poem

chale guftagu to mai ki, na paimaane ki ho,
chalke to chasm e saaki se, na maikhane ki ho..

chide mehfil mein kuch yun zikr e yaar ab,
ho baat gar to guzrey zamaane ki ho..

dinon mehmaan reh gayi hasrat e yaar bhi,
nikale dam jis ghadi wo tere aane ki ho...

On the rationality of choice and existence

I must admit before the reader that in writing this piece ,I have not attempted to advocate a point of view.Rather I have tried to put forward an honest admission of a sort of conflict that I have been unable to resolve.

I would start by quoting Sartre:
"Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance."
There is another statement by him which goes as:
"All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure. "
Now if without falling into the trap of a pessimistic or an optimistic perspective,if one analyses the logic behind these statements ,one will see that they seem to directly challenge the rationality of choice. Rationality to me here implies whether to a choice made in a given context, the reason backing it was good enough or not.

There is no denying fact that under a given situation the individual interest becomes the prime motivation to guide the necessary action. Here 'individual' implicitly implies also a group element or what one calls collective decision.Herefrom arise two points of serious debate.
Firstly arises the question of how much freedom do we actually have or can exert in exercising a choice.Here one is confronted with a bigger decisive factor , what I call causality.Causality in general implies a sequence of cause and effect. It has been since we have acknowledged time to be and will linger till time is. Now all our decisions, choices, actions have a beginning in time,meaning they arise out at some instant in this sequential flow of causal interconnections. This is the very fact that renders those decisions
devoid of any sort of so called freedom.It is because in a causal setting future is not independent of present and likewise present not independent of past.What is today has its seed in the womb of past.It includes everything ,you me,our reason ,our being ,this whole order before us ,of which we are an insignificant part .
What I ask is that if reasons for the present to be were already there in the past and what I call today is merely a result of a causal flow,then how can my thought or reason or choice be free of this supremacy of a causal decisiveness.This really gives a feeling of ' What is there is meant to be and it could not have been otherwise'.

The second point of debate is on the conflict of choices.When I try to act according to the reasons which to me are correct I may be coming in the way of what is right or beneficial for the 'other'.
In such a case one can say that this conflict has its roots in the bounded nature of rationality of the two conflicting groups. Argument given is that both are having a myopic vision of the nature of what is to be called 'right' decision and can be corrected by an informed and broadened vision which might result into coalescing of conflicting interests instead of a confrontation.
Now here there is a question which would put us before a broader question on the nature of existence.This so called 'right' decision backs the idea of good for the largest possible number of people.But this is statistics,a sort of quantification. All we are saying it is better to make hundreds smile if it can be done on the tears of few. All that is happening is a mathematics of quantifying justice and surprisingly humans have always adhered to this principle sacredly since times immemorial. One has never questioned the importance of the ones left behind in this scheme of justice.This is what is called the rule of majority.We never put a question that why is it that will of a lesser number of people should not have a say if it is opposed by a greater number.There is no more basic premise other than to go with what the greater number of people have agreed to.
Now here you will see the defeat of the very order of justice. Just is what is right for the maximum number of people possible. Or in other words maximum number of 'I's' satisfied is what we understand as justice.This kind of a definition lacks a notion of good or bad or right or wrong that means anything other than a greater extent of individual satisfaction materialised.
This is what opens the door to the crisis of existence. If in the entire scheme of things we tend to justify existence as a protection of individual interest, or in a collective sense, of siding with justice , we are confronted with a lurking notion of the futility of this entire exercise. The question that troubles is that the very 'individual ' that seeks his protection or validation of his strive to be, loses his import if there is no absolute way to decide why or why not one is needed is this order. Reason being the fact that the sides created to nurture the illusion of right and wrong are created and decided by individuals only and there is no universal law to uphold or justify the reason for you or me to be here. Thus it seems right to say that it is not that we are here because we were needed , but since we are here now we have to fight to justify why we are here.
It is because of this reason that all our debates of national or international, physical or metaphysical concerns have put the individual at the centre, and rest everything as a peripheral extension signifying his needs or his responsibilities.And since this way of understanding the world around us is so old and deep rooted in our psychology, mankind has almost fallen prey to the thought that its existence taken into centre must define the course of all that is and would be.This is probably the reason we are the most selfish, authoritarian and cruel race on one side and on the other side constantly fight with a sense of deep insecurity to save our ground, to uphold our claim towards our fulfillment.
I guess we will never know for sure, but as it is said 'to be or not to be' still remains the unsolved question before us.

याद ....

ना मंजिल थी , ना कारवाँ रहा ,
कुछ गुबार था , कुछ धुआँ रहा ...

गुज़री तन्हा यूँ तो राह -ऐ -ज़िन्दगी ,
तुम साथ थे मगर , मैं जहाँ रहा .....

टुकड़ों टुकड़ों में ख़ुशी , आई हयात लेकर ,
तेरी रहमत का मुझे , कुछ यूँ गुमाँ रहा ....

और की मुझे , आरज़ू भी क्या ,
रकीब ही यहाँ , जो राज़दां रहा ....

FACETS OF BIRTH CONTROL IN INDIA

Before going into the topic i would like the reader to go through these excerpts from a reliable press source on the matter.

