Verse perverse

Ancient writings, Musings, Remembering, Verse perverse

The redness of Sindhoor – 1

Mani's avatarMani 3 Comments

O Gentle and Patient Reader,  I take the liberty of posting an article—a lament of sorts—written by my dear and departed friend Ghatotkacha in late 2008, soon after the terrible attack by Pakistani-trained terrorists on Mumbai on 26th November 2008. Ghatotkacha was my guide, my teacher, so close to my heart, in a very real sense my alter ego. I empathized with and endorsed every word in his article then. as I do now.

I post this the day after India’s Independence Day, 2025; a time when India and Pakistan still obsess over Operation Sindhoor, the name given to India’s short but devastatingly effective military campaign against Pakistan-based terrorist and military  infrastructure in  May 2025.

I post this article even though it is filled with anger and bitterness. I post this for the simple reason that I, like my fellow Indians, am conditioned to ignore and forget my own history…and worse, to eagerly seize upon and adopt, on continuous basis, others’ versions of my own history without a care.

I believe we must be brave enough to remember and come to terms with all that we ever really were, and really did, and really experienced: whether right or wrong, good or bad, sublime or horrific.

Because only then can we learn, only then can we act. With neither self-loathing nor hatred. But with Equanimity.

Only then can we heal ourselves, and move on…

[That’s what another old and eternal friend Krishna counselled…]

Happy Janmashtami! May the Playwright of the Eternal Drama

Bless us, illumine our minds, guide our actions

So we don’t forget our lines, lost control of our passions

Or trip and fall, arse over elbow, on this Great Stage of Dharma

Boil the Pakistani frog

26/11, Mumbai: In Memoriam

[© Ghatotkacha Hidimbi Bhimasena (late): December, 2008]

First there was the rage.

Fury poured out on to the streets of Mumbai post 26th November 2008, fiery words spewed from the mouths of countless anchors on a hundred TV channels. There was much talk of retaliation, of revenge, of this latest atrocity by Pakistan-sponsored and Pakistan-supported and Pakistan-sheltered and Pakistan-trained terrorists being the last straw.

“India has been restrained all these decades…but enough is enough!” These words about summed up the collective feeling of the Indian people after 200 innocent men, women and children were slaughtered by 10 murderers from Pakistan. Murderers helped overtly and covertly by the Pakistani military, the Pakistani establishment.

The evidence of Pakistan’s complicity was clear.

The world witnessed the massacre of innocents, on live TV.

The world awaited India’s response…as the Indian people did.

Two weeks passed, during which for the first time in memory the Indian political establishment actually appeared to have achieved the unimaginable – namely, to unite and speak as one in national interest.

“We are with the government in combating this evil force that has attacked our nation, that threatens the future of India,” said Opposition leader and BJP member (late) L K Advani on the floor of Parliament.

The Congress-led UPA leadership, in a symbolic move, sent the derelict Home Minister Shivraj Patil home and appointed the inflationary and inflated-ego Finance Minister P Chidambaram in his place.

In a rare and refreshing contrast to the Congress’ customary rodent-like squeak-speakers, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee fumed and fulminated against Pakistan and its deceitful references to the attackers as ‘non-state actors’, at one point memorably asking: “Do these non-state actors come from heaven?”

Equally remarkable was the fact that during these two weeks the Indian media collectively stayed with the Pakistan-sponsored terrorist attack story – that too sans the usual faffing in politically correct journo-speak, which requires that any atrocity by any kooks who claim to be ‘Muslim’ can only be reported as such when it can be ‘balanced out’ by reportage on a similar atrocity—real or imaginary— committed by kooks claiming to be ‘Hindu’. [This is, of course, the famous Balancing of the Kookery Equation Principle formulated by British sociologists in the 1850s, refined by the Congress and Communist Party of India (Marxist) post-Independence, and taught as a foundational course by mainstream Indian media houses to trainee reporters and journalists.]

Curiously, the English-language Indian media (seriously! That’s what they call themselves, and we call them) named the atrocity ‘26/11’—because ‘26/11’ resonates so well with the USA’s ‘9/11’—and so this name has stuck, even though it blithely ignores the fact that for the Americans, ‘9/11’ actually stands for September 11th (and not 9th November); by that logic we Indians should have called this Mumbai attack ‘11/26’. 

But then, what’s in a name, no?

