Remembering Papa :: Trying to be worthy of his inheritance

Got a chance to perform the Shraaddh of Papa almost after a decade of his untimely demise just in his 50th year of existence on Fools Day which resonated with his well cherished name Phool (as in flower). 

Being the elder son, I performed all his last rites in April 2005. The ceremonies involved were quite elaborate and engaging spread across the 13 days which ensued. The brief Shraaddh ritual too was replete with philosophical techniques which would need another piece to unravel, from geo-tagging your own self to invoking the deceased soul to satiating him(her) across the species spread and conducting ablutions for ascendance. The metaphysical motifs contained therein are all worth pondering and relishing. What a human tradition which remembers its ancestors all throughout a fortnight !!!

I had somewhere been running away from remembering him formally. But today's Shraaddha ceremony caught me unawares and the entire floodgate of reminiscences just got open.

If the mother constructs the conscience, setting in the deepest directives of deducing the dharmic foundations of a decision; it's the father who illumines the intellect and ingrains it with information incensed with insights of the past and imaginations for the future.

My father, had the aforesaid profound impact and influence onto me. Whatever I am today and whatever I would be able to accomplish in this lifetime would all accord its credit to my father's grounding and firm rearing.  

His virtuos values, widespread intercoalsced vision and his enviable vitality caught my fancy since early childhood. 

Born in the city of Jalmahals, the erstwhile capital of the Jat Kingdom, Deeg, he was a gifted soul with an incessant curiosity and ability to learn from observation and experimentation. 

Well built and handsome he awestruck one and all by crossing the Gulab Taal, just adjacent to the prolific Jal Mahal. His resoluteness and stamina for a chosen task were unmatchable. He used to say that if you can master a posture of sitting engrossed into any vocation, the mastery of the vocation concerned is just but natural.

An avid player of badminton he was a finger-licking cook as well. He lost his father quite early and thereby immersed himself into studies and building himself. 

His mastery over the field of accounts in the heydays of manual processing was a region wide sensation. He stood 25th in the Chartered Accountancy Intermediate examination but couldn't complete the final group owing to multifarious reasons.  

His first principles based approach of comprehending a concept and thereafter extending it to all other domains was prolific. It was not limited to his domain of study - commerce - alone. He made himself a polyglot by self learning. 

From a thriving accounting practice, he was pulled into the world of entrepreneurship for fending his younger brother. He established a bakery in the very year I was born, a pioneering initiative in its own accord. 

Setting up a manufacturing unit and that too in the domain of a perishable food commodity spoke volumes about his skill, commitment and verve. 

All through my childhood both as a school boy and later as a college chap I witnessed the perils of a manufacturer in the MSME sector. The tepid tales of License and Inspector Raj became an integral part of the rubric of our existence. 

One ugly act of humiliation I faced just after the first year of study at IIT Kharagpur. It was summer break of year 2000 and I had accompanied Papa to the factory. 

The District Foods Officer has the onerous responsibly of ensuring the food standards of various food enterprises. In practice it has simply become a way of imposing annual collections on the concerned enterprises. Depending on the scale and profitability amounts are negotiated and contributed as a routine. 

That year, due to some family obligations on his count the concerned officer came out of turn all over again in the name of inspection. Out of human solidarity his additional finance need could have been met with but his sense of guilt made him extol his official powers which created a behavioural tussle. He was thereby restrained from unduly filling in the food sample. 

To get his humiliation redressed, he invoked his authority of being a government servant and lodged a complaint with the local police station. The sleuths came rushing blabbering  in lowest degree abuses and took hold of Papa in the most derogatory demeanour.

I couldn't withstand this dirty display and protested to which the goon in uniform took hold of me as well and transported to their den of justice. 

The SHO and the ASI tried to herald their expletives and terror including a warning to ruin my career. The tactic was to simply extract a booty from this deliverance of duty in the larger public interest. I was appalled by this entire turn of events and decided to fight these official goons against all odds - the societal weakness, the systemic fault lines, the collusion of all concerned. 

