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Showing posts from May, 2020

In the name of unrequited love

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Scene I (Somewhere deep i nto the woods without Robert Frost, his horse and the snow. Soft and molten gold-like rays of the sun pierce through the clouds, the mist starts clearing and a not-so-beautiful urban sprawl emerges down below. A pretty girl and a disheveled boy emerge from their respective disheveled and cozy lives to take the centre-stage) Boy (Sighs): You see, we should not have met in the first place. Girl: What a horrible opening line! You don’t have a sense of time and place? And you give our relation a bad name. To hell with you, bitterness personified. Boy (laughs): That's a pretty explosive start, isn't it? Kills the plot before it comes across hard realities of life. Any attempt to kill the plot, that too at the nascent stage, is like an infanticide and my hunch is that we will have to pay for it dearly. Nonetheless,  I wish you heavens, a comfortable stay in your ancestral land where milk and honey flows. This sweetens the bitter plot a little bit, ...

Let truth, justice and peace prevail

The Limpiadhura dispute between Nepal and India seems to be deepening. Amid this scenario, a section of the Indian media is going berserk. Feeding this madness are some livid members of the Indian intelligentsia. Our own lot is also trying to catch up.   Just a few days ago, an Indian TV channel made unwelcome remarks against Manisha Koirala. It accused the renowned actor of siding with China while relying on India for livelihood. It conveniently forgot that lakhs of Indians also rely on Nepal for their livelihood. It forgot that Indian workers working in Nepal send home around 3 billion rupees out of 8 billion rupee remittance that Nepalis send from around the world. The channel forgot that rivers originating in Nepal are a lifeline for India, especially big and populous states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.   The renowned actor was one of the sane voices calling for peaceful resolution of this dispute. All she had said was that Nepal, India and China should resolve ...

Blue blood on mimosa lane

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It’s June already, the jacarandas have all gone, But my heart is still bleeding with the flowers, That you crushed on the lanes of this city, Leaving blue blood oozing in the rains, Beneath the flowers was my heart, But you crushed it, leaving behind, A trail of devastation, Like dozers do with illegal huts, Made of small, beautiful dreams, On the banks of the Bagmati……… I have become a refugee soul, Tell me where do I go now, From the city of crushed dreams, With a bleeding heart and a wounded soul………..

Long and hard road to national independence

Early morning (a little past the Brahmamuhurta , May 10). Yours truly is off the bed, already. You see, sleep is hard to come by in troubling times like these when you look closely all around you, only to find that the thing you are looking for, the state, is present nowhere except in the draconian lockdown (luck-down for many people, except for those in or close to the corridors of power or people close to them) enforced without putting in place means of survival for its Praja , the subjects. Praja is not what we are, we are free citizens of an independent country, that will be your line of argument, most probably. Yeah you are right, in principle. You see, liberties become a luxury for the people of a state that cannot ensure inviolability of national boundaries, though it is strong enough to crack down on and arrest people protesting acts of unprovoked foreign aggression by braving the lockdown.       Praja  is not what we are, we are free citizens of an ind...