Wednesday 13 June 2018

An exit - not so graceful


The sudden demise of saint Bhaiyuji Maharaja has left the whole of India in dismay and why not? A saint committing suicide by shooting himself compels us not just to question what led him to take such a severe step but also to question the society we live in, in today’s era.

A saint is perceived to be above materialistic things and to be unaffected by all the wordily relationships. Then, why and how did all these superficial things catch the so-called saint into their trap and finally lead to his fatal end? Secondly, if saints are also getting affected by the venom spilled by the foundation of this society, then it’s high time to start rethinking our values and ethics. Mostly, to start thinking in what direction do we wish to lead ourselves.

Even though suicide does sound like a coward step but the idea to kill yourself doesn’t develop in a day. It goes through a long process and many factors contribute to the same. The components mostly being relationship statuses, financial stability, relation with peers etc. and everything which comes under the general functioning of a society. India is one of the leading countries in increasing suicide rates and the news of a saint committing suicide has put our whole working as a society and as a family under a question.

Rather than just focusing on what interpersonal relations or what property disputes caused Bhaiyuji Maharaja’s death, I believe this time should be used in self-analysing and in questioning the practices we are indulging ourselves in.

There is, of course, no harm in being ambitious or aspiring to be rich or successful but at what cost needs a serious thinking. There is a famous tale from South Indian mythology where a queen explains to his husband how he could have it all from his dynasty to his family and still be a religious or say devotee to his lord. The key is detachment. Detachment seems to be missing from this generation. This generation seems to be too sentimental about all the materialistic things and wordly relations around.

A very good article was published in the “Times of India” which talked about the graceful exit. When the situation demands leave, just leave. It doesn’t mean to face the failure but to take a step back and evaluate. The race of doing it all at once and of reacting quickly needs a pause today. If the situation doesn’t seem to be fair, just make a graceful exit from it instead of clinging on to it before it gets ugly. Its okay to make a departure and come back again.

The same phenomenon applies to death. It's very important to leave this body with elegance. Suicide or leaving behind the ugly unfinished business is not an ideal way to bid goodbye as it leaves no good message for a family or for loved ones. For that, its very important to learn the concept of leading a good life, the concept of detachment and as stated above the concept of exiting gracefully.

Let us not turn this unfortunate casualty into a debate on Bhaiyu maharaja’s connections, relations or money but make it a significant moment of self-inspection and evaluation.

Sunday 3 June 2018

No game changer - Veere di wedding


It’s ok to accept that a particular movie is another chick-flick. It’s ok to accept that nothing great would come out of a particular film. And why not? Not every movie is meant to create a change. Not every production needs to start a revolution or change the mentality of the whole society. Not every women-centric movie needs to be a game changer for the role of a female in the movie business. 

But maybe actresses of Veere di wedding didn’t realise the same while going through the script because during the promotion of the movie whole cast specially Swara Bhaskar and Sonam Kapoor were continuously spotted saying it’s not a chick-flick and is going to change the definition of women roles in the movie. Coming that from an actress like Swara Bhaskar who has carried a film like “Neel batte sanata” on her shoulder is a big thing or maybe she was trying to promote some other movie. Because after watching the movie you are left with no message. What game changer things are we planning in our head for women now in any business needs to be clearly defined. 

Only if a girl can abuse and openly talk about sex, we have created a strong character for her? Only because Kalandi played by Kareena Kapoor is shown afraid of commitment like most of the boys in movies, we have given a just depiction of women in today’s era? 

Does for the acclaimed actresses like Sonam Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor and Swara Bhaskar the meaning and concept of feminism is that shallow? What dictionaries are these main lead actresses are using? These show-biz people need to understand they have a great responsibility on their shoulder while they produce a movie because in India trends are still set by these big stars and their movies. They need be to cautions while serving content to the audience. Yes, they are there to make money but they cannot play with minds of people for the sake of it. 

For all those people who thought that Sonam Kapoor lost her feminism just because she changed her surname after her marriage, don’t you think the whole movie was an insult to womanhood?

The whole movie revolved around nothing but few adult jokes. I remember one of the interviews of Sonam Kapoor where she was caught saying, why aren’t there any films made on female friendship like “Zindgi na milegi dobara” or like “dil chahta hai”? And veere di wedding is going to be the icebreaker for the same. My question is, first, was the movie based on friendship? Because there was little about the bond they shared apart from them objectifying boys together the same way movies did to girls for a  long time. 

Second, if it was a movie on female bonding, do really girls talk only about sex and boys when they bond with each other. Why just to compete male-centric films we need to make a woman do same things boys do? Why can't we just accept the fact that we girls function in a different way and produce something more realistic than this? 

What the movie ‘Queen’ did was phenomenal. The journey of a girl who was left before her marriage was actually a movie which talked about a real issue and changed the mentality of many. 