Papa, who fought for dignity of entrepreneurs, found a young ardent supporter in his son. His silent blinking of eyes remained my sole assurance and I along with my father got scot free from that unwarranted ordeal. 

This encounter with the system, somewhere washed out the fascinations of flying down to greener pastures which has somewhere got germinated in the first year of my college. How can I leave my father all alone in this ordeal, became my dominant quest?

Fighting for justice needs sacrifice, and a deeper fearlessness imbued from a sense of probity & propriety. I am contented that I inherited these very traits in great abundance from him. Values and traits unfurl only when you see them in practice. Being tepid is otherwise the first comforting choice and option. 

Incidents after incidents are coming in front of me on this day of rememberance. How he overturned his enterprise by championing the American Institute of Baking patent book which I explored in the Central Library, got photocopied and couriered him. Even in his state of losing eyesight, this commerce graduate mastered the formulae, customised them and beat the competition. 

However, in this ordeal the physical state of his body beat the life out. His physiology developed high levels of sugar which bursted into a carbuncle which was operated upon but of no avail. His vital organs started receding and the towering intellect started frustrating. Despite the best of efforts, even to the extent of joining him in our hometown leaving the mainstream career cycle, couldn't rescue him. 

Papa, is not in his body, but his spirit resonates duly. His larger than life thought, openness of heart, resilience, belief in karma, fearlessness, diligence, sensitivity towards one and all...the list is endless.

I don't know where I am heading, but I am pretty sure that I am enthused and blessed by his spirit and the life he shaped within me would carry me forward to some definitive destination making me a worthy son of an illustrious father. 

Celebrating Siddharth's Bigots :: Towards Authentic Liberal Democracy

Siddharth Varadarajan, the Founding Editor of The Wire - a presumably declared joint venture in the public sphere between journalists, readers and a concerned citizenry - has attributed me as well as the 90 crore people of this country adhering to the common wealth of the tents & tradition of Hinduism a 'bigot', if his latest commentary is to be accepted without dissecting its utterly irrational, inconsistent and out of place arguments.

He brings to his credit stints from the reputed New York University and University of California, Berkeley. whose academic credentials, at least in the field of engineering & technology are beyond scrutiny. The discipline of Humanities, is after all a different ball-game altogether which still remains heavily prejudiced.

It's imperative on the part of public spirited citizens and well acclaimed commentators like him to scrutinize any public happening of significance. However, it ought to be done within the reasonable confines of facts, duly accepted & successful developmental doctrines and responsible consideration of global happenings. Selective omissions and inadvertent commissions are the tools of propagandists and not of respectable journalists.

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Mr. Varadarajan cites a bizarre political spectacle which took place in Delhi on September 3-4 which he asserts that no amount of sophistry can square with the principles of a modern democratic republic.
Accreditating an unvalidated epithet to an happening can be accorded as a journalistic prerogative, however the sheer assumption that the Indian readers would be one with the origins of the Greek Sophists, their machinations and their subsequent degeneration seems unfair. He probably would have been forced to use a western motif as he could not have found something even remotely close to it in the Indian tradition which has seen the antithesis of sophists in the institution of sanyasins which guides and inspires this nation till today. 
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The learned commentator makes a passing comment that the axis between the government and the RSS is problematic due to its extra-constitutionality and its sheer incompatibility with the sangh and its ideology with a democratic, inclusive polity and society.

The Constitution of India has made the due provision of a democratically elected government which is expected to be in a democratic huddle every now and then with representative sections of Indian Society. An interaction of the duly elected official heads of the Government of India with the representatives of an organization which represents the interests of the widespread of Hindu Community, which as per the last census constitutes a little less than 80% of country's population is extra-constitutional. Really? This seemingly 'condemned' organization has a declared membership of 5-6 million connected through 51,355 shakhas. What can be a better representative and responsible way of taking social feedback bottoms-up from the entire country? If observed from a pure objective reasoning, there could not have been a more constitutional act than paying constant heed to the voice of the people beyond the ritual of vote. 

