A Song for Kabir (by my friend Allen Fraser Clark)

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And of what import
is all this?
wonders Kabir,
as he sees a world
where goldfish float,
their tails hemmed
in myrrh, their bulbous eyes
fixed on Urdu soap operas.

Nowadays the only creatures
who read are a few mice
that parse the titles
on the gilded bindings
of the sacred texts
before they devour
the pages.

About Gandhi and Bose!

From the book, 'His Majesty's Opponent' -

"Subhas Bose's escape to Germany had made a great impression on Gandhiji. He had not formerly approved many of Bose's actions, but now I found a change in his outlook. Many of his remarks convinced me that he admired the courage and resourcefulness Subhas Bose had displayed in making his escape from India. His admiration for Subhas Bose unconsciously coloured his view about the whole war situation" - Abul Kalam Azad.

Can Rapes Be Stopped?

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Well, there has been another rape. Another life is marred and another woman is traumatized and hospitalized. And, expectedly, and to some extent boringly, the social media is abuzz with angry comments and suggestions about neutering the rapists, hanging them and other such harsh punishments. But, wait a minute, am I the only one getting a sense of déjà vu?!

Before you stone me for being apathetic and cruel towards the pitiable plight of an innocent victim, please read on.

I may not be a great savant in psychology or sociology. I don’t boast of any qualifications necessary to convey my opinions on such sensitive topics either. But as a simple human being, and a member of the gender that is capable of committing this heinous crime, I take the liberty to put my views here.

All of us want to curb rapes. Agreed. All of us want women to be respected. No doubts about that. We all want mothers to teach their sons to treat a female as their equal. Agreed totally. We don’t want a woman to be treated as a mere object of sexual pleasure. Er… are we sure about this?!

While the parents may succeed in teaching a boy to respect a female and see beyond her physical form and treat her as a human being, what are we, as a society, doing?! Once you are out on the streets, sleaze and skin-shows pummel the young minds. Movie stars flaunt their powdered cleavages and toned torsos to sell anything – from cosmetics to cameras to chocolates. Television and movies are no better either. Buy a chocolate, a woman is going to swoon on you, buy a perfume, any woman will shed her clothes to be your playmate. Literally, any men’s product in the market today – shave gel to shirts – is being sold as an assured bait to seduce a woman.

And, the commercials for women’s products are not better, either. We teach our girls that being dark-skinned is something they should be ashamed of. A woman is not supposed to have dark color ANYWHERE in her physique, except her hair. A topic as private and sensitive for a woman as a menstrual cycle is being openly commercialized on television and the sanitary napkins are just short of a live demonstration. There are so many commercials that project a woman as nothing more than her curvaceous physique. Tell me if I had missed out any commercial that makes a man think of a woman as respectable human being.

And, by the way, which female are we taking as role model and projecting in the media? Rani Lakshmi of Jhansi? Kiran Bedi, the first female IPS officer? Sunitha Krishnan, a female who is silently working against sex-trafficking? You are a fool if you think that these are the females that are revered and idolized by the media. We worship Poonam Pandeys, Veena Maliks and Sunny Leones. Some regularly visited mail-service-provider websites are volunteering with videos that can enlighten you with information such as the reasons behind Sunny Leone becoming a porn-star, or how Sherlyn Chopra became the first Indian woman to pose nude in Playboy magazine! For that matter, what relevance does a model like Archana Vijaya or a Mandira Bedi hold to comment about Cricket? If women are to be encouraged for Cricket commentary, why not ask a Diana Edulji or an Anjum Chopra – both eminent players of the sport – to take up commentary and inspire more women to play the sport?!

Another question I find so unanswerable is that, if China, a country much larger than India, in terms of area and population, or more relevantly in terms of mobile and internet connections, can block pornography, why can’t India do that?! I don’t think there can be two thoughts when it comes to facing the fact that nothing degrades a woman like pornography, by projecting her as an ordinary sex-toy. Sex, a basic process of reproduction and sustenance of our species is now being touted as a mere source of entertainment. From movies to movie songs we have started accepting a woman’s organs being measured and described in detail. Venereal topics have become venerated.

