My thoughts on 2015 Bihar Election Results

So, what was the giveaway from yesterday's poll results; in short, Lalu-Nitish won, BJP lost. However, dig deeper and you realize that the biggest loser of these polls were the people of Bihar. It is a shame that they have to choose a person like Lalu. Perhaps they thought that Nitish would be able to rein in and keep Lalu and RJD in control. Nevertheless, with RJD being the bigger partner in the alliance, only time will tell how easy will that be. The fact that Congress won 75% of the seats they fought, is another worrying factor. Wasn't 2014 election supposed to be the beginning of an end of these parties? This is why it is a shame, a shame for us who are governed, and a missed opportunity for the BJP and to large extent, BJP (and it's think-tank) are to be blamed as well.

When BJP came to power in 2014, there was much promise of development and country finally moving in right direction, after the corruption filled times of previous govt. 'Sabke saath, sabka vikas' proclaimed BJP (actually Modi) and people believed. Even the skeptics like me were willing to sit, wait and watch. Moreover, people like me wwere looking forward to be proven wrong. It will not be wrong to say that Modi had everything going for him. Yet, for all the talks of development before election, what one got instead was Adityanaths, Girirajs, Sakshi Maharajs and saadhvis. It was not Dinanath Batra, ghar wapsi, beef ban, lynching, hindutva and polarization that people have voted for, it was something else that was promised. As time went, doubts became real. When a statesman like Atal Bihari Vajpayee was not able to control the thugs within BJP, how much of a chance Modi had, given that he seemed to align with them anyways. Bhakts might not agree to this, but Modi is no Vajpayee and it will be long before he can become one. Vajpayee could carry the government and the country despite the rouges in BJP and the constraints that he faced. Modi, on the other hand, had a much clear verdict after 2014 elections and held a (seemingly) much firmer grasp, and effect, on BJP cadre, and despite all that, his record of accomplishment is average to say the least.

It is not that Modi govt has not done anything. I, for one, do not mind his foreign trips. I think it has instilled confidence in Indians in general and for a country claiming to be next superpower, it is important that its leaders act like one. Modi has that persona and it does not harm if he projects that at the world level. He is a good orator and has a charismatic personality that he uses to good effects in general, when on foreign tours. Nothing wrong with that. There are several other things worth noting. His govt's response to evacuating people from middle east, Naga accord and operations in Myanmar are all noteworthy and so are his symbolic gestures/efforts, be it Jan Dhan yojna or swacch bharat. No sane Indian will criticize these efforts. However, amidst all this, elements of RSS and hindutva brigade made sure that they remain the talking point (unfortunately). One can argue, "But look Modi has done some good work and he can't check everyone" or "he needs time". But that just goes against the very image PM Modi has been projecting. Wasn't he supposed to be the one who does not keep mum, unlike MMS. Wasn't he supposed to the strong one, the one who is control and get things done his way (be it marginalization of the likes of Advani and Joshi or keeping RSS brigade in check during his Guj CM time). Therefore, when such a person decides to keep quiet and takes no action against the likes of Giriraj and Adityanath, it sends the wrong message. It shows him as either weak or most likely as someone who is a party to these affairs. In our country, though, it doesn't take much for fortunes to change (take Lalu for example) and images to break. Nobody will mind Modi taking time to fix the ills of this country, be it finances or infrastructure or health and education. But Modi need to understand that what his brigade seem to concentrate their energies on (hindutva, polarization, unnecessary arrogance and chauvinism, communalisation), are also the ills that we want to get rid of. Pushing agenda on these lines has never reaped benefits and it is not going to in future either.

After Bihar results, I was having a whatsapp conversation with my friends and a friend said that Bihar has always voted along caste lines and it is not different this time either. At this moment, another friend, who hails from Bihar, corrected us. He said that all elections were fought along caste lines except the 2010 election. Perhaps, there lied the key and I am amazed that our so-called seasoned politicians failed to see it. The 2010 Bihar assembly elections were fought on the issue of development and these were the elections where BJP registered its only success in Bihar. BJP had won 91 seats in these elections. They fought 2014 elections in the name of development and got a thumping majority. The pattern is clear and has always existed. So why did they fought this election on bogus issues that are seemingly more RSS promoted. Why did they indulge in negativity (patakha in Pakistan etc.), when negativity has seldom paid back (be it BJP losing 2004 elections when they campaigned negatively against Sonia or 2014, when congress campaigned negatively against Modi).

