To Pee or Not to Pee....

Paan-spit-spray paint adorns our country's walls..

Human wastes splattered over all railings - as our folks attend to the Nature's call....

An obsessive cleanliness within the sanctity of our own homes...

But whats with us spitting, urinating or trashing (as if its our constitutional right), the moment we step out of our doors?

Money, power?

Status, Prowess?

Wealth, poverty?

The rich in his Merc as well as the slum dweller in his rags, each is equally guilty...!

Is it lack of basic amenities, facilities of sanitation?

Or the ''Most credible given explanation'' is ''oh. its rapid urbanization!''..??

Traditionally, personal hygiene had ''caste'' considerations for ''optimum social-economic functioning''..

But today, all religions spit equally and all castes spit without bias...

As Historian William Darlymple rightly says,'' India taught the English everything about personal hygiene. Before they came to India, the British bathed once a year...''

How strange has then been this role-reversal for weren't we once champions of Holy baths, Ash-dips and spiritual cleansing?

Has the imperialist-colonialist ''coming'' attributed to our own cultural failing?

Can roping in of our Ace Aamir Khan by the Ministry of Tourism to extol cleanliness virtues on Ad-campaigns resolve the eternal ''Hamlet-like'' dilemma of ''To Pee or Not to Pee''??

Looks like we'll have to just wait and see....;)

Ayodhya - Built by Gods, Broken by Men

Built by the Gods, Broken by Men = Ayodhya is not just the place where the Babri Masjid stood. It is a microcosm of India’s multicultural past.

The tension in the air enhanced by the security personnel and the verdict announced is one side of the Ayodhya story, but there is a lesser known side of the city which is in stark contrast to its image as a ticking communal bomb. The Atharva Veda describes it as a ‘’city built by Gods and being as serious and calm as paradise itself.’’ Ayodhya in Sanskrit means ‘’not to be warred against’’ and all over there are signs of its secular and saintly past. There are 32 mosques in this Holy city of Hindus. The ‘’azaan’’(call for prayer) echoes through the walls of temples and mixes with the bhajans and non-stop recitations of the Hanuman Chalisa. Mythology has given the city a unique status for Hindus, a place built by Gods where Lord Ram was born, but Ayodhya is equally sacred for Muslims, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists. There is the minaret that stands tall amid temples on the banks of the Sarayu river, which nobody knows who built or when. A few furlongs away is the famous cave temple of Hanuman Garhi, from where Lord Hanuman keeps a watch on the Ram Janmabhoomi or Ramkot. The Muslim ruler of Awadh, Nawab Shuja-Ud-Daula, had constructed this temple. Within the fort-like temple complex is the all-faith Satyar temple with idols of Ram, Buddha and Mahavira, and pictures of Mecca-Medina and Zarathustra.

Such symbolism is all over Ayodhya which embraces some 1200 temples. In another corner of the city is the famous Dargah of Hazrat Sheesh, who is believed to be the son of Adam, the first messenger of God. Then there is the Dargah Naugazi- an impressive, 16.2-m grave that attracts both Hindu and Muslim devotees from all over india. Pir Nuh Aleihi Salaam, after whom the mausoleum is named, is believed to be Noah and the grave his famous ark. The large number of Sufi shrines that were once an integral part of the ancient cityscape made local Muslims believe that Ayodhya was like Mecca-Khurd(small Mecca).

Scholars have pointed out that Sufi saints had used Ayodhya as a centre of spiritual teachings since 12h century. Among the mystic saints were Qazi Qidwattuddin Awadhi, who came from central Asia, and sheikh Jamal Gujjari of the Firdausiya school in the pre-Mughal era. On the other hand, some Buddhists had wanted to join the legal battle over Ram Janmabhoomi as a concerned party because of their ancient links. They claimed that Ayodhya was a Buddhist centre but int the wake of the revivalist movements in the medieval period, Buddhist shrines were taken over and converted in to temples. This was found legally untenable. It has, however been established that Chinese Buddhist traveler Huien Tsang came to Ayodhya and found some 3000 Buddhist monks.

