In God' Defence

One who says he does not believe in God appeals to the most refined senses in us. More often than not an atheist has a very simple and strong logic to support his belief: he does not want to live his entire life with such a profound lie as God and the whole edifice founded on His existence. This logic can not be faulted. If there is no god, a life based on Him is a condemned life!

If you ask me, non-existence of God is the best revealed secret of modern time. We all know this. We live with this painful truth without arguing, without complaining!
Geeta says , “ना सतो विद्यते भावो, नाभावो विद्यते सत: “, meaning essentially that whatever exists needs no proof (its abundance, obviousness is its proof). With these words, Geeta finally puts paid to any hope of resurrecting Him by humanity. He is finished, dead, gone for good.

Its heartwrenching, living in a world where there is no God. Where death is final and virtues and sins are merely words! As if its not bad enough, they come to us with their strong egos and poorly hid faith, claiming their superiority over us for having known that God does not exist! They say they are superior to us for they have renounced someone/something that never existed. And here we are-inferior because of our stubbornness in refusing to let Him go out of our life! We are weak because we would never brace ourselves to say, "Ok, so now we are strong and wise and we don’t need you and so we abandon you!"
Such vanity! Such selfishness! Such a crooked sense of victory and joy in the unmanly act of deserting, now that He is no longer useful!

I have strong issues with atheism and God is one of them.

ek anaam bhajan

Last recording of this series. Its a bhajan my late father used to recite, especially when he was ill or bit down. So, I kind of grew up with this- he did not keep a good health and was seriously ill three-four times during our childhood. I was actually scared of it when I was still a kid because of ( I now know) the connotation I always attached (father's illness). Even when I grew up and understood the meaning of this beautiful (what my mother calls) 'nirgun', it still had that tinge of darkness that only a realization of death can impart to man's words. I sort of love it, in the same fatalistic way someone passively waits and relishes one's end. Its absolute surrender of a person who has seen his end and then calls Him-not necessarilyy for life but for forgiveness. "hey govind raakhu sharan, ab to jeevan haare!" I dont know the poet but I have definitely seen it on Doordarshan. Was it Peenaz singing the bhajan? Not sure. And if I correctly remember, she sang two more lines one of which credits Meera as the poet. Again, not sure. The language and tone, as I remember this bhajan, do not belong to Meera.

खुदा की खुदाई

बंज़ारानामा के अतिरिक्त, नज़ीर की आदमीनामा, रोटी, बचपन, आदि नज़्म काफ़ी चर्चित रही हैं और मुझे भी प्रिय हैं. किंतु एक और नज़्म मुझे सदा से अद्भुत लगी है-शायद 'खुदा की खुदाई' के नाम से. इसे भी अपने आइ-पॉड के लिए किया था, दुष्यंत की कुछ ग़ज़लों और एक अनाम भजन के संग. एक बार फिर, अपनी धृष्टता के लिए क्षमा प्रार्थना सहित.

बंज़ारानामा

नज़ीर का बंज़ारानामा मेरी टूटी फूटी आवाज़ में. कृपया तस्वीरों को नज़रअंदाज़ कर दें और आवाज़ को भी. जो मायने रखता है उस पर ही ध्यान दें. मुझे ये लिखने से आसान लगा. वैसे भी ये मैने अपने आइ-पॉड के लिए किया था लेकिन चूँकि इस ब्लॉग साइट पर ऑडियो अपलोड नहीं कर सकते तो ये वीडियो के रूप में डालना पड़ा.

The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam

'Her mind is a haunted house'.
This is how the story begins. This certainly is a story of a haunted land with ghosts walking all around you once you enter that land. The distinction between living and dead is feeble, if any at all. I will not be surprised if you dont find any living person at all. Forget human beings, even animals and birds and butterflies are not real. All ghosts. Dead fragrances and dead feelings. Dead hopes and dead aspirations.
Aslam is like Mahabharat's Sanjay, aimlessly roaming around among the deads in the field of Kurukshetra. Or, may be, a powerful cruel magician who brings the dead to life for a while- summoning the souls who come spellbound to narrate the stories of thier misfortune, struggle and defeat. Not that it matters much- their individual petty tragedies. What actually frightens the readers-the unfortunate traveller to the haunted land- is the realization of millions of echoes, that the stories of pain and defeat and attempts at failed survivals produce. The cold still wind, the dark night, the morning sunbeams all carrying their million voices, whispering in your ears-its my story.
Aslam, the powerful, malevolent magician that he is, produces some of the strongest delusions to keep us moving around this dreadful journey. Only when we are near the end of our nightmarish journey, does he release us from his spell and we realize how acutely we want to run away from this place. Alas! The damage is done already. We come back but carrying the curse that every traveller to that land of the dead has to live with for the rest of their life. The curse of having to go through the pain that the ghosts went through- to suffer the agony and bitterness and a feeling of losing everything. Realization that there is basically little difference between life and death. Worse still, experiencing life itself gradually turning to death. Realizing that they never actually got out of the land- that they are carrying a part of the land with them.. inside them!

