Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Field Conversations

: तो भैया, पंचायती राज को शक्ति मिलने से तो अब चीज़ें आसान हुईं हैं? नहीं?
: पंचायती राज के आने से पूरा सिस्टम गड़बड़ा गया है सर।
: क्या मतलब?
: अब देखिये। पिछले पंद्रह साल से जो मुखिया है, उसको ये गाव वोट नहीं डालता है।
: ह्म्म्मम।
: अब वहां मुखिया हमलोग का पेंशन, नरेगा छोड़िये, ए गो कागज़ पर साइन भी नहीं करते हैं। अब अगर कोई अधिकारी रहते उस काम क लिए तो कंप्लेन करते कहीं कि अधिकारी काम नहीं करता है। और अगर कारवाई भी नहीं होती उसके खिलाफ तो घूस देकर काम करा लेते। अब इ मुखिया घूस ले के भी काम नहीं करता है। कहता है कि वोट दूसरे जात वाला को दिए तो काम हम काहे करें।
: ह्म्म्म्म।
: बोलिये गलत बोल रहे हैं?
: ह्म्म्म्म।

Monday, May 11, 2015

"A House for Mr Biswas" connection

When I look back, I realize my invisible irregular longing for literature since school days, when I used to read stories by Tagore and R. K Narayan and keep thinking about them for a day or two. With time, the demands of my false ambitions and the need to conform to the world threw me light-years away from the realization that I could read for pleasure. Past that point, whatever I read was for gulping any new information down the throat, most of which would be of any use after my hairs would turn grey. I resumed reading, a major part to fill in my loneliness and a minor for pleasure. In the latest innings of reading, most of the stories and books I read ended with melancholy, sadness and despair. I don't remember, I ever read to be happy. I read to relish the combination of words that would weave a world closer to reality. I would pick up a few, as companions, to walk with me for a day or two. Then, like a heart-throb, I would drop them somewhere and they would be lost. 
            Somewhere two years back, I found a copy of "A House for Mr. Biswas" by V.S Naipaul at my uncle's place. Just few days back of that find, I was browsing internet when I got to read that this was Naipaul's masterpiece written in his early years. So, I clung to it. It started off as a slow black and white movie with the very first line describing the death of the lead character Mohun Biswas. But after few pages, I experienced the book as a window where reading a paragraph was like walking with Mr. Biswas. After reading it, I felt changed in a manner. Naipaul wrote everything that I hated about my background. Closely placed rooms, fights inside family, shame of poverty and most importantly the desire of possessing a house which one could lay my full claim upon. It felt as if the writer wrote on behalf of all those dissatisfied souls whose present affluence made them hate their past background and though I finished that thick book in three days, I remember falling asleep many times while holding it in hand as often it connected the book and my past world. 
          I keep reading parts of it again and again to laugh and touch the slender thread of desolation Naipaul places between series of laughter. It is a masterpiece. A rare masterpiece.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

The process of Poem#1

Whenever a poem leaves you, it pushes you to an edge; an edge of abyss of dark and unknown. You get closer to the line from where people fall. Many say 'it's foolish'. But a longing sprouts in a dark corner of your heart to meet the unknown and know the shapeless hole. Many say 'It's madness'. But you walk to the hole and suffer. And suffer more in the darkness and apathy of that deep dead well. You suffer and write. Well, most of the times, you don't write, you just suffer.