Ayodhya is also the birth place of Jain tirthankaras Rishabh Deo, Ajinath, Abhinandannath, Anantnath and Sumatinath. The first Sikh Guru Nanak Dev, ninth Guru Tegh Bahadur Singh and tenth Guru Govind Singh meditated at Gurudwara Brahmakund on the Brahmaghat which, in mythology, was where Brahma meditated for 5,000 years. Ayodhya is just 6 Km away from Faizabad which was the capitall of Nawabs, who with their Iranian background were quite secular. Faizabad has a special place in Urdu Literature. Mir Anees the Shakespeare of Urdu literature, besides other famous poets and writers, belonged to Faizabad. If Umrao Jaan, the famous courtesan and poetess added romance to the Nawabi era in Lucknow, Begum Akhtar or Akhtari Bai, the Ghazal, dadra and thumri singer made Faizabad proud.

Much of the remains of the past have been destroyed or are decaying but the spirit of the city retains tradition of love and mutual trust that the saints, sufis and nawabs created……



In brief, the majority verdict from the three judgements is as follows:


The gist of the court findings goes like this. The spot where the idols are kept today, which was under the central dome of the demolished structure, is the spot generally believed to be, and worshipped as, the birthplace of Lord Ram. So the court ordered: let it be so. ‘’It is declared that the area covered by the central dome of the three-domed structure, i.e; the disputed structure being the deity of Bhagwan Ram Janamsthan and place of birth of Lord Rama as per faith and belief of the Hindus, belong to plaintiffs… and shall not be obstructed or interfered in any manner by the defendants.’’

That the disputed land in Ayodhya be divided in to three equal parts among the parties to the dispute, namely, Ram Lalla (Infant Ram), represented by his sakha(or close friend) Trilokhi Nath Pandey; the Nirmohi Akhara, which has staked its claim to the property since 1885 and ran a place of worship on the premises; and the Sunni Central Waqf Board, which claimed to have had possessions of the disputed structure and the land around it since the 16th century.


While putting forward this three-way division, the verdict also held that the place under the central dome of the demolished Babri Masjid is the birthplace of Ram ‘’ As per faith and belief of Hindus’’ and hence should belong to the Hindus as represented by Pandey. A makeshift temple of Ram has existed since December 6th 1992, the day the Babri Masjid was demolished. Justice Agarwal, who wrote the lengthiest judgement, running in to 21 volumes and more than 5,000 pages, quoted from Rig Veda: ‘’During the Dissolution, there was neither existence nor non-existence, and at that time neither LOK(world) was there nor was anything beyond space. What encompassed all at that time? Where was the abode and of whom? What was the unfathomable and deep water?...’’


After firmly affixing legality to faith and belief, the majority verdict also held that the disputed structure was constructed by Babar. Justice Khan said that for a long time until the construction of the mosque, it was believed by Hindus that somewhere in the large area of the disputed land, there existed a very small portion which was the ‘’Janmasthan’’ of Ram. However, he said that the belief did not relate to any specific small area in the 2.77 acre disputed land. He also said that the Hindus started identifying the disputed structure, sometime after the construction of the mosque, as the exact birthplace of Ram or as a place wherein the exact birthplace of Ram was situated. Justice Khan also found that much before 1855, Ram Chabutra and Sita Rasoi had come in to existence and Hindus were worshipping there. This was the basis for his finding that both Muslims and Hindus were held to be in joint possession of the entire premises under dispute.


Justice Khan found that for some decades before 1949, Hindus had started treating/believing the place beneath the central dome of the mosque to be the exact birthplace of Ram. He said that the idol was placed for the first time beneath the central dome of the mosque in the early hours of December 23, 1949. But he doesnot explain its relevance in deciding that both parties could be declared as joint title holders of the entire disputed premises when it is clear that the installation of the idol in 1949 was illegal and should have been reversed immediately. In contrast, he assumes that an illegal act, if not corrected in subsequent years, vindicates itself.