Mind is a haunted house!

Unaccustomed Earth

In her latest book, Jhumpa Lahiri has reverted to her strengths: stories with small canvases. In her first book her subjects were all first generation immigrants, struggling to find their feet in a foreign land. Ambitious young Indians with all their insecurities, trying to fit in a society that does not care a bit about them. A society they find difficult to assimilate into and actually are scared of.

Namesake was an ambitious project by Lahiri. She chose a very big canvas encompassing two generations of immigrants but restricted herself largely to this inter generational frictions without getting much into the outside real world in which the two generations are trying to survive.

Unaccustomed Earth is mostly about this second generation that we first observed in Namesake. Here we face the dilemma of those kids of Namesake who are now grownups. Its their story. Story of their struggle to find a place for themselves in a country they think as their own. How an entire generation of Indian immigrants are struggling to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable! Small battles that they fight daily within the family, and outside. Battles where a win is no better than a defeat. And this realization filling them with bitterness.

All these stories are essentially melancholic. These stories depicting small and big, significant and mundane human tragedies of routine nature are beset in a sad and depressing background. Lahiri ,as creator of these characters, is more mature here and more aloof of her subject matter. She , in my opinion, is for the first time in complete control of her characters; no sympathies for her, no frowning on him! No consolations anywhere.

It was not a very pleasant reading for me. Hated each and every details of the book and still ended up liking them all!

Namesake

'Namesake' is one book that I avoided for a very long time. I was so overwhelmed by 'Interpreter of Maladies' that I found it impossible to read Namesake without continuously (and at times may be unknowingly also) comparing it with the the other book. It would have been unfair to the author as well as myself as a reader. Then Mira Nair made a film on this book and I decided to leave aside both the book and the movie. Last month I stumbled upon 'Interpreter..' and could not resist reading it again and realized that though my fascination for the book was still there, I was no longer in awe of it. And then I decided to go for the Namesake.
Jhumpa Lahiri is a gifted story teller. Her language is simple yet effective and she allows the events to unfold and characters to evolve very naturally. That gives a very smooth flow to her stories-something we always expect from an author. I, as a reader, also like her for the sympathy she has for each character.

Namesake is Gogol's story; whose life is typical of a child of a first generation immigrant indian. The story has no surprise. Asoke for some reason moves to US. He marries a typical bengali girl, Asima, whose life is a struggle to make adjustments that all other characters demand from her from time to time. Gogol does not like anything that relates him to his roots-his parenrs, his relatives, India or even the local bengali friends of his father.
Asoke is the central character of this story and has strong influence on all other characters and the events, either direct or through Gogol. However, after initial part of the story, he is present more in the background. In a way, his influence is more like that of a 'sutradhaar' in sanskrit/hindi dramas. Its difficult to miss his presence in the book even when he is dead (somewhere in the middle of the story). At times his influence seems to be waning but still you have a feeling that its he who is responsible for whatever is happening. Asima is there throughout the book but more like a non-entity. She is present and still does not matter. She does not impact the story more than the house she stays in. With bit of imagination, one can substitute her with almost anything, without in anyway changing the story.
Sonia (Gogol's sister) and other characters are all there to represent different stereotypes that the author's prejudice warrant. Moushami has received more attention from the author precisely because she represents a very strong stereotype of second generation US-Indians. Sonia could have fit the bill but I think the author was not very comfortable with Sonia doing that part (the Ganguly family has author's unconditional sympathy)- again reflecting a bias that can only amuse you.

Gogol (Nikhil) is all that he wanted to be, trying (rather succesfully) to shape his destiny throughout his life, and still his life is, in a way, pre-destined. In a strange tragic way, its Asoke who unwittingly and unconsciously decides what Gogol is and what he will finally be .

