2019 – A New Year Has Begun

2019 – A NEW YEAR has arrived. Today, January 1, is the day of promises to oneself, New Year resolutions, bucket lists, and plans…a day of greeting everyone you know and even strangers.

This will be followed by unfulfilled promises, resolutions broken, lists that remain on paper and plans that remain in the mind. This is a pessimistic view. Some people do make a new beginning, start implementing resolutions and try to make the new year a happy one as desired

In my case, the last quarter of this year would mean completion of 80 years of age – one more year of a vigil at the exit gate of life, waiting for it to open. The boastful ‘unstoppable’ is slowing down and a decision is to be taken on whether to continue till 80 or make it ‘stoppable’ now — neither acclaimed if continued nor missed if stopped.

This post is being written, perhaps, due to the Indian belief that what happens on a new year day or a birthday will happen throughout the year – which explains why some celebrate these days by feasting and wearing new clothes.

Writing this is, however, not to ensure that this would continue for the year but an acknowledgment of the fact that I have lived, from the age of 16, by writing, with no great achievements in the past and certainly none likely in the few weeks or months that remain. That is the story of most. not all, people on earth.

And yet we wish each other a Happy New Year and celebrate the occasion. The famous poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1937-1984) who migrated to Pakistan during Partition (to start Communist movement there, but was frustrated due to his failure) asks what is new in the new year or how it is ‘happy’.

ऐ नए साल बता, तुझमें नया-पन क्या है

हर तरफ़ ख़ल्क़ ने क्यूँ शोर मचा रक्खा है

रौशनी दिन की वही, तारों भरी रात वही

आज हम को नज़र आती है हर इक बात वही

आसमाँ बदला है, अफ़सोस, ना बदली है ज़मीं

एक हिंदसे का बदलना कोई जिद्दत तो नहीं

अगले बरसों की तरह होंगे क़रीने तेरे

किस को मालूम नहीं बारह महीने तेरे

जनवरी, फ़रवरी और मार्च पड़ेगी सर्दी
और अप्रैल, मई, जून में होगी गर्मी

तेरा मन दहर में कुछ खोएगा, कुछ पाएगा
अपनी मीआद बसर कर के चला जाएगा

तू नया है तो दिखा सुबह नयी, शाम नयी

वरना इन आँखों ने देखे हैं नए साल कई

बे-सबब देते हैं क्यूँ लोग मुबारकबादें

ग़ालिबन भूल गए वक़्त की कड़वी यादें

तेरी आमद से घटी उम्र जहाँ में सब की
‘फ़ैज़’ ने लिक्खी है यह नज़्म निराले ढब की

……………………….
meanings —
ख़ल्क़ – मानवता, हिंदसे – संख्या, जिद्दत – नया-पन, अगले /पिछले -गुज़रे हुए, क़रीने – क्रम, दहर – दुनिया. मीआद/मियाद – अवधि, बे-सबब – बे-वजह,ग़ालिबन – शायद, आमद – आना, ढब – तरीक़ा l

And yet, as a positive outlook and attitudes play a decisive role in life, I wish all A HAPPY NEW YEAR

And yet, as a positive outlook and attitudes play a decisive role in life, I wish all A HAPPY NEW YEAR

Growing Up In Information Age

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–Courtesy Prakash Hegde

WhatsApp has become so much a part of our lives that there is hardly an urban Indian who is not only on the app but also on one or several groups of the messaging service.

Some find WhatsApp a big nuisance with lengthy forwards and data-consuming videos  Continue reading Growing Up In Information Age

When Scribes Turn Dalals

planA petition  was filed in the Supreme Court last  Tuesday  January 3,  by an eminent journalist, Hari Jaisingh, asking for the
constitution of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) for a court-monitored probe against some journalists who wrote in favour of the AgustaWestland VVIP helicopter deal of the earlier Congress government,sc-pil

Jaisingh  alleged that  journalists were paid Rs. 50 crores to support the scandalous deal in connection with which the former Indian Air Force chief, S. P. Tyagi and some others were arrested. The scandal was unearthed by foreign newspapers.

