आखिर कब तक

आखिर कब तक

कहाँ से शुरुआत करूँ जब तुमने अंतिम विदाई ही ले ली ।
जहाँ आसूं टपके थे वो जगह अंगारो ने ले ली ।।
सड़क पर अस्मिता उतारी हवस के अन्धो ने ।
भड़की जनता तो लाठी बरसाई कानूनी गुंडों ने ।।

तीर बितिर है मनस , नज़रें मिलाओं तुमसे कैसे ।
बांधी राखी थी पर उसका कर्ज उतारों कैसे ।।
झुका है सर शर्म से , पैरों मे कम्पन भी है ।
जिलत का ठीकरा फोरों कहाँ , कुछ कमी तो हम में भी है ।।

तिल तिल कर मरने की आदत सीखी हमने ।
दो पैरों पर रेंगने की कसम खा रखी हमने ।।
जहाँ नोटों के लिए वोटो की नीलामी होती है ।
और नारी की इज्ज़त हर मंच पर उछाली जाती है ।।

सिने में धधकते लावों को आज न रोको तुम ।
प्रचंड बलिवेदी पर कुछ नर मुंडो को चढ़ने दो तुम ।।
तिमिर के इस सांझ को अंगारों से रोशन करें ।
नारी का सम्मान करें और नयी सुबह का आगाज़ करें ।।

कृत्य - कुनाल

A Language which a Deaf can hear and a Mute can speak

A Language which a Deaf can hear and a Mute can speak

It was Saturday late morning of early October. I had finished reading many pages of The New York Times along with my routine breakfast of bread, butter, jam and strong tea. I took some loaves of bread in my hand and moved towards the small artificial pond in the backyard of my house. Seeing me approaching the pond, ducks and fishes started competing with each other to be the first to reach me. I was their regular evening visitor on weekdays and morning feeder on weekends. Fishes find it little difficult to grab bread crumbs than their amphibious competitor, ducks.  While I was breaking the bread loaves and tossing it to them, I saw two pairs of curious cute eyes at my back watching these excited creatures. I looked at them and gave them a spontaneous smile with a ‘Hello’. No reply came. They kept on looking at them. Then they started clapping, shooing and chasing ducks with a small, thin stick.

I asked them not to do that. They did not understand at first. Then they looked at my eyes and stopped. I gave them few loaves. They also started feeding, playing and laughing. I was speaking English and the two kids, a boy and a girl, were speaking their native language, probably Japanese or Pilipino which I did not understand at all. I could only guess what they were saying by looking at their facial features and expressions. We kept on playing and laughing with ducks and fishes without knowing each other languages, even duck’s language. So after around half an hour their mother called them and we dispersed. We never met after that.

 I have some acute bad hobbits. One of the prominent one is going for daily evening stroll unfazed by weather outside. The intention of this stroll has never been to reduce weight but to come out of house and get some natural air. Winter had started descending on this part of globe and leaves of the trees had started turning colors, a clear indication of change in weather. I was wearing half sleeve jacket and slippers. The chill in air had forced me to erect my shoulders to my ears and to squeeze my fists inside pockets of the jacket. I was lost in my thoughts and was strolling very slowly on the pavement. Then I sighted an elderly woman of small stature of south Indian origin coming from my opposite side. She was walking at a good pace. I could easily guess her motive of walk was either to maintain her weight or to reduce it. She saw me and gave an affectionate smile. If you find your countrymen or women outside your country, either you look down to ignore them or give them a familiar lovely smile. An evening or two passed like that. On third day I said ‘Namaste’ to her and she said something in her native language probably Telugu. I could not understand. She understood my ignorance of the language and said in broken English ‘Walking  ...good. Good’. I completed her sentence and said ‘yes... Yes’. So every evening I would meet her on pavement and she would use few words of English like ‘family, working, food, happy, home etc’ with words of Telugu to complete her sentence.  In the similar fashion I used to answer her in few English words like, ‘alone, not taken, yes, no etc ‘. So one fine evening, she said, “Vinyak Chaturthi, come home”. I understood. She was inviting me to her home on the occasion of Vinayak or Ganesh Chaturthi. I gently said, “O.K”. Pictures of typical Indian festive dishes started flashing in front of my eyes and my mouth started watering instantly. Actually after a long spell of time, I was going to have Indian dishes made by an Indian woman. I knew her address. I reached there on time.

