Incompleteness..

There is something haunting about the incomplete things. A painting left incomplete with just two eyes drawn on the canvas, staring at you, penetrating you deep down inside. A house in the neighborhood, left under-constructed, which didn't see the joys and the celebrations of the people who would have lived in there, had it gone on to become complete. A tree uprooted in the storm, its greenness drying out of its veins with every passing moment and unripe fruits still on its branches. A paper with few words written on it but all smeared and illegible now. A promise promised long ago but now not kept and forgotten and along with it crushing all the dreams which were seen but never became reality. And when the realization strikes that this incompleteness is there to stay, forever, it instills hollowness inside. Paradoxically, this hollowness is so complete; it engulfs the mind and senses completely blocking the space for any other thoughts to come in.

Same Day And Another Year...

He tried to smile and was surprised to see that he actually managed to. But he knew that his eyes will betray him. They didn’t. “May be because it’s eleven years now”, he thought. “But then why did the sleep elude me whole night yesterday?”, He pondered again. “And what is this uneasiness inside again?”.


“But I smiled today, I really did. I smiled, chuckled and even laughed; and my eyes didn’t betray me either..”, He looked out of the window, gave a look at the high-rise buildings which still had the lights on at few floors but under the overcast  sky, they looked different; draped in shadow. They looked hollow and lost as he was feeling right now. He thought of the various distractions he had tried that evening similar to the previous years, but couldn’t take off his mind from the fact that it was ‘this day’ again. “May be I should have stayed back till late hours in the office”, He thought with his right hand on the window pane. Suddenly a cold wave of wind swept across his face. He looked at the watch. It was 12:15 AM. “Eleven years..”, He sighed, and closed the window..

And That One Fatal Decision

One wrong decision cost Osama Bin Laden his life.. Instead of opting for a hideout in Pakistan (where looks like he was duped), he should have thought of coming to India and get recognized (And you bet he would have been easily).. We would have arrested him 'alive'.. Then he would have been tried in Indian courts for a decade or so to give him a 'fair judgment' and then the death penalty to which he could have always appealed; Dragging the case for another few more years at the highest court and on getting death sentence again, he could have filed mercy plea to the President.. We do have sensitive people like Medha Patekar and Arundhuti Roy who would have supported and fought to the hilt to get him the justice on 'humanitarian' grounds.. Then there are whole lot of human right activists who would have gone on fast unto death demanding to give him a fair chance to 'change', with 'After-all he too is a human' with equal right to live' being their core logic.. Even our Government would have been glad to spend billions for his security which he certainly didn't get in Pakistan.. More than anything, Kasab and Afzal Guru would have got some company.. But one judgmental error of Osama sealed his fate..

P.S.: Pun intended

What Is My Identity....

Working in a foreign country brings a whole lot of new understanding and insights about our life.. We get to see a new culture, new places, new food habits and new beliefs.. And if we try to, then we also get to discover some facts about ourselves which we always knew but never paid attention to.. A usually unquestioned question which more often than not gets an unsatisfactory answer is “What is my identity?”

My Passport says, I am Rajeev Kumar Jha with so and so date of birth and a citizen of India.. But most significant identity which it adds with me is my Passport number.. My PAN card gives me another identity number.. From religious point of view, I am a Hindu and on caste lines, I am a Brahmin whose mother language is Maithili.. From my family’s perspective, I am a son and a brother, may be a good one.. From my friend’s point of view, I am an understanding and caring friend (I hope).. Looking from Accenture’s perspective, I am Software Professional with Java/ J2EE skill set.. For the client here at KL, I am a GCP resource whom they have called from another country to get their work done.. From my colleague’s point of view, I am a team mate, who might or might not be co-operative and the one with whom he/ they need to work with.. From the perspective of the nearest Indian restaurant from my flat here, I am a customer who mostly looks for vegetarian food.. As I have, each one of us are by default attached with a set of identities which may be religious, social, professional or general in nature.. And we all are defined by multiple sets of identities.. Not marking this statement as conclusive and final, barring a few, our identity mostly depends upon other's perspective.. So identities do have important roles to play in our life.. But problem arises when we start giving them the undue attention.. When I think about few of the basic problems back home in India, I feel that somehow, we have let some of these ethnic identities rule our mind and control our lives.. There are quite a few of these ‘set of identities’ which have been in attention for all the wrong reasons.. We don’t get divided over the professions we are having.. We don’t hate people who work for any other company, even a rival one.. We don’t really care about the fact that if we studied and went to the same college or the different ones.. But we do get divided over ‘Religion’, ‘Caste’, ‘Language’, ‘Region’.. Let’s look into these very quickly..

