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

C For Compassion … L For Love …


Published in Pioneer, Chandigarh on 26.8.12. Link: http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/90091-teach-them-to-live-and-love.html

By Amit Shekhar

            There must be something terribly wrong with the way people are educated if all the degrees and academic brilliance can't ensure that people are honest, fair and good human beings. There is no end to dishonesty in all professions in India. Many people who are professionally adept are found to indulge in professional dishonesty and prove to be failed human beings. Is it enough to be a professional wizard when the person is bereft of a soul and a heart and probity? Our schools and colleges think they have done a good job if they hone your intellect and make you good academically. But we find our society reeking of corruption and other ills that surface when people are not human enough. Should schools and colleges have no role in making a person learn to love and tolerate and be compassionate, helpful and sound of character?

            The obsession with literacy appears meaningless when you square off the huge number of corrupt and morally deficient people who are well educated with one illiterate Ramakrishna Paramhans who has a disciple like Swami Vivekananda, a real pundit if ever there was one. And what about Kabir? He was illiterate like Ramakrishna but his wisdom and love not just for God but also for man live on. I am sure even those who are atheists or staunch believers in secular education would approve of an education that produces human beings like Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and Kabir, although that education was grounded in spirituality. Spiritualism seems to have lost its appeal as a nourisher of human qualities and therefore as an educator. Of course, whether to believe or not in God is entirely a personal choice and it is completely wrong to impose spirituality on anybody. But if spiritualism practised correctly can uplift not just the intellect but the human quotient of people, as has been seen in numerous examples, it surely makes a case for itself as something that should be a part of the curriculum along with secular subjects.

            We are in desperate need of more compassion that comforts and cures the huge number of suffering people on this planet. Lack of compassion can easily skew one's priorities and even make them inhuman. So while the poor, sick and destitute all over the world go on suffering, their neighbours and those who thrive on the services they render to society as lowly but indispensable workers think nothing of splurging money grotesquely. People no longer share what they have in surfeit with those who live a miserable life of poverty and deprivation. Even the idea of sharing never strikes them. We expect the world to be sympathetic and compassionate with us when we are in trouble. But insensitivity immobilises most people when it is their turn to extend a helping, sharing hand.

            We think nothing of spending huge sums on lunar and Mars missions when millions are in need of that money so that they can live a human life and die a peaceful death. The lunar mission appears very intelligent but it is a cruel and inhuman intelligence whose preoccupation with the moon is at the expense of the suffering of the earth and its people. Poet Basheer Badr unmasks the insensitivity and apathy that lurk behind lunar missions when he says: "Kisne jalain bastiyan, bazaar kyun lute / Main chand par gaya tha mujhe kuchh pata nahin" (Who burnt down these houses, who looted these bazaars? I know not because I was on the moon.)

            We make much of the rise of Kalpana Chawla from a Haryana school to outer space, but has any of our schools produced a Mother Teresa? One might argue that a school cannot produce saints but the problem is that we have not even tried yet. The crisis of the earth today is not a crisis of the intellect, but of the heart. And our education does not address the heart at all. The world needs more trips to the suffering hearts of human beings than trips to outer space or to the insides of atoms. The world is in dire need of the healing and nursing touch of more Mother Teresas. Trips to outer space can wait till the earth itself becomes a healthier, happier place. Our schools have taken up the challenge of producing more Kalpana Chawlas. That is fine by itself. But it is far more necessary for them to take up the challenge of producing more Mother Teresas.

            Catch 'em young applies not just to sports and studies but also to matters of the heart and soul. A person is most receptive when he is young. We would have more love, peace and happiness all around and not mere material prosperity and scientific and technological progress if love and compassion were part of the curriculum of the young.

            Education should not just make efficient but unethical and heartless lawyers, doctors and bureaucrats. It should also produce loving, sharing and caring human beings. It should make us sensitive towards the suffering and deprivation of not just our family and friends but human beings in general. The world is bleeding because our education focuses only on sharpening our intellect and making us efficient professionals and fails to foster the human qualities that would make us reach out to humanity with whatever we can share--our skills, talents, money, smiles and hugs.

            Kabir used just two lines to tell us what education should do and where it fails: "Pothi padhi padhi jug mua pandit bhaya na koi / Dhai akhar prem ka padhe so pundit hoye." (All the erudition gathered from tomes makes no one a pundit. He is a pundit who can love.) In another doha he says: "Daya bhav hriday nahi gyan thake behad / Te nar narak hi jayenge suni suni sakhi shabad (You have not kindness in your heart but you tire not of mouthing your knowledge / Surely such people will go to hell even as they take God's name.) 

