July 25, 2008
Happy B’day my dear…
25 July, 2008
Friday
It was on another Friday some 27 years ago when you came to my life on this very day. It is a very special day for me because I got to experience another role for a woman–the role of a mother, a mother to you my dear. Happy b’day for filling my life with many colours! May you be blessed with all that you wish in life!
Thinking of that special day brings to my mind a very vivid picture of that day. It was a very hot and humid day and I was heavy with you in my womb but dear I was as agile as I am today. Somehow I never learnt to be slow and pretend delicacy. And you, too, have taken this trait from me.
You came to my life as a small bundle of joy and I would gaze at your face lovingly and at my mother’s face with a new warmth of love sweeping me. You taught me to see my own mother in a new light as i was to see what a precious relationship it is between a mother and a daughter.
You have made my life beautiful and fulfilling! Happy B’day to you my dear.
July 18, 2008
She has made us proud…
12 July, 2008
Saturday
We got to talk about a girl student who has made us proud and when we talked about her I could not help thinking about some very small details about her which make her so memorable to me even after some 20 years!
A bubbling beauty who brought such vivacity to the campus! Would write later about her!
I Felt really honoured…
12 July, 2008
Saturday
Sitting on the other side of the table alongwith the man who had interviewed me some 22 years back was a real honour to me. I am really happy. It was a strange mix of board. There was Dr. R C Chauhan the first principal of the then REC Hamirpur and there was a student of the first batch who was to join in as the Principal of the Institute that we were conducting interviews for and most interestingly the Institute was openend by another one of the frst batch students. I felt honoured to be flanked by on one hand my first Principal and on the other two of the frst batch students.! We got to talk about a number of people and incidents and related to each other in a manner that transcended all distance of time and place. It was wonderful! Would write some other time more about it.
July 7, 2008
The Unshed Tears…
7 July, 2008
Monday
The rainy tears of Sky
Drenching the earth
Cleansing it of impurity
Despicable and vile.
Relief writ large
On the face of the earth
Its happiness and mirth
Making it heave a sigh
To be rid of all the vile.
My eyes, too, like the sky
Shed tears
Warm and salty
That burn my soul
All the more.
It burns my being
Hurts my esteem.
But mere the look
Of my misty eyes
Brimming tears
Quivering nostrils
Brings sadistic mirth
Joy and rejoice
To the face of all
Who wait to see me lurch,
Break down and be hurt,
Go weak, whimper and cry.
I wish I had been
The cloudy sky!
July 5, 2008
Read Between the Lines if you Can…1
- Determinism
- a condition in which all forms of liberty are gradually suppressed; madness shows us nothing more than the natural constants of a detemrinism, with the sequences of its causes, and the discursive movement of its forms; for madness threatens modern man only with that return to the bleak world of beasts and things, to their fettered freedom. (Madness and Civilization, p.83)
- With nothing much to do on a lazy Saturday morning I tried surfing Net for some information on Foucault’s Power/Knowledge Essays and came across a page containing Dictionary for understanding the works of Michael Foucault! It was like a treasure hunt and I could not stop myself from sharing my simple comprehension about the connotative meanings of these words. I am sure that the people who know me well and also the people who know about the situation I am in would be able to read between the lines!
How true is the meaning assigned to the word Determinism! “…. a condition in which all forms of liberty is supressed.” This fragment of a sentence set me thinking about the conditions prevalent around me and I could not help wondering that how truly it had been mentioned. Liberty is being suppressed around us. The first liberty that I want to avail as a human being is my right to free expression but is it being allowed to us as a part of an organization? Unfortunately not. You dare to express yourself, may be in the best interests of all, and face the music. And unfortunately each and every rational human being, or may I say all those who used to be rational human beings once upon a time, have ceded their right ot free expression. Yes, one more thing I want to make clear–when I talk about right ot free expression I don’t mean by it making statements that bring out protests as people are/were rational. On the other hand I mean by free expression–statements for the welfare of all concerned and for the benefit of the system. But such basic liberty is suppressed. And “madness shows nothing more than the natural constants of a determinsm“, but whose madness? Who has the power to snatch away gradually freedom and liberty? It is always people at the top who enjoy such blatant power or display of power that makes people under them to cede their freedom, albeit no one ever says so. Neither the snatcher nor the ceder! Isn’t it the politics of mutual gratification but all for the benefit and pleasure of the power holder?
And the other part of the statement threatens the “modern man only with that return to the bleak world of beasts and things, to their fettered freedom.” Now reading this line I am struck by two words/phrases “Bleak world of beasts and things” and “fettered freedom”. Would we ever confess openly that the world we inhabit and work in is, in fact, a bleak world of beasts and things where survival of the fittest or say the strongest is the rule of the jungle. But we are all rational human beings on the surface at least and would never so much as mummerabout the kind of life that we have been led to live. Such is the unfortunate condition that we don’t even acknowledge this truth to our ownself leave alone to each other in the system. And then how can someone from the outside world can even glimpse inside our shadowy and callous world?
We live and enjoy our “fettered freedom“! We have become so used to such fettered freedom that I am afraid that if one fine morning we would be set free by some divine chance, we would have lost all sense of direction and space as we have been led for a long time and we have ceded our right to free thought and free expression long back.
We have become prisoners of fettered freedom and sadly we seem to relish our status.
