Thursday, July 8, 2010

New Age Mahatmas



Hundreds, may be thousands are up to proving why Mahatma is not Mahatma, for the reasons  quite ambiguous  quoting  partition, nonviolence,  palling with British,  civil disobedience,  Gram Swaraj,  even for his  costly simplicity. Yet  none could convince me for his smallness. Every thing  he did look  very expedient  and thoughtful for the times he lived in. His  Ideological intensity appeal more to my intellect than to my earthen bearing. His life was an example. When the whole world started  looking towards  Mahatma why we Indians elude great son of India? The only reason I find is that the entire West is becoming more inwardly  while we Indians are into turning  more  profane.


 People of India see more of distorted personalities in public life than they were doing decades ago. With few babies born out of every second, and growing every year, we are adding millions to the mainstream. We are  also adding  millions of  improperly groomed and greed grunt thought streams to the national thought process. Often we stumble in our judgement with "Good" and "Bad". Rarely we find a chance  to adjudicate what we are up to. Offenders  flee. Conscious suffer. Strait is never a way of life.  People are forced to pass through crooked lanes than Howard but not certainly as clean as it is. Our Gods have been treated as mere vehicles to transport us  good luck  than being  moral inducers. There is hardly any effort to set the things right. No wonder millions grow in the sordid environ with " Go, Grab what ever you can, no body is watching you" learning.


Millions gather to cheer even  a jerk. Bad memories easily fade from our minds. A rapist, a grabber,a drug addict, or  even a murderer can be overwhelmed with admiration. What he needs is a convoy of SVUs, few psychophants, bundle of garlands, two folded hands , a modern version of "Bhasmasurahasta".  Easily people can be bought. There no dearth for curious onlookers. All put together we get to see a stream of people waving, and cheering  to an obvious manipulator, as he  is the lone saviour of  these 1.2 billion people.  Their road shows disrupt traffic. Common man's life turns hell with this kind of  over doings. Who cares  these dare devil acts of transgression ? Scores of uniformed men struggle to control these mobs as if they have no other useful issue to attend to. What a waste of public money !


Some one's (alive or dead) birth day should be celebrated as a state function not on the strength of his nobility, but to avoid nuisance from few. Sarees and dhotis are  distributed free and we find  many hands stretched in anticipation. Many who go to collect these cheap clothing  forgot how  to claim their right. They have been deliberately  turned into beggars. No wonder few die in stampede. 


 A person with multiple land rows and treacherous politicking, nepotism, vendetta is present day Mahatma.We get to see hundreds of statues erected with a fortune big enough to eradicate fluorosis  at one go. We do not fail to garland him/ her. We don't fail to celebrate his/her  birth or death day. We do not hesitate to pass on the power to his/her  siblings as property of inheritance. Millions of lives can be  transferred into unworthy  hands without their consent or willingness. But we can afford to  ignore true Mahatmas or their birth days. We are in a hurry to disown them.  We needed  some one under  "TADA" to define Gandhigiri. Till such time young ones are in a fix whether Gandhi is father of Indira Gandhi or or Jawahar Lal Nehru and what he lived upto. Cinemas remain  the sole source of our inspiration. People are queuing  up to make their children choreographers or singers with no hint of making a good citizen.   What are we teaching to our posterior generations? Do parents need coaching ?



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