INDIA and Elections ‘24 Dear citizen: Elections ‘24 are almost upon us. Given the country’s present mood and pulse, it would be moot to ask “who will win?”, for the answer seems so obvious. Exultant after its recent assembly election wins the BJP is already breathing brimstone and fire and flexing its muscles to deliver a fatal blow and knock the living daylights out of the haggard, famished, fractured Opposition. As a simile it is almost like a dangal between pehalwan Dara Singh and the poor fumbling (‘drunken’) Kesto Mukherjee- our Bollywood comedian once. Thinking about the INDIA conglomerate, nothing but disgust washes over me. What a silly mess its constituents have made of it! Marked by two grand meets of its stalwarts it took off well engendering hope while giving jitters to the BJP. But alas! they flattered to disappoint. Succumbing to personal (‘Nitishian’) greed, self-interest, insatiable lust for power and perhaps some sam-daam-dand-bhed stratagems employed ...
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‘Carry on Jatta!’ “Love is a Many-splendoured Thing”. So goes a popular song in the movie with the same name perhaps borrowed from Han Suyin’s bestselling novel’s title. Though I relished reading this beautiful book decades ago, but the true import and transcendent power of ‘love’, its many splendours, its mystic beauty and purifying fragrance that it bestows on us had not descended into my wayward soul in those flippant years of youth. Regrettably, the wisdom leading to my nirvana dawned a bit too late in life: my ‘wisdom tooth’ having only caused pain (and fattened the dentist’s bill) than shone any light of understanding. Well, I am no Rumi, Bulleh Shah, Shakespeare or Keats. Neither Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, nor Kant. Nor am I Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone (much though I adore them for their trail-blazing, self-practiced ideas and ideals). No Bertrand Russell either– a towering intellectual I would love to emulate, though. No ‘love-guru’ Osho am I too: in a sense the m...
A New Year Eve love letter to my ‘dearest’ Hi dearest, I love you dearly … I always have. Who wouldn’t? Anyone who comes visiting you, whether by chance or by choice, falls under your seductive spell. Myriad and many are your charms. Your graceful curves and slopes are gentle and inviting. The wide grin you often wear captivates all. You appear so bright and balmy when the benevolent sun, neither too hot in summers, nor freezingly cold in winters, showers its warm kisses on your wonderous parts. My sore eyes never tire of feasting on your form and looks as you lie sprawled in blissful splendour on the sumptuous, bountiful lap of our ‘Grandad’: His majesty, the Dhauladhar. Wow! How I adore his resplendent crown of glittering silver! I also marvel at his big and vast ‘56-inch-ka-seena’ that he proudly displays but without any empt...
Gaza, Israel and this world Have you seen those horrid videos and images from Gaza? Of wailing mothers and moaning fathers? Of dazed children with their blood-smeared faces and a badly shattered leg and arm? Of a nearly-dead, dishevelled young girl in blood-soaked tatters, head slumped, limp arms dangling, being rushed on a stretcher to a hospital? Of a thickly swaddled young boy with both his arms and legs amputated? Of starving men and women, young and old, holding out bowls begging for food and water? Of children, some newly born and some older, lined up in coffins in rows and dozens more dying for lack of medical care they desperately need? Of the city almost turned into a bizarre ghostly wilderness with the once-upon-a time buildings bombed and strafed to shattered heaps of brick and concrete? Of innocent people being bombed day in and day out not for days, not for weeks but for months? Just ponder a while and reflect. Is this some imaginary scene in a h...
On B N Goswamy (the storyteller of Art) with love Listen to my blog: For a rabbit-holed country bumpkin like me to write on B N Goswamy is what? Asking a molehill ant to climb a mountain, perhaps? For, Art historian B N Goswamy who shuffled off his mortal coil on the 17 th of November was no less than that: a towering, glittering summit in terms of his erudition, scholarship and his immense contribution to all things called ‘Art’. Without an iota of exaggeration his passing away leaves the shocked, sobbing world of art so much the poorer. While the gleeful gods somewhere above must be having a ball to have amidst ...
On Being Mahua Moitra Play Audio To write on Mahua Moitra is to miss a heartbeat or two! A feisty lady, exuberant in spirits, and exuding both charm and gutsy defiant air, she turns many a head as she bounds about in the corridors of power, or anywhere. She is a stormy petrel in our political landscape whose fiery eloquence with a tadka of desi phrase, a Shakespearean quote, a Mahabharata metaphor and a Bengali/Hindi simile to boot, serves a steamy, sizzling stew fortified further with a battery of facts. That’s what lends her speeches in the parliament so special and a must-see, must-hear, for everyone. Those whom her fiery stuff is aimed at squirm in their seats with her red mirchis burning hot on their palates, while the benches on her side applaud in stunned disbelief at her heroics. Her academic and professional credentials are impressive: in a house where even ministers can’t tell Einstein from Newton, and a Baba’s herbal conco...