My senseless and irrelevant point amidst all this razzamatazz and buzz - that might die in a day or two, only to be revived when the next woman falls prey – about killing the rapists is, let us all start doing something in real life, rather than simply venting out our futile anger in social media. It can be as simple an act as that of stopping a friend, who wolf-whistles when a woman passes by. Or it can be a noble act of joining an NGO that works against human trafficking. Let us raise voice first against all those media-supported commercials that exploit the feminine physique for pecuniary benefits. Let us all learn to raise voice when a woman is harassed in a bus we travel, or at the office that we work, or simply in the road that we walk.

As long as we don’t do anything to prevent such things happening in real life, I don’t think we have any moral rights to condemn or raise voice against the rapists, because a person who abets the crime is equally guilty as the one that perpetrates it. And, we all, including the person writing this, are as guilty as the rapists, because we have done nothing so far to save a woman from being exploited!

Ashok Krishna

A worthy note from Robin Sharma

Love this thought! :-) ♥

"Suffering has always been a vehicle for deep spiritual growth. Those who have endured great suffering are generally the ones who evolve into great beings. Those who have been deeply hurt in life are generally the ones who can feel the pain of others in a heartbeat. Those who have endured adversity become humbled by life and, as a result, are more open, compassionate and real."

Robin Sharma

Book Review – His Majesty’s Opponent, Sugata Bose

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I was a young boy when I had my first introduction to ‘Netaji’ Subhas Chandra Bose, through a children’s magazine. Going through a pictographic portrayal of his life and struggle for Indian independence, I couldn’t make much about him at that time. With words like freedom, sacrifice, dedication and death not making much of a sense to my young mind, I didn’t understand him as a leader then. However, the adventures of his escape from house arrest, travel to Japan in a submarine and his death in a plane crash, have all stayed in my mind since then. Hence, when I came across this biography of him in the bookstore, I felt a bit of keenness to pick it up sometime. And, I must say that this book has added so much of details to those sketchy images that I have been carrying about him in my mind so far.

‘His Majesty’s Opponent’ is a biography of this great leader of men, compiled meticulously by his grand-nephew, Sugata Bose (grandson of his elder brother, Sarat Chandra Bose). Coming from the filial circle, this ought to be the most authentic version of his biographies. With elaborate research and extensive interviews with his contemporaries and comrades in arms, the author has done a splendid job.

Like all the great personalities, Netaji has his own share of admirers and detractors. However, no other leader’s life has ever been a bundle of adventure and mystery like that of Netaji. From the episode of the attack on a college professor to his escape from the house arrest to his marrying his Austrian love and to his death, there are so many portions of his life that still remain shrouded in mystery and uncertainty. However, his contribution to the Indian freedom struggle, his dedication to the cause of freedom of his motherland, his focus and efforts to work for the welfare and equal treatment of women, peasants, poor and underprivileged classes in society as well as the religious minorities are all beyond doubt.

The author has displayed enough tact to push at full strength the leader’s claim to glory, whenever the events are up for all to see, while he does not lift the covers completely on some of the episodes that could cause a dent to the leader’s greatness. Like the case of the attack on the college professor Edward Farley Oaten or Netaji’s having kept his own marriage hidden from the eyes of even his own family members.

However, the author has done a great job in clarifying certain sore points like Netaji’s siding up with the Germans and Japanese in the World War II, his choosing to question the correctness of Mahatma Gandhi’s political stance, and his confrontations with come bigwigs of the Congress Working Committee. While the author has steered clear of any controversy, by not questioning Mahatma’s greatness, lesser mortals like Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru are not given any such respite. The author has starkly presented the views held by Subhas regarding these people.

It is always a reality that Mahatma and Subhas have been locking horns often, with contrary views in ways to attain freedom – with Gandhi wanting to get it and Netaji wanting to wrest it. But it is also a reality that both these great humans have had mutual respect and admiration for one another at personal level. After all, isn’t that a quality of greatness?!

Another most important aspect of this book is that it establishes beyond doubt Netaji’s death due to a plane crash in Formosa Island. With elaborate details about his death, narrations by his co-passenger and survivor from that crash, Habibur Rahman, as well as some other accounts of the Japanese military personnel, he clears the mystery that surrounds Netaji’s disappearance.