This movie could have done the same if the makers had invested more time in the journey of these four girls. How kalandi (kareena Kapoor) became commitment-phobic? Why didn’t the marriage between Sakshi (Swara Bhaskar) and her husband work out? What trauma did Meera (Shikha Talsania) go through after running away from her parents and why did Sonam Kapoor desperately wanted to get married? The movie instead of answering these questions and their bond in between went on a different track by showing some inappropriate scenes. 

They could have handled each issue with great sensitivity like Zoya Akhtar did in “Zindagi na milegi dobara”. Few scenes of Swara Bhaskar were not only inappropriate but were also not necessary. It’s really hard to digest a woman who had the nerves to thrash Sanjay Leela Bhansali for glorifying Jauhar on the big screen, agreed on doing a shallow character like Sakshi in Veere di wedding. 

I am not saying there is anything wrong in making a commercial movie because obviously, all producers are there to make money but what’s wrong is the means of promotion they used that surely mislead the audience. These are the same actresses who posted photographs of themselves with a placard saying I am Hindustan and I am ashamed, to protest against Kathua rape case, were they not ashamed to agree on doing shallow characters which projected women in poor light and depict something which holds no importance in Indian society?

I agree its time we should start talking openly about sex and other things like commitment issues faced by this generation but there could be a subtle way to do the same. The movie was disappointing in every sense because it could not bring forward any issue properly.

Saturday 14 April 2018

An open letter to Asifa

Dear Asifa, 


I know you are too young to understand why those 8 people did to you what they did. I know you are too young to care about the system and I know you don’t even worry whether prime minister Narendra Modi spoke on your case or not.You don’t care whether your case was a religious propaganda or a political act. But I am sorry that we are just concerned about these points.I and other people of our nation are just worried about the caste of the men who raped you. we are more caught up in finding what did Rahul Gandhi say, what was the view of Menka Gandhi. Today, through this letter I want to apologise to you on their and my behalf. 

Asifa, I am sorry I don’t even want to think what punishment your rapist should get because after whatever you faced I really don’t know who should be behind the bars, them (accused) or the whole human race. After reading your story I want to serve penance myself for not being able to create a better society for children like you. Today, with your sinners I hope we all humans would be able decide our retribution because when something like this happens the question is not only why the accused did what he did, the bigger question is where are we leading ourselves on the name of religion, on the name of politics. 

When a man does a hideous crime like rape, I feel sorry and culprit myself that I didn’t raise my voice higher enough to urge every mother to inculcate basic values in their sons. I am sorry Asifa for letting these man ruin your life.

Asifa, when you meet almighty I request you to complain not only about those 8 cruel men but also feel free to tell him, that we the so called ‘intelligent race’ have created monsters in ourselves through knowledge and power. Do convey him how shallow this world has become. Also tell him that even after your death we kept on raping you daily in newspapers. Girl, Do not shy away from telling him that the world he moulded has nearly came to an end. 

It was heartbreaking to hear that you passed away but somewhere I feel it happened for a good reason because you know we won’t have allowed you to have normal life. This is how we have developed ourselves in this blind race of politics, votes, religion. 

I am sorry Asfia because we didn’t build a good society for you. As a human, as an elder and as a woman I apologise to you for making you go through all that. I don’t know the art to flip time but I can promise I will try to work harder, I will try to raise my voice higher for developing a more secure space for angles like you. 

-Soumya

Sunday 8 April 2018

Yoga - an anti-Christian practice


Recently a commission report was prepared by the Pala diocese Bishop, Kerala, which was later on approved by the Syro Malabar church synod. It is interesting to note that the report states, “Yoga doesn’t bring about any improvement in any person.” It also adds, “The RSS and other sangh parivar groups are trying to promote yoga all over India. So laity and church heads should take care to avoid paying attention to yoga and other spiritual movements which are totally against the catholic faith. The yoga and other ‘anti-Christian practices’ do not encourage the official teaching of the church.” 

On the one hand the whole world acknowledged the importance of yoga and to even celebrate its virtue declared 21 June as world yoga day while on the other hand there are these people who have the courage to link yoga with some culture. Plus have the audacity to declare it anti-Christian. What I don’t understand is what is anti-christian in practicing yoga? What makes a community to say that any sensible person should not encourage such practices? 
Just because the roots of yoga and meditation are found in India, it suddenly became a threat and something which should not be practiced at all. Doesn't a way to meditate, a way to attain peace should be universal? Don’t you feel instead of trying to find cultural or so called communal issues in it, we should rather be focusing on how to promote it to create a stress free society? When even western science is understanding the importance of yoga, isn’t it baffling to hear that only sangh or so-called Hindu organisations are trying to promote yoga? Is yoga or ways to mediate patented by RSS? How by practicing yoga, a way of exercise, a person would be unfaithful to his own culture or community? 

