Individualistic

15th August 2008 --- Harika Dronavalli and Abhijeet Gupta won the World Junior Girls Chess Championship and World Junior Boy's Championship respectively. India thus entered the record books as the first country ever to win both the titles in the same year.Not even the erstwhile Soviet Union, a major superpower of chess, managed to achieve this double even at the height of its chess glory.

Though this news was lost amidst the Olympic medal news, its significance is outstanding.Apart from cricket, our team game results are pathetic.Cricket is a game played by only 10 top countries -though Bangladesh and Zimbabwe can hardly be called that anymore. Yet, where the individual Indian has to fight amongst huge global competition, the results are different. Bindra, Jeetender, Sushil are all individual sportspersons--as was Rathore, Usha, Paes etc.

This shows that individual calibre, talent and perseverance are available ---it is the combination , the coaching and the nurturing that is absent.A pure systems failure, due to lack of foresight, corruption and the backing of the wrong persons. has led to the failure in combination sports.

Are we as a nation jealous of each other, unhappy to share and combine? Are we a country of individuals and not in a real sense a collective whole? Till we combine well, individual acts will occur sporadically, but we can never hope to achieve the standards being set by China and Korea and Japan and....

Today is Independence Day. And, I wonder what sort of a country we will be leaving behind for our children. A country split apart by terrorism, and communalism, by huge economic disparities, by moral schisms in which role models are at a premium, where our prominent constitutional authority can be partially bought by a wad of notes, where government employees are being paid crores while inflation soars above 12% with ease... Or will we leave a country of Growth and Prosperity, slated to be the World's richest economy by 2030, a country of education and art and culture unmatched by anybody in the world, well connected by roads ,with copious air and rail links, full of power supplied from nuclear energy, where all communities live in harmony and peace...
The choice is with us. Individually if we strive to be a little better worker every day, more caring for our country and its environment, more rigid against fanaticism and terrorism, we can make India the perfect example of "Ask not what the country will do for you,ask what you can do for your country".
Jai Hind.

I must travel also to the darkness between the lights........

The glittering, unforgettable Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games will perhaps not be paralleled. The precision, the design, the movements, the concepts which blended unique modern day virtual reality with age old traditions, culture and history, has set the benchmark. Amidst the myriad fireworks, the Olympic Flame blazed away recorded for posterity by a million camera flashes. The pinnacles of possibility and creativity had risen yet again ..

And yet, one can only say, that below the luminosity was a peculiar darkness. When there is a global food crisis, rocketing oil prices, industries closing, inflation rates rising—the Olympics expenditure come across as a luxury, avoidable and downsizable, a celebration of achievements which possibly inspire but does not fill empty stomachs. And maybe, inspite of China’s impressive growth rate and rising prosperity, the Chinese people find their choices restricted by governance and bureaucracy. The Chinese family must have only one child, public demonstrations are banned, and the rights of the people disregarded for the so called National interests. And that is why students were gunned down at Tiananmen Square in 1989, and Tibetan Monks in 2008 were taken away to unknown destinations, never to be heard of again.

What is better? This glamour, this show, this showcasing of discipline and creativity---or the ability to protest, to change, to motivate and above all to choose? Are the Chinese better off than us? Are we smugly , complacently saying that my Bharat is Mahaan because of democracy, when it is not. Has China , catered to the Highest Common Factor and have we been chained to Freedom of Expression and factored in the Lowest Common Denominator too much.......

When China displaced villagers , and took their land to build highways and bridges and industries, did you hear any voices of protest? Perhaps there were, perhaps not---but no one heard anything. In Communist ruled Nandigram in West Bengal, you can stll hear the reverberating protests and the gunfire. Nandigram can never happen in China---but will occur repeatedly in India.

As for me , the ability to write and post this is far more important than my bank balance, the ability to decide on my life and family is more important than the ability to eat out, wear designer clothes and own a Mercedes.

Thanks to censorship, the current generation in China know nothing about the legacy of the defiant Tank Man---but we know and we can ensure that our children and our children’s children never forget him….

Morning Light

The same light can have several interpretations. No one knows it more than photo- or cinematographers. In my book, the Morning Light is something special.It can be warm, diffuse, swathing the city in a broad band of clarity and anticipation. It can convey hope to the troubled, assurance to the distraught,eagerness to the doer.It comes softly, without the brilliant glitter of midday. It comes accompanied by birdtalk . The chattering sparrow,the cockcrow, and the early morning traffic sounds are there in the background. Then it starts spreading, with only a sufficient strength to light up the credits, while somehow hiding the crevices. It sweeps over the city from left to right from where I stand,illuminating the Maidan greens, before striking the metalwork of the two Hooghly bridges. Pinpoint reflections start reaching the local chaiwallahs battered kettle, the two large milk cans straddling the milkman's cycle, and the large Tissaud wristwatch of the obese exerciser.
The Morning Light is of a special hue, as I watch it unfolding my day....