Of crucial importance is how Justice Khan interprets the Limitation Act. When the suits (except suit No:5) were instituted, the Limitation Act, 1908, was in force. It was replaced by the Limitation Act, 1963. According to this Act, the suits for declaration of rights had to be filed within 12 years of the 1949 incident, and the Sunni Waqf Board filed its case within the limitation of 12 years, It was filed on December 18,1961, within the limitation without adversely affecting the title of the Sunnis. But Justice Khan found the suit time-barred. This interpretation appears to be debatable. Justice Khan declared all the three sets of parties, Muslims and Hindu organisations and the Nirmohi Akhara, joint title holders of the property/premises in dispute, to the extent that the disputed land should be equally divided-one-third share to each for using and managing the same for worship. However, in his final decree, he allotted the portion below the central dome to Hindus. Thus an illegal installation, followed by regular pujas, enabled Hindus to acquire the right to pray at a particular spot and secure the same spot through a court-directed partitioning of land.


Justice Agarwal’s reasoning of the right to worship is bizarre. He held that the Hindu plaintiffs had a right to worship: ‘’The place in suit to the extent it has been held by this court to be the birthplace of Lord Rama and if an idol is also placed in such a place the same can also be worshipped.’’ But it is not clear how he holds that the right to worship flows from a mere belief that a particular place is the birthplace of a god. Even if it is conceded that historically there has been such a belief, an explanation of how the legal right to worhsip could be inferred from it would have been necessary. Justice Agarwal seems to condone the illegal placing of the idols inside the mosque in 1949 because it was based on such a belief.


This has serious implications for the other religious sites, and the secular tenet of the Constitution faces the risk of being seriously compromised, let alone the challenge of maintaining inter-communal harmony.


Justice Khan records in his judgement that in 1885 the Sub-Judge of Faizabad had conceded that there was no doubt regarding the possession and ownership of Hindus over the Chabutra(the platform outside the mosque which had Ram’s feet embossed on it). But the Sub-Judge had held that it was against the public policy to permit the construction of a temple thereupon. The court was then of the opinion that granting permission to construct a temple would amount to laying the foundation for communal riots.


An appeal against this judgement was dismissed by F.E.A.Chamier, the then District Judge of Faizabad, on march 18, 1886, saying that it was too late to remedy the Hindu’s grievance as the event of building the masjid on a piece of land held sacred by the Hindus had occurred 356 years earlier.


The second appeal was dismissed by Justice W.Young, the Judicial Commissioner of Oudh, on November 1, 1886. The penultimate sentence of the judgement in the second appeal was that there was nothing whatsoever on record to show that the Hindu plaintiff was in any sense the proprietor of the land in question.


The Lucknow Bench appears to have achieved what could not be achieved in 1885. This must lead to a genuine introspection by our judicial authorities on whether historical evidence and precedents could easily be brushed aside to accommodate contemporary jingoistic pressures.


In his judgement on the land acquisition case, delivered on December 11, 1992, Justice S.H.A Raza of the Allahabad High Court rightly said that an ‘’article of faith cannot be stretched to such an extent which threatens the Rule Of Law. The contention that faith is beyond the jurisdiction of the Court is centered around the application of theocratic ideas.’’ Still less can the faith of one community become the law of the land by a judicial ruling because it happens to be the majority community.


But what if judges themselves rely on their own religious faith in their judicial orders? Justice D.V.Sharma remarks on Ram and ‘’the spirit of divine’’ in this context are eloquent enough. Courts can try only suits of a ‘’civil nature’’(section 9 of the Civil Proceedure Code) in matters of faith. Remember the Evidence Act permits expert evidence only on a few limited matters (Sections 45 to 50). History and Archeology are not among them. The Act itself is misread by Justice S.U.Khan, who held that ‘’both the parties have failed to prove commencement of their title. Hence by virtue of section 110 of the Evidence Act, both are held to be joint title holders on the basis of joint possession.’’


