BEING AND BECOMING

नेतृत्वकर्ता करुणामयी होता है. जिसके पास अहंकार आती है तो उसे दया भाव से देखता है, और मुस्कुराते हुए आगे बढ़ जाता है. अहंकार एक स्वाभाविक लक्षण है. जब तक अस्तित्व है तब तक अहंकार है, इसे मिटाया नहीं जा सकता, पर बेहतर होता है कि वो हावी ना हो. हमारे समाज में, चाहे वो मनुष्य हो या जानवर हो, नेतृत्व करना हर किसी की बात नहीं है. नेतृत्वकर्ता अपने काम को इबादत की नज़र से देखता है. अनुपालन करने वाला पूरी ज़िंदगी इसी बात में गर्व करके बिता देता है कि कितना सफल व्यक्ति उसे जानता है. उसका अस्तित्व बस इस बात पे निर्भर करता है कि वो कैसे दूसरों की ज़िंदगी का हिस्सा बन सके. इस प्रकार वो अपनी ज़िंदगी के अध्याय को लिख नहीं पाता है. भटकता रहता है पर उसे मालूम नहीं कि वो क्या कर रहा है. प्लेटो, ग्रीक दार्शनिक, ने सही कहा था कि नेतृत्व करना हर किसी के बस की बात नहीं है. क्योंकि नेता वो है जिसकी अपनी स्वतंत्र आवाज हो. जो खोने को भी पाने जैसा सत्कार करता हो. जो सीखता रहता हो बिना किसी अहंकार के, अपने ईर्ष्या को अपना मित्र समझकर उससे बातें करता हो. मैं हैरान नहीं होता इस बात पे की लोग अनुपालन को उपलब्ध क्यों

Sometimes a good book makes you happier more than a million dreams of heavenly pleasures one may dream about. But reading is a difficult habit which seldom interests you and once you find the music in books no other imagined pleasure would seem to be perpetual enough to replace the bliss of reading. I learnt from a textual journey of Jacques Derrida, to whom I admire immensely for his sheer brilliance, which I perceive in his magnum opus, Of Grammatology. Derrida taught me how not to read a text; reading with love and reading with suscipicion travel around through two extreme poles. It is only after a reading with the critical intimacy a text becomes a leader to guide in a dark and unguided path to explore.  Today, I got to know about Jeremy Bentham a little bit, because narratives and headnote knowledge are more obnoxious than ignorance, though frankly admitting, I am still away from his masterpiece, Principles of Morals and Legislation. While reading Karl Polanayi, The Great Tr

Writing about something is a task of exemplary courage, and writing about nothing is of course a fun of anxious wanderer. Something matters to everyone deep down living under an intervowoven thread of the society. "Something" is a question of existential nature which invites multiple criticisms, myriad ways of observations, negation, sublimation, and elevation. I am sorry for using Hegelian terminologies, but the fact is, what I find compelling here to express is that our society has not responded with urgency to the various existential crisis in mature and delicate ways. The deep divide between poor and rich has reached to its extreme consequences. Somebody rightly said, we can fight against poverty either by exterminating the structure of impoverishment or abolishing the poor. It seems that we have taken the second mantra more seriously than a prior one. Culturally and politically, we the humans on  planet Earth have developed a unique kind of "exploitative men

कुछ धुँधली सी कुछ यादों सी वो शाम की ढ़लती आभा कई सवेरे हुए, अंधेरे हुए, पर वो रंग रही अभागा कई औघड़ देखा, कई रावण देखा हर मौसम में कई सावन देखा कुछ चलता गया कुछ रुक सा गया कुछ बादलों सा बरस सा गया चंद किस्से सही कभी अपने हुए कुछ किस्सों का साथी मैं बनता गया कुछ मिले भी नहीं और बिछड़ से गये कुछ बिछड़न में उनसे मिलना हुआ कई मंज़िलें मिली कुछ रास्ते मिले कुछ रास्तों की कोई ना मंज़िल मिली कई बहारों की गलियों में उदासी मिली कई बेचारों के छत बेसहारे मिले कुछ लिखता गया कुछ भूल सा गया मैं राही जो था बस चलता गया

The continuos work of our life," says Montaigne, "is to build death." He quotes the Latin poets: Prima, quae vitam dedit, hora corpsit. And again: Nascentes morimur. Man knows and thinks this tragic ambivalence which the animal and the plant merely undergo. A new paradox is thereby introduced into his destiny. "Rational animal," "thinking reed," he escapes from his natural condition without, however, freeing himself from it. He is still a part of this world of which he is a consciousness. He asserts himself as a pure internality against which no external power' can take hold, and he also experiences himself as a thing crushed by the dark weight of other things. At every moment he can grasp the non-temporal truth of his existence. But between the past which no longer is and the future which is not yet, this moment when he exists is nothing. This privilege, which he alone possesses, of being a sovereign and unique subject amidst a universe of obje

Existentialism, which rejected the teleological world view, possibly emancipated the human lives from cognitive enslavement, emanated from over-deterministic world views of European Enlightenment. Four different thinkers, annoyed by metaphysical dogmatism and euphoric empiricism asked certain authentic questions, which were more fundamental than the ontological quest of Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Marx. These existential thinkers, including Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus, did empathize on "existence over essence", went on searching a world view which is less theoretical than "ready in hand" (Heidegger, Being and Time). Kierkegaard, one of the greatest theologians of all time raised the question of dizziness, finite and infinite, which, for him, has paralyzed human's actions. We're less concerned with actions and, are more involved in the evaluation of what action is good or bad. Over-deterministic approach in excersing choices resulted

Is there a possibility to detach from what is given, as history exposes or cultural norms shape our identity? Is there a possibility to discover something which is not cultivated in a projection of history and present? Do we immerse in cultural moorings so as to forget who we are? Or all real are cultural, cultivated, earned here and now? Possibility is always a process of radical shift from its initial embeddiness or possibility is what is possible to actualize? These are the questions which remain there at its place. Because, some questions are invaluably unquenchable enough to be answered. Simple and fundamental questions remain alive, its fundamental characteristics make it impossible to actualize. Like death which remains a question for one who anticipates to die but never experience the "status of nothingness". For Sartre death is not real, not experienced by self. It is merely a possibility which never gets actualized in experience. Analogously some questions remain