I hope BJP top brass realizes that Bihar is no aberration, just as Delhi was not. There is still time for BJP and Modi to get their act together and start focusing on development agenda, for that is the only factor that guarantees success. If Modi wants to be the proactive, progressive leader that he aspires for, and hopes that people will remember him as, then he needs to rein in the unnecessary elements within his party (and affiliates). Else, writing is already on the wall. Choice is for BJP/Modi to make, whether they want to win the polls only on social media or win hearts of people by doing the real work instead of indulging in foolish one-upmanship that most bhakts indulge in on Social media. Unfortunately, until that time arrives, it is a pity for our country and its citizens, that all the messiahs that spring time and again giving us hope and expectation, ultimately they all turn out to be Lalus, in one form or the other.

Gandhi Jayanti

I am not sure if I should say 'Happy Gandhi Jayanti' or 'Gandhi Jayanti ki haardik shubhkaamnaye', for firstly, I don't know if that's the right greeting and secondly, I dont know if this even applies in current times.

There are people who worship this great man, considering him a saint, without possessing any of the values the great man stood for. It's like knowing him has become a fad. Ironic, that with each passing year, Gandhi ji continues to attain more and more popularity where as at the same time, the values and philosophies he suggested continue to become more and more obscure.

There's another bunch of people, who hate Gandhi ji. Without any understanding of the times in which he lived and anchored India's quest for freedom, they hold him responsible for all right and wrong things forgetting that its much easy to look back at history and criticize.

What Gandhi ji deserves is not sainthood or worship, but perhaps respect for what he had done for the nation. 'Mahatma', 'Rashtrapita' are salutations that people like us created, it was not him who took those titles. He would better be a human than a saint or god, for he knew he wasn't one.

Here's one song from Kavi Pradip, summarizing very well the current state we live in, and how Gandhi ji would have felt seeing his children living in such a state.

In Times Like This, My Friend

In times likes this
I see you my friend,
helpless and stranded,
frightened, hopeless.
You cry my tears, my friend
you bleed my blood;
my pain, my agony,
you go through this all.

There's a story of your nightmare
I heard;
I experienced
the horror on your face;
terrified eyes, yours
sorrow in mine.

We are shaken as of now,
sad will follow soon;
perhaps anger as well
but from now we know
we'll never talk of hell.
I have seen one
the one you went through
the one we never knew
existed
right next to where we dwell
My, your, Our Hell.

We are orphaned my friend
both you and me,
you on that other side
I, alone on mine
few paces, few screens away.
I see you,
my friend;
I know not
your religion,
caste, creed or nation
I only see you bleed
a red, that I know and recognize.

I am sorry my friend
for I can do nothing more
I can grief
I can mourn
go through this feeling unknown.
Is this enough
I doubt my friend,
and I have no one to ask
for we all sail in the same boat
that is struggling to stay afloat.

I hope
and I know we all do;
we know not
how it might have all started
I just pray with my eyes closed
and hands folded
that this is indeed the end
for I can't bear the times like these
as I mourn you, my unknown friend.

Amarjeet Kaypee

There always have been stories of 'have beens' who never got their due. In the world of Indian cricket, few names are always talked about in this context, names like K.P. Bhaskar, Rajinder Goel and that of Amarjeet Kaypee.
One of my childhood activities involved reading meticulously domestic cricket scores in the newspaper. It was this way that I first came across Kaypee's name, a name that will keep on figuring prominently again and again on regular basis. I always thought that one day this guy will play for the Country; he never did. And like Kaypee himself, I could never figure out why. I never saw Kaypee play in real, not even on TV, but I always had high regards for him. He was like those Heroes of Childhood who never fade from your memory no matter what. So if you now come to me and tell me the reasons for his non-inclusion and they might all be valid as well, I wonder that my views about Kaypee will change any how.
You can always find information about Kaypee on sites like Cricinfo and Wikipedia, but this was not supposed to be his biography, this is just a fan's respect to one of his childhood hero, who was, as that article on Cricinfo said, A dedicated cricketer that never got his due.