Religions came into existence to bring ‘Me’ and ‘You’ together and convert them into ‘We’.. Today it has again become ‘We’ and ‘You’.. Are we really ‘following our religion’? Caste is probably most misunderstood of various identities that we carry.. It’s just the name of the profession people were involved in years ago.. But ironically, over the years, their generations carried that thing as an identity which took shape of ‘Caste’.. Ever thought of calling kids of an Engineer as ‘Engineer’ or the child of a Doctor as ‘Doctor’ just because of his/her parents profession? Basis of a caste system is as simple as that.. Then why do we continue to divide and discriminate over this ages old baseless thing? Ironically, most of us are doing that.. Coming to language, isn’t it something as simple as ‘medium of communication’? Then why do we see ‘Mine is better’ or ‘Ours is more rich’? No matter which God or faith or religion we follow, we have certainly not been given the power of speech by the creator so that we can spit venom and demean others.. Language is a need, a vital one and its importance solely depends upon the place and people we are interacting and working with.. End of story.. But many people tend to read in between lines and many others know how to manipulate things for their own advantage.. No wonder we have people spreading hatred on the basis of language as well.. Then comes in the ‘Region’.. Yet another dividing factor and has some of its roots in previous three factors.. And there has been continuous attempts by some political entities as well to fuel the issue deliberately to keep their pot boiling.. This has been made a sensitive issue needlessly.. Only thing I want to state is, if we are Bihari, Bengoli, Marathi, Gujari etc first and then an Indian, then we are not Indian in real sense.. But reality is, this aspect is there to stay specially because we have regional political parties which will always use regionalism to spread hatred for their own gain..

So here we are, in the 21st century, and still clutched in the age old beliefs and letting our actions being determined by these meaningless facors.. Some conscious efforts at individual level can certainly make the things improve.. A person doesn’t become good or bad, successful or failure because of the religion he follows, the words he speaks while praying, the Gods he worships.. A person doesn’t become intellect or dumb on the basis of language he speaks.. A person doesn’t become respectful on the basis of caste he is from but because of the deeds he has done.. A person doesn’t become superior or inferior because he belongs to a specific region.. The biggest truth is, we are human beings, an intelligent specie.. Let’s do some justice to this fact.. What was the caste or religion of the people who discovered fire? Or what was the language spoken by the people who set the first wheel rolling? Does it matter? It doesn’t.. It is just about and it is all about the legacy we leave behind by good things that we do here when we are alive.. It need not be a great invention or something on similar lines.. It can be something as simple as treating everyone equally and leading our life in a way which helps in taking the world closer to real harmony even by the slightest extent.. It is about compassion, it is about tolerance and more than anything, it is about doing our work with sincerity and in the right way.. It is about caring and adding smile to an anxious face.. If these words seem to be superfluous, I will try to make them a little simpler.. We all want to be happy in life.. Life is all about an honest attempt wherein we are living happily and giving an honest attempt of trying to make others happy as well..

Anything which pulls me towards negativity and makes me prejudiced is not a part of my identity.. So what is my identity? I am Rajeev, a human being.. I am Rajeev, and I believe in doing my work with sincerity and try to be a helping colleague.. I am Rajeev, and I hope to be a good and caring son, brother and friend for my family, relatives and friends.. I am Rajeev.. and I love to look into the vastness of the infinite sky and its blueness and at night the twinkling stars and the reflection of the moon in water, the same way all of us do.. And I am Rajeev, and love to listen the innocent giggles of kids and watch the smiling faces which sets a real sense of pleasure and fulfillment inside us....

