Nothing to hide

 

Darker than usual, the night was as deserted as it could ever be. The sky frowned, with the lightning strokes drifting as down as they could. When the lightning struck the old dusty pinnacles of the temple stationed on the old narrow street, it seemed like a sinister pair of eyes gleamed through the hidden corners.

The man having treaded on the street by error, could hear the Sanskrit spells being recited by the deepest of the voices he had ever heard. It was as if it was coming from deep within the ground. He kept walking, pretending to be not bothered by the clumsy decibels. His heart felt heavy as he stealthily moved forward. Gulping down his saliva, he just could not acclimatize to the eerie underbelly of the night.

As he moved forward, he could see the blurred glimpse of an opaque end. It was a dead end to the narrow street. Exposed to the dead end, he felt a light press on his lanky right shoulder. Yanked away from his musings about the end, he howled and jumped backwards only to find two heart shaped leaves from the peepal tree above his head, dropping down the hem of his linen shirt.

He experienced a little warmth being forced down his larynx. It was not the leaves that landed hard on the pavement, but the mysterious energy dropping down his knees. He felt as if his call for help got subdued by the sudden rustling of leaves. He turned around and a bump of unseen air pushed him to head towards the rustic temple. He staggered as he aimlessly darted towards the staircase of the senile temple.

His heart started beating faster with each step he ascended. It was dark with no signs of anyone as far as the sight could go. The statue of the deity stood in front of him and the temple bells clanged above his head by the strong gusts of wind. His sight then, suddenly transcended upon a little gleam shooting towards him from the right most corner behind the statue. He felt a magnetic pull on his chest, drawing him slowly towards the mysterious gleam. As he treaded, the gleam distanced itself too, leading him to an array of chambers beneath the temple which were usually locked but were open that day. But he didn’t notice any of that, all he saw was the charming gleam, it was an equivalent to the hypnotic beam of energy.

The gleam suddenly vanished as soon as he crossed the turmeric line laid out at the entrance of one of the chambers. He gained consciousness upon its disappearance and saw an old man reciting spells, sitting in front of the havana kund, pouring ghee after each spell.

“Welcome! You will now guard my wealth,” the old man yelled while pointing towards the earthen pots and a pile of files surrounding him.

“Wait, what?!”, the man questioned.

The man stood up and tied a black thread around his right wrist.

“You are now obliged to take care of this wealth till any mortal comes here on the night of the poornima who is not interested in the wealth just like you,” the old man explained.

Having said that, “I have nothing to hide now!”, he wailed and his body disintegrated to ashes with the fire in the havana kund losing out its strength.

The whole frantic situation left the man in a state of absolute terror. He turned with a motive to escape, however, the rustic wooden doors closed before he could cross the same turmeric line. The chamber devoid of any light had inordinate quantum of wealth and an ordinary man to boast of and nothing to hide.

Religious You; Religious Me

Coming across the reverential pieces of mind and the piousness of each soul, we present ‘religion’ as a deeply highlighted feature of ourselves.

While some are hit hard by the wave of agnosticism, some make a stride in being atheists. However, religion all over the world is deeply seated amongst the pangs of dire kingdoms sub-existing amongst the continents. Clearly, the excessive dose of relishing the religion draws a veil on the most of us which becomes too long to be lifted with each passing day.

Has the purpose of religion been totally demolished?

Why is there a need to tame the demarcations of land according to the claque of influential beings pursuing their own interests?

Why aren’t we advertent to the fact that base of every religion is to live in peace and harmony?

The uproar of growing terrorism extends its claws to the foundation of one’s belief of growing supremacy of the respective religion.

We extend our ears to the gnawing of media on how terrorism is becoming a scuffle; on how it is outliving the quotidian pangs of tranquility. The main idea behind permeating the terror is to enforce a particular community’s beliefs around the globe. And sadly, these beliefs again lend themselves to get associated with religion.

Sometimes, I am made to ponder that how this cascading effect of moderately barbaric practices in the name of rituals have been settled upon for the satisfaction of the religious leaders. Sometimes these rituals attack the environment, sometimes it is the people of the community and most of the times it is you whose freedom to rationalize is barbarically clawed upon.