It might shred the hearts of so many Indians to find that their leader did indeed die a gruesome death without seeing his dream come true, but as Subhas had always believed, ‘in this mortal world, everything perishes, and will perish, but ideas, ideals and dreams do not’, the story of his life and sacrifice will remain a beacon of hope for millions of young minds that believe in a world of equality and justice!

Prophetic words by Subhas Chandra Bose (in 1940)!

"The more I think of Congress Politics, the more convinced I feel that in future we should devote more energy and time to fighting the High Command. If power goes into the hands of such mean, vindictive and unscrupulous persons when Swaraj is won, what will happen to the country. We should concentrate on fighting the Congress High Command now [,] and to that end, we should make alliances with other political parties wherever and whenever possible."

from the book "His Majesty's Opponent", by Sugata Bose.

What Drawing Can Teach You About Life

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Often in life, we receive some lessons directly while some other lessons are taught to us through some indirect methods. If you are one such a person, who believes that keeping eyes and ears – and most importantly the mind – is the way to learn Life, here is for you, some of the lessons that I am learning by learning the art of drawing!

1.    We can buy all the costly tomes about art, read innumerable books, purchase plenty of costly material for use, but in the absence of practice everything counts to nothing. So much like Life, where we can have myriad philosophies and theories about Life, but what counts in the end is how we LIVE our life!

2.    There are so many colors and each of them branch out as so many different hues and shades. But each of them is still worthy and deserves a place of its own. Because nobody likes a palette filled with only one color of his/her choice, no matter how favorite that color might be for him/her – just the same way about people and their personalities!

3.    While getting the tools and materials for your art, you can either choose to buy the pricey ones or opt for the cheap, cost-effective ones. But at the end of the day, it is not the price of the tools you own that matters, but the art you create with them. Just as in Life, where the price of the gadgets and toys that you own has got nothing to do, but the way you lead your Life, with or without them, is what counts!

4.    It is not always necessary to follow conventions and rigid principles. Once in a while, it is OK to forget all the rules and simply scribble and scrawl like a little kid!

5.    Two persons can view the same object from two different angles, represent it in their own different ways and still be completely correct. There is no need that the other person must be wrong in drawing the front side of the object, just because you saw the profile and drew accordingly.

6.    There are so many techniques to painting – Impressionism, Pointillism, Modern, Renaissance, etc., and all of them are special and blissful in their own way. Just because you have decided to follow one method and become an expert exponent in the same does not mean that the other methods are wrong. So like religion!

7.    No matter how great a genius you are, you still need to start every painting from the scratch, from the blank canvas. And, the praise for that painting, most of the while depends on how you have performed with THAT particular piece of work and not how you have done so far. So much like how we should start living each day as a fresh piece of Life’s canvas!

8.    Impressionism can teach you that, at times, all that you need to look at is presentation of the big picture, ignoring the meticulous, trivial details that may not need to bother you. The stain of the shirt, the temperature of the beverage, the silly misunderstandings with friends, the occasional anger with our parents, the lack of some ‘cool’ toys and gadgets and so many such things matter nothing, when we learn to count our blessings and see the much bigger canvas of Life!

9.    There are some small mistakes that we make, which can be corrected easily and leave no trace at all in the final picture. There are some errors that need a bit of effort for correction and might show up a bit at the end. Then there are some mistakes which might force us to bring in a lot of effort and do a lot of corrections and they sometimes even end up changing the entire picture. And, finally some mistakes end up marring the whole work. Caveat, just as in Life!

10.    There are some people who might find your work as a masterpiece and appreciate it a great way. Such people give you confidence. There might be others who might find it unimpressive and find so many flaws. Those critics add to your learning. And, for improving your skills you need a balanced supply of both!

11.    Not all of us can become a Dali or Raphael or Ravi Varma, but all of us are blessed with our own innate skills. And, each and every one of us has his/her own learning phase and pace. Just because you have become a master artist doesn’t mean that Life has given you any prerogative to belittle the work of a learner. With Time, every person learns!

12.    And, finally, no matter what you do, learn to enjoy what you do. Remember, that all the great works of art were produced by people who were passionate and enthusiastic about what they were doing. A grumbling Da Vinci couldn’t have produced Mona Lisa, nor could Monet have produced the ever-lively water lilies in a somber mood!