The reason and rationale of accordingly this relationship axis as incompatible, somewhere accrues from a figment of imagination & intellectual insinuations whereby a healthy discourse between official governmental organizations and societal representations is subdued and thwarted. 

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The learned thinker goes onto to label this axis between the government and the RSS is unhealthy for the obvious reason that it represents a classic case of what con artists call ‘bait and switch’ as millions of men and women, especially the young, voted in 2014 for Modi and his promises of development and not for a shadowy, all-male, all-Hindu organisation that has never presented itself for election in the 90-odd years it has been in existence. 
Mr. Varadarajan might have a personal problem with a all-male, all-Hindu organization. What's wrong in having personal preferences and biases. What astonishes me is that what's wrong with an organization dedicated to the cause of Hindus, to be all-Hindu? My simple innocuous mind, just cannot gulp this reasoning of this astoundingly well reasoned and acclaimed journalist. Also, why should any voluntary organization be forced to retort to a unitary style of representation? Isn't it an infringement on the liberal human right of associating and furthering a chosen cause?

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Mr. Varadarajan reminds the voters of the country that Modi asked for votes in the name of vikas and not in the name of Hindutva, but the RSS clearly has a lot more on its mind. 
Anyone can understand the etymological and epistemological problem faced by Siddharth ji in furthering his grand narrative to label the axis between Mr. Modi and Sangh Parivar as evil as there is very little divergence in the precept & practice of vikas and foundational principles of Hindutva which have been interpreted and established time and again by extremely neutral and credible platforms par excellence. Even the most regressive definition of Hindutva has not stood in way to vikas at any point or place in the country. However, there can be no end to sheer political rhetoric & intellectual skulduggery of alien worldviews. 
If the cerebral journalist is somewhere trying to connote Hindutva as some variant of the now reemerging evil of Islamic State, Mr. Varadarajan would have been on an intellectual vacation around 21st of June when then entire world united to undergo yoga, one of the exalted harmonics of the doctrine of Hindutva. Defying or deifying just can't be passed as objective journalism or independent commentary.
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Voters are entitled to ask who these secretive little men are who appear to be wielding so much clout from behind the scenes. 
Voters would get their chance in 2019 and have been constantly getting their due chances since 2014 on various forums. As far as the skeptics and cynics like Mr. Varadarajan are concerned, these secretive little men congregate in open ground across the length and breadth of the country, not at tens, hundreds but thousands of locations, some 51,355 of them. A seeker in Mr. Varadarajan would have taken him to one such congregations and he would have settled his quest, rather than harboring the same in perpetuity and speculating about the same relentlessly like a teenager who has not undergone the 's' experience. Though these secretive little men have lived by the virtue of continence & commitment to that nation, which a proponent of critical theory would take real time to internalize and appreciate. 
Unfortunately, these secretive little men have yet to get initiated into the craft of secret parleys, behind the scene play and a whole lot of clandestine plots, something which is much warranted for global suzerainty in the modern era. Either they don't feel the need of it, or they don't aspire at all for exercising dominion over one and all.    
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What is the extent of their hold over the government?
And Mr. Varadarajan claims that he has taught to the students of New York University and University of California, Berkeley where I have seen some of the best minds going from my own institution which has given Sundar Pichai. The current Prime Minister of Government of India by his own admission has claimed on open forums that he is a proud member of Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh, like me and hordes of others, who don't bear any external insignia to represent the same, but simply empathize with the ethos and vision espoused. Does it disqualifies Mr. Narendra Modi to be the Prime Minister of Government of India? Is exposing open secrets a new branch of celebrity journalism?
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What is the nature of the remote control they clasp so firmly in their hands?  
By Mr. Varadarajan's admission, a bizarre political spectacle unfurled in the national capital. He should have at least taught his journalist students to make sound reasoning on inferences. Isn't this enough to answer his query? 
