Kavita Savita

भूमिका के संग एक कविता:

आज का मेरा निज ब्रम्ह-भाव

आप सब सुधिजन को अर्पित:

कविता का शीर्षक:

ब्रम्हंजलि

जब कवि हृदय से सत्य की

अविरल धार बहती है

हिमालय झुक कर एक अंजुलि

भावों के जल को पीने को

व्याकुल हो उठता है,

गंगा का निर्मल नीर और भी

अमृत हो जाता है

सागर के गहरे अन्तःस्थल में

सूर्य प्रकाश नहीं पहुँच सकता है

पर हृदय की सोई चेतना की

गहराई में कवि कमल नयन

उतर कर सोई तममय चेतना

को फिर जागृत कर जाते हैं

कमल के पुष्प खिला जाते हैं

और एक कहावत जन्म लेती है

कि "जहाँ न पहुंचे रवि

वहां पहुंचे कवि"

अम्बर के सूने आँचल पर

रंगों-किरणों-अक्षरों के अमर

आकार उभर आते हैं

बादल उमड़-घुमड़ कवि-हृदय-नीर

भर बरसने को व्याकुल

हो जाते हैं, धरती को जल से

निर्मल तृप्त बना जाते हैं

खोए उजड़े वन के वन फिर से

हरे-भरे हो जाते हैं

देवी-देव, ऋषि-गुरु-गण

आशीर्वचनों से ओत-प्रोत हो

नयनों से अश्रु-नीर उड़ेल जाते हैं,

कामिनी-कांचन का अमर पाश,

ब्रम्ह की ओझल-बोझल माया

ढीली पड़ जाती है

अखिल सृष्टि-ब्रम्हाण्ड-जगत

फिर जीवन-ऋत को मान

सहज प्राकृतिक हो उठता है

छंदों-स्वरों-सुर-लय-ताल

कण-कण में अंकुरित होता है

रेतीले मरुस्थल एक बूँद भाव

की पी कर अमर वर देते हैं

स्वप्न-जागृति का चेतन खेल

और भी विनोदमय हो जाता है

हृदय-हृदय के सोए अरमान

पूर्ण हो वरदान सदृश लगते हैं,

प्रेम पाश में अवनि-अम्बर

ऐसा बँध जाता है कि वह

मानवीय प्रेम का सुघड़ आदर्श

बन जाता है, मर्त्यों को अमर

बना जाता है, स्वर्ग को धरती पर

लाता है, अप्सराएं जन्म ले कन्या

बनती हैं, देव मानव शरीर को

मचलते हैं, एक कवि हृदय की

अमृत-धार वेद-गीता-बाइबल-

क़ुरान-गुरुग्रंथ साहब की

अखण्ड ज्योत बन जाती है,

बुद्ध-महावीर, राम-कृष्ण,

ईसा-मसीह-करुणाकर को

पुनः पुनः जन्म लेने का

सहज कारण बन जाती है,

ज्ञान-विज्ञान-कला-विद्या को

एक सूत्र में रख कर

संसार को सारमय कर जाती है.

कोटि-कोटि प्रणाम कवि और

उसकी भावांजलि को. 😛

Ghazaliya Sultanat

वक़्त का काम है गुज़रना गुज़र ही जाएगा

न ख़ुशी ख़ुशी न ग़म ग़म रह पाएगा

इतिहास सा तुम भी भरम मत खाना

इतिहास में सिकंदर भी महान कहलाएगा

वक़्त ने सब को बाँध रखा है पाश में

ख़ुदा को नींद भी आए तो सो न पाएगा

A Youth's Take

My nephew and I went to restaurant in Patna called Fine Dine and came across a rather quaint waiter there who gave us multiple remarks to create opportunities for hilarity. On our first visit with my nephew Tini, we were pondering over what dish to order and getting stuck at the strange sounding names given in the menu. The waiter was at hand watching our efforts. When we asked him to clarify what a dish with an outlandish name was all about, he said, "Sir, when I look at these names even I become khatarnaak pareshan (dangerously worked up)." Now if I had been there alone or with other grown-ups like me who have lost touch with the humour strewn in everyday life, maybe I would have just smiled at this remark and then would have forgotton about it. But you will see in a while what Tini, who studies in class 10 in DPS, Kanpur found in it. True jewellers can find jewels even in a garbage heap. And real magicians can turn stone to diamond. This is what Tini did to the khatarnaak pareshan remark. But first more of what that fabulous waiter said. When we asked him what all went into a particular dish, he named the ingredients and then I don't remember what we said that made him end his reply with "sab mila ke (everything added together), thank you". The waiter had an amazing capacity to cook up ingenuous string of words. The second remark gave Tini another chance to find humour. We both went on getting into the groove of the two comments and found that they yielded ladles of laughter.

