The Man In The Glass

When you get what you want in your struggle for self,
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to a mirror and look at yourself...
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn't your father, mother or wife
Whose judgement upon you must pass
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,
For he's with you clear upto the end,
And, You have passed your most dangerous,difficult test,
If the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the path way of life,
And get pats on your back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears,
If you have fooled the man in the glass...

THE YEAR THAT WAS...

The year's coming to a close & soon we'll be stepping into 2009..isn't it amazing how far we've travelled in the new millenium.. 9 years!! 2008's been a far more troubled year of the 21st century for India..my readers will surely agree with me..no other year saw so many tragic happenings...the deadly terror attacks,the recession,the lay-offs...it seems everything bad had to happen this year.But there has to be a silver lining..ofcourse we won a Gold in the Olympics and our Cricket Team won the Tests against the Aussies...but I think the most important thing we evidenced is the unity being formed among the people of our country...it just grew stronger with every Terrorist Attack.It feels that we have matured a lot in a year...and it feels great to know that...The last evening I was with this group of frends who mostly treat "News" as being for "other people".But even they were discussing our politicians,our security apparatus,elections and stuff...there's this need to stand up and be counted..I personally think this unity and the sense of belonging to India was greatly missing among us...it's coming back,slowly but surely...
On the personal front mine too was a year of realization,be it career wise or other.I have matured up a lot and the best part have recognised certain lacunae on my part...I am now ready to be more responsible and as I mentioned earlier ready to be counted among...I can only say that I m happy to step into 2009 as a person who understands herself more clearly and is confident and determined to shape up her life as SHE wants it... WELCOME 2009..

Women Are From Venus...

I came across an incident of marital violence some days ago...It was one of my frend...I had never ever expected she had any kind of past but she did and listening about it terrified me...it was horrendous...I kept thinking about it for a long long time...I have often observed..ofcourse a lot of my readers will disagree with me,that in any kind of relationship,the woman always, always are compromising more and more and more....they are the ones who always sacrifice and only some lucky ones are acknowledged...I m not saying that they sacrifice because they want the acknowledgement,they do it because they really care about their families....but what I m trying to say is perhaps..is there some kind of pschye that women carry,some kind of notion that just because they are women,they think it's their time honoured duty to put others interest ahead of herself.I guess she does because she really cares or maybe the society's attuned in such a way that makes a woman feel guilty if for once she cares about her own interests rather than that of others.There's this trailer of a sitcom that appears on the Colours channel in which a woman is shown asking a similar type of question that has been posed above.Maybe I have recently had a bad experience about hearing a rather unpalatable version of a marriage gone really bad that I m posing these kind of of questions or thinking this way...otherwise such has been the role of women since the dawn of history.Our Hindu mythologies have examples galore...Sita had to give the "agnipariksha" time & again to prove her loyalty and chastity, Gandhari of Mahabharata had to remain blindfolded throughout her life because her husband had been born a blind man, even Draupadi had to sacrifice her five sons inorder that her five husbands be saved! I m not saying these women did wrong,history would have been quite different if Sita refused to give her fire ordeal time & again and asked Ram for a change to face the fire ordeals hinself, if Gandhari refused to be blindfolded...maybe the great war itself wouldn't have taken place or if Draupadi had told her husbands to face the enemy instead of sacricing her sons!!!!!! Maybe the society expects women to sacrifice, to keep compromising time and again, maybe someone is needed to do a little sacrifice inorder that the social balance may be maintained... maybe that's why women are born, that's why they are the ones who can bring life forth and nurture it. Maybe just maybe she needs little more respect than she normally gets, a little more frequent acknowledgement of her immense capacity for selflessness.

An Honest Confession

I am not perfect,I don't aim to be;
I stand in the madenning crowd,
Part of it, yet isolated.
The isolation reflects upon my shadow
While I think I'm ahead of others,
It stands still,silent,a spectator of my quest for perfection
"Life is rising above mediocrity",
the world around me thus advocates.
Creating one's individual niche,
I thus question myself,
"In my quest for perfection,
Aren't I getting lost in mindless mediocrity?"
What then is "Perfection" when everyone seem to be eager to attain?
All our shadows stand a silent testament
While we vie for a place ahead of others
Desparate,Selfish,Uncaring,Unconcerned,
The madness,
In pursuit of that "perfection"
And I say..."I am really glad
I am not perfect."

Secularism: The Soul of India

India is a secular state,Pakistan is an Islamic state;so much is clear.But when we enter into the question deeply,we find some amount of confusion.A secular state is not one which does not recognise religious affinities of it's population,but the one which does not discriminate among them.