Transformed

It was not that I was always like this, but one fine day I thought, well why not, after all most of the people are like that anyways. So I donned on this mantle of being the impatient bloke who wont be the first to lay down, the first to compromise. Impatient, cos I didnt wanted to undure the pain and more so, I wanted things to be resolved fast; if it has to, it better be fast or else I dont bother.
Not that it was easy to be this way, like getting rid of any other habit, and adopting other, is a painful exercise, so was the case here. I would think, well whats the point in being this way, it doesnt make yougreat nor the other person small. But perhaps, in my case, the point was never about feeling great or making someone feel small; point was not to make oneself feel victimized. Cos' U may bend down thinking, well its not a big deal; but others, they dont look at it that way. They think you are too soft, they start taking you for granted. Humbleness and humility were never the cherished virtues anyway, they were in fact bookish qualities, qualities you always find much appreciated in books but seldom witnessed exercised.
Anyways, I started being the way majority are, life seemed so useless initially, afterall these were in direct contrast to the way life and its philosophy had been so far. But then I realized, life always felt like that, even in cases when people didnt acted according to the philosophy; my philosophy of life which laid so much emphasis on these bookish virtues. And gradually, I started feeling more at ease with this change, so much so that I sort of not adopted it but also absorbed it. The other, earlier theoretical, ideal philosophy; it seemed as though it was never a part of me. In fact, in due course of time, I even forgot about existance in books. I became the true citizen of the world, the way most of us are. Obviously, being in harmony with the rest meant that there were now lesser conflicts of self and otherwise and soon I grew inert to conflicts. They might have tried to occur a few times, but they got suppressed, first forcefully and then naturally.
Now I am happy, I am comfortable, nothing in the world worries me anymore, I think I have attained Nirvana of sort, all the things and happenings that bothered or displeased me before, are no longer a cause of worry. Yes, this must be Nirvana, cos it took penance of a different kind, after all to be able to give up your natural ways, isn't that as creditable a task as penance of any form.
And this thought gives me immense satisfaction, cos now I see the point why everyone else aspires to be this way. After all mankind will probably be saved from lots of misery, if all can think and believe this way. Since the transformation is already in place, I being the latest beneficiary, I get this feeling that it not far when the world will go back to being the harmonious world it always should have been, it always wanted to be.

A Love I'll Never Loose (To The Divine Gift of Music)

Love, obsession, liking; it must have all started long back, perhaps in those days when music and Vividh Bharti were synonymous. My journey with music has been long, from those nights of ‘Pryajoit Karyakram’ on Vividh Bharti to this vast ocean of musical riches Internet. I progressed through the times of a single speaker tape recorder as a kid to a those of a two-in-one in my early teens. The Videocon walkman that I possessed as a college teenager consolidated this association and though I didn’t have that sort of a personal relationship with the big Kenwood music system back home, I share fond memories of preparing for GATE while listening to it. Those were the building blocks of my musical journey that blossomed with me finally getting a comp. And here I am now, sitting in States, far from the sounds of my country.

I don’t have any great liking for America, nor do I have any dislikes. I think for most times, my times in America have passed though the motions. However, immersed between studies and a up-and-down personal life, one aspect of me that progressed was my likeness for music. I say likeness and not understanding, because honestly I cant claim to know music. But I do know how to like it, how to feel it. It was not a conscious effort to widen my musical sensibilities, but it did happen. Faster internet connection, access to a vast resource of music at the public library, interaction with music enthusiasts sharing similar tastes; in those aspects America did more for me than I expected.

Often, my friends have dismissed certain music on grounds that it is from a certain region, in a certain language or created/sung by a certain individual; and often I have wondered, is music of a country, for a particular set of people or classified as so-and-so.

On many of my experiences with music, I have realized that I am crying, tears running down my cheeks, and I wonder why is that. In Sufism, the great masters talk about the heightened divine experience achieved on the magical powers of the music. Divine is a subjective term, loosely defined. I wonder what is divine, but isn’t it divine that while listening to ‘My Sweet Lord’ by George Harrison, I feel elevated, I feel connected to the ones I love and I feel happy about the fact that I have experienced the feeling of love. Isn’t it magic that I listen to Tinariwen or Boubacar Traore and my tears start to roll even though I have no clue what meaning the words carry. A certain Korean song, I don’t even know what it is called, makes me excited and nostalgic about the childhood that’s now left only in the old photographs. I listen to Celtic folks and I feel the Violin strings cutting my heart like a knife, a pain that only music is able to create. I see Goddess Saraswati blessing Abida Parveen as she sings of eternal love of god and I visualize Mirabai singing to Lord Krishna as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan sings “Sanson ki mala mein simaroon main pee ka naam”. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s the Swedish band Opeth singing melodic death metal or Moody Blues crooning one of their poetry soaked silken ballad, for they all stir my soul by the sheer brilliance of their music.

In times such as these, I realize that music transcends all boundaries, all limits; no religion, no language can lay claim to it, its for all and its omnipresent just like god is. Music is a blessing for the humanity to cherish and its marvels are for all to reap and its sin to dismiss based on these attributes the divine blessing that’s music.