At least for a change, there were no cut-and-paste editorials in the newspapers and magazines on how India must exercise ‘restraint’, no pious and ponderous platitudes on why India must follow the process of ‘dialogue’ and ‘negotiation’ with Pakistan rather than that of ‘confrontation’…

For the first time in history we were spared the logorrhea of human rights activists campaigning for the well-being of Ajmal Kasab, the sole Pakistani terrorist captured alive; spared, too, the hysterical outpourings of assorted pamphleteers drawing parallels between Mumbai 26/11 and Gujarat 2002 and Mumbai 1992/93.

By the time December 12th 2008 dawned, one actually dared wonder: had we, in India’s Civilian Street, finally discovered those rare qualities, Courage and Resolve?

Would the Indian political leadership, along with the bureaucrats and policy wonks and diplomats and strategic eggheads have the guts and the gumption to unshackle and unleash the calibrated might of our defense forces to strike and eliminate the sources of terrorist infection in our neighbour Pakistan’s ailing body? To strike not to destroy Pakistan, but rather to strengthen the Pakistani people in their silent, six-decade-old war against the Pakistani religious fanatics who rule them with fear; the monsters in clerical and military uniforms who have created schools of pain in the name of God, schools in which they have brutalized innocent young Pakistani boys and transformed them into the twisted, hate-filled murderers who call themselves Al Qaeda, Lashkar e Tayyeba, Harkat ul Jihad Islami, Jaish Mohammed?

We hoped so. The signs were good.

Alas, it was a futile hope.

In the two weeks since December 12th, 2008, the great show of bravado put up by our politicos and the media has all come unstuck faster than the dhoti of a certain senior Congress leader with a penchant for flashing.

As of 26th December, 2008 – exactly a month after the attack on Mumbai – India’s measures to avenge the Mumbai atrocity and cleanse Pakistan of terrorists comprise the following key elements:

  • Our nominal and notional PM, Manmohan Singh, has repeatedly appealed to the US, Britain, Australia, and any other country that might listen (and there haven’t been too many) to urge Pakistan not to send terrorists to India.
  • The PM and the Minister of External Affairs have repeatedly appealed to the United Nations to tell Pakistan not to send terrorists to India.
  • The PM and the Minister of External Affairs (as well as assorted Ministers of other Infernal Affairs) have repeatedly expressed disappointment that the international community is not telling Pakistan not to send terrorists to India.
  • The de facto PM Sonia Gandhi has repeatedly declared that India will give a ‘befitting reply’ to terrorists who think they can divide India on communal lines. (She is, apparently, even now drafting out the befitting reply on a standard-issue Congress party greeting card, which will doubtless be sent duly by Registered Post (with Acknowledgement Due) to Pakistan’s notional President Asif Zardari with copies for information and necessary action to Hafiz Muhammad Sayed of Lashkar e Tayyeba and Masood Azar of Jaish Mohammed..
  • The PM and the new Home Minster have announced the formulation of a new anti-terrorist law that will also include, in its ambit, heinous offences like smoking ganja and abusing politicians (might as well turn myself in).
  • The Hon’ble Union Minister A R Antulay has declared that the entire Mumbai atrocity was just a pre-planned strategy by Hindu fanatics to conceal the assassination of certain Mumbai police officers who were inquiring into bomb attacks targeting Muslims in Malegaon, Maharashtra by their brethren Hindu fanatics.
  •  The MEA has denied Pakistani media allegations that India had a hand in a car bomb attack in Lahore on 24thDecember – and continues to deny it even after the Pakistanis lost interest in the case after a Taliban splinter group claims responsibility for the Lahore car bomb attack.

Saddest of all, the print media editors, the TV talk-show hosts and their attendant analysts, the academia and intelligentsia and not-so-intelligentsia,  caution the Indian government with increasing shrillness and anxiety, about the dangers of any kind of strikes against a ‘nuclear-armed Pakistan’.

It makes one wonder:  why doesn’t Pakistan ever worry the same way about striking against a nuclear-armed India?

How the late and much-unlamented Paki dictator Zia-ul-Haque of the ‘boiled-frog’ strategy must be chuckling— even in his special cell in Shaitan’s Eternal Abode— at India’s self-imposed paralysis following the attacks of 26th November.

And so India’s leadership will wait—as always.

And so India will wait, as ever making a virtue out of inaction and passiveness; wait for the next attack by Pakistani terrorists…

http://creative.sulekha.com/boil-the-pakistani-frog_383941_blog

General ravings, Verse perverse

The last rejection slip

Mani's avatarMani 10 Comments

Oh Most Noble and Patient Reader, a thousand apologies for my long absence.

