Bhat Abas
Thanks a lot for tagging me in this beautiful video about reunion of friends separated by partition ...
One gets involved in a tale when one finds his/ her story lurking somewhere in it..or sees the plausibility of such a tale in his lived experiences or future destiny...
Coming from a family wounded by partition, I've grown up hearing anecdotes and tales, narrated and often re-told, by my father, uncles and paternal aunts of a lost ‘pastoral paradise’ that existed in Zafarwal.. in district Sialkot. They often rued the loss of their 'haveli,' land and cattle ...which they had to leave…behind ...as their 'home' had become a part of Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1947. 
My nonagenarian tau (paternal uncle), during each meeting, harps on the old communitarian culture they had, and still longs for the "Mehtian di Gali"(street of Mehtas) in Zafarwal named after our clan, and where his clan once flourished.. 
Life for them, the migrants from across, must have been quite tough ...dad was a child barely gaining consciousness of the harsh, divisive world around...For him, it took a lifetime to overcome the loss of his parents just before partition and the loss of his ‘home’ and ‘hearth.’ 
My dad's generation of 'victims' of partition..really slogged it out..Grappling almost daily with the wounds of partition and the resulting emotional and psychological scars…Father had a large circle of friends, and that friendship sustained throughout. The ‘victims of partition’ were united by their ‘lacks,’ united by their ‘sense of victimhood and loss.’ 
When ‘we’ took birth, dad had already carved a place in the social topography of Pathankot; earned the status of a sincere, sagacious soul, from who people could seek advice and help. We grew up to know of his struggle... against recalcitrant conditions, poverty, rejection and hunger... from his friends, and proud relatives. 
The topography of the kasba or township of Zafarwal must have been so vividly entrenched in his mind that he often confidently claimed that if he ever goes to his town he would easily trace his steps to home ; ‘the ‘home of his childhood’ that survived in his memory, the home he had left long ago. We, the children, had developed our own ‘mind-pictures’ of the place and had developed ‘place-attachments’ to a place where we never had been and never would physically be. But in our stories, and in imagination Zafarwal had always been a real, thriving place. 
Was it curiosity or ‘inquisitiveness’ born out of the daily ritual of communicating with dad?, that made me …search ‘google baba’ to find that Zafarwal the town… where my grandparents build their home and bore six, or seven, children, had grown to become an administrative tehsil of the district Narowal. 
The image of the town that I could ‘construct’ was of a place having dusty lanes, cluttered with small houses amidst the large, expansive green fields. Mosques and large farm houses of the feudal lords were perhaps the most pompous and eye-catching buildings of Zafarwal. Though divided by a distance of a few kilometers (aprox 100 maybe), ‘no route’ was shown by google maps between Gurdaspur/ Pathankot and Zafarwal/ Narowal …
We, the children of our father had always known of the routes that led across to the place.. …We had often been there…,and though aware of the physical boundary …we had crossed it many times …in our ‘imaginative worlds’…
and I’m sure about this, Zafarwal- the place of our imagination is much more ‘paradisal ;’ much more vivid than the place of ‘feudal reality’ that I encountered through Google.

Delhi Assembly Results: The Seven Mistakes of BJP

  After tasting successive victories in post LS sabha polls in Jharkhand, Haryana, Maharastra and J&K assembly elections, Modi's roller-coaster was finally stopped by AAP in Delhi.
Defeated, dejected and virtually decimated in the Lok Sabha polls.......
 How did Kejriwal's AAP team overturn BJP's apple cart and sweep Delhi.?

BJP's strategists and spin doctors need to go back to the drawing board and find out what went horribly wrong with their strategy.

 Here are the seven glaring mistakes that BJP did in the run up to the Delhi polls:

1 Negative Campaign targeting Kejriwal:

What worked in Modi's favour worked in Kejriwal's favour.
Congress paid for slandering , abusing and maligning Modi in the run up to LS polls

BJP repeated history by trying to paint Kejriwal as a villain;an anti-national, power hungry corrupt rabble rouser: people were not taken in by this mud slinging
The more BJP tried to bring his image down , the higher  Kejriwal rose .......like a Phoenix

 2. Confused Strategy Wrong Signalling 

Roping in AAP's liabilities Like Shazia Ilmi and Vinod Binni quickened the slide for the saffron party .
These two had made headlines for the wrong reasons many a times, their jumping to BJP's bandwagon was a blessing though in disguise for AAP.