Section 110 says no such thing. It says, on the contrary, that ‘’when the question is whether any person is owner of anything of which he is shown to be in possession of, the burden of proving that he is not the owner is on the person who affirms that he is not the owner.’’- in this case, the Sangh Parivar vis-à-vis the Babri Masjid. The Supreme Court has held that ‘’a presumption of an origin in lawful title could be drawn….in order to support possessory rights, long and quietly enjoyed, where no actual proof of title is forthcoming.’’ The longer the possession, the stronger the presumption (1991 Supp (2), SCC 228 at pages 243-244).


Records of the 19th century litigation disprove Justice Khan’s inference of ‘’Joint possession’’. From such errors flow the bizqrre order of a tripartite partition, which the media and others have so readily lapped up as an act of ‘’judicial statesmanship’’. The record since December 23, 1949, shows the judgement of september 30, 2010, to be a crowning act on consistent judicial injustices to Muslims in 1950,1955,1986 and 1994. The verdict comes despite the Places of Worship (Special Provisions Act. 1991), which makes it impossible for anyone to change the status of a religious place, including Kashi. Will Ayodhya become a precedent? In Benares, the bone of contention is the Gyanvapi masjid which stands next to the Kashi Vishwanath temple. In Mathura, next to the Krishajanmasthan temple is the Shahi Idgah mosque. Are we slated for further division?