This story is so simple and predictable and yet so tragic! An expat couple attached to their roots. Their children who are baffled and frustrated by why certain things are so important to their parents. And the tension that is enevitable! What is so special? Isn't it the story of an entire generation of Indians who went to the US for a decent living and settled there.

That is Jhumpa Lahiri for you. With her, the story becomes your own story and you are so involved with her characters-her imaginations! What makes this story so excruciatingly painful comes from outside-from us, the readers, who feel compelled to reach out to her hapless characters despite thier weaknesses, their failings. I felt for Asima when she was very new to the US. How can you feel for her, who, as I said earlier is absolutely nobody in the story. Why, you even feel for the other bengali families, when you find out how they tried to keep in touch in a foreign land and stuff like that. I feel for Sonia, for whatever happened to Gogol might have happened to her also (apart from the naming fiasco). Moushami, for she shows what demands you place on yourself for getting acceptance in the mainstream society in an alien land. And Asoke! I just love him. A typical Indian father whose presence is always felt, even in his absence and he indeed is practically absent in the book.

What makes this book an absolute agony is that whenever I think of Gogol, I feel miserable: for my two little daughters.

कनुप्रिया

हिन्दी काव्य के जितने भी प्रतिमान तय किए जाएँ, जितने वर्गों का अविष्कार करें, छायावाद अपना शीर्ष स्थान कायम रखता है. इसका एक प्रमाण तो यह है की इस युग के अतिवाद से ऊब कर जब लोगों ने कुछ और लिखना चाहा तो बहुत समय तक यह निर्धारित ना कर सके की परिवर्तन की दिशा क्या हो. सप्ताकों का विकास और उनका त्याग इस दुविधा को दिखाते हैं. यह दौर था जब धर्मवीर भारती ने स्थूल का सूक्ष्म के प्रति विद्रोह का शंखनाद करते हुए संस्कृत काव्य और तनिक आधुनिक काल के बांग्ला-मैथिली काव्य के दैहिक प्रेम भाव का अवलंबन लिया. हिन्दी में प्रेम के दैहिक रूप के आराधक में भारती का नाम शिखर पर रहेगा. भाषा पर उनकी पकड़ छायावादी कवियों के टक्कर की है जिसने उनके काव्य-विषयक स्थूलता को भी एक मोहक आवरण प्रदान किया. उनकी 'तुम्हारे चरण' ऐसी ही एक अद्भुत कृति है. उनकी भाषा ने इस तन्मय प्रेम-काव्य को इतनी शालीनता बख़्शी है की मैं ग्लानिहीन इसे अपनी छोटी बेटियों को पढ़कर सुनाता हूँ. हाँ, संस्कृत और बांग्ला तथा विद्यापति काव्य सा सुंदर और उन्मुक्त चित्रण भारती के यहाँ नहीं है किंतु यह तत्कालीन साहित्यिक एवं सामाजिक रूढ़ि का दोष है, कवि के सामर्थ्य का नहीं.

भारती ने एक अवसर पाया था, प्रेम की दैहिक अनुभूति के आख्यान का, उसकी समस्त लौकिकता के संग. एक स्वर्गीय भाव के इस संसार में उत्सव की कथा कहने का एक अवसर.
यदि हिन्दी में कोई एक व्यक्ति यह कर सकता था तो वह निश्चय ही भारती थे. कनुप्रिया!