The BJP was signalling defeat ....by such actions & overtures ....much before the finishing line

3. Announcing Kiran Bedi as CM candidate midway during the campaign

 BJP strategists initially thought it prudent not to announce any CM candidate for Delhi,and instead bank upon Modi's charisma.
In a blunder , they brought Kiran Bedi in to counter Kejriwal but on a hindsight, this move seems to have backfired miserably.
Public got the message that perhaps BJP lacks a local leader who can match Kejriwal's onslaught as they were apparently forced to bring in someone who is of a similar pedigree as Kejriwal.

4. Where was the common man?

People in Delhi perceived a certain disconnection  of the Modi government with the common people on the street

The talk of smart cities, big mega projects ,nuclear deals and missile programmes did not cut much ice with the common people engaged in existential concerns.
Common people, are more concerned about basic facilities , basic infrastructure, 

BJP govt. did little to address these small-2 things that concernt he lives of common people

AAP's focus on Common people and its tirade against VIP culture ,,,,,,,was a hit among the masses

5. The Dumping of OLD TRIED HORSES like HARSHVARDHAN

Dr. Harshvardan who took BJP close to the corridors of power in Delhi in the last ousting was not even considered to lead or direct the campaign

The seat he won( KRISHNANAGAR) by an overwhelming margin -32000 Bedi lost by a margin of 2550.....

His honest,sober down to earth demeanour could have been a positive for the party.

His cornering in the last few months is strange.....

6.  Delay & Mistiming of the polls

BJP miscalculated the timing of the Delhi assembly polls.

It must be ruing the decision to inordinately delay the polls.......What if & only if the polls would have immediately followed the LS elections when the party swept all the 7 seats?

7. Infighting & Failure to reign in the fringe...

The BJP campaign was marked by widespread infighting and the failure of the leadership to reign in those wayward elements who made headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Those who had lived the Jan Sangh , RSS, Swadeshi ideology ......felt largely sidelined by a new set of party hoppers and seat seeking brigade who were simply keen to milk the Modi-BJP wave for  gaining power.

.

End of Childhood

END OF CHILDHOOD

End of Childhood


Modernism and the resultant techno-scientific culture have permeated every domain of human life. The paradigm of modernity that drives our existence is blind to toxic side effects of this culture of greed, exhibitionism and superfluous existence.