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What is the agenda they want the government to pursue?With the entire national media covering and reporting on the aforesaid political spectacle, isn't it a question in redundancy? 
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The author, like his other professional compatriots sharing the similar style and leanings go on to balance the narrative by drawing out a parallel story rationalizing the case of their benefactors. 
He thereby submits that During the Manmohan Singh period, the Bharatiya Janata Party went to town over the “extra-constitutional” authority Congress president Sonia Gandhi wielded in the United Progressive Alliance government. They attacked her hand-picked team of associates – the National Advisory Council – for involving itself in matters of policy. The NAC was at least established through an executive order. 
A coterie of motley mix of varied professionals and personalities from different walks of life creating a parallel governing structure led by the Chairperson of the ruling coalition competing and contradicting with the decision making capability of Government of India, is a real constitutional crisis. By the way going to town over one or the other issue is a valid political tactic. Has the Congress Party commissioned this write-up to Mr. Varadarajan, who claims to lead an independent voice of reason in public sphere?
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Where does the RSS draw its sanction from?  
Do we still need to delve deeper into the sanction of RSS after so much of informed commentary? RSS is the resplendent societal voice of the 90 Crore Plus Hindu Community of India.
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The September 3-4 forum is arguably the most visible association between the government and the sangh parivar we have seen to date but we know from the functioning of various ministers and ministries that RSS functionaries are “consulted” on an almost continuous basis.
What's new and nocturnal in this association? What's making Siddharth ji crying wolf over and over again? Has he given away his fundamental lessons in primary representative polity? The ruling NDA alliance is led by Bharatiya Janata Party which is supported and sympathized by the larger societal cadre of Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh which in turn leads a consortium of an innumerable number of social organizational across the 7 lakh hamlets of the country. It's an impeccable organizational structure which only countries like India can boast of with a vast tradition of society as a dominant constituent of national life not subdued by the sheer power of state or that of corporations. Can there be a better way of a representative and rounded decision making which would affect the future destiny of this grand old civilization? Should this nation be led through secretive parleys of some well endowed individuals with dubious allegiances & alienated leanings, just because the magic of vote has turned in their favor?  
---  What unfurls next is the well known trick in deflection and deviation. Referring to Organiser, making it the dominant RSS Organ, quoting Dr. Pravin Togadia, the working president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an independent organization with an independent leadership and labeling his article vicious and poisonous on the face of it creating a comparative with the the toxic standards of the Organiser. Heralding labels to create a psychological dominance; orchestrating the remotest of the relationships when found convenient and clubbing of the opposing worldviews to create a linear contest are all rusted tactics in sheer sophistry which have come out in the open and duly exposed. 


Dr. Togadia's concern of the rising Muslim Population in the wake of the global crisis presented by the likes of ISIS and the growing cross-border Islamic terrorism is seen as an exercise in usual fear-mongering. Should India import Sheiks and Imams from the Islamic Kingdom to get concerned about the Hindu Society which constitutes a whopping 80% of this vast country, which is so rightfully termed as Hindustan? 
How can a liberal democrat in Mr. Varadarajan, oppose the developmental doctrine of family planning which is so openly flouted by a significant section of Indian mosaic putting an inordinate affect on the developmental indices of the country, just because a Dr. Togadia - a Hindu leader is espousing for the same. Should the Government of India give away its well reasoned initiative for advocating small and prosperous families? Liberal democracy is all about responsibility, isn't it Mr. Varadarajan? And what better than a communal leader resonating with the underlying objectives of a welfare state? You can't impose a gag order on a communal leader just because he is seeing or interpreting things from a particular tactical lens? You can't snatch away his democratic right to counsel the Government of the day over his genuine concerns which the government might interpret from an different lens suited to its constitutional obligations? Just because an idea sounds absurd, just cannot mean that its expression would be curbed in a liberal democratic set-up like India.

