The colours of Indian Television

Indian Television, today, has myriads of colours to offer to its viewers, unlike the two decade old black and white glimpses. It is no longer an idiot box in itself, but a treasured box which is religiously married to every Indian household. Treasured because it has become indispensable to poor, bourgeoisie and rich equally.

I will, perhaps, fail to count the innumerable dishes of channels that are served under DTH banners ‘Wish karo to Dish karo’, ‘Ghar Aayee Zindagi’ and the like. And more the dishes, varied are the taste. Of late, I got the opportunity to taste, on television, a few luscious but quality dishes, in the searing summer vacations.

The menu - entertainment, sports, movies, regional and what not! But certainly the English news channels always used to be my soups or starters, or whatever you name! Whether it is UPA-II first year diary or the Maoists menace or the ubiquitous fashionable blasts – things gave me more choices for my appetite.

The main course was always a combination of variety of dishes, from movies to entertainment and often the dance and comedy soap-operas. Out of all these, the dance shows housing the little prodigious children enthralled me the most. I was totally amused to see the energy, flamboyance, enthusiasm, tenacity of these li’l masters thundering on wooden floors. Every nuance was articulated with master’s touch, every expression- be it romance or anguish- was extra-ordinarily reflected, every performance left me speechless.

After a satisfying main-course, I would normally indulge in a minute or two Sport desserts, anticipating June 11 footie Cup, for Team Cricket with all its young blood seems to have rather stuck in blood-donation camp up in Zimbabwe; and in India we only see cheer-girls and belly-dancers kidnapping the minds of our very own IPL rich cricket stars.

Politics of Change

Let me greet you, at the very outset, with a traditional ‘Namaste’ – which mothers a pious meaning that of - "I salute the God within you."
The cultural and spiritual heritage of this motherland has always professed and cultivated in its children a spirit of oneness, equality and sacrifice. As Swami Vivekananda says – “The highest ideal is eternal and entire self-abnegation, where there is no ‘I’, but all is ‘Thou’.”

Looking around at today’s so-called tech or TED age scenario, we have almost lost the very in-evitable strength of spiritual, cultural and moral divinity. The era seems to be pregnant with blasphemous and chauvinistic terrorism; human, and in particular, women atrocities; social in-equalities and the like - all these at the cost of whimsically wheel-chairing the rampant and nasty politics breeded by the corrupt heavy pocketed netas and dadas.
Is it, thus, correct to define politics merely as governance? Or is it more of a concerted game of superiority, shrewdness, cunningness and conspiracy– or more pronounced a game of Change but mostly for the substantial worse!

This eight letter word, astonishingly, has the most number of collocations – left-wing, radical politics; party, partisan politics; contemporary, modern politics; sexual, gender politics; student politics – and what not ! Of course, to my mind, a part of the above enumeration is healthy, but majority paint a polluted picture of encroaching one’s time and career. To cite a few common symptoms, this grave disease of politics may engender owing to favoritism, bias, ego, entice, romance, professionalism, blind vying, and the like. And once infested, it deepens its roots to an incessant perpetuation and calamity.

The consequences are dire for a victim– from a psychological collapse, to displacement of shelter, to chained and orphaned freedom, to a dead life languishing in the shadows of shame and fear– too much to eat away one and change him, at once. Let us, therefore, try and combat this cancer - of the handicapped head line on a cruel palm, of the very infection off a dictator of whims and conspiracy and be-fittingly a mastermind of life-destructive politics of change!

Let me conclude, again, with the words of Swami Vivekananda –
“…Good motives, sincerity and infinite love can conquer the world. One single soul possessing all these virtues can destroy the dark designs of millions of hypocrites and brutes.”

Fragile Innocence

“Only if your eyes sang the anthem of a true innocence”

The birth of all living species is characterized by an incessant flow of a river of innocence – be it for a green leaf, or the mighty human-beings. This very innocence then journeys all along – sometimes as your friend and at other times as a swindle. You can hardly cage it, for it is as elusive as imagination. But those who can capably nest it, to them life certainly offers the most pious flamboyance and grace.

There was a time when innocence ornamentalized human culture, tradition, values. Its fragrance smelled of piousness, its beauty outclassed every pageant, its love incessantly soft, and its volume un-measurable. Today it is more of commercialized – and can be aptly branded as ‘the disguised innocence’.
It has become the new-age modus-operandi for professional impersonation, lascivious pitfalls and the like. Rightly so the new supari for acutely sensitive and barbarian silent murders and blackmails as portrayed in myriads of Hindi movies.

