Children of a lesser God

He walks with a swagger, with a smile. And he walks with a bounce , not knowing what tomorrow holds for him! Mangal is a ten year old who knows not what life is , or where his next meal is coming. No ipads, no smart phones , no gizmos , nothing. Just how to go about life everyday and where the next roti is going to come from.

Punjab is a melting pot of all the migrants who leave their homes for greener pastures (pun intended). They come from all the states like Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and the maximum come from UP. At the farm, we have groups and groups of children, with their parents who come to work seasonally to earn their living. Such a boy is Mangal, who has come with his father and his stepmother brought here to earn and eat his living. When one looks at him, you see this tiny, short, dark as anything boy merely a seven year old. The striking looks, matched with bright as a button eyes proudly claims his age as ten years. Well, Mangal ran away to a nearby village because his stepmother was beating him and then we got him back at the farm.

The little boy is here with me, and his intense looks mesmerize you. What is his fault? Is it his stars? The particular alignment that is blamed for every problem in our lives according to the pundits.  When I gave him mis-matched clothes, a pink pajama with his blue cardigan the smile he gave me was priceless! In fact, he lit up with his warm clothes, as earlier he was clad in a torn shirt with loose pants, with red color on his body. When I asked him, why do you have color on your body? He remarked wisely, saying, everyone knows, no one is going to stand for me, so that’s why they put the marka (screen print color for the gunny bags) on me!

These kids have no one. India, is progressing but at what cost? Elections are around the corner, but the cacophony of voices is just over slander and mudslinging to the nth order. No one thinks about the nameless, faceless children who are lost in the system, living, working worse than animals, losing their innocence in this society. We have tall statesmen, society NGO’s who preach the most but they all get shoved under the mat after elections, before that they are poster boys of garnering votes.

Children of lesser God, deserve better, and I think it is up to us, to change and pave the way for these nameless Chotu’s and Nikkis, rather than asking the political party to change the way. Do your bit and see the precious smile that can light a thousand ships.

Fifty Shades of grey - India Style

Fifty Shades of Grey – India Style

Ha! Got you on reading the article. This is no attempt to introduce you into erotic reading but just describing the political scenario in India. Every youngster (and this comes from my nephew) is confused, literally grey and polarized.  What to do, on one hand we have a n individual who symbolized the IIT dream and the successive rise into a government job who then went on the warpath and gave it up to singlehandedly revolutionize the system and promising us Utopia. India where there was no corruption, a country where jobs were for all, adequate electricity and water, and rights for the down trodden, the common man, the Mungeri lal! Then on the other side we have a right wing mammoth who has taken India by the storm by his clever speeches, the meteoric rise form a chai wallah to heading a successful govt in Gujarat but who can never erase the blot of communal riots. Those riots haunt him, and he never clears but answers back with clever rhetoric and challenging the other character in the arena. Pappu and Madam ji.

Pappu ji, gave his first interview and just bungled as a kid who learnt by rote an essay on The Cow and kept on answering the same answers for everything. I don’t know about his vision for the system it is just juvenile and nothing concrete for the India of tomorrow. Yes, he is a romantic figure and girls swoon over him, but romance isn’t going to run a country!

There is also the ubiquitous third front leader, colorful characters who add the necessary drama, the right amount of blackmail, the essential caste drama, and the very fact they can befool large percentage of our population that is rightly the Aam Janta. India is a country that is sitting on an explosion keg, the youth that is swayed by fundamental rights, emotions, high drama. They are a percentage that get riled up with emotion who have been brought up on virtual networking, face book viral statuses updates, a generation that is more connected to the umbilical cord of whatsapp, snap chat now. They are an instagrammer gen-x who are at once highly private but have their lives on display on their profiles once you break into their secret coven. I know for a fact, I have four boys now young men in the household.

It is a precarious situation where we need to tell them about the lessons of life not by Bollywood rang de Basanti , or Bhagat Singh the revolutionary but by the ground reality and the permutation and combinations of life. Maybe I am getting in my dotage , that I tell them to be patient and not be enamored by politics, this quick rise, make money get rich , have big car syndrome image of our leaders.

It is best for them to realize that life is grey and nothing is black and white as they believe in and coalition is the fifty shades of India.

Ravneet Sangha

AAP ka PAAP

I had been toying with writing and then scribbling and then putting down my pen ( yes ,I do write the old fashioned way ) but then the innate intuition got the better of me! AAP has one of the most powerful initials - a word that invokes old age respect , manners, a vintage style that immediately brings to your mind ' tehzeeb' . It also stands for in this day and age for the Aam Admi Party.  India , is an interesting country and on this Republic Day's unity in diversity this party brings together all sorts of diverse people from different sections of the society who have united to fight the problems that matter!

It is a party , that in its infancy has upstaged and has changed the game plan of Indian politics ( I am not going to get into a history lesson , every citizen of India has two Gods Cricket and politics , enough said !)

AAp comprises of you , me ,the common man of India , the Nikkis, Bittus , Ramus , chottus and also the common middle class along with the idealists who have been awakened to do good and to change the face of India. We were given a glimpse of the change, the ' badlaav' they eloquently speak of , by voting themselves into power in Delhi.

But , Ladies and Gentlemen, we should never forget that the Gods we put on pedestals have feet of clay ! And, that is apparent from what is transpiring in Delhi. he calls himself , an anarchist , a revolutionary , a common man ,who wants to change and give power to the common man. Popular gimmickry is what he is resorting to, inaugarations by rickshaw wallahs, sleeping in the open , speaking  crudely ..
Why ? The system supported you , made you what you are ... Why this revolt? Why are you in such a hurry to prove us wrong? Why are you making it into the biggest war of the classes ? Why are you against progress ?
Sir, your muffler clad ,topi wearing iconic caricature is lovable, but Sir , please don't become a symbol of a lost misguided hope for the youth , for whom you have raised hope given them a beacon but are taking it back like a spoilt child in the playground when his lollipop is taken away !
Dont play with our emotions too.. We also hurt , and are the other aam admi of this country .