When you would wake up one day with a sense of worshiping yourself and others in the name of humanity, only then would you realize the potential of being pious enough. Till then, it’s better you sleep away until the true illumination strikes you to wake up.

 

The Social Paradox

As the time paces, we do train our minds to open up a little and convene the unconventional lorries of the advanced mindset. In the 21st century, we aim to uproot the social-orthodox crust of our society. But, what if the time outpaces our kaput string of thoughts; rusted with insubstantial theories giving rise to cumbersome social predicaments.

If the course of a river is blocked by some rocks on a delta, will it slightly change its course or will it flow above the rocks, flooding the whole area? Is it smart not to acclimatize to the changes which are very evidently taking place in our community? I wonder for how long people can thrust their notions which do not contribute to a bright social set-up.

Let me just take you through the lanes of a story. Let us suppose you are a girl and, a student and you make a stride in showcasing the power of a girl upon reaching one of the colleges of the most prestigious university in the whole of country. You actively participate in competitions, engage yourself in social work, get along well with academics and prove to be a heartbeat of the societies and associations that you work for. However, one day, your professor, who happens to be quite old and the head of the department catches you red-handedly passing a chit to your friend. Let us suppose that chit said, “I’m too hungry, let’s go to canteen after the class,” because why not, we all love food and it can prove to be the best example that we call can relate to. The professor sees that and he eagerly waits for the class to end. The class ends, he tells the whole class to wait until he addresses the two girls. He, then, starts rebuking you guys, taking into consideration that you both were mocking him. He does not let you guys explain yourselves and make you feel guilty for not behaving in the class properly. You guys are guilty enough and are about to apologize until he starts passing on his thoughts to every soul present there. He starts throwing his stereotypes at you, like, you don’t want to learn anything new, you just wish to waste your parents’ money, all you want is a lavishing and polished life and the teacher might seem to you as a crass human being; which certainly does not make sense but then, yes that’s the true definition of stereotypes, right? SENSELESS. You still feel sorry. He then starts sharing his theory of life and gender research expertise which clearly states that nothing else matters to the girls except the kitchen and to make ‘rotis’ to the perfect circumference possible. He says, girls or should I say the women, are fond of spending the hard-earned salaries of their husbands; they just want money, basically, portraying women as greedy jackals drooling over their husband’s money. Wait for the climax, here it comes… Only men go through frustration and tension, as they come across the real struggle to run their families. He not only opens his mind over these ‘novel’ thoughts but also jeers at you that this generation seeks a lot of freedom, slightly indicating towards the trending clothes, the relationship statuses of the youth or their eagerness to question the unquestioned. Perhaps, he did not seek a lot of freedom in his time that’s why today’s youth stands at the juncture of seeking freedom from the unreasonable demands of the society. Perhaps, you shouldn’t have passed the chit, or perhaps, he shouldn’t have crossed the line? Which one do you prefer?

And, what if I tell you, this story is true? What if I were to tell you that this is a case of the one of the colleges of the most prestigious university of India, The Delhi University. The professor is highly qualified and never leaves the opportunity to brag about how qualified his family is, including his daughter, subtly inching towards one of the layers of his hypocrisy. We as students can commit a petty error on our part and the teacher has full right to catch hold of our ears and make us understand our fault. However, when the teacher throws chromatic jeers at us as well as puddles the refined game of transforming the society through playing with naive minds, he just ceases to be a teacher. He just descends himself from such a pure profession, a pure arena, for the lack of one thing that a teacher is not only a person who teaches you the particular subject, a teacher is one who is looked at by the variety of souls searching for their values, their virtues as well as their standing on the today’s world through him. But what if the teacher himself, is claimed to have failed the acclimatization test of the decade? What if the teacher himself has his values distorted? Is it wrong to question such a person? We all know that our actions speak louder than our words. But what if our words were to speak louder than our actions?

The precepts of an Indian Proforma

What is India?