I owe you an explanation.

And so I now proceed to explain my absence, briefly, even as I appreciate deeply those agonized whispers and mutters from the back-benchers of “That’s all right, no need to explain!” “But we didn’t even know you’d gone!” “Can we do this next week? Don’t ping me, I’ll ping you!” and so on.

Much sewage hath flow’d down the sacred Yamuna since I last wrote in this space…in November 2024.

Indeed, much less sewage hath flow’d through this sacred Blog-space during the same interval, when I didn’t post anything; but that is of course entirely coincidental.

I’ve written a bit elsewhere, these last six months: mainly on climate-friendly technologies and the like, to earn enough to keep the rice steaming and the sambar spicy and to pay the electricity bills. I’ve read a bit, scribbled here and doodled there a bit more, and stared blankly at nothing in particular a great deal. I’ve also travelled a bit: to attend to a friend who fell ill, and later to recce the lovely town of Mysuru to which I will relocate when the Fruit of Opportunity ripens…which is a damned silly and pretentious way of saying, when I can find a place to rent or buy there and simultaneously find a person to rent or buy my place here in Dilli.

More on all that, and much else, anon. It feels good to be back here.

But for now, realizing that those agonized whispers and mutters have become as loud as an AAP politician’s protestations of innocence in a scam inquiry, I shall content myself with having finally logged in my presence here and greeted you after over six months.

And as I log out, may I leave you to groan and gnash your teeth at an execrable piece of doggerel that I composed over a decade ago in a similar mood. It was written as a tribute to certain edit-page editors that I had the misfortune of encountering during the two decades I contributed articles to print newspapers. Perhaps the freelance writers among you will empathize?

The last rejection slip

Old hacks and reporters tell of an ancient time
Ere iPads and desktops had been found
With pens did folk then craft prose and rhyme…
And pencils and erasers did abound

Imagine! An era sans software to check
One’s grammar, to vet one’s work!
Only Editors there were, to hack and peck
Per their whimsy, individual quirk

One such Ed there was – a newspaper man
Whom legend hath made immortal
His style was lucid, his face dead-pan
And he knew his sans-serif fonts well

Aged freelancers still tell, with awe
Of how Great Ed dealt with their submissions
Most he flung into his dustbin’s maw
As unworthy of the weekday editions

But now and then, some odd article
Would make Great Ed hesitate, pause…
Here to strike out an errant participle
There improve ‘pon some conjugate clause

Indeed, these signs, the ancient hacks knew
Were propitious for the aspirant essay
Which, having decided it merited further review
Great Ed consigned to his ‘Pending’ tray

His arduous duties for that day being done
With the final insertion of two commas
To the Press Club Great Ed did head, for a bit of fun
‘Midst like-minded spirits and spiritual aromas

Many weeks would pass; the article lay
Inside a folder marked ‘See Later’
Old hacks knew ’twas Great Ed’s way
Of teaching Humility to the article’s creator…

Whose gentle reminders, seeking to know the fate thereof
Were dispatched forthwith to the incinerator room
Where, with a glad cry and a bronchial cough
The furnace man piled the waste paper up with a broom

‘Twas with him the work of an instant
To fling the reminders to the flames
Therein, presently, the original too’d be sent
Thus absolving Great Ed of any claims

There things usually ended; and yet
Some die-hards there were, among freelancers

Who’d send countless stamped reminders, seeking to get
Their precious articles back, even after three years

Then indeed was Great Ed’s greatness manifest!
(For he was a being of rare sensitivity)
To writers who made such sustained requests
He responded with remarkable empathy

Each letter Great Ed began with: “Re. your manuscript,
I deeply regret having to say…”
And then, in words of incomparable wit
He would explain the article’s loss away

He couched his reply in a variety of forms
Embellished by choice quote and font
Conform did each letter to Rejection Slip norms
And in creativity and empathy they didn’t want

‘Twas rumoured that Great Ed worked overtime
To give his Rejection Slips deep meanings
He spent hours composing their doleful rhymes
And on occasion, read them out on Press Club evenings

So moving were Great Ed’s missives, old-timers said
That their recipients wept for joy, like children!
All their ire and frustration fled
All their bitterness with Great Ed forgotten!

Alas! Great Ed’s end came in a singular way
At the hands of an occasional writer
One who’d waited twelve years for return of his essay
A mere twelve years…the impatient blighter!