Her husband opened the door and shook my hand very strongly but warmly. He was serving in Indiana state dept. and had good command over English. Only he and his wife were living there. Their kids were settled in other parts of U.S. They were living in U.S for more than 15 years. I was little surprised that she had survived good enough time with so little English. Then the lady came along with dishes and thus came the pleasant aroma of ghee. My long wait was over and I just lost control over the food. She was serving the same way as my mother used to serve, always trying to pour more food on the plate. I was eating voraciously oblivious of the fact that I had visited their place for the first time. After the heavy lunch, I departed with big thanks on my lips, my heart and my stomach.

I was transferred to Florida after few days. The above incidents revealed one very interesting thing. We had no common language to communicate but the message of love and affection was passed without any language. These incidents happened in U.S but I also remember one incident in India which had the same message. During fourth and last year of B.Tech from Vellore, I was staying as day scholar (away from college campus) along with my friend. There was a problem of drinking water as the timing of municipality water was early morning and early evening. Both the time either we were sleeping or in the college. So we used to take drinking water from the other tenant, Tamil speaking family in the same building. The housewife did not know English at all and we knew only ‘Tani’ in Tamil, meaning water. Often she gave us Sāmbhar, Dosa or sometimes Mysore Paak, popular sweet of south India. We were there for six months and enjoyed an excellent rapport with them. On the last day of our stay in Vellore, I went to say final good bye to them. The aunt became very emotional. With droplets of tear in her eyes, she said something in Tamil. I could not understand. She said it again. Then her ten year old son came and said, “Amma was asking to come back “. These words touched my heart deeply.

There is one language which has no grammar, no words and no syntax. The vocal cord of this language goes deep down the heart and it speaks through eyes. This is the language of humanity. Pundits say mother tongue is the first language we learn from our mother. But I feel before the mother tongue, we learn the language of humanity through the affectionate eyes and the caring hands of our mother. It becomes easy to break the ice and enter into the conversation if you know someone’s language. But if you feel the pain or happiness of someone, your hearts start communicating. Linguistic conflicts will always be there but the language of humanity has the power to surpass any conflict. Glitter in your eyes and a lovely smile on your lips can bridge any gap of caste, creed or country. Languages may come or may become extinct but the language of humanity will survive as long as human race exists.

A language which a deaf can hear and a mute can speak.

Political Dynasty

Political Dynasty

Politics is the system designed “to rule”, originating from an innate nature of human beings to dominate over each other and the desire to leave a trail even after death. Politics is as old as the human settlements, formation of societies and stabilization of civilizations. Selection of chieftains, leaders, kings is part of political system across the globe to govern the subjects. It is assumed that the king or the leader accepts the whole mass as his family but not only those having same blood line as his. Selecting his heir, a suitable one to throne is one of the prime duties of a king before he retires from his duty. Here “suitable heir” is not according to his personal derelictions but according to the best interests of his masses. If his son has those qualities to bear responsibilities of a competent king, the king may select him as his heir. As the offspring of a king grows up under the shadow of the king and the best teachers of the kingdom impart knowledge in different streams of life to the offspring, offspring might have a fair chance of becoming a ‘suitable heir’. But there had illustrious examples when kings had not found the desired qualities of a king in his offspring and selected someone from his court or general public as his heir, negating chance to his blood line.