A Nation Betrayed

We are living in a difficult time.. It is an era of scams, enquiry commissions, sky rocketing inflation.. I hate to paint this gloomy picture full of disparity.. But writing in anything otherwise doesn't hold any meaning because these are few facts which even though make us uncomfortable, but they are very much true..So question it leaves behind is, where are we heading to as a nation?

Being in a new country, one way to keep track of the things back home is following the news.. And I do that by using google..co..in >> 'News' tab.. And barring a few instances, usual headlines are the unpleasant ones.. Latest one being CM-Governor ugly spat in Karnataka and the violence that followed on Saturday Bandh.. Same story repeated again.. I will not talk about 'What's the point in observing Bandh', 'The economic loss which occurred', 'How that money could have been utilized', 'The inconvenience common man had to face'.. Because they hold no meaning to our politicians.. We are being governed by a sick and insecure lot, who are confined to their own personal ambitions.. One thing that has been very consistent across the nation and states is, we always have had corrupt Government(s) and irresponsible opposition(s) whose intention has always been to topple the Government so that they can take turns and loot the country..

Why cannot the politicians behave a bit more responsibly? Recently we had a statement coming from a top notch leader that joining politics is about sacrifice and one should not consider it as a career option.. I seriously doubt this.. Our MPs and MLAs don't work for free.. As a matter of fact, being an MP or MLA is probably most lucrative job today and you don’t even need a professional degree to qualify for this! All you need to have is, good political contact(s), lots of money (That means really a lot of them) and/ or some muscle power.. When it is the question of joining the politics, there are a number of ‘*Conditions Apply’ for common people.. But at Press Conferences, few of our charismatic ‘youth leaders’ always ‘encourage’ the ‘young and educated’ to join Politics.. But the real fact is, for commoners, they will ask you to come through ranks and in an imperfect and undemocratic system where genuine qualification matter least, it is impossible to ‘come through ranks’ alone and reach a responsible position.. About the 'Sacrifice' aspect, it is quite well known fact that how patriotic our politicians are and how many of them lose their sleep over the issues common people are facing today.. To sum up, I only see insincerity and shamelessness as far as acts of our politicians are concerned.. There might be handful good ones, but the whole system is so much rotten that those few will never have a free hand in setting the things right..

As most others, I will leave even this feed as a non conclusive one.. Not that I have run out of words or the ideas, but at the moment I am having a feeling of repugnance.. We have been let down and cheated so many times now.. These politicians have forgotten that they have been elected and selected and are being paid handsomely to do some work.. But what they are doing is far from what they are expected to do.. Worse still, they are diverting the attention from their incompetence by involving people into their political rivalries.. Not only they are not doing what they are supposed to do in their 'working/ official' hours, but they are also wasting other resources for their own benefits.. This is simply not done..

Just think about the number and monetary values of the various scams in recent times.. Think about the similar incidents which have happened in past.. Then think about the names that were involved in those scams.. How many of those have reached a logical end? How many culprits have been punished? More than everything, how much amount related with these scams has been recovered? A small analysis of these questions brings up the answer that why we should not be surprised to see the shady images in our political system and why we have people with criminal backgrounds getting tickets and contesting elections even from behind the bars.. In fact, this is something common across all the political parties.. Our law and judicial system is applicable to the common people only and may be our Politicians don't come under the perview of it. Bigger the stature, more 'Pas Applicable' laws become to them. But we should not be complaining, for being a good citizen, we should have 'full faith' in our 'Judicial system'.

So where does it leave the common man? At least from what I can comprehend, it leaves ‘we the common people’ with very little options.. We need to be contended by what they are doing.. We have cynics running the country who are full of murky intentions and want to see the things going on as per their whims.. May be we should get used to this feeling of betrayal and abuse, maybe we have got used to it….