0 The beggar

The post retirement life of my Papa is no more the same in Gorakhpur, where he spent 35 years of his life working for Indian Railways. His daily routine has been changed now, of course on a good note. Now he spends on an average two hours in our kitchen garden which is almost four thousand square feet the sufficient enough to keep him busy regularly. The appearance of green plants of cauliflower, cabbage, bringal and reddish gives him more satisfaction than the prospective harvest itself. He tries to have a nap in the afternoon. Lunch time has been advanced to 11:30AM, beyond which he browses different news channels before hitting the bed for a afternoon nap. Most of us overheard from my Mom that it was better when he was regularly going to office blaming to unpredictable and untimely demand for a cup of tea. 

It was 29^th of September 2013. Lalu Yadav was already found guilty and quantum of punishment was yet to be announced. Papa was browsing different news channels in search for an analysis of his interests. It was probably 01:00PM and Maa was in other room. My youngest brother having business of video surveillance in Gorakhpur was visiting Bangalore. Thus we all three brothers were in Bangalore. Maa was not anticipating any demand from anyone. 

She was feeling lethargic in her bed room. Someone knocked the main door. Anticipating that Papa would not do it Maa went on to open the door. It was a sixty year old man. He told my mom that he was hungry for last 48 hours. His effort of brining tears in his eyes were of no use as he was too weak to display tears. He asked for a Roti in his feeble voice. Maa and Papa already had finished lunch. Maa told the beggar to wait and went inside the kitchen to see if something was leftover for this beggar. She could find only few Rotis but it was not in good hygienic condition. She prepared a cup of tea and went outside. Papa was completely aloof from the sequence of events. Maa offered him tea and told him to wait. The beggar prayed again, "maalkin I am hungry for last 48 hours, please give me something to eat." Maa assured him to give something to eat and told him to wait further.

Maa was emotionally charged. She decided she will cook for him. She opened the refrigerator. Few slices of Paneer was there. She cooked Paneer-chilli and Kheer. Subsequently she prepared a dozen of Purees. She went outside and gave that begger to eat. My father now observed my Mom taking Puree-Paneer-Kheer combo to outside. When he came out he could see the beggar eating like a feast. Papa looked at the beggar. He gave an impression to Papa that it was not his mistake. Papa responded with a gesture that yes, he knew it was not his mistake and only Maa could do it. Then he went inside and brought water for the beggar.

Beggar ate nicely. He thanked my mom and subsequently to my father. He wished all good things for my parents. There was no blessing which was not recited by him. He moved on contended and satisfied. A dull and lethargic afternoon was already turned into an eventful moments. Afternoon nap was not required to rejuvenate my Papa. He called me and narrated the entire story. It was so satisfying for me. I felt there could not have been better week-end news from my parents. 

After a while I realized something and called my mom and asked her, “Maa, by the way! do you know which cast that person belonged to”. My mom lived always in conservative brahmin society where cast, creed, community are still the bitter realities which has been practiced and maintained religiously. She never had a university education. She replied to me, “बेटा, आखिर ओहो त’ मनुखे छलय ओकरा खुआ के आत्मा तृप्त भ’ गेल. आइ धरि एतेक आशीर्वाद किओ नइँ देने होयत: My dear son! he was indeed a human being (humanity was his cast). I am ever satisfied. No one has ever blessed me like him." 

I was speechless.

0 A tale of muscle power and the knowledge

The word “knowledge” keeps mystifying me intermittently. Because, “knowledge” and “facts” are two important words with all attributes having independent and mutually exclusive courses. The knowledge that we posses are instilled into our entourage with the opinions of few people: mostly the authors. It is almost impossible to witness the facts and then build a knowledge base on top of it. Therefore, I am an ardent believer and practitioner that knowledge gained by travelling is most authentic one. In fact, I assumed a pen name aadi yayavar आदि यायावर (means ancient traveler/wanderer) for my writings in my mother tongue मैथिली. Other forms of knowledge are merely the opinion of someone else. There is nothing wrong in the opinions of others as long as integrity of authorship is maintained.  The biggest question is: Is it possible for authors to maintain integrity and always write facts? 

A recent incident forced me to rethink on this subject. Sometime back I was talking to one of my old classmate of my village school. We were talking about our common acquaintance whose heroic act of eliminating local terror was being treated as an act of Hitler. My friend was taking pride in glorifying the way he managed it at his will. It was rather a Robinhood style of work but I was wondering about the relevance of Hitler. Momentarily, I could not stop myself realizing that he had a strong opinion that Hitler was indeed a hero. Until my undergraduate, I was also a votary of similar opinion about Hitler and thanks should go to our class-7th text book. In our textbook the act of Hitler was glorified. His barbaric approach was never highlighted and in our young mind Hitler was established himself as a hero. It is true that the text books of 20th century were influenced by the emotional state of mind of authors for Indian struggle for independence and hence some kinds of emotions are justified in the text books. It was also true that Hitler helped India against the British. So he deserves all praises as a friend of India. However, there is a huge difference between a friend and a hero; they don’t go hand in hand. 

Government has always advantages of promoting their individual schools of thoughts through the text books. Young minds are too tender to realize the real motive and to develop the politico-religious-economic view of the government: the socialistic governments are ought to avoid capitalistic ideas. Like I did today, often people realize at later stage of life that everything written in textbook are not absolutely right. However, there is another question: whether anything written anywhere in the world represent the facts? Or whether facts are really able to survive in this world? 

It opens up another question why would a ruler allow a particular historian to write against him. Why would not a ruler destroy all facts written against him? The history written in modern time was actually written by historians of Victorian era. So were those historians maintained high degree of integrity in revealing the facts or they just wrote what Queen wanted them to write. 

It reminds me another incidence that I come across recently to realize that this problem is not limited to history only. This is regarding Mr. Henry Hindley who invented the non-pendulum clock. In that time it was very difficult for the sailors to maintain uniform view of a timescale in the ship because pendulum clocks were not working properly due to the massive vibration in the ship. The fraternity of the scientists was challenged by the royal family to design such a clock that could still work in voyages.  All scientist of the Royal Society failed to invent such a clock. It was Mr Henry, a carpenter by a profession invented the clock of modern era which could withstand the vibration of ocean and still work without getting deviated. Mr. Henry had to prove it multiple times in real life voyages from England to West Indies. However, Royal Society was not ready to accept it readily. Mr. Henry and his next generation had to fight the legal battles for almost 60 years. It took consistent fighting of two generations of Henry family to get his invention recognized by Royal Society.

Everyone would not have a matching will power like Henry. Many inventions would not have got recognition. It means, so many of them must have been buried or would have been re-invented at later point of time. What we see today are merely the blessings of the royal families. 

I have talked about "the history" and "the science". Literature and other form of knowledge would have met the same fate. It is a blot on the civilized society.

0 I have a valid point here

This is regarding the recent arrest and then release of cartoonist Aseem Trivedi and I have really a valid point here. An unknown man still in his college files a case against a not-so-known cartoonist. The unknown cartoonist became a national hero overnight. The law student who filed case became media cherubs. This ensures his further career of practicing law would definitely flourish. The emotional state of mind of Indian Youth filled with overwhelming patriotism resulted in bizarre TRP and attention of media was converged to the issue of "freedom of speech". Since those cartoons were displayed long time ago (at least more than a month), police arrested him yesterday when coal gate issue was at its peak and all of sudden now, police is no more interested in this cartoonist: I have a valid point to suspect whether this drama was arranged by congress to divert attention of public from the coal gate…?? Nothing is impossible! after all, everyone is in win-win situation: the cartoonist, the law student who complained, the media and of course the congress.