Aircraft purchase and journalists looks like an unlikely connection. Hari Jaisingh is not one of those so-called journalists editing sensational rags. He was editor of mainstream dailies including those of The Tribune group and author of several books Continue reading When Scribes Turn Dalals

No More Scavenging With Pen

pen-1Writing on politics in India is a scavenger’s job; you can write only about dirty deeds of unprincipled people. The very word ‘politics’ has lost its original meaning to acquire a bad connotation. When one conspires or manipulates, one is supposed to be “playing politics”. Journalists think only ‘politics’ – who is stabbing whom in the back, who is pulling whose legs – is news. Even those who are disgusted with it and choose fields like sports or science have to cover politics there; ‘politics’ has become all-pervasive.

All political reporting is about parties which have sacrificed all values, principles and ideologies and have the single-point goal of coming to power and retaining it, about palace coups within parties, about people called ‘leaders’ who only follow — doing what the mob wants, even if wrong. Populism and evils like casteism, parochialism and use of money and muscle power are accepted as “electoral compulsions”, even by parties which once swore by principles.
What can a political analyst write about today?
On how a loyal good man, frustrated and grumbling about being always ignored in favour of dynasty members has been ‘kicked up’ into the Rahstrapati Bhavan as he cannot be kicked out?
On how one becomes a President or Governor not for any merit or erudition, but as reward for loyalty to ruling family or for nuisance value and ability to needle the rulers if not ‘rehabilitated’?
On how goondas posing as leaders work up mob emotions on issues which should be sorted out across the table and in the interests of the majority, irrespective of their language. religion or caste? On how these ‘leaders’ remain unscathed, grow rich and live comfortably in palacial properties even as the people whom they incite to violence lose lives or limbs or get locked up?
On how “people’s representatives” waste time in Parliament and legislatures on dharnas, freebies for themselves and trivial issues like a decades-old cartoon, naming of universities/projects or even more frivolous matters, but have no time to pass the Lokpal or Women’s Reservation Bills or laws to benefit children, dalits (who they swear by) and disabled?
On how ‘leaders’ of a party which criticisie rivals for corruption or illegal activities and “foreign jaunts”, themselves face corruption charges, get arrested or go on pleasure trips abroad with hangers on? On how they spend hundreds of crores of tax-payers’ money on ads to promote temselves while basic services suffer?
On how a CM spends crores on helicopter-hopping, poojas, homas and prostrating before pontiffs, ignoring draught and more urgent issues?
On how a leader with prime ministerial dreams prefers to be a puppet Chief Minister controlled by a disqualified politician and allows a wanted criminal ‘welcome’ a muder accused on bail, giving him a VIP treatment?
On how Union Carbide’s Andersons, Bofors’ Quattarochis and the corrupt with secret Swiss bank accounts are protected by leaders who then demand a probe into an anti-corruption crusaders’ money but refuse to reveal where their own party’s millions came from?
On how those responsible for a deplorable massacre of members of one community charge rivals –just to get a community’s votes– with (equally deplorable) genocide, but use their own power to escape prosecution while the rivals faced scores of cases and tet their own members go to jail?
On how politicians, film stars and gold-and-diamond merchants – all of them contributing little to the society — have become millionaires with political patronage while farmers who produce the food we live on are driven to suicide?
On how a ‘son of the soil’ who could spend crores on world tours for his extended family despite being a ‘poor farmer’, found only three billionaires of the state to choose a Rajya Sabha candidate from?
On how a company can lend money to the close kin of the ruling dynasty to buy land and then buy the same land from him at many times the price just a few days later or on how a government-allotted land worth hundreds of crores is ‘sold’ by politician-trustees to themselves for a paltry sum?
The list can be unending. The pen may be mightier than the sword, or the (key)board stronger than the bomber, but a journalist has to use it as a toilet brush to clean up the dirt spread by politicians.
Journalists who want to stop writing on politics and turn to human issues are, however, condemned to be considered “useless” non-entities.

I did.