He stormed into Great Ed’s den, this wild-eyed man
Brandishing a razor-sharp inverted comma
One foul stroke…and off he ran!
Leaving a scene of utter trauma

Great Ed lay dead, a smile on his face
Gathered hacks did weep and grieve
For they knew Great Ed was the last of his race
And they mourned the abruptness of his leave

They buried Great Ed with honour; in deep despond
On his grave a smooth stone they did lay
On it they carved, in 16-point Garamond
“Dear Lord, Re. your man’s crypt, we deeply regret having to say…”

P.S.: I actually sent this thing to a few editors I knew. Two responded: one with a chuckle, the other with a Rejection Slip.

Musings, Verse perverse

Departure

Mani's avatarMani 7 Comments

Saying goodbye should never be hard…

Like atoms in a Universe are we all, drifting

Endlessly, without beginning, now here now there

Coming together perchance, then moving apart once more

In the Dance of the Cosmos, that began even before Time began

Union brings warmth, sharing brings joy, contentment

Fulfilment, perchance even Love

The nature of the Dance wills that we shall drift apart again

Why then grieve over farewells, so universal, so inevitable?

Love endures beyond farewells! Beyond Time

By Love indeed has One created this Universe…for a Loved One

Each nanosecond we are born, we dance, we die, are reborn

Atomic clusters and energy quanta come together, fall apart, merge in new shapes

Now a crystal, now a rhino’s ear, now a fragrance, a sparkle in thine eye

A lightning flash today, the power of a thousand minds tomorrow

Eternally changing….yet unchanged, eternal!

At times sedate, at times frenzied, we sway and whirl and careen

To a divine Music that strikes resonant chords in all

A Stellar Orchestra, a Cosmic Choreography!

We the dancers, our Selves the instruments…

And the Composer-Conductor-Musician-Choreographer Supreme in you

And in me, in all there is…

Always

Musings, Verse perverse

Tumble-Wash Epiphany

Mani's avatarMani 7 Comments

Of late I’ve been experiencing a strange mental turmoil.

Days and nights have been passing in a timeless, rather pleasant blur—nothing unusual about that, as the passing of days and nights in a blur has pretty much been part of my philosophy and lifestyle since 1963, when my Class 2 teacher recognized and highlighted it with a vitriolic comment or three. But in the past few months, the blur has been interspersed with short but incredibly vivid interludes of fantasy that are as engrossing and disturbing as they are impossible to wipe off the cerebral slate.

Last night, I actually experienced intense déjà vu within dream. The weird thing is (or was), in my dream I was not myself—meaning, I was not this dusty old bandicoot who even now sits in a dusty corner of East Delhi on a sultry mid-August night writing this crap. Instead, in my dream I was a dusty old historian from South Delhi in body, mind and soul, a part-time heritage walk mentor specializing in ancient Sultanate and Mughal monuments. I was walking through the Mehrauli Archaeological Park area on a grey, misty, bitterly cold January day with a small group of men, women, children, and a few other creatures including a squirrel wearing bifocals and the crafty look of an avaricious advocate. The walk was going quite well in my dream, though I was mildly irritated by the squirrel which kept asking me searching and intelligent questions about squinches, domes, arches and other such architectural things that I knew very little about, and  that chuckled and chittered loudly and derisively whenever I fumbled for answers.

All at once, without warning, the swirling mist intensified into a white-out fog. Alarmed, I froze in mid-step and called to the others to stop …even in dream I remember noting how flat and muffled my voice sounded. And then, like the clouds of moisture-laden air that wander amidst the deep gorges of Sohra and Pynursla, the dense fog magically thinned into great billowing columns that parted like pearly curtains and evaporated into blue nothingness, and I found myself bathed in brilliant sunshine, and that’s when I realized two things:

One: I was no longer with my group in Mehrauli but standing alone, utterly alone on a vast, treeless sweeping slope strewn with scree, surrounded by incredibly tall snow-streaked mountains;

Two: I knew for sure I had never stood on that slope or ever seen those mountains in my life, yet I knew I had been there before, experienced that experience before…just as I knew exactly and fully what I would think and see and  hear and smell and taste and feel at the very next moment and at every moment from then onward, for ever and ever…

…And that’s when, even as I clutched on to that timeless déjà vu, it slipped away and vanished with the growing awareness that I must be in the coils of dream, because there was no way in which I, a heritage walk mentor, could have transported myself from Mehrauli in south Delhi to what appeared to be a steep mountain-side amidst the high Himalayas…leave alone experience déjà vu in that desolate place. And with that awareness that I was dreaming came a tidal wave of terror that I might awaken to find myself not the historian/heritage walk mentor that I actually was, but as someone else…perhaps even as a decrepit old writer lying in bed in east Delhi. And at that thought a great abyss of dread opened up deep within my mind as the tidal wave tossed and turned me hither and thither and eventually flung me, battered and bruised, on to the shores of consciousness where I lay trembling, awake at last.