The selective scholarship comes into play when he arduously quotes from Dr. Togadia's article while mischievously mis-construes the Article 2(c) of the Genocide Convention. Dr. Togadia raises objection to more than 2 kids amongst the socially and economically weaker sections of Muslim Community and Mr. Varadarajan goes on to generalize it by equalizing it with the  “measures intended to prevent births within [a national, ethnical, racial or religious] group”. 

Being a communal leader Dr. Togadia might be addressing an adrenalin enraged forum and would have gone overboard in his acclamations, something which he would have avoided in closed doors. But what motivates and objective scribe in Siddharth ji to misconstrue and twist a well meaning international convention?   
 
The gimmickry furthers with the flawed reasoning deck, which even the most profound student of scientific logic would take eons to justify, by extending another label to RSS an organisation that publishes articles advocating genocide of a section of the Indian people. And this self heralded admonition gives Mr. Varadarajan the legitimacy to question the political wisdom and moral compass of the Indian premiere. 
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Can one think of a single example from a modern democracy in which elected leaders will allow themselves to be seen in the company of a ‘cultural’ organisation that publishes and promotes such incendiary filth?
Mr. Varadarajan exposes his allegiance to that dichotomous tribe of scribes & commentators who would rejoice over elongated parleys with terrorist and separatist organizations, which unfurled during a real bizarre political spectacle, whereby a fringe segment of his compatriots took to ransom India's sovereign foreign policy. 
What Mr. Varadarajan has inadvertently been propounding is an incendiary filth himself, in the garb of objective rationale political commentary. 
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What's wrong with a demographic scaremongering, if the author is hellbound to call it? His studies in developmental economics would have initiated him into the co-relation between demography and development? If certain sections of a nation state have created a political and intellectual blockade in touching their pain points, it should be the self-ordained academic & intellectual responsibility of economist turned journalists like Mr. Varadarajan to bring to light, rather than colluding in their very degeneration.
Mr. Modi, a sound politician and emerging statesman has had his past and would have his future. Let him be kept out of the Biblical duality of being a saint or a sinner. Let's accept him as a human who with his sheer commitment trying to fulfill his   implicit social contract – give us economic growth and jobs, by all means. 
Let commissioned commentaries like this one which Mr. Varadarajan has presented himself to in the ‘bait and switch’ mode not let India be dragged back to the divisiveness and violence of the previous decade. 
It's not the RSS agenda and mentality but the doctrine of selective omissions and inadvertent commissions which has been a sound recipe of denigrating and deriding India and convolution her, otherwise peaceful co-habitation with the second largest Muslim population in the world. 
Mr. Varadarajan's extremely filtered intellect might have removed the dastardly case studies of Boko Harams, Islamic States and the likes. There might be a different term used for the concepts of love jihad, conversions, ghar wapsi, population jihad, et al in his expert dictionary, but these and many more dastardly acts are haunting the destiny of millions just because the perpetrators of the same find intellectual refuge from giants and geniuses like Mr. Varadarajan, howsoever misplaced they might be. 
The quicksand of bigotry, division and strife is there, but in a different direction. Siddharth ji might like to take a break to meditate under the Bodhi Tree for a while to detoxify his conscience from the burden of the imposed & aberrated scholarship, whose refuge his namesake took as well and devoted his life to human emancipation towards peace and prosperity devoid of conflicts and contradictions which life presents at times. This surely can pave the path for an authentic liberal democracy of all our dreams.

Dream Girl's Shree Krishna Mahotsav at Mathura :: Remoulding the Krishna Narrative in Promiscuity

Transcending from one's professional identity to assume that of a responsible public representative in the sphere of popular politics is somewhere an arduous task.

A typical case in point is the Member of Parliament to the 15th Lok Sabha from Mathura, who just couldn't go beyond her 'dream girl' identity of yesteryear celluloid that she still maintains her official Twitter handle as @dreamgirlhema even after being elected as the representative of a spiritually profound and culturally significant constituency of India.