IN THE NAME OF FAITH…A historical overview of the misconstrued TRUTH

The ‘’compromise’’ judgement of the Allahabad High Court, for all its merits and attempts to achieve communal amity, is perceived as a setback for the basic tenets of historical inquiry and precision. Social scientists of all hues have reacted with dismay to the dominance of faith and belief over scientific fact and historicity.
There is nothing wrong in looking for a kernel of truth in the literary tradition of the Ramayana. But what is necessary for a scientific methodology is to build a reasonable hypothesis about the structured entity which must have been objectively in existence in the past. The courts have asserted that the site where the idols were placed was indeed the birthplace of Ram. The judgement is therefore based on faith and theology and certainly not on history. Historical evidence does not support the assertion that Ram was born where the idols were kept.
The first conflict that took place between the Hindus and Muslims dates back to 1855 and Wajid Ali Shah set up a three member committee to defuse the situation. After the 1857 uprising [ war of independence], in 1889, a Hindu priest went to the local court, staking his claim to the place and his plea was dismissed. After that, from 1889 to 1949, both Hindus and Muslims continued to worship at the Ram Chabutra peacefully except in 1934 when there was a conflict between them. The saga of the conflict over Ayodhya began in 1949, when the idols of Ram were surreptitiously placed in the central dome of the Babri mosque with the connivance of the Deputy Commissioner of Faizabad, K.K.K.Nayar, who is said to have been a member of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh).
As far as the verdict of history is concerned, if you go back in time, before 1528, there is evidence of several religious groups who had a claim on Ayodhya. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang wrote that there were 3,000 Buddhist monks and hundred monastries and only 10 devas or temples belonging to the brahmanical religion. Buddhism was dominant in Ayodhya in the 7th century. The first and the fourth Jain Tirthankaras were born in Ayodhya. Even today, Ayodhya remains a holy place for Jainas. There is strong evidence of Muslim presence since the 12th century onwards. Sufi saints visited Ayodhya since the 12th century – one of them was Qazi Qidwatuddin Awadhi, who came from Central Asia and is said to have been a disciple of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti of Ajmer. There are many Sufi shrines in Ayodhya. Thus, there is evidence of Buddhist, Jain and Muslim presence. Ayodhya was not even a Hindu pilgrimage centre before the 17th and the 18th centuries.
There is reference to Ayodhya in ‘’Skanda Puranas’’ called ‘’Ayodhya Mahatmya’’. The composition of this text stretches over 300-400 years with lots of interpolations and contradictions. There are atleast a 100 verses devoted to the place where Ram ascended to heaven, the ‘’Swargadwaar’’, located on the banks of the Sarayu river and only 10 verses referring to his birthplace, but not the site of his birth. The three historically attested Ram temples are in Madhya Pradesh, belonging to the 12th century. Tulsidas’s ‘’Ramacharitamanas’’ does not specify the locale of Ram’s birth, neither does he refer to the destruction of a temple to build a mosque. Within 50 years or so of the construction of the Babri Masjid, Tulsidas composed in 1575-76, his celebrated ‘’Ramacharitamanas’’, the most fervent exposition of the Ramayana story in Avadhi. Is it possible to believe that Tulsidas would not have given vent to heart-rending grief had the very birth site of his Lord Ram been ravaged, its temple razed to the ground and a mosque erected in its place? His silence can only mean that he knew of no such scandal; and given his attachment to Rama and Ayodhya, this must mean that no such event had infact taken place. Tulsidas on the contrary suggests that it was not Ayodhya but Prayag that was to him the principal place of pilgrimage (Tirath raj); and so no tradition of the veneration of any spot as that of Rama’s birth at Ayodhya had yet taken shape.
The historians added that even Abul Fazl, in his ‘’A’in-i-Akbari’’, completed in 1598, wrote about Ayodhya being the ‘’residence of Ramachandra, who in the Treta age combined in his own person both the spiritual supremacy and the kingly office’’ but did not confine Ram’s place of birth to the existing town of Ayodhya, let alone the site occupied by the Babri Masjid. Had such tradition existed, Abul Fazl would surely have mentionned it, because he does mention the tradition that two Jewish prophets lie buried at Ayodhya. The historians also relied on the most primary source of recorded historical evidence, the Persian inscriptions on the mosque. Presenting a full translation of the inscriptions, the historians observed that the contemporaneity of the inscriptions was shown by their text and date, and their accuracy was established by the fact that Mir Baqi finds mention in Babur’s memoirs as the governor of Awadh or Ayodhya at exactly the same time. These fairly long inscriptions show that the construction of the Babri Masjid was completed in 1528-29. But nowhere is any hint given in them that the edifice was built after destroying a temple or upon the site of a temple. If one accepts for the purpose of argument that there was a temple at the site, and the builder of the mosque (Mir Baqi) destroyed it to build a mosque, one has to answer why at all should all reference to this fact be omitted in the foundation of the inscriptions. Surely, had Mir Baqi destroyed a temple, he would have deemed it a meritorious deed, and what would have been more natural than that he should get this act recorded along with that of the building of the mosque to add to his religious reputation. That he did not get any such act recorded surely means that he had infact not destroyed any temple, and so found no reason to record something that had not happened.
As for the black pillar bases that were used to vouch for the existence of a temple, the historians noted, after examining many records, including those of art historians, that there was nothing to show that ‘’the pillar bases were remains of a local temple of which they formed an integral part in the beginning and the mosque was erected over them.’’ This is a wild hypothesis not backed by any material evidence and is actually negated by the factual position easily verifiable from the existing structure of the Babri Masjid. The stone pillars, are infact, embedded at the arched entrances in the massive walls of the mosque and stand at the floor level on the foundation walls constructed for the big building. Only those who have failed to understand the architectural plan of the building and wilfully ignore the indisputable factual position will insist on seeing these stone pillars as in situ. Since black stone pillars are relatively short and slender, they cannot be load bearing. Infact, their placement at the arched entrances and the colour contrasts they offer as also the carvings on them suggest that they have been used only as decorative pieces and are not architecturally functional beyond this decorative purpose. Furthermore, the placement of these pillars fits in the plan of the mosque and not that of a Hindu temple. The presence of animal bones throughout and the use of ‘’Surkhi’’ (made from powdered burnt bricks) and lime mortar (all characteristics of Muslim architectural presence) rule out the possibility of a Hindu temple having been there beneath the mosque. If we travel further back in time, in the 11th century, there was a minister of the Garhwal King [who ruled over the Awadh region] called Bhatt Lakshmidhara. He wrote a book called ‘’Krityakalpataru’’, which has one section on the Tirthas, called ‘’Tirthavivechankanda’’. This does not mention Ayodhya as a centre of pilgrimage.
The VHP(Vishwa Hindu Parishad) maintains that Muslims destroyed 30,000 temples to build mosques. Richard Eaton, an American historian who has written on the desecration of temples, says that the total number does not exceed 80. History is full of examples to show that the religious structures were constantly destroyed by the ruling classes of various hues and religions.
The judgement is so seriously flawed that history will be ill-served if these errors are not set right. People outside India compare the destruction of the Babri-Masjid with the destruction of the Bamian statues by the Taliban. Secular governance is incapable of remedying the travesty of destroying the mosque and denying even a shred to the people who owned the masjid and the site. India’s democracy requires that minorities must be treated with the dignity and respect they deserve or should we continue to hear the Sangh Parivar Fundamentalist’s proclamation ‘’Ayodhya today, Mathura tomorrow, and Varanasi the day after..!!!’’.??

