BEING AND BECOMING

 ख़्वाब देखने का जज़्बा ही मर गया फ़िर भला ये दौड़ किस काम की भागते दौड़ते कुछ सामान इकट्ठा कर लिया और उसे संभालने में ये वक़्त निकल गया जिसे लोग ज़िन्दगी कहते हैं। ठहर कर देख लेते दो बात कर लेते तन्हाई में गुम कोई इन्सान बेरुखी नहीं दिखाता बेबसी के अंधकार में मौन हो जाता है चंद बातें इतनी महंगी भी नहीं जो इंसान की आवाज़ लौटा सके अपनी तकलीफ़ें सरे-आम करने से पहले सोच लेना  संसार के बाज़ार में मख़ौल उड़ाने वाले ज़्यादा लोग मिलेंगे बजाय मरहम लगाने के बाट सको तो खुशियाँ बाटना ग़म बड़े सस्ते में ख़रीद लिए जाते हैं राग, ईर्ष्या, वेदना, और चेतना इंसानी है और इंसानी ही रहेंगे इनको सही और गलत में बाटने का बीड़ा ना उठाओ जो खेल तेरे मन के भीतर चल रहा है वो चलता रहेगा ज़िन्दगी आख़िरकार किसे कहते हैं? खेल हर कोई खेल रहा है बच्चे से पूछो तो वो भी अपने खेल में गंभीर है बड़ों से पूछो तो उनके गंभीरता का क्या कहना सवाल इतना है कि खेल शुरू किसने किया? और खेल के नियम गढ़ता कौन है? खेलने वाला सवाल नहीं पूछता खेल को खर्च किये जा रहा है।

Naturalism and Humanism are the antidotes to fanaticism. Violence, cruelty, and exclusion, based upon caste, gender, religious or any exclusive identity are the byproduct of spiritual impoverishment. There is no better religion if it doesn't bring forth the idea and practice of love, harmony, and compassion. Religious fundamentalism in Greek caused the life of Socrates, a man of immense courage and wisdom, and in Europe, fanatics victimized great minds like Bruno, Galileo for their heretical proclamation, and Allan Turing in recent period because of his sexual orientation. Similar cultural pattern is visible in South-Asia since colonial periods. One incident of violence creates smokes for fundamentalist to use it as a tool of propaganda to incite hatred and bigotry against a community at large. Few miscreants take the cultural differences as a standard to create an environment of hate-mongering and inculcate beliefs and  prejudices, antithesis to humanism. Cultural differences are ...

Who can pursue happiness? Happiness is not a dream. It's not an achievement, a thing of future. It's an attitude, a state of being, a habit of being instead of becoming. Human species is the only one creature who reduces all the beautiful feelings into a possibility of becoming, even if it is absent at the moment. Possibility is a key word of teleological imagination; a movement, a plaything of time. Who knows what time is if not a state of movement? If something is moving what is the nature and character of that thing since it's nothing more than temporal. Temporariety is the real character of existence; does it mean nothing exists except time and its movement? In that sense, there is no perfect time; every moment is imperfect perfection or perfect imperfection. There will never be transcendence from hell towards heaven. Both are cousin-brothers. You dare break the binary, there is no perfect space or time to occupy. If anything is real, it exists here and now. If happines...

Writing is a dishonest act if it is practiced for the sake of writing only. We often write about many things without having any experience of the same, simply because somebody has expressed something. Through references writings are authenticated and authentic writers take its birth. Why do we believe somebody even if we don't have actual experience of the same? It's an easy task to create a piece as an assemblage of many authorities but it may not be true as per experience or it may sound quite illogical. Many illogical utterances often get validity simply because a name or institution of repute has said something. Validity is not desirable for a writer. Truth is more important than validity. To say truth is a daring act, the sole motto of European Enlightenment. But many of the writers of classical age wrote many a good things while ignoring the dark side of truth. Thinkers of enlightenment like Immanuel Kant advocated to use public reasoning courageously against dogmas. Cour...

If you want to have faith in innocence like a child, choose a friend like yourself. You won't get contaminated like a modern sophisticated man, who alienates oneself for symbolic life, arrested in language of money and power. The deep secret of modern life makes its secrets open for everyone to see its annihilatory character. A man runs after money, power, and position at the cost of loosing a life meant to feel and express. Man lives in a perpetual denial of oneself, suspends oneself for transitionary pleasures and in its suspension lives and dies a meaningless death. In search of meaning, he chooses to have more power, wealths, and fame and this narcissistic attitude becomes a burden to carry so long. Caste, class, gender, nationalistic ambitions are the by-product of self-annihilation of life itself. The construction of ego in the process of otherisation imprisons soul and compels it to live a life of slave. Ancient slaves were not allowed to be free. The discipline was imposed ...

Roots of Democracy, a piece written by Abhishek Banerjee and Sumedha Verma Ojha for the Indian Express, suggests about the ancient roots of republic and democracy in India. It is a fact visible across all the diverse literatures of the past. But the real question is not about its identities or the place of origin, instead, the problem lies in generalisation. It's an easy task to generalise an assumption to create a narrative about backwardness or progress, tradition or modernity, and status or contract, etc. Behind every generalisation, there is a case of cognitive or epistemological biasness. Before generalisation one must think about its opposite and try to investigate if opposite is equally true? In our world of values, there is not a single value exists as truth without  co-relation to its opposites. Likewise, democracy is not an institution or state of being rather an attitude. And every attitude has its opposites simultaneously. One can be democratic at the cost of non-democr...

हाँ, चालाकी का हुनर मैंने भी सीख लिया,  ये बात और है कि कोई हुनर ज्यादा देर तक टिकती नहीं है, जमाने के साथ पुरानी हो जाती है। एक भ्रम तब भी था कि मैं सच्चा था, एक भ्रम आज भी है कि मैं झूठा हूँ, सच और झूठ इतने सस्ते मकां में नहीं रहते, कि जिसे चंद शब्दों में ही पिरोया जा सके, कई बार ज़िन्दगीयां बीत जाती है यह समझने में, कि आख़िर में वह सवाल क्या था? इल्ज़ाम मढ़ने से पहले यह सोच लेना, कि कहीं तुमने अपने चरित्र को, किसी आईने पे तो थोपा नहीं है, शक्ल तो वही दिखती है, जिस अंदाज़ में देखा जाता है। कभी इर्ष्या भी अगर तुम्हें हो, सामने वाले की उड़ान पे, उसके पंख कतरने की बजाय, कल्पना की उड़ान भर लेना, कोई कल्पना कोरी नहीं होती, गर हौसला हो उड़ान भरने की। बात करने को बेचैन हो तो, तो एक बात समझ लेना, ज़्यादा बोलने वाला बेअक्ल जो जाता है, भावनाओं की गहराई को समझने वालों के लिए, आंख के आँसू ही काफ़ी हैं, सच की गहराई में उतरने के लिए।

Who is not interested in power? After all, "Will to Power" is the primal virtue every creature has been endowed with by nature. Even though, it has temporal existence, still it is sufficient enough to enthrall an ordinary mind. Power has a language unique in itself. Its language is cruel and uncompassionate. Meet a person of power who holds any position in life and travels to the highest echelon of power, you won't be surprised to know that people acquire a unique language of claim-counter claim. They will keep blaming others for their failures and keep boasting for the things they don't deserve to get. But the arrogance of power makes a good person worst than a machine. An efficient machine  is designed for production. It is valueless in normative sense. But a similar opinion about a human being doesn't hold true. In spite of the fact that history has shown us the futility of power. Alexander had a day but never remained for him. It is said that every victory is ...