Example of the great king ‘Bharat’ is the most glorious one. Today’s India adorned its name ‘Bharat’ from the name of its great king ‘Bharat’ who took borders of ‘Aryabarat’ erstwhile name of India, to as far as Afghanistan and Iran in the north and till Sri Lanka in the south. After his victories across different terrains, he came to his capital ‘Hanstinapur’ to a grand reception. He was assigned the job to select his heir and to give ‘Aryabarat’ its new king. In shocking surprise to many, he did not immediately announce his eldest son as his heir as commonly assumed by his ministers and advisors.  To dispel his doubts, he consulted an elder sage, Gann. Acting on sage’s advice and earning wrath and displeasure of his mother and wives, he appointed a young man from his court as his heir though he had nine sons to choose from. There are numerous lessons that can be learnt from this example. But the most prominent one was: ‘A king might have done a lot for his country but the country does not allow him to select his heir merely based on his bloodline, his personal preferences or under any pressure but solely based on a person’s ability to lead the kingdom”. King Bharat was not only unparalleled in battle fields but was a righteous and impartial king too. The trend to select heir to throne based on merit and not on birth continued till Dhithrastra became king of Bharat. His lust for power and urge to see his mighty but immoral son Duryodhan as his heir led to the fierce battle of ‘Mahabharata’ at Kurushetra.  What happened before Mahabharata and post Mahabharata is known to most of the readers of this article.

Putting a pause to that era and coming to the period of India’s independence from colonial British rule. Mahatma Gandhi’s position was not less than the king Bharat, not in terms of skills at warfare but in terms of acceptance by common mass of this country. But Mahatma Gandhi took this acceptance for a ride and forgot his own quote “Don’t see what your country has done for you but always think what you can do for your country “.  There was no dearth of more competent people to lead the country at the time of independence but he chose Jawaharlal Nehru as the country’s leader, putting his personal preference at the helm of his decision and ignoring the precedent set by the king Bharat. That gross mistake became a deep sore in the history of India post-independence. The country is still reeling under the pressure of that decision. Taking the cue from his mentor, Nehru ruled the country for 17 years, longest serving prime minister and made appropriate arrangements for his bloodline to continue his legacy of ruling this country by hook or by crook. Nehru’s leadership started a systematic process of capturing a common man’s mindset by naming major roads, Institutions, airports, various awards after his family member’s name that included adopted patriarch, Mahatma Gandhi also. Eminent intellectuals who sang paeans for Nehru’s leadership were given golden boots to move on and those who did not stoop were shunted down. The trend had been practiced religiously so far and even today. Nehru’s bloodline which got the surname of ‘Gandhi’ which was not a mistake anyways, ruled the country for 38 years directly and 13 years indirectly altogether 51 years.  The so called largest democracy in the world does not look like democracy at all but a monarchy under the curtains of democracy.  Corruption took the shape of cancer from its nascent stage under Nehru’s rule to full grown up stage under the indirect rule of Sonia Gandhi, yet another Gandhi.  Under the direct rule of Nehru-Gandhi, scams amounting to Rs. 1428crore (keeping 2011 whole sale price index number for calculation) has been reported. Under the indirect rule of current imported Gandhi, scams worth 1, 98,546 crore (it does not include coal scam) has been reported so far. With two more years to rule before the scheduled general elections, the country is hopeful of witnessing new world records in the field of scams that would beat all previous records. Unaccounted reports of black money belonging to the prominent political dynasty may belittle any wild imagination.

This dynastic rule not only helped corruption which thrived like weeds in all spheres of life but also sprouted a new trend among different political parties’ specially regional ones.  Under the aegis of Gandhi dynasty, regional parties too adopted dynastic mode of politics. Parties like Samajwadi, Akali Dal, DMK, Shiv Sena, Lok Dal, NCP and NC are few of many who are emboldening the stolid pillars of democracy by adopting the principles of monarchy. Parties have become family fiefdoms. Trend has not left any corner of India right from Kashmir (National Conference, PDP) to Tamilnadu (DMK). Some of these parties have 20% of their elected MPs from the same family. World’s largest democracy has become an archipelago of small blocks of monarchies with the biggest monarchial block at the Centre.

Dhithrastra might have died centuries back but his very ambitions and lust for power are still breathing in many hearts today. Crafty ministers of Dhithrastra are busy in smothering voices raised against the whims of their king. They are working day and night preparing stage for smooth coronation of new Duryodhans. These Duryodhans are no less than the old one in terms of immorality, stupidity and power greed.