"...total fertility has fallen from an average of 4.7 children per woman in 1970-1975 to 2.6 children per woman in 2005-2010. This has not only defused the demographic time bomb by slowing the growth rate of population, it has brought with it an unavoidable corollary — an aging population. Again, while it was well known that humans were living longer than ever before, the proportion of elderly in the total population is rising at an eye-popping pace with fewer children coming into the world."

"In India, about 56 per cent of couples are estimated to be using some form of birth control, up from about 45 per cent in 1988."

Now,if you will carefully analyse the first piece of information above,the burning issue seems to be the fact that the lower fertility has compromised the statistics in a manner where the children are losing against the aged people in terms of head count.The aftermath in the demographic seems to have stemmed from the population getting more and more aware of the birth control measures available .Now reading the second piece of information you will feel that this is a bloody fix.I mean what exactly should we do to solve this problem. Any decent couple deciphering the meaning of this would argue,when our forefathers were busy copulating and bringing the "blessings of God" into this world,the government did not approve of it then.Now when we have barely started to restrain our reproductive facilities,they ,without saying it to our faces are in effect telling us to fuck faster and with results to increase the numbers of the working age group.

On one hand we can blame the improving scenario in the field of medicines and health care(if at all it has improved),to carry the average life expectancy a bit higher( more old hogs around).On the other hand i am reminded of the strenuous effortsf rom the media and the government for the past 2 and a half decades with all those advertisements on condoms and pills and vasectomy to bring some 'sense' to the masses.Nostalgia takes my mind to those good old days of doordarshan when condoms had just started to imply not just healthy and safe sex but an unprecedented euphoria in coitus which apparently people were unaware of .There was this ad in which a lady would come out of her house in the morning ,face tired and smiling,watching her man riding a horse through the length of the open beach(or field ,i dont remember),and then the ad would reveal the name of the brand in big bold letters 'MASTI'.Then i could make no sense of it as to what is the bloody horse doing here,or why is the man going horse riding in the pleasant quiet hours of morning,or is the lady happy to see that her man can ride a horse too..?? Even today the advertisement is an enigma as i cannot decide whether the implicitly implied 'Masti' is related to the happy couple ,with a post coital bliss plastered on their faces,or to the stallion himself. I have decided to count on both(after all ad people are geniuses).

Well, those were the old days, when references to sex and precaution were in hushed tones.Now we have road gigs on TV with guys wearing coustumes looking like condoms and asking (particularly) college girls their views on safe sex. I guess bye bye ignorance.

So, as matters rest to my confused mind, it seems that still the choice is with people. Well you cant just tell the oldies to go to hell for living longer than you want them too. But on the question of bringing more into this godforsaken world ,well you can argue with yourself to decide.

"Fuck all you want to,but fuck it no more "... Loadu

ख़याल

यूँ भी कभी आरज़ू बेक़रार होती है ,
निगाह जब आइने से शर्मसार होती है ...

किसी दम जो ज़ेहन से उतरे है ख़याल उनका ,
तब हमें भी फ़िक्र -ऐ -कारोबार होती है ....

नजीबों से हो भला हमें क्या वास्ता ,
अपनी तो हर बात ज़िक्र -ऐ -यार होती है ....

ले आई गर्दिश हमें ये किस मक़ाम तक ,
जीत भी अपनी जहाँ , एक हार होती है ....

गुज़रे  कम ना इम्तेहान मुफ़्लिसी के लेकिन ,
कोई ज़िद है कि तबियत अब भी तैयार होती है .....

फिर फिर जायें क्यूँ उसी  राह ऐ दिल ,
हर जुर्रत जहाँ बस एक इंतज़ार होती है ....

मैं और तुम

कितना और रोयें , कि इक बार मुस्कुरा सकें ,
और कितना खोएं , कि इक बार पा सकें

लम्बा हो सफ़र , तो ये इनायत ही कर खुदा ,
जो दूर हो चले हैं , कभी पास आ सकें

इस दयार में उलझी हैं राह सब ,
साथ चल कि हमसफ़र , कुछ दूर जा सकें

उम्र ने बुनी खामोशियाँ ये क्यूँ ,
कभी तू ही पूछ बैठे , कि हम बता सकें

poem

शौक़ को हैं मंजिलें हासिल और भी कई ,
एक तू ही नहीं साथ गर तो गम क्या है

तेरे शहर में जो कभी आये है ज़िक्र अपना ,
मेरे हिस्से ये इनायत ही कम क्या है

अश्क रोती हैं आँखें कि लहू रिसता है ,
कुछ यूँ हमने जाना एहल-ए-सितम क्या है

वो संग -ऐ -मज़ार होता है गवाह मेरा ,
वो बताये तो बताये कि चश्म -ऐ -नम क्या है

मधुशाला

भग्न हृदय कि करुणा से ,
आज रचा मैंने प्याला ...

अमर क्षुधा इन प्राणों की ,
माँग रही कैसी हाला ...

भूल चूका था मैं तो लेकिन ,
याद रहा फिर भी उसको ...

बुला रहा है प्रियतम साकी ,
खुली है फिर से मधुशाला ....