A secular state,in essence,should not discriminate among religions.In such a state,no citizen can claim or enjoy special facilities by virtue of his belonging to a particular religious community,nor can he be deprived of any civic or political right.Secularism is a modern idea.Even a hundred years ago in England,Jews and Roman Chatholics were discriminated against;they were ineligible for service under the state,or even for education in institutions under the state.It must be said to the credit of ancient India,that there never was any desire to impose relogious qualifications or disqualifications on any community as such.India has always given an honourable status to people of all religions.

In the modern world most civilised states are secular in a sense.Today,in no country is religion taken into consideration in politacal or other sphere of activity.

Secularism in the state has very great importance in our daily life.It has a social value which has it's own significance.In a secular state,society is more well knit and homogenous.The collective interest of the people has much less chance of being deflected into communal channels.This means strenght to the state.In a non secular state,in times of stress might find the people divided and disunited,but in a secular state this is far less possible.It also has an educational and cultural value.The citizens of a secular state have far greater realization of the interests of humanity.Their attitudes to the problems and demands of life are more humane and less abstract.It is a fact that if we allow a class or community to remain in an under privileged position,we become unresponsive to the human claims of the later and this has an adverse effect on our ways of thought and feelings which by no means should be encouraged.It creates a narrowness of outlook.We should make a psychologically strong state for the people to share the responsibilities of the corporate ethos.

Education should be strictly non religious and non sectarian.The modern world,under the influnce of sceintific antagonism has a more or less secular outlook on life.Religion no more colours our views on political or economic matters except in backward ir reactionary states.

We have had far too many outbreaks of communal passion to be complacent and allow the forces of reaction to take their own course.A positive step in the right direction would be to cultivate a scientific and ethical approach to our social problems-an essential prerequisite for the building up of a secular state.

The Gamble

I don't know how to tell you

but somehow I think you know

That what you really mean to me

is more than I'd show.

at times I would like to hold you

And show you that I care..

But the thought that stops me reaching,

Is finding you not there.

And I guess I had to tell you so my heart would let be me...

I've put a gamble on your heart,

The token is on you,not me...

So if you ever make more

I've gambled...

I've lost...

But just the fact that we are friends..

Is worth what it'll cost...

Published In the Times Of India,Saturday Supplement,Kolkata circle,03rd Oct.'08...this reproduction is for those who missed it.

The Ideological Credence Of Terrorism

Terrorism: One of the words which have been used too much too many times in the recent past especially in India and is currently the favourite word of the two Presidential contenders in the USA.We all know the aim of terrorism,it is to spread terror or in more sophisticated terms violence in order to acheive the desired result.My question is do the "terrorist"(as they are called in the common parlence)adhere to any kind of ideology or their only motive is to ruthlessly kill people?Terrorism as a weapon to acheive the ends is not a new phenomenon,India has had a history of revolutionaries right from the Chapekar Brothers to Bhagat Singh who had been called "terrorists" by the British and 'revolutionaries' by their countrymen,who did use violence to make their griviences heard.But as Bhagath Singh time and again asserted,"Terrorism as an ideology cannot acheive much"so our freedom fighters moved from what has been called the "cult of Bomb" in the days of Khudiram to the "philosophy of bomb"in the times of Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev.The two had vastly different connotations.While the 'cult of bomb' did follow individual terrorist acts inspired by the Irish revolutionaries,the 'philosophy of bomb' just used terror as a weapon to make their demands meet..their explicit aim being not to harm any innocent whether native or foriegn,that was the reason when Bhagath Singh and B.Dutt threw the bomb in the Legislative Assembly,it was not meant to injure anyone but just give the pretence of a bomb blast.

Anyway we have since long travelled from the days of Bhagat Singh and entered into the times of Osama Bin Laden amd somewhere in that long journey,the ideology followed by the revolutionaries or teerorists as they are now known as have got lost.Today an act of terrorism does not potray anxieties of the opressed or the neglected minority,instead it manifests the destructive power of a few which destroys millions and orphans a few more.In a nutshell TERRORISM TODAY DOES NOT HAVE ANY IDEOLOGY OR THE TERRORISTS OF TODAY JUST TERRORISE PEOPLE FOR THEIR INDIVIDUAL GAINS.

The all pervesive question of how to contain terrorism has come up time and again and one answer everyone right from scholers to politicians agreed was the socio-economic upliftment of the backward and the neglected classes of the society from where it was found that the majority of people engaging in terror came from..but this does not hold true anymore today..today's terrorists come from affluent middle class,educated families who are sufficiently educated themselves and have the necessary sophistication to understand fully well the consequences of their actions.These are the numerically few who are holding the numerically large to ransom through their acts of terror.

The answer to the question as to how to contain terrorism lies within each of us today.We have to decide whether we want to live coherently and solve our problems in a civilised manner,through peaceful and constructive methods or would we choose the path of violence,of terror and destruction to have our grievinces heard when there won't be anybody at all to hear them.