In the quadrant of helplessness and jugaad, Does India prove to be an amalgamation of outlandish customs? Does it culminate towards the promising society that it wishes to stand out for?
Is it too subtle to handle the secularism that it promises to provide for? Are the grounds for sustained cleanliness provided for, in respect of religious sentiments, political thoughts, cultured customs, or the equality amongst all classes?
The fact that, the leaders in today’s world should acknowledge the diversity and complexity of the society’s working pattern, cannot be ignored. The case of US can be boasted of as an example. However, we do have a new figure coming up in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India who not only supports Hinduism but aims to aggrandize it further. In a state, where Muslims share the essence of the place in a great proportion, where the sacred temple and Masjid in Ayodhya (the birth place of Lord Rama in Hinduism) stand next to each other peacefully but, with conflicting spirits, where the riots between the Hindu-Muslim communities have already grabbed the headlines, this leader seems to be a model of frolic wave of intolerant governance.
Well… the fact that we need to respect each other’s space in the society is imperative. The cyber aftermath of Gurmehar Kaur’s video is disturbing in its own way. The girl who hated a particular community, yes, hated is the word, because she lost her father at a tender age in the Indo-Pak war is made to think along the lines that she needs to view every community of society on the same weighted platform, is mocked of. She says, “Pakistan did not kill my father, war did.”, and this statement is perfectly used to create a cyber comic series. It is, indeed, a debatable issue, however this was not a way to debate, with celebrities mocking her, it just created an artificial wave of nationalism, not even patriotism.
Reservation has been an evergreen scuffle since the times immemorial. The protests of communities to get their status chartered seem to be the failure of the Indian purview. The blame game which follows is harrowing and it clusters the sense of separatism across borders forming webbed opinion charts.
Again, the Modern India yells for freedom. Struck by the new air of anti-nationalism, the Modern India again yearns for a breath of fresh air. The youth now demands justice in its own ways. Is it good or is it bad, who is to decide? Having said that, the community partitions itself into left and right leaving its delicate imprint on the Indian proforma.
The new patriotic stroke in the society has also immensely ameliorated the respect for our national anthem. We are now standing in our cinema halls commemorating the virtues of India.
Be it the rules of a patriarchal institution, or be it the defined structure of thinking on any grounds, India has seen it all; and still it affirms its growth prospects.
However, the question lies that, Will the new as well as the lucent India revitalizing itself with its impeccable freshness outpace the dark underbelly co-existing?

Happiness

Happiness lurks within you, it depends on you, whether to keep hunting it on external grounds, or to light the torch deep within.

A plain thought but too hard to administer. But is it really too hard?

Find your happy prospects every single day because you don’t need a specific day to be happy.

Well.. we just need an excuse to be happy sometimes. So here you go. Hope you had a great International Day of Happiness.

 

Imprinting ‘Me’ on ‘Myself’

 ” Amidst the self-bloated egos, I fail to discern the truism of my oddity.”

I fail to find the esplanade with a view to culminate the strong pillars of my existence; my   purpose to life.

Is it a failure worth noting like the expectations not met by me; to go the college I wanted to study in, or is it another of the few failures which has not yet been realized by me, pulling me apart and leading to the self-conscious tactics adopted by me in this mere world.

I was yanked away from my musings as to the cause of my noticed failures to a sudden realization as to why we all have been surrounded with parameters, socially established norms, the modern caricatures of the ancient well-thought mechanisms. Is it really my failure or is it the society’s failure that it has not been able to deliver to me the power of living, living my life; living my purpose so that I leave a petty mark on this petty world having a petty thought process.

As to the unnoticed failures the life has weighed incessantly, I have missed the several opportunities to catch hold of the libra.

Forging ahead with a mind-less petition written to life to deliver me the virtues of a happy life. However, am I not able find the spark in life? Is it too deep-rooted or is just a mere perception of finding that spark within the great depths of a well-dug well.

Amalgamating the notions conceived by me in all these years, I somehow convince myself to live this life grabbing the strengths from those failures and burgeon the hope to collide with that spark on the clogged crossroads of life.