We’re after all human

There seems to be brewing a huge conflict of resolution in New Delhi regarding the reaction to the attacks in Mumbai and for the first time I am not blaming the politicians. Here’s how the human mind works: it sees images, shocking tormenting images which just don’t go away and then it hears words like: enough is enough and citizens against terror(not pointing at an one channel here) and then the brain makes up a decision based on what it sees. Now I think is the time when Indian Media should rise up to the occasion and admit it did make mistakes. There is so much implied hatred in the words spoken on the television. There is no: ‘mind you the images are shocking, parents’ presence is advised’ or ‘This just in terrorists have attacked buildings and they are killing people so maybe we should mourn our loss’. The only thing I remember seeing flashed in big huge letters were: they were all from Pakistan and then newspapers went about their business of “implying” and trying hard to let the government know this is what we want, well no this is not what we want, we don’t want to attack Pakistan, we think we want that but we don’t because we’re not being told all the sides of the story.

How does one not hate when one sees a man laughing talking to his comrade minutes before he shoots down a lady and her young 4 month old infant? But the job here is not to instill hate now is it? Our media channels report f how citizens can make a difference: well, we could start by forgiving, I know it’s too much to ask particularly after you have seen such horrifying images but our anger is just going to be received with sarcasm. Our anger is what they want; our impatience is exactly what they need to fuel more violence.

As a strict believer in non-Gandhian principles, this may come as a shock, but for the first time I see our nation’s father as a hero. He managed to forgive and yet fight for what he believed in. He was right in saying violence only breeds more violence. We’re not by nature a militaristic nation then why does anger breed thoughts of how even a tyrant will rule this country better. Do you guys realize how much you are insulting your own intellect by saying that?

You’re saying that ‘we as a nation have failed to make a democracy work so now we’ve realized that one man can maybe do it better than one billion people?’ One billion-and yet not one stands up and says, we’ve made mistakes but who doesn’t let’s look at the mistakes we made and not at whom to throw a stone at. Restraint is important.

I’m not saying we should go easy on these people, no. I am just saying we shouldn’t underestimate our powers as a nation. So the next time you take a pledge to combat terrorism, here’s my own list of things that you should agree to:

1. 1. I will not blame some random country just because I have a finger to point at.

2. 2. I will continue to believe in love, which at some level has survived after all this, after all we’re human.

3. I will not make decisions or sound opinions like ‘kill,die,murder’ etc. Does that kind of talk makes us any different from those who killed our loved ones?

4.It’s difficult to forgive but I will try to be a hero simply by looking at things objectively and leaving my anger behind and if the only way I can do that is by forgiving then I will try my level best to forgive(I’m still personally working on this one: trust me it’s tough but I’m working on it)

5. 5. I will remember that no sane democracy would single handedly want to kill another country: it’s just not good for the future of the two democracies. I will remember that my neighbours: good or bad(not making opinions that don’t matter) are just as in this fight as we are. They don’t hate us because…well, they know its stupid to hate like this maybe we’d understand that some day.

6. I will not stand in favor of anybody who suggests military rule for the country. I cannot take that kind of insult of intellect from a country which boasts of intelligence that changed the world.

These may get sound amount of criticism but don’t you think, when you are not listening to the deafening cries of despair: ‘our nation sucks. Our politicians should die. What we need is military rule…etc’, the silence sometimes tells us more things than anger does. Maybe if you stop listening to these desperate screams you’ll start hearing those birds chirping again.We’re on the right track as a nation(at least I’d like to believe so). Then why do we suddenly have to start listening to the terrorists telling us we are only capable of hate? That’s not true now is it?

We’re after all human.

Is my country falling apart?