References: 1] 1991, May ICHR(Indian Council of Historical research), an interim report, ‘’Ramjanambhoomi-Babri Masjid issue: A preliminary study of the archeological evidence’’, by Suraj Bhan (Professor of Archeology in the Dept. of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archeology at Kurukshetra University, Haryana.
2] ‘’Ramjanambhumi Baburi Masjid – A Historian’s Report to the Nation’’ authored by Historians R.S.Sharma(Professor of History, University of Delhi), M.Athar Ali (professor of History at Aligarh Muslim University), D.N.Jha (professor of History, University of Delhi) and Suraj Bhan.
3] ‘’Unfurnished Innings’’- (pages 406-407)

ITALY

My heart is like a singing bird soaring up the sky..

My heart is like a rainbow shell that paddles in the sea..

My heart is gladder than all of these for ''Siena'' of the Tuscan Italy hath come to me...!!

The meandering streets, the welcoming magnificent doors, the endless arches, the red-bricked walls, the strong forts...

I suoi rossi edifici, le brune tegole, le sue case allungate, i campanili svelti delle chiese, via di Città, Banchi di Sotto, Banchi di Sopra,Fonte Nuova, Fonte Gaia, ma sopratutto, la più antica della tutta dov'è si trova la mia Residenza Universitaria è la bella ''Fonte Branda''..!!

Looking skyward, sits my soul, newer challenges, newer goals, and knock-knock here we come, 200 of us from 200 different places to the Centro-Linguistico, il 5 luglio, per l'esame orale e l'esame scritto, and were thus assigned our respective ''livello''!

First day, first class, 40 of us clubbed in to B2 = introductions, salutations and then began the grammatical downpour of ''Periodo Ipotetico'' '' Il Congiuntivo-presente, imperfetto,trapassato..'' = ''Avessi, avesse, abbia, fosse, venisse'' and so on and so forth!

Due ore della grammatica, due ore della lingua, quattro ore della cultura, la prima giornata ben è stata interessante e lunga!

The shell-shaped Piazza del Campo which houses the Palazzo Pubblico, Torre del Mangia or the hosting of the famous fervent horse race='' Il Palio''= what pride! what passion! fervent enthusiasm, alliances and animosities and indescribable human emotions!

Beyond the 12th century ''Il Duomo''=Siena's Romanesque-gothic architectural cathedral with the best Renaissance Fresoes of Ghirlandaio, Donatello, Ghiberti, Jacopo della Quércia and Duccio's famous Maestà or Beyond the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, or Il Campanile di Giotto or la Cupola del Brunelleschi or Il Battistero di San Giovanni or la Porta del Paradiso di Lorenzo Ghiberti or La Divina Comedia di Dante Alighieri, Beyond the golden roofs of il Palazzo Vecchio or La Torre di Arnolfo = Florence's emblematic Simbolo or the picturesque ''ponte Vecchio'', Beyond l'arte dell'Uffizi with Leonardo da Vinci,Filippo Lippi, Tiziano Vecellio or Tintoretto's ''Leda e il cigno'' or '' La nascita di Venere'' di Sandro Botticelli or Davide of Michelangelo, beyond the leaning tower of Pisa or the breathtaking Colosseum, Pantheon, Fontana di Trevi, or la cappelle Sistina of the Vatican City, Beyond the mystical magical postcard perfect moments of Gondola=Venice or the spectacular musical opera of ''La Traviata''...Beyond the 5 Mediterranean cities of La Spezia, Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia,Vernazza, Monterosso of trek and sea, of cancelled trains, and closed ticket counters or ticketless return journey of having spent sleepless nights on station platforms.. Beyond le bruschette, papa al pomodoro, riso insalata, pasta pizza, ravioli, spaghetti, panino, tramezzino, tiramisù, gelato, caffe espresso, caffe cappuccino or the wine tasting at Montalcino, Montepulciano, Chianti, Brunello, Vino Nobile, Vino Santo..Beyond the street musicians or the street artists or the staged concertos or just the sheer sight of those beautifully hanging clothes...or be it my early morning walks to the university for ''bus-ticket=economy'' brisk walks on the meandering cobbled paths in the silence of the aromatic cappuccino restos and bars...Beyond the 4 walls of classroom learning of language, literature or the complex almost mathematical grammatical structure, It has been a cross-cultural, borderless, boundaryless, life-time emotional bonds of pure friendships....it has changed and channelled my vision, opened newer horizons......My trip has ended but the true journey beyond has just begun...!!!