We ordered a drink there called Mewa Glow that was really delicious. And then there were Dussehri mangoes that Tini had brought from his orchard in his native place Nehtaur in Uttar Pradesh. You will know later why I have mentioned all this.

Tini said khatarnak pareshan stands for mental tension with the SI unit Fine Dine (FD). He chose Fine Dine as a recognition of the fact that the concept was created in that restaurant. When I asked him what he could do with "sab mila ke thank you", he immdediately piped up that "it expresses the epitome of gratitude" and coined the term TOTY for it (Total of Thank Yous). Now all his mails to me end with TOTY instead of the plain "thanks". But it was the khatarnak pareshan phrase that he really took a fancy to. He effortlessly built on it to finally come up with something really funny. He summed it up all in a mail to me. This is what came (His formal name is Yashoraj Tyagi):
"TYAGI’S LAWS OF BRAIN TENSION

1. Tyagi defines brain tension as a mental or emotional condition which produces perceptions of strain or shock if its magnitude is positive. Negative magnitude is termed as a ‘state of relaxation’. Those who are neither tense nor relaxed are termed as foolish.

2. The second law specifies that any action which occurs inside or outside the specific confines of a particular human body produces a change in the magnitude of brain tension. (It is not necessary that any change in magnitude will be felt by the body concerned.)

3. The variations in the magnitude of brain tension always occur in alternate numbers and never consecutively.

4. Any accentuation in the state of tension or relaxation can be measured in Mewa Glows (1 Mewa Glow = pleasure in eating 5 Dussehris). Tension is measured in negative.

5. While transitioning from a state of relaxation to tension or vice-versa, the brain transcends the NGPT (Neutral Grace Period of Relaxation) which is also called enlightenment.

6. Overdose of enlightenment is dangerous as it may lead to
formation of Einstein (1 Einstein = 1 E = mc square)

The SI unit of the magnitude of brain tension is FD or Fine Dine (10,000 FD = Tension felt before a plane crash. Minus 10,000 FD = Relaxation (or negative tension) felt if an impending plane crash is averted absolutely safely.)

7. Mr Tyagi would like to say TOTY to everyone who reads this."

Tini's next mail said:

"From now on, prime ministers and chief ministers will take oath like this: 'I swear that I will try to the best of my abilities to prevent the FD level of even one of my fellow citizens from crossing the maximum threshhold ...'"

This pricked my own creative vein and I added to his rendition on FD (just imagine what a simple remark by an awkward waiter had spawned). Here is what I wrote to him:

"FD levels will be one of the parameters on which the human development status of a region will be evaluated. For example, it will be said that the average per capita FD (APCF) level of Bihar was lower last year than that of UP. That means the people of BIhar are better off than the people of UP as far as mental tension is concerned.

"After any natural or man-generated catastrophe, the authorities will try to bring down the FD levels of the affected people as soon as possible. News readers will speak like this: "The FD levels of the people hospitalised after the disaster are coming down slowly."

"The resilience and mental strength of people will be measured on the basis of their respective FD level response when they are exposed to different tension inducing situations. For example, there will be simulation of a person losing his flight on way to an important meeting and his FD level will be measured. Or how the FD level behaves when some bad news is conveyed to a person. Or how the FD level changes when a student gets a shocking exam result. FD responses to different situations will be one of the things that will be considered while recruiting people for jobs.

"FD clinics run by trained personnel will be working to measure FD responses to different sitations. The reports generated at these clinics will have to be submitted during the recruitment process. Since people will bribe clinic staff to get favourable FD reports, leading institutions like the UPSC and the defence department will have their own FD clinics.
"My own FD level has come down while thinking about all this. Long live FD."

Tini writes back:

"I think you should start a National FD Enforcement Committee (NFEC) to implement your ambitious plans of starting the FD revolution. In colleges from now on there will will be cut-off FD levels for students. In schools also FD tests will be taken up based on Tyagi's Laws of Brain Tension (TLBT).

I had read somewhere that on an average a new-born smiles 400 times a day, a teenager laughs 17 times in a day, and grown-ups take weeks to stumble upon laughter. Here was a 15-year-old who turned a little remark which would have been noticed at best with a faint smile by grown-ups into something that made him smile and laugh endlessly. And even turned my taut mind to frequent laughter. Long live humour. And long live youth.