Justice Done :)

So finally the sentence all waited for. Santosh Kumar Singh to be hanged till death. Without being sentimental or emotional, I am happy, more so optimistic, hopefully this will set a precendent for such criminals to be brought to justice.
For the CBI folks, delayed but all in all a job well done. And for the judiciary, they proved that "Satyameva Jayate" just arent mere words.
Once again congrats to Justice For Priyadarshani, Indu Jalali and The media.

http://hindustantimes.com/news/181_1831928,000600010001.htm

Mumbai Blasts

This one is for GUNS, wrote them long back but thought I should share them. Pardon my english for all the grammer mistakes :)

Day before yesterday, a series of blasts ripped through the city of Mumbai. I read the news only in the afternoon (about six hours after the event) and initial reaction was to call Tushar. Tushar lived and commuted on the same train route where the blasts have taken place. My efforts to establish any sort of immediate contacts with him by means of phone were in vain as understandably the lines were busy. So I mailed the college Yahoo group and also mailed Tushar. I further mailed the other friends in Mumbai to enquire if they are safe and sound. In the time that followed this process of enquiry and concern was applied to people here in Cincinnati hailing from Mumbai. After this initial reaction of concern and associated activities, I realized something. Was I attached to this tragedy, was I a part of it, was I even feeling the way I should.

This wasn’t an event that required ones attention for an hour or two, like an accident where you panic; you try to get in touch with your near and dear ones. Once you’ve made sure that everyone is fine, you take a sigh of relief and then for get the accident as a bad dream. After all, essentially none that you were concerned with are affected.

But Mumbai blasts are not accident, they are a serious threat to my country, my fellow countrymen and when I think deeper, it’s a threat to me. Mumbai blasts are not accident, they are a well thought of plan to disrupt harmony and peace of me and my country.

Sadly though, these thoughts never occurred to me. I made sure that all those I knew are fine and got back to my work. Now that I think, this is what I feel these terrorists bank on. They realize that most people will forget these things like I did and most of us end up doing just that. We forget too soon, too easily, go back to the state of slumber we always were, only to wake up when these terror merchants carry their business again. We are again hurt the same way, but we continue the way we live, a life ridden by forgetfulness. And perhaps that’s the way the government deals with these situations. That’s why I don’t blame them; after all they have been bitten by the same bug as me. None of us think deep, none of us care for people beyond our sphere of known.

So far away from my country, I have to force myself to think all this. Sad but true. I know I would have done nothing if I was in India, but I might have been inclined to these thoughts naturally. Alas now I am forcing myself, I’m on the look for people to discuss my thoughts, my anguish, my helplessness. Alas.

Worse is the realization that even after giving time to this, I’m not able to come up with any single point that I can suggest to counter such events and activities. We don’t even know who the real culprit is? Is it Pakistan, is it the global Islamic terrorists, is it the POK based groups, the religion-based fundamentalists or the local terror groups.

Most newspapers are filled with an image of Mumbaikars , depicting them as those who are not jolted, praising their spirit, their courage, people who are united, so on and so forth. Irony is that its event as bad as this that unites us, makes us stand together. Everyone in college got into act when they heard the news, cursing government, terrorists, or who so ever they thought they should. We all cursed and expressed our sorrow united. Happy occasions are not sufficient to unite the people. We don’t have anything major on festive occasions in our college. Like I said, happiness is a less valued emotion. Irony, because all we ever aspire for is happiness and joy and yet those are not sufficient to unite us.

One of my friend linked all this unity and aforementioned state of emotions in the aftermath of a tragedy to the term ‘Indianess’. According to him, all of us have this subconscious Indianess buried inside us that rises on occasions like Mumbai blasts. Is this Indianess or a sudden charge of sentiments that dies so soon that it just don’t feel right to give it such a big name as Indianess. And if its really Indianess, shame on myself for it takes a terrorist attack to evoke it. Can’t I have this Indianess as a part of myself, just like my feelings for my parents, like those towards my friends. It makes me sad to realize that my Indianess is not a vital part of me. I sleep with this sad thought. I hope I wake up more clear in head, more Indian in heart.

My Sweet Lord

"Music touches you deep", dont know who said that but the there cannot be anything more true. Often I hear a few tunes and they just leave me spellbound. When George Harrison sung "My Sweet Lord", dont know who was the lord he was refering to. Was it the almighty or was it the lover. To me if there's ever a westernized version of sufiana music, the only song that can lay the claim is perhaps "My sweet lord". While listening to this song, many a times I felt connected, to the almighty, to the mother nature, to the ones I love. And yes true to the every word,

"I really want to see you lord,

but it takes so long, my lord"

Who is my lord, whom am I craving for, I dont know. May be I do but thats not important, important is the fact that music creates magic, a wave of positive vibrations gently swaying, making you aware of how good the life is, how good it is to be in love and to be loved.

Not surprising that I remember the feeling of love this day, somebody just whispered 'Happy Valentine's Day', well not to me though. So what am I left with, perhaps

My sweet lord

Hm, my lord

Hm, my lord

I really want to know you

Really want to go with you

Really want to show you lord

But it takes so long, my lord