How could I possibly have dreamed such a dream, in which I was not only someone else but had actually experienced déjà vu as that someone else?

I have no answers; only questions, that sound so demented I am almost too scared to voice them.

Yet I must.

Have the global clouds of angst and anxiety, spawned by Covid-19, finally overcome my cerebral defences? Do they now wait, like monsoon clouds in their brooding and silent enormity, to pour forth their giga-tonnes of fluid insanity and wash away what remains of my cognition in a raging neural flood?  

Have I waded for too long in the limpid pool of Mann Ki Baat, to now be flushed away and drowned in the foaming toilet of Monsoon ki Bath? 

Have I finally achieved the position grimly foretold for me by my class 2 teacher, and become quietly yet indubitably insane?

In the sacred name of Bakasura the Ravenous, will I ever be able to escape from this realm of Guiche into which I have wandered wonderingly and now wonder wanderingly?

These and other troubled musings kept me tossing and turning till dawn; whereupon, after a few cups of healing tannin and caffeine solutions, I went up to the terrace and put a load of clothes to wash.  Watching the sheets and pillow cases tossing and turning in the washing machine just as I had tossed and turned half the night, I began to feel better. Slowly but surely, that familiar old timeless and rather pleasant blur of being returned to soothe my frayed neurons, dendrons and rhododendrons. The washing machine hummed contentedly; the birds chirped happily as they hunted bugs in the foliage; a squirrel streaked across the tiles, sat on its haunches a few feet away, chirruped a series of questions and stared at me through shrewd eyes, waiting for a response.  I stared back at it, wondering why its accent seemed so familiar…but the moment passed, as did the squirrel.

My questions may have no answers; I realize that now, as I write these words.  

Indeed, my answers may have no questions.

Yet I find some blurry comfort in the immortal lyrics of that great and little-known Tamil bard of yore, Konal Kuttilingam (c. 644–596 BCE) whose octrain ‘Ode to Calavai-Pen‘ was translated and soulfully rendered by Irish blues singer Anne O’Nimus at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, 1963 shortly before her tragic demise due to an accidental overdose of pandemonium nitrate.

Wash’d like a garment might thou feel, O beloved, in this Kaveri of Life

Beaten and scrubb’d by Great Calavai-Pen* on Her adamant stone

Yet despair not! Only by this Bath of Anguish, this Path of Strife

May’st thou for many Muttal-Thanams@ of the Past atone…

Be joyful, then, as She cleanses thee, wrings thee

Spreads thee to dry: do not moan and groan

Behold! the Vapours of Illusion leave thee, pure and free

To ask: “Dog without bone, or bone without dog…who is more alone?“

[(Tamil) *Calavai-Pen = washerwoman; @Muttal-Thanam = idiocies; boo-boos. Translation by the late lamented & lamentable Periachandu Dorai II of Mayiladuthurai (1946 – 1997)]

General ravings, Potshots, Verse perverse

CAA, Nuclear Physics and Opium for the Masses

Mani's avatarMani 6 Comments

I write this at the urging of a dear friend, who believes (bless him!) that I might have something worthwhile to contribute on this whole CAA-NRC issue that’s  destroying so many lives and so much public property and so many millions of youngsters’ academic careers and the nation’s collective equanimity (except, maybe, Amit Shah’s and Pinarayi Vijayan’s equanimity).

But I can’t get started on CAA-NRC and affiliated crap; not right now, at least. I am still too filled with angst at the way our political leaders – BJP, Congress, CPI(M), the whole rabid lot of them and their respective captive media-houses – have yet again exploited the well-known, repeatedly validated tendency of We the Moronic Indian People to allow ourselves to be suckered by netas and kooky religious leaders into taking violently extreme and opposed positions on things we understand little or nothing about.