So far so good. Developing an ethereal spiritual consciousness from an innate material one is an entirely personal journey. However, her latest and only visible initiative towards the constituency she represents is bound to haunt her for times to come as it got entirely out of sync both in spirit as well as in expression. 

Shree Krishna Mahotsav, organised to mark Sri Krishna Janmashtami this year has emerged out as an exercise in sheer vanity. Replete with cheap Bollywood teasers retorting to the trivialization of the Krishna narrative and interpreting it from the singular lens of promiscuous romance, came out to be the core of the entire representation of Krishna. The due depth and desired demeanour was dastardly deficient. Neither the time nor the venue and nor the context was somewhat relevant for undertaking such an audacious  enterprise stooped into vulgar slangs and sensuous gyrations.

The job of a public representative is probably not to entertain but to educate the people he/she leads and represents. Yes, the tool of edutainment can be duly employed in this exercise but not at the cost of abrogating the due sensibilities and established & well recognised spiritual and cultural facets associated with a legend whose life & times define and determine the worldview of a billion plus humanity.

Had this extravaganza been organised by a private organisation, it could have been sidelined and rejected as an aberrated misdemeanour emanating out of some or the other myopic vested interests. However, when a public representative belonging to the ruling political party of the country organises the same and relishes every moment as a hyperactive participant and dedicating it to the poor farmers (whose traces were not be found anywhere on the event venue) inviting a host of senior personalities from across the spectrum, she tries to bring an official sanction & legitimacy to the entire narrative which is nothing but dangerous.

The outcomes and presentation somewhere also suggests the line of thought of the ruling disposition.

This not only smacks of sheer contempt towards the sacred sensibilities of a significant but silent lot but also the utter lack of creative imagination and inability to use a public platform of such giant magnitude to invoke a sensible chord of communication for national transformation something to which a substantial set of people have dedicated themselves to.

On a personal note, the representative concerned has failed to evolve beyond the dreamgirl image which somewhere led to this tragic manifestation of self as well as the society she represents.

Shree Krishna Mahotsav could have been an occasion to champion and communicate the unfurling of the vision as well as blue print of future development of Braj Bhoomi which was chosen by the Hon'ble Prime Minister to mark the completion of 1 year of his government which has been heralded as a visionary and action driven one from almost all quarters.

Shree Krishna Mahotsav could have been an occasion to sensitise the Bollywood damsels and their on-reel consorts having an astounding influence on the younger generation about the splendid magnificence of Braj in the realms of culture, art, music and life philosophy which drive and govern and influence and inspire and instigate a vast ocean of humanity.

Shree Krishna Mahotsav could have been an occasion to expound the ecological-economic and educational narrative of a majestic living tradition to the entire world. What was presented can be termed as a stale routine cocktail which Bollywood's cheaper version has championed over the decades.

Shree Krishna Mahotsav could have been a classical rendition of the philosophical resplendence of Braj Bhoomi beyond the titillating theatrics and performances which still guides a mammoth set.

People from various walks of public life are chosen by political parties to represent people in order to bring diversity and depth to the unfurling public discourse in sync with their larger ideological precepts and convictions. This however needs an ascendance from being a member of a particular professional fraternity, and to gel its innate trends and traditions to that of the very people he/she has been chosen to represent. This is a gradual process replete with great responsibility and is the test of leadership.

Merely changing the physical attire multiple times during a professional extravaganza might not suffice the ordeal of standing upto the aspirations, ethos and dyamics of a living society as rich as that of Braj. The Dreamgirl might have done due justice to her professional fraternity but has somewhere orchestrated a great harm to the image and respect and standing of the constituency she represents.

She still has 4 years to correct this and use all her grand clout and charisma to bring about a substantial transformation to the Land of Shree Krishna which providence has ordained her to represent in the Indian Parliament. She simply would have to invoke the artist in her beyond other assumed identities.