I want to highlight here that even science says yoga improves health, reduces stress and elevates mood. In a 2005, German study, women who described themselves as “emotionally distressed” took two yoga classes a week for three months. The control group maintained their normal activities—which did not include exercise or stress reducing techniques. At the end of the three months, the women in the yoga classes reported improvements—depression scores improved by 50%, anxiety scores by 30%, and overall well-being scores improved by an incredible 65%. Headache, backache, and poor sleep quality complaints also decreased more often in the yoga group than in the control. 

So what kind of vigilance is report asking for? And how a practice to have a good health against catholic faith? I do not intend to mock or insult anyone’s culture or beliefs but I do wish to get answers to my questions. Because these kinds of report not only misleads innocent minds but also in some way winds communal tension. These reports should be studied carefully before approving because they can factually wrong and may also hurt someone’s beliefs. Anyone influential should understand what difference their word could make before speaking or stating any item. They should also realise what kind of message world be interpreted by their statements. 

Some people have already raised voices against this report. I hope their voices would build pressure on the makers to amend the same. 




Saturday 24 March 2018

India and loneliness minister

Recently an article published in Times of India with an interesting heading, “ Do we need a loneliness minister?” It is an intriguing question to ask. The article talked about how we are so engrossed in our digital social circle that we have lost all connection and contact with the outside world. Where we have thousands of friends on our Facebook list but none to have a shoulder to cry on. The modern age of living has surely made people come closer but has also made people feel lonely.

According to the article published, “Loneliness is more dangerous than smoking 15 cigarettes a day and raises the risk of heart problem and diabetes.”

Loneliness has nothing to do with social acceptance or family condition, it is basically the state of mind. In the digital era where everything is counted by number of likes and followers, somewhere we have lost the inner sense of satisfaction, the inner peace.

The united kingdom understood the seriousness of this matter and literally appointed a minister of loneliness! Recently in Madhya Pradesh a similar step was taken forward. A whole research team was called up to measure the happiness index of the state.

India is one of the leading nation where teenagers and youngsters are in depression due to various reasons. According to the statistics 1 IN 5 people in India needs psychological treatment and the number of people living in depression has increased by approximately 18.4% in last few years. It comes as a shock to know that even in a country like India, we have students feeling lonely or depressed and we need measure the index of happiness. A place where yoga took birth, where mediation evolved, where from starting we have discussed about inner peace, talked about getting over superficial material, we came on to the stage where people are not finding contentment.

What have we done to reach a state where we have artificial intelligence but in the race of achieving it we somewhere lost emotional intelligence (EI).

There was a so called prudent saint who was master of all knowledge. Once he hired a boat to cross a river. While he was on the boat he asked the boatsman,“Do you know philosophy?” The poor boatsman said,“No”. The saint, with great grief said,“Oh you wasted one-third of your life.” The boatsman got little nervous.

After a little while the saint asked,“Do you have knowledge ofof sociolo?” The boatsman said no in a very low voice. Saint smirked and said,“you fool, you wasted half of your life.” Saint asked few more questions and finally declared the three-fourth of boatman’s life futile.

Just when boatsman was about to break down by the sudden realisation of his wasteful life, a storm erupted in the river. Both boatsman and saint got petrified. Now, the boatsman asked the saint, “Do you know how to swim?” The saint said no with dread in his eyes. Boatsman smiled and said,“My three-fourth life may have been wasted but now your whole life would drain in the spate of this river.

Moral - It doesn’t matter how much knowledge you posses or how much wealth you have acquired. Important point is know how to live. How to satiate your soul, your own self.

If we wont learn the art of living, if we wont learn the basic law of life, we will keep getting tangled in this peripheral world of facebook and Instagram. While we have different mediums to fulfil our living needs, we need to do something for the fulfilment of our soul, from somewhere we need to arrange the soul food for deep sense of self satisfaction in life.

It is the demand of the time to go back to our actual ethics and values to understand the worth of our life. Its time to start reading Bhagvat Geeta again to unlock the secret of our lives.

As stated by Geeta everything around you is tranquil, everything around you is transient and one day everything would get demised. To attain peace and get away from the feeling of loneliness we need to fathom this truth.

-Soumya



Sunday 11 February 2018

Jouhar - a heroic deed or an insult to feminism


After a long struggle Padmaavat (Padmavati as called before) got a release and even after a longer wait I got a chance to watch it. I know everyone around me including myself am tired of the whole Padmaavat controversy. From the invasion of Karni Sena at the sets of Padmaavat to biding on who would cut Deepika’s nose to Swara Bhaskar’s open letter. There was a lot said and a lot heard.