To Laugh Is Thy Privilege

Published in Pioneer, Chandigarh on 1/9/12. Link: http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/91751-to-laugh-is-thy-privilege.html

By Amit Shekhar

            I laugh, therefore I am. This line could as much define human existence as French philosopher Rene Descartes’ celebrated “I think, therefore I am”. Laughter is as much necessary to qualify as a human being as thought. That’s because just like thought, laughter is also a gift that has been bestowed by nature only on humans.

Now, wait a minute. I can hear dissent based on recent scientific research that suggests gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and rats “laugh” when they are tickled. My own research on scientific research is still inconclusive merely because the researchers have failed to be conclusive on anything till now and made somersaults in their findings during the entire course of scientific journey that would pale both politicians and master gymnasts. Till science makes its first conclusive discovery, I would prefer to believe that only humans are capable of laughter. In that way, like thought, laughter seems to be one of the highs of ages of evolution, if I allow myself to believe that human beings are the supreme creation of nature, the climax of evolution. It is a conceited belief, and even conceit is a trait only humans are entitled to in nature.

It seems that nature not only turned thoughtful after creating man and made him capable of giving her company in being thoughtful, she burst out in laughter too at the grand game of creation and the masterpiece it had yielded in the form of man. And she made man capable of laughing along with her in the bliss of creativity that springs every moment from every corner of the universe which scientists propose began with a bang and the Bible declares started with a word, The Word. Who knows, scientists may one day realise that the Bible was bang on about the beginning of it all, and that their bang was The Word.

Coming back to laughter, it seems the tragedy with life today is that too much of the wrong kinds of thoughts have crowded out laughter from it. At times I am prompted to think that a corollary of Descartes’ profound “I think, therefore I am” is “I think, therefore I am miserable”. That should not have been the case, but that is how it has become.

It has been found that thought stops during the sexual climax. Thought takes a break also when we laugh deeply. Thought seems indispensable for human life, but it is absent at the peaks of joy. Spiritual masters say thought does the vanishing act also during experiences of supreme spiritual bliss. There seems to be some kind of trade-off between thought and happiness.

If thought is what is bugging me, laughter has the promise of debugging me. But laughter is no laughing matter. Rudyard Kipling in his famous poem “If...” mentions a lot of things that a man must do if he wants to have the “Earth and everything that’s in it” and more than that, if he wants to be a “Man”. It is a daunting list, although it is all very poetic, and manhood and the Earth and everything that’s in it don’t quite seem worth having if getting past the list is a precondition. To take just one example, the last item in Kipling’s list is to “fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run”. Imagine a lifetime of this kind of running. It’s too uphill a task and I would rather quit the race.

I can somehow manage to let go of the earth and everything that’s in it, but quitting Kipling’s race threatens to strip me of manhood too. I desperately look for a way to salvage it. Is there no easier way to manhood for a lesser mortal like me? And then it dawns on me. Can I laugh? And I laugh out loudly. That convinces me that I am man enough. For only a man (a human being — man here stands for both genders) can laugh.

The catch is that the act of laughing, especially in healthy and good spirit, and not morbidly, say, at the misfortune of others, can give close competition in being difficult to do to Kipling’s formidable list of acts that maketh a man out of a living being. The sensitive and wise drunkard Amitabh Bachchan plays in Sharabi very poetically declares how tough it is to laugh: Ya to deewana hanse ya Tu jise taufeeq de, warna is duniya mein aakar muskurata kaun hai? (Either the really crazy laugh or those whom the Almighty grants the good fortune of laughter, otherwise even a smile eludes those who come to this world.)

To laugh is not only human but curative too. That has been known for ages, as reflected in the saying “laughter, the best medicine”, which the intricate research of modern medical science has seconded. Who knows doctors may one day prescribe daily doses of Charlie Chaplin movies for cancer. Noted physician and spiritual mentor Deepak Chopra writes in one of his books that “if you are having the experience of exhilaration and joy, your body makes interleukins and interferons which are powerful anti-cancer drugs”. So a Charlie Chaplin movie that evokes laughter and joy may actually help cure cancer.

The real issue for me is: am I laughing enough and am I laughing right? If I am not having a good laugh at my life it is probably because just like beauty, laughter too lies in the eyes of the beholder and my vision needs a correction so that it can see humour in everyday life. With the right vision, maybe I too would burst out laughing at the grand game of creation, and fulfil the dream that creation dreamt when she dreamt up man.

If it began with a bang that was The Word, which Hindu belief says was Om, maybe it is meant to end with a bang, a word too, and that word, in all likelihood, is Ha, uttered at least thrice with hands raised skywards like the laughing Buddha, a symbol of auspiciousness.

amitshekhara@gmail.com