Sunday, September 22, 2013

Hypocrisy, thy name is politics

मज़हब नहीं सिखाता आपस में बैर रखना

I'm confused.
There are articles doing rounds of social media, promoted by extremist anti Congress groups, which, it appears, are comprised primarily of Hindu Extremists and Loyalists.
These articles talk about the Nehru bloodline and how corrupt and anti Hindu (and therefore anti India) its always been. I dont know, and frankly dont care, about the degree to which the information stated in the articles is true. It just creates one rather confusing paradox.

I realised this while watching a documentary about operation Blue Star, the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the ensuing riots of 1984. Surviving Sikhs interviewed by the filmmaker quoted the Hindu mobs (comprising, I presume, to a great degree of the same breed of Hindu extremists as the ones dissing the Nehru bloodline now) saying :

" इन्होंने हमारी माँ को मारा है, जला दो सब को "

(They've killed our mother, burn them all)

referring, as is obvious, to the Indira Gandhi assassination by Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, two of her bodyguards, both Sikh.

You see the paradox emerge?
Sigh.

While we're on the subject, here's something whimsical I was idly thinking about earlier today.

Preventing communal violence 101, The options :

i) Genocide - Feasible. But not sustainable in the long term due to population growth rate exceeding genocide rate.

ii) Forced Atheism - Likely to escalate religious identity. We are all little brats, always want what we cant have.

iii) Public execution (or at the very least excommunication and deportation) of anybody how politicises a communally sensitive issue. Now there's an idea.

ज़िन्दगी  मौत  ना बन जाये, संभालो यारों!
खो रहा चैनो अमन,
मुश्किलों में है वतन,
सरफरोशी की शमा दिल में जला लो यारों!

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

When it rains it pours.

My house got broken into today. I walked in and surprised the thieves and they bolted, leaving my room behind looking like a war zone. Everything pulled off the shelves, drawers emptied out, cupboard door wrenched open.
I was on my way to the roof to fix a faulty cable dish, had my tool bag with me. Quite a fool I must have looked. Cussing and screaming at them, waving a hammer, as they jumped on to the neighbours’ roof and ran. I don’t recall being this angry in a very long time. It was bloodlust. The fear and anger, the sense of violation, capitulating to an overwhelming rage.
And it’s still burning. I don’t know what to do with it. The loss and pain of the last few weeks seem to have found an outlet in the form of this anger that I can’t quite handle. I half feel like going out there and picking a fight with somebody, just to feel my knuckles skinned against a jaw.

I think I just might go for a ride.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Eclipse

I set myself ablaze and shine
Illuminate the darkest part
of you; that guilty, smothered sign
of longing by a desperate heart.

You lock your doors and draw the blinds
And paper up the skylight too
and shut your eyes and drown in lies
But still my light keeps shining through.

It comes to pass, your doubts and fears
They overrun and blur your sight
The sudden wrath, the unshed tears
Make you lash out with all your might.

You douse me with your pent up bile
and then deride with jeers and quips
So now i burn in darkness vile
You've proven to be my eclipse

Thursday, August 1, 2013

A physicist's apology

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

All that was left unsaid.

I missed you today. An errant thought triggered by a stark reminder of the fragility of life. I thought about the last thing I said to you, I wished I'd said more. Told you just what you mean to me; the words come so easily to me now. They never did before.
You knew, I know you did. We both knew, in that unspoken, oft forgotten way that people who've always loved each other know. But I the heart still aches. It aches for all those little things that there will always be time for, till there isn't.
I missed you today. And shed a tear, or two. You were my shelter. My hero. And your memory will always make me smile, and well up. As all happy memories do.