Childhood, a phase traditionally associated with innocence, leisure and freedom, is increasingly becoming a victim to this culture of capital aggrandizement, greed, over consumption and competition.
In the pre-modern and traditional communities in India, children were and are envisioned as the images of archetypal Krishna and Radha. The community culture of sharing and caring perceived children as innocent gods whose innocence was meant to be celebrated.
Modernity is characterized by the rule of capital and a culture of cut throat competition. Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” is being played out literary in the socio-economic sphere of the homo sapiens. This trend to earn more and spend more and this centrality of comfort and capital has changed the concept of leisure.
 The ‘end of leisure’ is conspicuously phenomenal in childhood.  Leisure for urban children often means staying glued to laptops, TV screens, tablets and other modern gadgets. These devices simulate the real world and are poor substitutes for human interaction or human interaction with the natural world. The advocates of ‘technology driven childhood’ and techno-savvy childhood education are often ignorant of the multiple ways in which technology is stifling childhood and the growth of the child. The world of touchpads and touchscreens created around the child often misses the soft human touch. Moreover, the techno-savvy, capital intensive world created for the child is an unnatural world. It is a veneer; a camouflage for something real; something natural. The real is the natural, relation centric, community centric world which has been deeply fractured by the rise of concrete jungles. As the ‘where’ decides the ‘is’, the entropy of metropolitan systems negatively affects the child. Also, growing up in claustrophobic surroundings in the increasing metropolitan sprawl, the children are never ‘free’ and childhood is bereft of any autonomy. The self of the child becomes too individualistic, narcissistic and selfish disconnected as the childhood is from the natural world of symbiosis and co- existence.
The globalization of western values and paradigm of linear progress have standardized childhood. Childhood is constantly subjected to gaze of “performance driven” adults. The children are constantly surveyed, analyzed, scrutinized and judged by the demanding parents. The child becomes a meek robot; married to the transistorized routine set by the demanding parents. In trying to realize the unlimited, human potential of the child the educated, potent parents all over the world unwittingly perceive their children to be superhuman machines. They are expected to perform as machines and every act is a “performance” enacted by the child. Parents all over the world, of all classes and cultures, love their children but in various ways end up misusing their power and monopolizing the lives of their progeny.
Another glaring feature of present, mechanical upbringing of the child is the end of conviviality among children. Children being brought up in urban landscapes increasingly are made aware of their “class positionality”. The boundaries of personal space and social space are again constructed, demarcated, entrenched by the adults without any voice, freedom and choice of the ‘hegemonized child’. It is highly interesting to note that a serious disconnection with the natural world and popular culture of the immediate locale has constricted and restricted a child’s conception of space. Thus, the ‘exotic utopias’ to which children are often taken by the urban parents to make up for the lack of leisure cannot and do not suffice for the lack of imaginative familiarity with the native cultural geography. The gerontocracy of certain traditional societies has been increasingly replaced by the rule of young, debonair, bold and sexy young (or young looking) people. This norm emanating from America has been so much universalized in the modern age that the naivety or innocuous innocence of an adult is often marked as ‘childish.’ Childishness, thus, is to be abhorred. Thus, childhood is conceived of as a stage that has to be grown of by a child and avoided; “silenced” by the adults. Children in this Americanized paradigm are conceived as “mini-adults”. It is really hilarious that how childhood is being standardized in this age of globalized modernity where children in far flung, nondescript towns also play with Ninja, Barbie and Hana Montana toys and dress up like them. Another strange phenomenon, though highly dislocated, being witnessed is the parents lapping up and trying to implement guidelines given and laid down by American (self-styled) experts on childhood in the third world countries. The standardization of childhood and the universalizing of norms of child rearing is a serious problem in the contemporary age. Another problematic with the current conception of childhood is the conception of child as “mini-adults”. The adult subjectivity often bounds the children in a monotonous order imposed on them. The life of children growing up in urban landscape stands imprisoned in the routines, daily charts and time tables. Bereft of a link with the natural world and community, the children of the metropolitan sprawl find their relationship with the world around monopolized by the parents.
The disconnection with the natural world is substituted by a materialistic world involved in pursuit of comfort. The “nature deficit” leads to                an increasing class of children wedded to a paradigm of comfort, class, competition and career. In India, we are experiencing an increasing loss of traditional values of adjustment and sacrifice (tyag), reverence for elderly and tradition ( shraddha) , community culture of caring or sharing and loss of rapport with nature (prakriti) resulting in over consumption and rising pollution. It is really strange that the western impetus, on self and self enhancement and western paradigm of progress and success, guides adults and goads children in the globalized local places in India and other third world countries. 
The end of childhood is a postmodern phenomenon and it is accompanied by an ‘end of laughter’ in the childhood phase. The laughter of the children in the streets is heard no more; the participation of community in child rearing and upbringing is no more. Parents and teachers are a part of the environment in which children are born and deemed to grow. Therefore, it is a bit unjustified to solely blame parents and teachers for the end of childhood. It is socio-cultural problem and should be tackled accordingly. In the context of globalized Americanization and pandemic anglophilia, the uprooted, urban dwellers need to revisit the text of their lives and make it context- sensitive. The ‘nature deficit syndrome’ that afflicts children in the metropolitan sprawls can be made up by making children more socially, culturally orientated. The standardization of a child’s upbringing should be localized. Childhood is in need of resurrection and it can only be done by reconnecting with the natural cultural world.

Elegy on Love....

Let us kiss and part

separation...love's aftermath.

We met... at six

assiduous glance met

with a ready response

Aureoran hugs provided warmth

O! thus started our romance.