After so much of debate and discussion I really don’t have anything more to pen down nor I find myself very much eligible to question Sanjay Leela Bhansali or the actress Swara Bhaskar. Because where both are phenomenal artists, I am just a budding writer. 

The screenplay, the set, the music was without any doubt splendid. It indeed looked like a Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s movie. The look of Deepika Padukone surely takes away your breath, Ranveer singh’s portrayal of Allaudin Khilzi makes you believe him as a monster and of course, the Rajpootani pride in Shahid Kapoor eyes is uncanny. 

I have no right to answer Swara Bhaskar because whatever she said was at some point logical and have been well answered by the people to whom the letter was concerned. But I have few questions to ask her. Starting with, the whole movie talked and celebrated the wisdom that Padmavati had then how did the actress Swara Bhaskar or anyone arrive on the conclusion that it only talked about vaginas? Whatever director Bhansali made is a different issue, but what made anyone believe that Jouhar or self-immolation was nothing but the mass suicide act because they didn’t have rightful owners of their vaginas. Don’t you think it has something do with honour, pride, dignity of a lady and more than that respect for your birth place. 

We belong to a nation who’s history has seen Maharani giving precious advice in the matter of Raajnitti (Padmavti) on the other hand had the caliber to raise a warrior like Shivangi (JIja mata). Yet, somehow in the fire of feminism we find the courage to call Jouhar an act to protect vagina. Have we gone that shallow? On what grounds are we actually fighting and the bigger question is what are we even fighting for? There is this storm of feminism where everything said, made or talked about comes down to so called freedom of a girl, a lady.

I am not anti-feminist but I do believe our history has respected women because they respected themselves. They had the courage to turn into a warrior when enemies were at door (Rani Laxmi Bai) and when the time demanded burn in the fire of self respect  to protect the honour of their mother nation. But narrowing these great women and their actions just to vagina does not doom their dignity or bravery, but it surely questions our thinking process. 

Try to learn from these women who made our history glorious instead of holding the flag of feminism. Doing something rightful for your nation or family wont take away your liberation or make you anywhere less than a man. These women are not being worshipped because of their of their husbands but because of their fearless and heroic deeds. 

- Soumya Tare 




Friday 12 January 2018

....none will remember you.

I was reading a book lately, written by John Green. Somewhere in the book there was a line which opened the doors of infinite questions. The line read - 

“i shall say you that you would die and none will remember you.”

When I read this line there was a sudden heart ache inside caused due the true fact written by the writer. Now the question arises, Why he must have written this line? There could be two possible answers, either he himself is petrified about his own existence or he is someone who knows the universal and spiritual truth very well. 

This small line questions the whole existence of us in this universe. It mocks on our stupidity of earning name and fame. It keeps all we have, all we want to acquire at stake. If I am going to die and no one would even remember about my existence, then why am I running in a circle again and again to achieve something that would be just gone away without anyone’s notice.

But if we put more thought into it we realise that the line has some deeper meaning in it. Maybe the sentence is trying to communicate that since no one will remember you, so there’s no point wasting your energy on something that is just superficial. Theres no point devoting your time on some wordily relationships or work. Its written that you will die one day no matter what, then why not invest your whole energy into your own self, into the awakening of your own consciousness. 

A similar text was written by Swami Ramdas in his work known as Manache Shloka. 
It said, मरे एक त्याचा दुजा शोक वाहे अकस्मा- तोही पुढे जात आहे, पुरेना जाणीई लोभ रे क्षोभ त्याते, म्हण- ूनी जाणीई मागुता जन्म घेते

Which means when someone dies, the mourners don't realise that even they too are heading towards death. It is the greed, be it of name, fame or to be remembered till eternity, that pushes us into the cycle of birth and death.

By this Swami Ramdas tries say that instead of mourning or rushing towards unsatisfied needs, everyone should indulge themselves to attain peace and then ultimately salvation. 

I m sure the writer didn’t advocate that all the relationships or all of your work is just some futile exercise. It is of course important and should be done with all integrity and hard work. 

As the famous Shloka from Bhagwat Geeta goes, “"कर्मणये वाधिकारस्ते मां फलेषु कदाचन मां कर्मफलहेतुर्भू: मांते संङगोस्त्वकर्मणि" ।।

Which means, You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.” Its should be noted that Geeta emphasis on on the word prescribed duty.

As the Geeta tell us, I m sure writer did also try to say that these all actives no matter how important they seem are just the path to achieve something bigger. These are all just your (prescribed) duties which needs to be fulfilled without any attachment or emotions. Wordily exercise cannot ever be your final destination, they could surely be the path to achieve your ultimate aim i.e. “self actualisation”. Because my friends, you would die and none will remember you. 

- Soumya Tare