He evokes in me...

The mystical music spinneth in me a myth

a dreamy stream seemingly gentle poundeth in me its fists

a mighty torrent rushing down in sheer abandon

so sweet is his melody for all else is forgotten



Dreams, whims - craved and cradled, swerved and lingered

steeples, spires, mosaics, tiles - ocher orange,vermilion red

frozen silver, coppery bronze surges teems, a canopy of ''doubts''

stationing itself in ''nimbo-stratus'' as are the sequined velvety cottony clouds



Parched is the Earth in pain

unquenchable is her sorrow albeit the sinuous rains

billowing bales, dizzying heights,ranting rage of the celestial skies

all in one divine diffused delight bringeth forth tears to her ''Kohl''d eyes...



Yet here she stands,stays,not wanting to quit, bidding her time

and waiting for the tide to turn and before the clock ticks and swipes with it the magical melancholy of those yet ''unsaid'' bits ...

''Such a Long Journey''

Two queens fighting over on who’s opening the Commonwealth Games,
While lakhs of Delhi denizens are contending with unflinching torrential rains
as well as the whole world descending down to this one mayhem of a place…
We are told that we ought to feel proud for this very ‘’honorouble’’ hosting…
Even as India has become one treasure-house of shameful scandalous ‘’happenings’’….
A High Court accepts ‘’Divine’’ petition, puts religion over reason…’’faith’’ over ‘’facts proven’’…
A third-generation politician burns copies of a major literary work getting it successfully banned from the University syllabus with a 24 hour ultimatum…
But would there come a day when such a student be expelled for his acts of sheer vandalism?
Or is it ''Such a Long Journey'' as yet to begin?

Advaitya Vedanta

'' L'Univers est fait d'oppositions, ombre-lumière, bien-mal, naissance-mort, et la division naît de tous ces couples dissociés. Gravitation et anti-gravitation, force centripète et force centrifuge, c'est par le jeu des contraires que la vie émerge et se perpétue.....mais si c'était là toute la réalité des choses, nous ne connaîtrions que luttes et conflits, nulle part, il ne pourrait être question de paix et d'union. et pourtant, il est évident que par-delà les discordances, règne une harmonie sans faille. Par le pouvoir de l'imagination, nous pouvons tracer une ligne droite et la prolonger à l'infini, ou nous représenter l'obscurité comme une masse qui s'épand dans l'espace, toujours égale à elle-même. il en est ainsi car, pour nous, une ligne droite ne peut-être qu'une ligne droite, l'ombre ne peut-être que l'ombre. ce sont là, pourtant, des idées fausses: malgré les apparences, toute ligne est courbe et, sur notre globe, la zone d'ombre s'incurve graduellement, s'estompant peu à peu jusqu'à se fondre dans la zone de lumière. De même, sur un tout autre plan, le bonheur tend à se muer en peine au fil des jours, et la peine en bonheur, tandis que l'erreur, insensiblement tend à se rectifier d'elle-même....
le matin se lève toujours et le soir se couchera bien encore.......''