"The fault dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves", was Shakespeare sending out a message to the world with or did he just want a good line for poor Cassius? My people are rapidly declining into a very deep abyss of insecurity and yet the irony of it all lies in the fact that the very educated and so called "aware" youth seems to simply not care. Imagine a state of affairs where everyone who belongs to a certain caste wants to be called backward simply to attain reservations that according to them righteously belong to them. The Gujjar agitation is a clear sign of a chain of events that is going to set forth. The wise of the country tried to undo this agitation two years ago when the doctors of the country were against increasing the reservation percentage. They didn't know then that in their loss they set fire to an already raging issue of reservation. Clearly, the increase in reservation percentage was a personal ambition of politicians seeking vote. The middle class of the country had to wake up. And they did two years ago when the doctors of AIIMS decided to stand up against this tyranny. Only the ending was the same as it has been for years. The politicians won the war, and subsequently the battle as well. But the idea of a doctor who is simply in the med school not because he studied but because he belongs to a certain caste or religion scared the public and still nothing happened. The ripples of the so called revolution died out and now a new battle is on stage.I won't be surprised if in some time the Thakurs of U.P. and the Rajputs of Rajasthan and other so called forward castes start fighting for Scheduled Caste status. I don't blame them for I am a victim of this system as well and have seen my other forward caste classmates illegally change their names simply to have greater eligibility for a certain seat in a reputed college. The idea that a whole community wants to be called backward is ironic isn't it? This, my friend, happens only in India. What can i say? I am proud? No, I am disappointed in the system that promised equality 50 years ago. My cries fell on deaf ears when I sent these words to a newspaper two years ago on the counts of the fact that I was opposing the system too strongly. I hope my right to voice my opinion is not being compromised when I am talking to the world.I must add, and disappointingly so, the ideas of biggest democracy in the world is washing away and the world is slowly coming to know of the true price that we all paid in the name of instilling equality. The curtains of secularism had already been torn down by Gujarat's sad situation years ago and now our next "pillar of democracy" is being pulled down. For my part I hope the Gujjars get the reservations they want we will then have more reason to fight for making the forward castes the new minority of the nation.Those who don't stand up for themselves will not find anyone to stand up for them so if you want a piece of the cake, hang on there will definitely be a day when seats in colleges will have to be "reserved" for all castes and each "caste" will eventually have a college of their own. Talk about unity in diversity? At this rate only diversity will remain.

Soft Solitude

There he’s-hark the good old moon

Scared every night

As he ventures into the dark

Little does he know

What wins over the night

Is his heavenly light

There he is hiding behind the clouds

Mischief in his mind

Playing with his own brilliance

What the stars fail to see,

Is the loneliness in his game

For his helplessness brings him too much shame

As the morning comes,

The sun maliciously bidding him goodbye

He goes back leaving me alone

To wither in this wretched heat

Little does he know

Everyday I blossom for him

For it’s his soft gaze that makes me glow

I don’t know what I’d do

If he’d not be there to see me through

the end of every day and the rise of every night

Cry me a River

Cry me a river

For these rivers from ages of darkness

Have run dry

So my dear stranger

Cry me a river

They well up these rusty eyes

For they’ve only seen decades of hatred

With only one wish of a wishful heart

To die with a smile

For there will be some one who will

Cry me a river

For the land is too red with blood spilled

The trees have skeletons for fruits

And the sky growls in anger and rage

In this mist of hell’s relentless fury

Cry me a river

For it’s been too long

Living in a loveless land

Under a red suns and a dreamless nights

Give me a reason

To believe in the world beyond

Full of love and liking

Give me a reason

To die with a smile

So my dear stranger…cry me a river

a day in the life of nobody

‘He’s not here but far away

The noise of life begins again

And ghastly through the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the bald day’

I just finished reading a book ‘every time we say goodbye’ by Anna Blundy. It’s about a daughter missing her father after he dies in a war ravaged El Salvador. Being a father obsessed young lady; I seem to sort of understand how shattered she was when she heard of her father’s death on the news. You should read it probably makes you realize how we take people for granted every single day.

So here I’m far away in a town that doesn’t speak my language sending out a message to the millions hoping my voice doesn’t drown in the consistent drone of the servers next you.

When emptiness seems to fill your senses and your emotions tend to be indefinable, when you are in an empty room with walls for company and you’ rather be away from your one single friend in the crowd, you should know you’re missing home.