Let Passions Play Out  

Published in Pioneer, Chandigarh on 8/9/12. Link: http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/93282-let-passions-play-out.html

Published in Millennium Post, Delhi on 7.12.12. Link: http://www.millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=15220

By Amit Shekhar

            Patna hosted a grand mushaira (Urdu poetry recital) on September 1. Big names of Urdu poetry like Waseem Barelvi, Munawwar Rana, Majid Deobandi and Iqbal Ashhar were among the poets who had come from various cities to read poetry. The poetry was refined and subtle, both in language and the feelings it conveyed, upholding the highest traditions of Urdu poetry. I have been following modern Urdu poetry in India and had heard some of the poets who came to the mushaira earlier. I was expecting outstanding poetry and was not disappointed. But it was the audience that belied my expectations, much to my satisfaction.

            Most of the people who came to listen were from the lower middle class. Young men were in a majority but there were many elderly people and women too. Every seat and space in the auditorium was filled. The spontaneous and robust daad (appreciation) showered on the poets by the audience showed that it had the maturity to understand the nuances of sublime and elevated Urdu poetry. And the daad was delivered the way it is traditionally done in a mushaira--with intensity, ardour and elegance which match the flavour of the poetry.

            American poet Walt Whitman said that "to have great poets, there must be great audiences, too". While Whitman's view is open to debate, the obverse is definitely true: to have great audiences, there must be great poets whose work they can savour. And my experience is that it is really great to have poets and audiences face-to-face.

            A mushaira, or a recital of poetry in languages other than Urdu too, is not a frequently held event in most cities of India. If it had not been held in Patna that evening, those who took part in it would not have missed it. The poets would not have missed it because real poets, the kind which graced the mushaira, write poetry for the sake of it and not for recital before an audience. And the audience would not have missed it because it was clear that it was an audience that enjoys poetry and nurtures its love for it irrespective of whether it gets a chance to attend mushairas, which are seldom held anyway.

            Compared to the big issues the country is grappling with, this mushaira was quite unimportant. And the mega events the world is forced to take note of from time to time made this mushaira look like a non-event, much like life on this planet would look on the scale of the universe. But much like we like to celebrate life on this planet and it has meaning and importance for us, the 'non-event' was an occasion for celebration of life for both the poets and the audience and meant a lot to them.

            Nobody dies if it does not happen, but life sure becomes richer if platforms, occasions and opportunities are created where this kind of celebration of life and all that it offers happens more often.

            The world was doing fine without the Internet and there was no chance of missing it when it did not exist. But can we do without it now? Among its various offerings, it has set up platforms where people can make friends, network, chat, exchange ideas and showcase their creativity. All the energy that’s flowing through the Net was there all the time and nobody was getting harmed when the Net was not there to serve as a channel for it, but it sure is a beautiful thing to see energy getting channelled positively and creatively.

            The TV competitions of dance, music and stand-up comedy serve a similar purpose. The talent was already there and had been preparing itself for years even with no signs of these shows around, and the audiences were there too, savouring their love for these art forms in their own ways. The TV shows just brought them together, and the country got to know how much talent it has and the artists came to know how huge and dedicated a following their art has. The importance of such platforms and avenues applies to many more activities that people enjoy in their own way, or would enjoy if given a chance to do. In many cases people are not even aware they have a talent, a special ability, a passion or a liking unless something comes up in their environment to make them discover it and enables them to nourish it.

            People seem to be doing fine and not missing it, but when a park, however ordinary, comes up in a neighbourhood, it becomes a channel for the energy of joggers, walkers and riotous children. A gym comes up and I wonder what all the fitness freaks and body builders sweating it out there would have done without it. But till it comes up, all the energy working itself out in the gym with utter sincerity does fine. A cyber café shows how much chatting, mailing and surfing mean to some people. Don’t open it and all the cyber-energy does okay in a latent state. Children have a great time with gully cricket, backyard football and driveway badminton, but give their locality a playfield and their sporting energy gets a better chance for expression.

            The need is to have more and more chances, however modest, for the throbbing, pulsating energy of India to come out into the open and express its creativity and beauty. The chances can be big or small, but they should be there. The passions, pastimes and private love affairs of common people with their calling need to unfold and find fulfilment. Much of the action is till missing, much of the energy is still unknown and unseen and the country seems to be pulling along fine. But the bustle and buzz can sure get better. The fizz is there in all corners of the country, waiting for the corks to be pulled to come bursting out and drench our thirst for life.

Life @ Work ...Work ...Work ...

Published in Pioneer, Chandigarh on 15/9/12. (Not uploaded on Pioneer website.)