In the present competitive age all you need to do (if you are sans this boon) is paint your face with the superficial colors of innocence. Those might not look like a true rainbow but surely can fox your opponent into kissing the futile salaciousness, the fragile innocence notwithstanding his exhaustive sanctified search.

Can you, eventually, appreciate the true innocence, if any, in this era, where every innocence seems to be blind, deaf and dumb, emotionless or rather a plate of un-reciprocative salacious salads?

With the World Champion

This man does not bathe in news nor is he the sizzling hero of common multitudes, but he certainly is the king of the minds and brains – the very one and only GM Vishwanathan Anand.

His recent world championship title against GM V Topalov of Bulgaria proved once again that he is undisputedly the most versatile and prodigious chess-master even at 40. Truly he remains the cherished icon of every single chess player of this motherland.

My experience with the grandmaster was exceedingly rich, inspiring and touching. I was moved to be in the very presence of the six feet tall milky king – so gentle, so submissive that will perhaps give you the futile illusion of him being a true genius and world-champion.

It all started in fall 2006, wherein I got an opportunity to play in the NIIT’s National Chess Championship – the very brand that sponsors Vishy from inception. It was indeed a hectic tournament which filtered players from grass-root levels i.e. from school level to the Nationals. For the intermediate district level, I had to go to Vapi, which was a 10 hour long chilling winter journey from Ahmedabad via a rickety State bus. Thereafter, I remember vanquishing all opponents from the neighboring states of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, MP; having to play online in my school alone till six in the evening. In the said regard I cannot miss out my teacher Ms J Rao whose incessant support steered me through all odds.

The finals of the Chess Championship beckoned me in Chennai in December 2006 just prior to my class X boards which further escalated my hesitation to participate. Eventually I landed up in the Russian Center in Chennai, a familiar place of Vishy’s chess-childhood, where the Grandmaster obliged us (the national participants) with a simultaneous. Almost everyone close to Vishy was present – his wife Aruna, his mother and not to forget the big-wigs of NIIT headquarters. To be very honest, our game was more of a commercial endorsement with dozens odd paparazzi and flashes terrorizing the very tranquility for a chess game.

I can well recall Vishy walking up to me at the end of my game and telling me my flaws – his humbleness, his greatness, his versatility inspired greatly the little chess-player in me. Last but not the least the memories of receiving the prize from the world champion still exhilarates me, especially because he is again the New World Chess Champion.

GM - Grandmaster (in chess)

Memories of Abu

You will probably like Gujarat for every romantic reason save the 3-4 months of excruciating and un-endurable heat – that’s one thing this land puts your semi-white skin to an ugly test. The worse entails engendering heavy raining of sweat of-late, unlike a couple of years back when only the epidermis burnt to death without sweat. Primarily, the said fact took us (3 families) to Mount Abu, in quest of some remedial relief from the scorching heat.

Coming to the composition of the retinue – it was multi-cuisine dish with young pros from varied fields- a pilot, two engineers and one to-be-ER and the last one still a student coupled with the stereo-typed supervising heavy weights. In all, a healthy dish and luscious too.

The itinerary precisely included Ambaji, the holy and revered worship place of Maa Ambe and therafter Abu for another one and half day. We eventually checked into Abu at around 2 pm and pacified our exhaustion in an oblivious sleep. The clement evening of Abu breezed all of us to Nakki Lake whose hilly, cemented but dilapidatedly dirty banks housed some of our mischievous commotion for two long hours coercing the other tourists to look at us perplexed and irritated. Poking, playing, enacting, teasing, taking series of snaps, mouth-watering slushes what not! The only thing left was to dive into the heart of the Nakki Lake but the water had mostly dried up, leaving behind bones of rocks as remnants. There followed some feministic marketing (but I doubt whether they bought things or simply bargained as usual) and the young team managed a bat-ball which actually paved for a night long corridor-cricket match in the gigantic common balcony of our hotel rooms. A thrilling and hilarious 5 member match with our excited parents acting in as both spectators and cheer-leaders but only for the first few overs – I guess!!

The next morning looked more cheerful…a much early wake-up morning tea at 11 am, the last person to have been luckily offered a tea only because it was a vacation; then a sexy shower followed by Park Avenue’s Good Morning, when it was bidding time for the morning in-fact; we set out for a breakfast and then the Bramhachari’s Peace Park, which looked antagonistic to its name, pregnant with multitudes of people. We then headed towards Dilwara, but the killing crowd discouraged any entry and thus we decided to worship our stomach in a restaurant before again stepping into the tiring afternoon’s oblivion.

Team young again had a wonderful time with bat-ball until late afternoon and eventually it was time to bid adieu to Abu – a place re-visited after 4 long years and thoroughly enjoyed by all and sundry to cherish it till a next visit.