Right now I only do three things (ignoring your theatrical groans):

1 – I declare my belief that Amit Shah, Union Home Minister and BJP leader, has crafted and timed the passage of CAA in Parliament, supplemented with carefully planned loose talk about NRC and NPR, as a cold-blooded, brilliantly laid trap to ensure that India remains divided along communal Hindu vs. Muslim lines till the next Lok Sabha elections. I believe Amit Shah has done this because the Ayodhya issue, which has been used by all political parties to divide the people for 30 years but benefited BJP the most, has finally and honourably been resolved by the Supreme Court…and therefore the BJP is desperate to find another issue to keep the people polarized on communal lines.  And predictably, tragically, the fools of the Congress, CPI(M) and other Opposition parties have fallen into this BJP trap by taking communal positions on the CAA issue and fighting street battles over CAA instead of fighting CAA on logical grounds, on Constitutional grounds; they are right in opposing the CAA, but they are opposing  it for horrendously wrong reasons and in violent ways…and this is precisely what BJP wants  [More on this later, I promise…if I can conquer my nausea]

2 – I translate the infernal, eternal, and vehemently disavowed words of the great Narakasura the Terrible, ruler of ancient Pragjyotishpura [c. 1191–1124 BCE]

Beware cruel Leaders who light Fires of Radicalism, Fanaticism

In the minds of the ignorant, gullible and young,

To divide them, break them, as white light in a prism

Till they forget the One Source from which we’ve all sprung…

 Thus riven, passions aflame, driven by Sermons of Venom and Hate

The masses butcher one another in the names of Secular Gods and Prophets

Whilst in theirs quiet clubs and boardrooms, on their electronic slates

The Netas and the Priests chuckle, and chalk up their Profits…

 

3 – To complete your agony, I paste below a highly irrelevant article on Secularism and Nuclear Physics written in 2007 by another dear old friend, Ghatotkacha the Late (alas, he disappeared without trace soon after posting this article: unconfirmed reports suggest he was dispatched by a joint assassin squad comprising members of Bajrang Dal,  SIMI and certain unnameable and unmentionable Leftist groups).

Indian Scientists Discover ‘Secularon’

It is a moment that all Indians should be proud of. On Friday 1st June 2007, at precisely 2344 hrs IST, a team of scientists headed by Dr Falturam G Bakthahai of the prestigious IIFS (Indian Institute of Fundamentalist Sciences) announced the discovery of a new fundamentalist particle found only in Indian adult brains: the ‘secularon’.  Social and political scientists believe that this strange and elusive particle holds the key to understanding the various forces that influence political behaviour among Indians.

“Naturally, we are thrilled!” announced a visibly tired Dr Falturam at a hastily convened press conference at the sprawling IIFS campus in New Delhi. “Our team has worked very hard these past four years. We have had to face and overcome immense technological challenges and resource constraints…but now, finally our efforts have been rewarded!”

News of the IIFS breakthrough has generated great excitement not only in India but across the global scientific community. Many feel the secularon’s discovery is as momentous as that of the neutron in 1932 by Sir James Chadwick.

“The IIFS finding is stupendous!” says Prof. Mel O’Drama, well-known philosopher, science writer and Head of Caltech’s Department of High Energy Physics. “The discovery of the secularon confirms Richard Feynman’s famous tenet: that ‘the only thing we know for sure is that we don’t know anything for sure’!”

His views are echoed by scientists across the world. “The secularon’s discovery reveals how little we know about our Universe, and indeed about humankind itself,” observes Nobel laureate Dr Gott Tubi-Jokin, Head of the Psychophysics-Cyberobiology group at the University of Grumingen-Schlauss. “Just as the discovery of the neutron changed our understanding of atomic science, the secularon’s discovery dramatically alters our long-held theories of Indian political science.”

Dr Falturam agreed to answer a few basic questions regarding the nature and significance of the secularon.

 What is the secularon?

The secularon is a tiny, negatively charged fundamentalist particle that is found only in living Indian brain cells. It contains at least 237 extremely complex organic compounds – most appear to be enzymes. These compounds are looped together in a kind of triple-helix form, vaguely reminiscent of DNA’s double-helix shape and also somewhat resembling the trishul shape venerated by Hindus.

Why is the secularon’s discovery so important?

The secularon exists only in Indian adult brains; it is unique to our nation’s population! Our studies reveal that an average adult Indian brain contains an estimated 2.34 billion secularons, and that the nature and level of secularon activity in a brain directly influences the political outlook of the owner of the brain. In simple terms, we can tell whether an Indian is secular or communal simply by studying the secularons in his or her brain!