In the past four years, my life has been in such turmoil. Everyday I’m constantly reminded of the fact that I’m a terrible writer. I haven’t read enough books to be called well-read and I haven’t heard enough music to claim to be a music buff. And yet when I hear people quoting D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce, I feel someone’s playing Beethoven’s symphony in my heart. My heart jumps at the sight of a Shakespearean play not because I love Shakespeare, but because I always wanted to play a Macbeth or Hamlet or a beautiful Juliet. For at the end of my hard earned day, when I ask myself who am I? The four walls around me mock my silence.

So to the world out there, please give an answer lest my faith in my importance dies out. Who am I?

End of an Era

Four years in a place that has taught nothing but to stop feeling, to stop living, to stop whatever you start if it is not helping you with a job. I feel free to have left the place I will leave behind good memories, more like desperate attempts of breaking free, attempts made by people I have learnt to love and cherish. According to Einstein, institutions have a moral obligation to the society to teach the individual how exactly to contribute to the betterment of the society. Considering Einstein was the greatest minds of the 21^st century, I’d like to believe him to be true. So how exactly has my college taught me to free the society of its so called polluted nuances? Well, it starts with learning to live with it, learning how to not rip your hair out when you wait in the line at the Finance Office and the counter closes just when your turn is on. It continues with smiling despite the fact that four of the five offices you have gone to have turned down your request for one lousy signature of a guy you’ve never seen in your life. So, yes the college has taught me a lot.

There is an upside though, when I leave this college, I’ll miss the various nice things which we could never use. The beautiful lawns where we couldn’t walk bare feet, the expensive books in the library we just couldn’t touch, the overly expensive International Mess where we couldn’t eat, the college does have its perks. My friends call it cynicism, I call it mere optimistic attitude, and where in even the worst of places in this world is more than bearable because, hey it could’ve been worse. I could’ve been sitting without any work on Saturday nights, partying away to conventionality, instead I chose to sit alone in a room and do assignments due the next week. I could’ve been wasting time, dating guys to get over boredom, instead I chose to become a nerd (I still blush at the thought of that cute guy calling me a nerd and stomping away when I turned him down for an examination).

‘What will you miss the most?’ my proud father asked me when we drove off the Main Gate, I thought long and hard and couldn’t find answers, I could say friends but I know I’d be laughing years later at the thought that I even imagined I’ll lose them after college. “Life”, was m answer I don’t know why I muttered such a stupid answer, it’s not like I am going to die and most people say that fun begins after college. But yes I will miss the life that I lived.

The eating in the middle of the night talking about what our future may hold, the getting wet in the rain the first time because of potentially crazy friends, the praying together at the advent of the scary results, the laughing at…well, absolutely nothing and laughing still. What I write here is not a memoir, no, it is a tribute to all those people who morphed me for good or for bad.

I will miss the lecturers who made my life hell, the friends who refused to tell the truth, the guys who started weird rumors about me, and most importantly, the rumors I started about themJ. My friends think college has made me quieter and more resilient or as some say I can take anything from anyone now. This would have to do with all that I went through here. I look back and smile that saintly smile and think oh my god I actually let these people get to me! But just as I begin to think that the end of an era concept is overrated I remember the number of times we all missed our respective homes, the times we fought and pretended not to care about each other, the times we laughed together and oh the one time we all got so scared after watching ‘The Exorcist’ we all had to go in groups down the empty hostel corridors and wait faithfully while the other answered nature’s call. The midnight noodles spree, for a moment I thought we’ll all end up eating so much of the one minute noodles that even the folks in Japan would want us to stop!

But what I learnt is beyond all this. What I learnt is to keep secrets, to tell even the worst of all truths to your best friends, to pretend to like everyone but to like only your best friends, to be as nice to people who are nice to you. Yes, it’s the end of an era, an era of honesty, truth, laughter and a shared sorrow. In the four years of my college, I learnt…how to live.