Published in Millennium Post, Delhi on 21.12.12. Link: http://www.millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=16279

By Amit Shekhar

            Work is proceeding in a blurred rush in the office of a leading national daily in Delhi on a Sunday evening. It is time to take out the evening edition and the stranglehold of the deadline is complete. Suddenly a worker in the editing department cries in anguish, “Oh my God, it is 7.30.” Then he turns to his boss and pleads, “Sir, can I leave immediately? I am getting married tonight.” The boss looks at him indulgently and says with affection, “By all means. You have every right to.” As the bridegroom reaches the door hurriedly, his boss calls him and tells him sternly, “Make sure to return by 10. You have to bring out tonight’s edition.”

            This is a joke I heard in 1995 at the outset of my journalism stint in Delhi. It is an exaggeration of the way work was done in the media industry then, intended to make people laugh. But the story worked as a joke only because those who heard it found it experientially close to reality. A reality painfully endured by workers not just in the media industry but other corporate sectors too, both in the private and public domain, in the economic reforms era which began in 1991 and yielded a mixed package of huge changes in all spheres of life in India.

            While a thing of beauty can be a joy forever, a thing of pain cannot last forever. But corporate workers in India, especially in metros and big cities, have stoically pulled along with killing work schedules simply because there is no way out for them. It is time the biggies charting India’s economic course gave this a thought. For the statistics have looked both good and bad since India began making its desperate bid to arrive on the world economic scene, but cold figures have never told the gut-wrenching story of how India’s workforce has been crushed and mauled underneath the strides the country has taken on the world stage.

            Nothing expresses pain like poetry. These lines tell one of the many stories behind India's economic success story: "Jo saaz se nikli hai wo dhun sabne suni hai, jo taar pe guzri hai wo kis dil ko pata hai" (The world hears the tunes arising from a musical instrument, but who has the heart to understand what the strings of the instrument undergo?).

            There are pockets and perches of ease on the work scene, but they are uncommon. And only a privileged few can get there because, besides talent and hard work, which a lot of people can offer, getting there needs superlative levels of luck and politics. And superlative levels of anything, by definition, are rare.

            Workers have endured the grind of the 9-to-5 workday and the five-day workweek for long with groans and sighs as an unavoidable part of life. It is never fun to be in bondage and this grind is nothing but bondage, however sophisticated and civil it may be made to look. Work tied to an unrelenting routine and various layers of subordination and constraints has no chance of being a joy. Joy comes with freedom. But what about a 9-to-9 workday (or a 12-hour workday with other timings, often quite unearthly) spread over six and more days a week? There’s only so much the body and mind can take.

            When I worked in Delhi for a widely read news magazine in the early years of the previous decade, we were expected to deliver top-notch creative headlines (the magazine proprietor’s role model for his magazine was the American Time, no less) at 3 in the night after we had already put in 14 hours of work. The magazine has done well for decades, but my colleagues said that if you squeeze it, it will release the wails and tears of those who work to bring it out. It was just an imaginative lament arising from disgust and exasperation, but that’s what workers were reduced to—silent wails and invisible tears—when the choice before them was to either be at their creative best at 3 in the night or be fired for not being good enough.

            Work loses all its appeal and charm if it has to be done in these kinds of distressing, agonising circumstances. All workers look forward to then is the time after work, but they can’t find it because it is simply not there with a 12-hour workday and six- to seven-day workweek. This schedule, with some variations, is common in the corporate world. So if at least six days a week, a worker slogs 12 hours, sleeps six hours, wades through traffic two hours, eats and snacks two hours, gets ready for his day in an hour, he is left with an hour for himself, his family and his society.

            The duration of different activities varies from day-to-day, but this break-up of a corporate worker's day gives a rough idea of the way his life is perpetually under siege. He may decide to completely ignore himself even at the cost of his physical and mental well-being, but he can’t endlessly ignore the needs, duties and chores that come with family and social life. The inescapable tensions, anxieties and worries of his work spill over into whatever spare time he gets and end up consuming it too.

            Charles Dickens began A Tale of Two Cities with that memorable line: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …” That was about England and France around the time of the French Revolution (1789-99). But transcending the confines of space and time, as only a line from a true classic can, it applies to today's India too. If India has been a rocking party scene for the past two decades, the revellers are having a great time because there are people who are doing a lot of running around serving them. People who don’t even have the breathing space to step back and sigh, “Ah, some party this.”

D for Democracy, Not Dynasty

Published in Pioneer, Chandigarh on 22/9/12. Link: http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/96452-the-day-of-the-democrat.html

Published in Millennium Post, Delhi on 21.12.12. Link: 

 http://www.millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=16907

By Amit Shekhar

            Friends, Indians, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to declare that democracy has won in India, not that it has lost. I will now present some slices of the political life of India. That will show just how real democracy is in our nation.