Sorry , if the post head sounds like a B- grade Bollywood movie ! Couldnt help it .

The Lost Indian

The Lost Indian

Society today has moved to a certain unexplainable, undefined plateau, which keeps on changing moving, to a level of decadence that reminds me of Roman orgies. It seems the level of voyeurism, corruption and greed are reaching its zenith. Before you all label me as a true blue Akali, or a congress wali bandi, or an AAP supporter, a Modi basher (bet that made you smile), I am a lost Indian. I seriously wonder who I am, a lost tribe of the Amazon. Sadly, the Amazon does not run in my country, the Ganga does and she is way too polluted by the moral degradation of the times, the corruption of the moral fiber of the society, the lack of basic amenities for every citizen. Or, am I the woman of the 22^nd century who is trying to fight, claw her way to reach the next destination, pulled down by every step, every turn, very corner just because God decided she should be anatomically different then the rest of the population. Just because of this, I am killed; raped, maimed, acid is thrown just because I have the temerity to say No. Why was I taught No, in the first place? All the incarnations of Shakti, Maa are lost in the idol worship that adorns the homes of the 1.2 billion of my country.

Am I the Indian who lives her life through a smart phone? Worried more about connectivity, status update, whatsapp and a false bubble of virtuality. Or Am I the struggling Indian who lives with hyperinflation, costs so high that change and dive at the mercy of the Lok Sabha elections? Just because, a senior heir apparent wishes the subsidy increases. I am at the mercy of the political heavy weights that are at a tussle to fool us, for maximum votes. Then I am torn apart just because I belong to a religion, I am given a quota.

Do I need to be given a quota? Why?

I need a quota, the lost Indian. The Indian whose psyche, the zameer is buried. I need one to revive the lost patriotism, loyalty and all those old-fashioned morals values that I grew up n. I need a quota for the fresh air, food, water I signed up for. My country deserves it. We need to give back to the country, not because we ought to, but because she deserves it. We owe it to her. Not by anarchy or with a revolution or by the systematic division by religion or by caste or by the listing of systematic wrongs that have been slighted upon communities just because we were fooled by slick smooth operators who needed the votes to win and loot the country.

I want all of us to reclaim ourselves , otherwise we might just go extinct like the dodo ; to be excavated in the future like the Jurassic park Of India.

Death and I

I had gone to attend a Kriya of my Vice Principal’s daughter who had passed away. All deaths are unfortunate, no one wants to face the reality and the certainty of Death but it is the one and only truth. I went there, shocked, shamed that I had not been in touch with my teacher who had taught me a lot of core values plus math. Mr. Bakshi with his dark jet-black flick hair and his bent finger was always on the look out for the backbenchers that tried to evade his questions. I cannot here debate his teaching or whether he played favorites…

I just remember him as a towering imposing disciplinarian who struck fear in our hearts. And today I saw this man, broken a mere shadow of his previous self. His only child had lost her battle and had passed on.

What shocked me was the absence of students who should have come to pay their respects or homage or give support to him. It was a weekday, some said. Some said they had visited him personally at home. I was just taken aback.

Am I being sanctimonious? Was I being overly correct just because I had gone there and the others hadn’t? Why have we lost our humane self ? It is as if all has been replaced by an equation that just translates into money and materialism.

I just realized one eternal truth, when I die no one will be there. All these platitudes of being friends and being there for life and till you die are false. When one dies, who has turned and got up form the grave and marked attendance and said, well so many are present. Good, Now I can die!

Life indeed is cruel and it teaches one at every step.

For me, I am a sentimental fool and these incidents make me lose my faith in humanity and I know no one will be there to cry at my bier.

Punjabi Fashion!

Every year, Punjab suffers from marriage mania. It can be summed up by a mathematical equation, strange it is applicable to us but sometimes we do follow a pattern. It is like this, as the temperature drops, the women start wearing skimpier clothes. This is the time when the temperatures plummet, weddings are planned and women because of fashion start wearing shorter tighter, skimpier clothes. What to do? If they covered themselves in shawls, and wore the ugly sweaters which heaven forbid might give them warmth, how would they show off their clothes, the designs, and most important the OTT jewelry?

Her diamonds, the polkis she wears and the shawl she carries so strategically placed on her shoulder do not know by her intellect but a woman, in Punjab. It is definitely a marvel, I have seen women place them in balance with the duppatta, jewelry and she walks so straight in those pencil heels, and I wonder how it happens. Its like the delicate balance of war we have with the China.

Last Sunday, I was decked in all my finery as much as I could and I was off for a wedding with my husband and as we came out of our house, we saw a sight that was earlier limited to stories and the ever famous Amar Chitra Katha.

I saw a couple sitting in front of our famous old as time, Peepal tree. And they had tied a red thread around it. They were going round and round it.

 When I asked a passer by they said first they had married the girl around the tree so that the would be groom would not die after marriage. This was done in accordance with the kundli. I was stumped.

The world is progressing to inter net weddings, weddings under water, on the balloon, destination weddings and relationships are planned, thought of under planned circumstances and we even have pre nuptials to prevent anything and everything. But, these rituals do exist, when I said it was all superstition and nothing like this prevented a death, as all was predestined.

The old lady stumped by saying, this too was predestined and written by the stars. Sometimes, the old ways are better; at least they were done with full clothes on.

However, do not dismiss me as a prude, I too am partially guilty of fashion!