Friday, June 16, 2006

First Attempt at Hindi!!!!!!!

Not particularly proud of it.... but its my first attempt at writing Hindi....Feedback pls....

Ankhon me jo chehra tha
Aaj jaane kahan kho gaya
Shayad yahin kahin hoga
Kya tumne use dekha

uske Ankhon me ek chamak thi,
Muskurahat me koi jadu tha,
Aur uski ek nazar,
Meri zindagi ka har gham bhoola deti

Aaj achanak ankhen mundi maine
Who muskan, who nazar,
Jaane kahan thi
Wahan the to sirf tum

Aur main tumse poch rahi thi
Kya tumne us chehre ko kahin dekha hai?

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Legal system

'How many times can a man turn his head and pretend he just cannot see?' These Bob Dylan lines came to my mind when I read that Jessica Lal’s murderers had been acquitted. A girl shot twice, at a crowded party for refusing to serve drinks, because the bar was closed. And years later her murderer goes scott-free. Why? Because he happens to have a powerful and rich father. Newspapers and social activists are blaming the hostile witnesses and favourable judges. But it is us Indians in general at fault, it is not just the system, but we who let people take advantage of the system that are at fault. How many times will we see the country’s legal system, being twisted and turned around to deny justice to the weak of the society it is supposed to help. How many times will the rich and powerful get away unscathed for their crimes.

People show apathy to this news, because for them Jessica is dead, and that's all there is to it. But a day will come when someone important to us will be left hungry for justice and we will bleed to see people being apathetic. The important thing is to understand how this case can encourage the rich and the powerful of the society to take law in their hand. Eventually a day might come when it will be a crime to be poor and weak. And any criminal act of the rich and powerful will be pardoned by their position in the society. A democracy that is a servant of money and power…. That’s what we will be reduced to!

Monday, January 30, 2006

Groups Continued

I have said goodbye to all those groups and to life and I have been dead into another group. I cannot tell you what group this is, because it is useless having any knowledge whatsoever of it before you die. You hear a lot of stories of what happens after you die. Some say you go on to another world, some say you can watch over the world, over your loved ones. Like I am trying to watch over you… What the stories don’t tell you is the pain of watching your loved ones go wrong, seeing them fall into a pit and then being helpless to tell them what you feel… That is the first rule of this group, we don’t communicate explicitly with your group. You need to have a higher power to be able to do that.

How can they expect me not to communicate with you, a part of me, a part of my soul, a reflection of my life. You learnt your first words with me. You learnt to look at the outside world through me. Eventually, you helped me see the outside world… And now I am in a different world, one that you can’t see or feel, but it is there. From this world I can see the dangers coming to you, I can tell your true friends from the false ones, I can see the mistakes you make but I cant tell you. I cannot break the code. It is like going back to your teenage years when I wanted to tell you about the mistakes you were about to make, but you didn’t need me. I felt helpless then and I feel helpless now. You sit by your bed every night looking at me, frozen in that little photo twenty years ago, and tears well up. I can almost hear you call me as if I were lost or hiding from you. I wish I could whisper in your ear, ‘I am right here’. I feel the urge to cry, to weep, to stretch out my hand to you in distress like I did on my deathbed, but now, there are no hands to stretch out, and there are no eyes to weep with, no voice to call out with. All that remains is an essence of my being. But I see myself in you right now… I see your daughter hold you and comfort you, just the way you comforted me when your grandmother left us. I am alive, in you…

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Groups

A group is a set of people having things in common to do, to say or just have common goals, a group is made up of you, me, she, him and them. Eventually with time these hes, shes and thems become us. You begin to belong to the group and the group starts belonging to you.

We live our whole life in groups, a family is a group, our friends are a group, our school, our education, our profession, our social position, our income, our culture, our religion, our gender, our age, our language, our music. Everything in life is divided into groups. Everywhere we go we look for a group to belong to. Sometimes when you realize that some person belongs to the same group as you, you feel excited, because you have at least one thing in common; the group. Many relationships in life are built on this foundation of a common group.

Sometimes you leave a group, or sometimes time comes for the group to leave you. It is like birth and death. You are born into a group of people, your family and when you die you say goodbye to an extended group, which is the universal group of all the groups you were a part of.