Can you please elaborate?

Well…to start with it is important to understand that the secularon can exist in two possible energy states: ‘passive’ or ‘active’. We have found that the secularon can switch between these two states several million times a day! At any given instant, if the majority of secularons in a person’s brain are passive, that person exhibits secular behaviour. However, when the majority of secularons are active, the person becomes communal.

How does the secularon switch between active and passive states?

Indeed, this question foxed our team for three years. Now we know that the secularon’s energy state is determined by a factor that is external to the brain itself! To be precise, whether a secularon is active or passive depends entirely on the political climate in which the observation is made.

Do you mean a person is sometimes secular and sometimes communal, depending on both the observer and the external political environment?

Precisely! IIFS has evolved a set of equations – tentatively named ‘Arjun-Advani Transformations’ – to describe this extraordinary behaviour. These equations resemble the Lorentzian transformations of relativity theory. At the macro-level, we have found that the secularity of a person varies in direct proportion to the closeness of that person to the Congress and/or Communist parties. Examples abound, not only of individuals but entire political parties!  For instance, the DMK party members had active secularons in their brains (and were therefore communal) when they opposed Congress in the late 1980s. However, their secularons switched to passive (and they became secular) as soon as they backed the Congress-led UPA government. The Telugu Desam members were purely secular when they backed the United Front, but deeply communal when they backed the BJP-led NDA. Sharad Pawar was a secular Congressman who became communal when he opposed Sonia Gandhi and formed the NCP; but now he has regained secularity by supporting the UPA. Another fine example is Sanjay Nirupam, ex-Shiv Sena MP and rabid communalist who is now the epitome of secularity because he has joined the Congress.

 Truly amazing!   Will the discovery have any impact on future politics in India?

Well, I cannot comment on that. However, our discovery does reveal that Indian secularism is as transient and ephemeral as our development plans are.

What is your team’s next quest?

We are trying to isolate another even more elusive fundamentalist particle – we call it the ‘minoritron’. As its name suggests, the minoritron imparts the feeling of ‘minority-ness’ to a brain. The minoritron is far more stable than the secularon; once a brain feels a sense of minority-ness, it becomes permanent. Unfortunately, the minoritron carries no charge and occupies virtual space; this makes it as difficult to detect as the neutrino. However, we are confident we shall succeed, thanks to a grant of 2200 crore rupees from our beloved HRD Minister Arjun Singh. We shall be collaborating in our work with a team of scientists from ILS (Institute of Lactile Sociodynamics), Kanpur. You may recall that ILS did path-breaking research with milk cookers in the 1980s that finally led to the discovery of the regresson – the Backward-spinning cerebral particle – and formulation of the famous Creamy Layer Postulate that forms the bedrock of today’s affirmative action policy. It is our hope that we may one day unify the secularon and minoritron into a Grand Unified Theory of Backward Integration, thereby showing India the way to retrogressive progress.

 

Jai Hind!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

General ravings, Potshots, Verse perverse

Crowd-source money for Rahul Gandhi’s foreign trips! Restore his SPG cover!

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URGENT APPEAL TO ALL INDIANS

All Indians must save Rahul Gandhi from Poverty’s claws

All of us should contribute generously to this worthy cause…

Since 2015, our Rahul-ji, beloved Blather of the Nation

Has gone abroad 247 times, as per latest information…

And we fear creditors will soon be howling at his doors!

 

So tirelessly, these four years, has Rahul-ji explored foreign lands for us

That his air-tickets alone must’ve surely drained his entire corpus…

He earns only two lakh rupees as MP’s monthly fees

Hardly enough for flying 247 times overseas…

And we’re quite sure he didn’t go to Hanoi and New York by bus!

Rahul the globetrotter

 

We’re alarmed, too, by this mean BJP government’s direction

To deprive our beloved Rahul-ji of SPG’s protection…

On the flimsy ground that he gave SPG the slip

On the above-mentioned 247 foreign trips

As well as 1892 domestic ones…we just don’t see the connection!

 

Hence, let’s crowd-source money to sustain dear Rahul-ji’s travels!

Let’s throng  international airports, to bid him fond farewells!

Let’s also urge  Home Minister Amit Shah-ji to exercise his power

And not just restore, but triple, Rahulji’s SPG cover…

We might then get to know where Rahul’s gone, to serve us through his revels!