But is the country ready for Mahabharata? Can anyone hear the drum beats coming from Kurushetra or shrill of the conch of Krishna? The country is waiting for the unified force of Pandavs stretching from snow clad Himalayas to brackish waters of Bay of Bengal. The red soil of Kurushetra is gearing up to taste some fresh blood.

Note- Scams amount calculated based on newspaper, The Hindu’s article

A Beautiful Girl

Indian Traditional Girl

एक सुंदर लड़की

वैसे तो हर व्यक्ति के  जीवन में कहानियां होती हैं | कुछ कहानियां साधारण सी होती हैं तो कुछ रह्श्य और रोमांच से भरपूर | लेकिन अगर कोई लड़की है और सुंदर भी तो ये दावे के साथ कहा जा सकता है की उसकी जिन्दगी की कहानियां बेहद रोमांचकारी रहे होंगे | बाला अवस्था से लेकर यौवन अवस्था  तक वो ध्यान एवम आकर्षण का केंद्र बनी रहती है |अगर किसी में रेखा जी जैसी जवान रहनी की दृढ इछा हो तो बुढ़ापा भी तिलिषम से भरपूर हो सकता है |तिलिषम इसलिए की नारी सुन्दरता हमेशा से पुरषों  के लिए  शोध का विषय रहा  है| अगर ऐसा न होता तो महाकवि कालिदास 'अभिज्ञान शकुन्त्लम'  की रचना न करते और राष्ट्र  कवि ' दिनकर' ने  ‘उर्वशी ' की | कितने पूर्वज अग्नि को समर्पित हुए, कितने पूर्वज कब्र में ध्यान मग्न हुए और कितने ही वंशज आये पर ये शोध कार्य सनातन  धर्म की तरह  सनातन चला आ रहा है | 

लड़की जैसे ही अपनी किशोरावस्था में प्रवेश करती है और उसकी रूप की पंखुरियां प्रस्फुटित होने लगती है, तब से उसका हरेक दिन एक न एक घटना से जुड़ने  लगता है| मैं तो ये कहूँगा की चंचल नेनों वाले पुरषों का एक दल ही उस लड़की को ये एहसास करा देता है की अब वो बड़ी हो रही है और प्रभु ने रविवार के दिन उसे बनाया है | मोहल्ले के चौराहे की रोनक बढ़ जाती है| मोहल्ले का किराना दुकान वाला तेल या ब्रेड पे उसे १-२ रुपये ऐसे ही छोड़ देता है | भले ही दुकान पे कितनी ही भीड़ क्यूँ न हो उस सुंदर लड़की को बड़े मुस्कुरा  के और बड़े फुर्सत से सामान देगा| स्कूल ले जाने वाला टेम्पो ड्राईवर १५-२० मिनट तक तो आराम से  उसका इंतज़ार कर लेता है और लेट होने पे भी कभी कोई शिकायत नहीं करता |  क्लास के कुछ होनहार शोधकर्ता बालक, अपने पूर्वजो की परम्परा को आगे बढ़ाते हैं और कॉपियों के कुछ पने  'प्रेम पत्र' के रूप में उस सुंदर लड़की पे समर्पित करते हैं | आजकल उन पन्नो की जगह sms और इ-मेल  का भेंट चढ़ता है|

Eternal Beauty

क्लास के बेंच हो या मलमूत्र स्थल , उस लड़की की स्तुति पाई जा सकती है | किसी ने सच कहा है की भक्ति की कोई सीमा नहीं होती और
भक्त चाहे तो भगवन का सिंहासन  भी डोला दे |

