Heart to Heart

                                                 An ode to my dad “Shashtriji”                                                        Today, on monsoon-oppressed August’s 31 st morn brightened by balmy sunshine, our kitchen downstairs is unusually abuzz. My better-half, despite her back-injury mandating bedrest, is busy making the choice Pahari dishes for my dad’s ‘shraadh’. The clang and bang as also the mouth-watering aromas trigger nostalgia and send me down the memory lane. The first wave of thought is guilt-laden and soul-singeing: how crass negligence by the slumbering night-duty doctor and apathetic paramedics...

    On a morning walk in monsoon                                                                         I t was a little dark outside when I stole a look from the window. The dawn still languid with sleep and conspiring with the rain-impregnated clouds lording over the sky had cast a hush of sensuous magic. The wet, winding road looked lonely and desolate. I was soon at my choice spot by the bend. There I stood to cast a reverential gaze at the distant ‘Dhauladhar’ peak with a couple of stately deodars standing in front like dutiful sentinels. Birds were busy singing their ‘Raag Bhairavi’ while a brook gurgled by behind me. I p...

  “Lightness of being” is all I am a self-confessed hedonist fond of all good things that I can mine out of this ephemeral life for my insatiable platter. Besides gorging on the magnificent delights that mother Nature presents   – golden-hued dawn and bird song, changing moods of the Dhauladhar,   meditative silence of the deodars, crimson-cheeked sun’s shy descent heading west for the rendezvous, and so on – I adore   exalting company of friends (though the truly cherished kind is harder to come by!). Above all, I love the sunshine of books that open new worlds of thought and bestow revealing insights into life and world; dispel the cobwebs of hatred and bigotry from the mind; infuse love, compassion and poetry in our souls and sculpt us into better humans; stimulate, excite, tickle and titillate and make us cry or laugh. And in addition, if yours truly is able to pen-push a few lines off and on, I have no need for any kind of heavenly bliss. That said, it is how...

                 I hold my peace I wanted to serve you a little helping from the stew brewing in the political pot, of late. I wanted to speak first about the ‘show’ we were witness to during mid-June Rajya Sabha (the esteemed Upper House, mind you) elections for a handful of seats. I wanted to show you too the interplay of emotions on my grizzled face as I watched the tragi-comic dance-drama that was being enacted on the Maharashtra theater with side shows at Guwahati and Goa: a tear in the eye, blush of shame on the face, a frown on my already furrowed brow and a wry smile on my lips. Also, as well, I wanted to ask the much too wiser and more enlightened readers of my blogs about what went on in their own heads and hearts over the unfolding panorama of all the recent political events. In addition, I wanted to have a decent little tete-a-tete regarding country’s onward march towards “Mission: Vishwaguru” with my dear reader-friends … ...

                Ouf! These Jagratas Though now into the sunset phase of my life (and loving it!), with books, Bacchus (temporarily suspended) and better-half as pals for company, there are some existential puzzles that I have still   been unable to unravel: my religiosity for instance. A ‘bhakt’, an agnostic, an atheist- what am I?   Perhaps I am all of these– a shameless, self-serving opportunist. For, I do turn to gods seeking divine intervention when suddenly some serious worldly trouble rattles me to utter desperation. My old parental sanskars suddenly begin to stir and nudge me to fold my hands in prayer before my devout father’s cherished deity begging for urgent relief and rescue. Otherwise, when all is hunky dory, I stop being a bhakt and revert to my original avatar doing my own version of meditation: A pre-dawn, celestial hour it is. I am out for a walk.   Hushed silence prevails all aroun...

                                                                  आओ सुनें क्या कौवा बोले                               काला कलूटा और बद्सूरत, उस पर असुंदर , बड़ी सी मेरी चोंच , और फिर कर्कश कायं-कायं - भला किसे मैं भाऊँ ? भैया कह लो चाहे मुझे   बुरा , पर हूँ मैं सेवक , सफाई-कर्मी भी ,  बस  खा जूठन व मांस गला-सड़ा , अपनी भूख मिटाऊँ हाँ मिले प्यार और दाना उम्दा , तो देता भी हूँ मैं उपहार , निज चोंच भर , और हूँ मैं तेज दिमाग़- यह भी दूं बतला: सुना तो होगा ही किस्सा: डाल घड़े में कंकर-पत्थर बुझाई थी कैसे अपनी प्यास पानी का स्तर ऊपर ला ! ? है मेरा परिवार बड़ा – भारत ही नहीं , यूरोप , अमरीका , ऑस्ट्रेलिया , क्यूबा भी और पूरा एशिया , तथा   विशाल अफरीका बस आप बुलायें कौवा , विदेशी कहें ‘ क्रो ’, ‘ रेवन ’, ‘ जैक-डा ’, ‘ रूक ’;...

                                                                Fall and fall of Congress A cloud of weary sadness washes over me as I begin writing this piece. Not that I am enamoured of Congress or its Gandhi dynasts at all but the steady - almost irremediable decline - into irrelevance of this old behemoth  that cradled and led our freedom movement is surely a cause for national worry. Has it lost its moorings? Has some evil curse befallen it? Have Cleopatra’s dreadful ‘snakes’ sniffed and stung its body, heart and soul? Have its old sins of omission and commission come home to roost and rendered it a zombie beyond redemption? What sort of (Trypanosomial) ‘sleeping sickness’ has overwhelmed it? Could it be that the ‘Gandhis’ are scared crazy that once they relinquish hold, they will lose the political heft required to f...