Musings, Remembering, Verse perverse

Barog: rediscovering the joy of simply being

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After three days of choking-level air pollution, it’s a glorious morning here in Delhi!

Today’s the 6th of November. I began the day with 90 minutes of pre-dawn yoga, followed by a brisk two-kilometre walk. Now, energized by a hearty breakfast and healing kaapi,  I check the Air Quality Index on the Weather Bureau site. It announces that the PM 2.5 particulate emissions are a mere 210 micrograms/cubic metre at 9 a.m.

That’s wonderful… 210 mcg/m3   is not even four times the maximum safety level of 60 mcg/m3 … why, it’s almost as good as being in Bhutan!

I wipe my smarting eyes and breathe deeply of the pleasantly chill light-brown air, revelling in the tingling sensation that courses through the entire body and mind as the lungs fill with a perfectly-blended mix of SO2, NO2 and CO, flavoured with delicate hints of ozone and hydrogen cyanide and just a touch of that rare element, oxygen…

Forgive me the laboured sarcasm, O most valued Reader; but I’ve finally understood that it’s futile taking the issue of air pollution, or indeed any issue at all, very seriously  in our beloved India that is Bharat. Three years ago, in 2016, I actually took the issue of air pollution seriously enough to write about it [please click here to read it]. But now I realize that nothing’s changed since then, except for the worse.

So:

Instead of wasting my breath in gasping rants

At Kejriwal and Goel, and their many sycophants

I abandon the idiocy of all netas and affiliated fools

For the serenity of hills and rills, still quiet pools…

Let Delhi and its denizens make Haze while the Sun shines!

I’ll find refuge in flowery meadows, sighing pines…

In this illuminated and detoxified spirit, I recollect and relive four wonderful days I spent in the quiet little town of Barog, near Shimla, in late September 2017. I stayed with my dear friends Micky and Abha: their warmth, their generosity and hospitality helped me shed decades of accumulated stresses and blues, and rediscover the joy and wisdom of simply BEING.

I’ve written earlier about walking up to the old army cantonment of Dagshai during this visit. [You can read it here]. Here are some more photos from that time.  A mere four days’ R&R; yet for me they evoke memories to draw on for a lifetime…

On the way up: Himalayan Queen

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In and around home

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Timeless mornings and evenings, lazing out on the terrace with Abha and Micky.   Tiger was usually present to test and certify quality of biscuits, pakoras, cake etc.

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Dagshai Cantonment – seen from terrace

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Every evening we’d walk to Micky’s ‘Sunset Point’ and watch the clouds roll in

just walking
Just walking around…

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Tiger doing his Think Tank act
Tiger contemplates the State of the Universe

A dreamy day in Kasauli

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At the beautiful old Christ Church (estt. 1853)

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Army Holiday Home

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Kasauli Club

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The wildflowers run riot here!

Barog railway station

Walking down

There’s no road to/from Barog railway station. There’s only a steep, 400-metre path leading down through the forest from the Old Shimla Road.  So Micky dropped me off at a signpost showing where the path begins, and I followed the path down…and down….

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At Barog station

I never imagined I’d enjoy waiting for a train so much.  I spent just over an hour at the station, during which I met only four souls: the cheerful Asst Station Master, an ancient and sleepy gangman; the young man who presided over the station’s canteen and fixed me two cups of black tea;  and a phlegmatic dog who decided I needed constant supervision.  Nothing seems to have changed here since the 1.15 km-long Barog Tunnel was completed in the early 1900s…

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Barog tunnel – named after Colonel Barog, British Army engineer, who was entrusted with boring this 1.15 km tunnel through the mountain.  To save time, Barog deployed two teams which proceeded to bore the tunnel from both sides simultaneously. Alas, Barog’s calculations were wrong; the two segments of the tunnel were misaligned, and when it became clear that never the twain would meet, poor Barog was fined the princely sum of Re 1 for wasting the British government’s time and resources. Unable to bear the humiliation, he shot himself, and the tunnel was realigned and completed by another engineer:  H S Harrington. Legend has it that the tunnel is still haunted by the unhappy spirit of the Colonel…

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Station guest  house – I was told the rooms are nice, the food excellent, and the best way to visit Shimla is to stay here and take trains up and down (2 hours and a bit each way)

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My mentor: the slightly accusing look is because he believed (despite my strong denials) that I’d eaten the larger share of biscuits

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And so…time to go