            Facing imprisonment in the fodder scam, Lalu Yadav quit as Bihar CM and his wife Rabri Devi, a rank political non-entity with no experience in public service, was elected leader of his party in the Bihar assembly and CM of Bihar. Rabri’s brother Subhash Yadav is a former MP. Another brother Sadhu Yadav was an MLC, MLA and MP when Lalu and Rabri ruled Bihar. Why did I say they ruled Bihar?

            ‘Rule’ has a royal ring to it and royalties ended in India after Independence. But the media and common people continually addressed Lalu as ‘king’ of Bihar when he was in power in the state and he is still the ‘supremo’ of his party RJD. It was never said that Lalu is serving his state and his party, as he should be in a democracy. I have reason to believe the media and people would at least be getting basic vocabulary right. But these are minor issues and I am going into unnecessary details. After all, as the Bard said, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet".

            So was it democracy in Bihar in the case of Rabri becoming CM and her brothers becoming legislators? Or was it a case of neo-monarchy masquerading as democracy? Of course, countrymen, it was democracy because everybody knows that Rabri and her brothers were elected to their positions in the genuine democratic ethos of free and fair polls not influenced at all by matters of kinship. If it were not so, it would very well have been proved by now in a court of law.

            Let's take some more fond looks at how democracy thrives in all corners of India. Sheikh Abdullah was head of National Conference (NC) and CM of J&K. His son Farooq Abdullah was a political rookie when he became president of NC. He was elected CM of J&K when his father died. Farooq's son Omar Abdullah held Union cabinet portfolios before becoming NC chief. At present Farooq is NC president and Omar is CM of J&K.

            The electronic media referred to Omar's elevation as NC chief as his tajposhi (Urdu for being crowned). Whatever is wrong with the media? 'Crowing' is all about royal ascension and NC announces on its website that it has "a separate constitution that guarantees inner democracy to strengthen a democratic system". It was definitely free and fair elections that made Omar NC president and J&K CM. Elections that are not free and fair are annulled in India. That is what the law demands. And Omar’s election was not annulled. So it has to be free and fair, not swayed in any way by the undemocratic considerations of ‘dynasty’ and ‘high command’.

            Charan Singh had stints as Uttar Pradesh CM, Union minister, deputy prime minister and prime minister. He was head of Lok Dal when he died. His son Ajit Singh became party chief after him. Ajit also got Union cabinet portfolios. At present he is a Union minister and president of Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). His son Jayant Chaudhary is a Lok Sabha MP and RLD general secretary. All this is pure democracy. It is about the practice of free and fair electoral politics in letter and spirit. It has not been proved otherwise. The law of the land is guided by solid evidence, not by some people having some impression in their mind that something's wrong somewhere.

            I need not go on mentioning shining examples of the triumph of democratic politics in India. The merry list of loyal servants of the democratic spirit in India is endless. I am not proposing in the least that everything is perfectly alright with Indian democracy. Nothing is perfect nor ever can be. But I give you my word that most of the time lineage plays no role in politics at all levels in India, from the panchayat to the Parliament, and also within the political parties on the electoral scene. Nah, India is a mature democracy.

            Innumerable champions of democracy have slogged it out at all the levels of the Indian polity, earning name and recognition to various degrees. It would be really impossible to name all of them. But it would be fitting to mention in passing some more outstanding leaders and important political parties that have contributed handsomely to make Indian democracy what it is today. Believe me, while naming them I am bunching people of a family just to bring some method and order to the listing and not because I want to send a hidden message that family connections were crucial in the rise to prominence of the politicians named below. Here goes.

            Devi Lal, his sons Om Prakash Chautala, Partap Chautala and Ranjit Chautala, and his party INLD. Om Praksah's sons Ajay Chautala and Abhay Chautala. Mulayam Singh Yadav, his son Akhilesh Yadav, his brothers Shivpal Yadav and Ramgopal Yadav and their party SP. Biju Patnaik and his son Naveen Patnaik. Sheila Dikshit and her son Sandeep Dikshit. N.T. Rama Rao, his son-in-law Chandrababu Naidu and their party TDP. M. Karunanidhi, his sons M.K. Alagiri and M.K. Stalin, his daughter M.K. Kanimozhi, his nephew Murasoli Maran, his grandnephew Dayanidhi Maran and their party DMK. Bal Thackeray, his son Uddhav Thackeray and their party Shiv Sena.

            The family linkages of the political biggies named above show an interesting and remarkable facet of Indian politics that is a matter of sheer chance—politics runs deep in some families. It's just freaky chance, nothing else. It is not a sign by any chance of the failure of democracy in India.

            By the way, why do the media call Rahul Gandhi yuvraj? The media keep mixing up their words. D in Indian politics is for democracy, silly, not dynasty.