बालकों की ये विराट भक्ति उस लड़की को एहसास करा देती है की  भगवान्  ने उसे कुछ विशिष्ट गुण दिए हैं और उसे किसी महान कार्य के लिए ही पृथ्वी पर भेजा गया है | अगर राहुल गाँधी जी को ये भ्रम हो सकता है की वो भारत के प्रधानमंत्री बनने के लिए ही अवतार लिए हैं तो उस अबोध सुंदर लड़की को क्यूँ नहीं | भक्तो की फ़ौज हो तो जिन्दगी  बहुत सहज  हो जाती  है | वैसे तो भक्त और भगवन के सम्बन्ध  में भगवान को अंतर्यामी माना जाता है लेकिन भक्ति सुंदर लड़की की हो रही हो तो भक्त अंतर्यामी  हो जाता है| बिना मांगे ही सिनेमा के टिकेट मिल जाते  हैं | किसी कुंजिका या पुस्तक के लिए दूकान में जाने की जरुरत नहीं रहती | वर्तमान समय के दर्शानिये स्थल जैसे की McDonald , Cafe Coffee Day आपकी सेवा में हमेशा हाजिर रहते हैं | देवी की अनुकम्पा पाने के लिए भक्तो में होर  सी लगी रहती है | कई बार तो भक्त गुण आपस में भिर भी जाते हैं और देवी को पता तक नहीं होता है | कुछ भक्त तो प्रत्यछ रूप से देवी के सामने आने से भी डरते हैं पर देवी को कोई असुविधा न हो इसका पूरा ख्याल रखते हैं | कभी कभी देवी भक्तो की अगाध भक्ति से प्रसन भी हो जाती हैं  और अमृत रुपी मुस्कान बिखेर देती हैं | कुछ भक्त हफ्ते, महीने तो कुछ भक्त आजीवन काल तक उस अमृत रुपी मुस्कान से बेसुध रहते हैं | कुछ भक्त तो अपनी जीवन लीला उस प्रसाद प्राप्ति के लिए भेट चढ़ा देते हैं| देवी  चाहे तो अन्ना जी से जाएद असरदार ढंग से भ्रस्टाचार  खत्म कर सकती है | कौन सरकारी ऑफिसर उससे ' घुस ' जैसी तुछ चीज की मांग करेगा ? पुलिस हो या नेता सब उस के सामने नतमस्तक रहते हैं |

वैसे तो सुंदर लड़की होने के कई फायदे हैं |  पर कभी कभी जरुरत से जाएद फायेदा नुकसान को भी आमंत्रण देता है | कुछ अज्ञानी भक्त उग्र हो जाते हैं और देवी को पाने की हटता भी कर बैठते हैं | यहाँ पुरुष और महिला भक्ति में एक विशेष अंतर बताना चाहूँगा | महिला भक्त भले ही भगवान को पाने की इछा रखे पर कभी उग्र नहीं होती | भगवान श्री कृष्ण ने ३६००० गोपियुं के साथ रास रचाया , पर किसी गोपिका के उग्र और हिंसक होने की कोई रिपोर्ट द्वापर युग से नहीं आई | असुर हो या विद्वान ब्राहमण देवी के भक्ति में उग्र हो ही जाता है | चाहे वो भस्मासुर हो या रावण| कुछ भक्त उस सुंदर लड़की के भक्ति में इतने अंधे हो जाते है की विवाह उपरांत भी उसके जीवन में व्यभ्धान डालते रहते हैं | और उस लड़की की जीवन में फिर कोई कहानी आ जाती है |  अगर कोई सुंदर लड़की  निर्धन हो जिसकी संभावना बहुत ही छिहं होती है, तो उसे कुछ समस्याओं का सामना भी करना पड़ता है | उसे घरेलु कार्य के लिए कोई गृहणी अपने घर में रख नहीं सकती | गृहणी अपने पति की पत्नी व्रत की परीक्षा लेने का जोखिम नहीं उठा सकती |

वैसे तो नारी सुन्दरता पे शोध आगे भी जारी रहेंगे | कई ग्रन्थ भी लिखे जायेंगे | सहिय्त्कार को कहानियुओ की आपूर्ति भी सुंदर लड़की से होती  रहेंगी | पर क्या सुंदर लड़की के  बिना पुरुष अपने सुरमय और सुरुचिपूर्ण जीवन की कल्पना कर पाएंगे ? ये तो इस लेख के पाठक ही तय करें |

व्यंग्य
कृत :- कुनाल