आज की रात
हर दिशा में अभिसार के संकेत क्यों हैं?
हवा के हर झोंके का स्पर्श
सारे तन को झनझना क्यों जाता है?
और यह क्यों लगता है
कि यदि और कोई नहीं तो
यह दिगन्त-व्यापी अँधेरा ही
मेरे शिथिल अधखुले गुलाब-तन को
पी जाने के लिए तत्पर है
और ऐसा क्यों भान होने लगा है
कि मेरे ये पाँव, माथा, पलकें, होंठ
मेरे अंग-अंग - जैसे मेरे नहीं हैं-
मेरे वश में नहीं हैं-बेबस
एक-एक घूँट की तरह
अँधियारे में उतरते जा रहे हैं
खोते जा रहे हैं
मिटते जा रहे हैं
और भय,
आदिम भय, तर्कहीन, कारणहीन भय जो
मुझे तुमसे दूर ले गया था, बहुत दूर-
क्या इसी लिए कि मुझे
दुगुने आवेग से तुम्हारे पास लौटा लावे
और क्या यह भय की ही काँपती उँगलियाँ हैं
जो मेरे एक-एक बन्धन को शिथिल
करती जा रही हैं
और मैं कुछ कह नहीं पाती!
मेरे अधखुले होठ काँपने लगे हैं
और कण्ठ सूख रहा है
और पलकें आधी मुँद गयी हैं
और सारे जिस्म में जैसे प्राण नहीं हैं
मैंने कस कर तुम्हें जकड़ लिया है
और जकड़ती जा रही हूँ
और निकट, और निकट
कि तुम्हारी साँसें मुझमें प्रविष्ट हो जायें
तुम्हारे प्राण मुझमें प्रतिष्ठित हो जायें
तुम्हारा रक्त मेरी मृतपाय शिराओं में प्रवाहित होकर
फिर से जीवन संचरित कर सके-
और यह मेरा कसाव निर्मम है
और अन्धा, और उन्माद भरा; और मेरी बाँहें
नागवधू की गुंजलक की भाँति
कसती जा रही हैं
और तुम्हारे कन्धों पर, बाँहों पर, होठों पर
नागवधू की शुभ्र दन्त-पंक्तियों के नीले-नीले चिह्न
उभर आये हैं
और तुम व्याकुल हो उठे हो
धूप में कसे
अथाह समुद्र की उत्ताल, विक्षुब्ध
हहराती लहरों के निर्मम थपेड़ों से-
छोटे-से प्रवाल-द्वीप की तरह
बेचैन-

(कनुप्रिया – केलिसखी)

कनुप्रिया का प्रारंभ एवं विकास सहज हैं तथा कथा का प्रवाह आवेग-मई. भारती का इस काव्य के उत्तरार्ध में विषयों का आरोपण न केवल कृत्रिम, बलात और अविवेकी है अपितु मेरी दृष्टि में उनके वैयक्तिक आग्रहों और महत्वाकांक्षाओं का उनके कवि-धर्म पर भारी पड़ना दिखलाता है. भारती का 'कनुप्रिया' में अनर्थक विषायारोपण ने इस अत्यंत सुंदर एवं साहित्य की दृष्टि से सशक्त कविता को समाप्त कर दिया. मेरा सविनय आग्रह है की 'कनुप्रिया' कवि की श्रेष्ठतम कृति के लायक थी. आह! कवि का आग्रह. यह सौभाग्य शायद कनु ने 'अँधा युग' के लिए तय किया था. राधा का भाग्य-दोष क्या उसके साथ ही गया!

यदि कभी हिन्दी काव्य पर अपूर्ण, एकाकी या एकांगी का लांक्षण आए तो निश्चय ही भारती अपने दायित्व से मुकर न सकेंगे.
तब तक इस अद्भुत एवं अविचारणीय-रूप से नष्ट किए प्रेम-गीत के शोक मे मेरे सहभागी रहें.

सुनो मेरे प्यार!
प्रगाढ़ केलिक्षणों में अपनी अंतरंग
सखी को तुमने बाँहों में गूँथा
पर उसे इतिहास में गूँथने से हिचक क्यों गए प्रभु?
बिना मेरे कोई भी अर्थ कैसे निकल पाता
तुम्हारे इतिहास का
शब्द, शब्द, शब्द…
राधा के बिना
सब
रक्त के प्यासे
अर्थहीन शब्द!
सुनो मेरे प्यार!
तुम्हें मेरी ज़रूरत थी न, लो मैं सब छोड़कर आ गई हूँ
ताकि कोई यह न कहे
कि तुम्हारी अंतरंग केलिसखी
केवल तुम्हारे साँवरे तन के नशीले संगीत की
लय बन तक रह गई……
मैं आ गई हूँ प्रिय!
मेरी वेणी में अग्निपुष्प गूँथने वाली
तुम्हारी उँगलियाँ
अब इतिहास में अर्थ क्यों नहीं गूँथती?
तुमने मुझे पुकारा था न!
मैं पगडण्डी के कठिनतम मोड़ पर
तुम्हारी प्रतीक्षा में
अडिग खड़ी हूँ, कनु मेरे!
(कनुप्रिया – समापन)