We ate ...together at one

your hungers a bait

on which I dined

I devoured the leg...

you pecked at the neck

O! love was our wine.

We are parting...at six

a day's period seemed twelve lives

being good friends we switched sides

and went for the last ride

O! can a spangled bubble last?

pintoo's gloomy day

My Atom of Gloom
Brown smoke intrudes upon the red sky,
My hopes end with the setting sun.
A quaint stream of images frisk about...
the demon of darkness engulfs me...
I spin in a vortex...
feel sucked in a marsh of gloom.
An unrelenting film moves on the blank walls...
the dark forms perform a samba dance...
the frenzied numbers from the temple...
nearby provide the background score.
The forms seem to raise fingers...exchanging, glancing
an autopsy is performed on my isolated being...
the night revellers celebrate...my undeclared death
in life.....

IDEOLOGY OF TERROR

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai and the serial blasts that preceded it should wake us all from our slumber and bring us face to face with questions of Indian identity and nationalism.
The terror strikes were meticulously planned and had a systematic pattern...
The places chosen for the blasts were carefully chosen by the ideologues of a dominant creed in the middle east which isn’t comfortable with the idea of a resurgent India ...trying to regain its rightful place in the new world order.
BANGALORE...is synonymous with the IT revolution ...this software capital proved to be a soft target
AHMEDABAD... the capital of Gujrat was chosen as the site for the blasts ...the region emerging as the Indian Shangai ...the aim was to debunk the image of vibrant Gujrat as a safe haven for investments .
JAIPUR...the place that figures in every tourist’s itinerary...capital of a state that has the potential of making India a western tourist’s favoured destination
DELHI...the capital city was the inevitable target to send the message of India being unsafe...a “trouble territory”
The attacks on India’s commercial capital were aimed at demoralising the whole nation...stopping the engine of nation’s economic march...accentuating the image of India being an unsafe destination and validating the image of India being a soft nation...
The strikes are a product of an ideology of terror ....This ideology of terror propagated in the name of jihad is a by product of an ideology of hate directed against India...
This ideology of hate propagates schizophrenic hatred against India ...The jihadis indoctrinate the young, naive and the ignorant with distorted interpretation of Islam and the existence of a pan-Islamic brotherhood...a Hindu majority India is perceived as a major threat to the establishment of a utopian kingdom of the pure ....
I believe Pakistan has always been at the epicentre of this anti –India machinery working overtime to destabilise and puncture India’s economic, political and military might...
The very genesis of Pakistan has been on this rabid hatred ....It has always acted as a hostile, recalcitrant, antagonistic bastard son who nurses deep rooted grudge towards his parents...
Pakistan is a failed state ...But the military establishment has been skilfully diverting the public wrath by promoting jihad in Kashmir...and fuelling anti –India feelings
I, like everyone else in India, believe that the terror strikes were planned in Pakistan and executed in India.
For long the so-called non- state actors have enjoyed the covert, at times overt, support of the Pak military and political establishment. But it’s also true, that India has committed foreign policy blunders a number of times (remember who took the Kashmir issue to the U.N.) and has failed to solicit vehement criticism of Pakistan .
India should follow the age old dictum that foreign policy is guided solely by self interest and not by altruism.
A full- fledged war is not needed ...a proxy war should be fought with tit –for –tat policy.
But this is also an ideological war and this can be fought by commitment to our nation .
The leftist ideologues often talk about the commitment to the society ...the lacuna that I find in their thesis is the attempt to separate society and nation ...and also there are attempts to challenge nationhood or concept of nation...The question of nationality is linked to the question of identity...but both questions have acquired negative connotations in our intelligentsia.
For long, the politicians suffering from chronic myopia have promoted caste, regional, linguistic and communal politics. Reconstruction of history by the western read and bred pseudo –scholars has always attempted to disown this country of ours....
“khafile ate gaye Hindustan banta gaya”
