Love, Life and Happiness

It is 15th August, 67th Independence Day of India. It was a keenly awaited event mostly by marketers promising amazing Thailand on the long weekend day, which extends into Raksha Bandhan next week.  There is nothing much happy about this independence day as we are sorely made aware of how fickle this independence is. Last fortnight has been particularly bad for the country, with the soldiers losing their heads, in real term in border skirmishes and the political leadership running around, somersaulting like headless chicken. The country which perpetrated these skirmishes went ahead and passed a resolution condemning India, while Indian leadership keen to earn a legacy, dithered and then shame-faced shouted- Same to same from our side, like two kids thumbing the noses. The loss of human life in the middle of these two juvenile leadership, celebrating independence day one after another has become another statistics. The two nations having lost any sense of self-respect are contending

It is said that Whenever we exhale We are dead for a moment, We keep pulling back Life, Inhaling and believing  Life to be a continuum While forgetting That life is nothing  But a series of constant struggle Of a breath to inhale Until We can continue to do it no more And surrender  Before the yawning  Death, which looks  At our pre-ordained defeat And prevails With a laugh Which thunders through The bosom of the skies. Human mind, Prevaricates, belies and befools Ourselves  Until the truth shatters Our little, make-believe existence.  I know it will happen to me Someday, as to anyone else, And tired of struggle  I do not struggle to win I wait to embrace the  Eternal defeat, But I have sneaked in  A slight victory, slyly Unknownst to death  The Ethernal, The little girl Who will wink at death When in that moment of defeat.

There are books and there are books. There are books which you read, dreamy eyed, amid slothful slumbers, floating between various stages spread between consciousness and unconsciousness. But then, there are books which hit you hard out of your stupor, drags you out of a protective Utopian shell, churns your heart and makes you want to cry out the truth, you are suddenly exposed to. This Novel by the great Russian is one such book. Having read it and wept over the pages, it makes you want to wander around like Nietzsche's Madman with lantern in his hands. It exposes one with the sadness in this world which embraces the Earth in its grey dullness extending across the continuum. Right when you are so dispirited to jump off the cliff, you find an audacious and stubborn dawn struggling to break free at the farthest end of the gloomy dark sky. This gloom, the dark and the sudden light at the end is wherein lies the beauty of the book.  Typical of Dostoevsky, the story does not p