It is a fact that cultural hybridisation and a kind of cultural symbiotism have slowly but surely taken place over the ages. Inspite of the creation of Islamic nation of Pakistan out of Bharat, India today has larger number of muslims than in Pakistan. For long the muslims in India have been taken for a ride. Politicians and religious leaders have connived to construct the myth of a muslim solid vote bank. The ideological problem, which the Islamic leadership provided by the likes of Geelani, Osiwi and Madani, has failed to recognise,arises from the rejection of the pre-Islamic past.
The impetus and focus of jehadi ideologues is to create allegiance to a pan –Islamic brotherhood .This allegiance is meant to take precedence over national anal cultural allegiance. The fundamentalist propaganda machinery operates , supported by the petro dollar funding in which drug traffickers and mafia play a pivotal role. Islam in India over the years has become Indianised , it is unlike the Arabic and Iranian versions , not even like the Turkish model where western influence is stark and conspicuous . The clergy and the Islamic leadership in India has mostly opposed this Indianisation and localisation by making efforts to keep the faith close to Arabian model ,curb the other voices(they are highly dismissal of Ahmedias or Qadianas, Sufism is also abhorred by the clergy) and keeping faith hegemonic ,semitic as far as it is possible. The local support that the nefarious, heinous activities get in certain pockets in India is the result of the efforts to create a chasm between the community interests and national interests.
Nation and culture are great unifying factors, perhaps much more powerful than caste , creed or religion. If religion had been such a unifying factor such large population would not have lost lives in the ethnic conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
We, the people, need to recognise our collective unconsciousness in which Ram, Buddha, Nanak , Kabir and Viveknanda exist. Indian thought has always been heteroglossic or many voiced where assimilation gains precedence over monolithism. In my personal ideology ,Indian identity and Hindu identity are synonymous. This identity accepts and doesn’t reject the other and his voice. This identity doesn’t believe in only one truth, one way, one book or one saint but accepts many truths , many ways, many faiths. Hinduism is not a religion and has always brushed aside the efforts to convert it into one. If the traits of Indianness ,that essential Indian consciousness are found in person believing in any faith ,he can be called a Hindu .India is secular not inspite of but because of its Hindu majority. If certain sections, due to certain conditioning, abhor and oppose the Hindu tag, let them not accept it or sport it. But national identity and interest should always reign supreme. Loyalty to one’s caste ,creed ,faith which have often been the cause of so many acrimony and dissensions in post- independence India , should be secondary and even tertiary to loyalty towards the nations .Indians need to build a national character and recognize the national consciousness which is lurking somewhere inside them. Not the support of U.S or Russia can make us victorious in the war against terror. To defeat this ideology of terror we need to counter it with ideology of unadulterated nationalism. Centuries of colonial rule resulted in the post independence opinion makers, suffering from colonial hangover, often falling a prey to self doubt and cynical self scepticism. This mindset often led them to dismiss or ignore issues of national pride, unity and identity.
AS SHOWN BY THREE LAC MUMBAIKARS WHO CAME ON THE ROADS TO ANSWER THE IDEOLOGUES OF TERROR,
WE THE PEOPLE OF INDIA CAN BE THE HARBINGERS OF CHANGE...
LET’S FULFILL TAGORE’S DREAM OF A NATION NOT TORN APART BY NARROW DOMESTIC WALLS OF CASTE, CREED, FAITH OR REGION...
LET US MAKE PEOPLE LIKE VIVEKANDA OUR IDEOLOGUES AND WORK TO MAKE OUR MOTHERLAND REGAIN IT’S ANCIENT GLORY
LET US DEFEAT THE FORCES OF TERROR AND DARKNESS...
LET US RECOGNISE AND ACKNOWLEDGE LOVE FOR THE NATION & NATIONAL PRIDE THAT EXITS WITH IN US...

poem

MY NUGATORY TRAVAILS
A dreary trudge of a few kilometres,
to do dour tasks.
Greeted by well rehearsed wishes
followed by cold handshakes.
A semicircle formation in the grey spring
that makes or breaks reputations.
The vitrolic talk spiced with bucolic laugh
causing lesions in the heart
The toll of the afternoon bell
An assembly line of sychophants
singing paeans of the local dieties
boasting of a flawed production line
of corrupted,criminalised race.
I......a petty priest
singing monotonous songs
in the temple of learning
A decadent industry...
churning out the future