~Diabolic Competition~

I’d like to begin my article, by discussing a very simple word- competitive. The word- competitive has developed a positive connotation. And this is to such an extent that those who lack that element of competitiveness are even being perceived as individuals having a lesser capability, in harsher terms- losers. While I do agree that the presence of competitiveness is essential to forge ahead and herald development especially when the stakes are so high today, but the essence of the word seems to be getting misted by us as it is being entwined in the lives of children at a horrific rate. Yes, young ones, far from the brink of adolescence.
It takes a strong voice and marvellous confidence to sing in front of an audience comprising the entire country. I am talking of the new trend of music programmes that have really beckoned the average child to put forward not only a voice but also their self-respect. Truly, the selection procedures themselves are demotivating enough for some and those who chance to make it through are swept away by an invisible tide of competition, fierce and gruelling. Is it fair to be selected amongst a hooting flurry of revelling audience and be called a prodigy first and then some two months later being thrown away from the show under the garb of elimination?
Well, according to me television programmes are unknowingly instilling in the young ones diabolic competition that too in some of the most irking ways ever! I agree that children want to see themselves on national television, but do they also want to see their families stricken with pestilence and their peers heaving with grief once they are conveniently eliminated?
Childhood is being lost in the murky reaches of competition. Since when did being a child involve literally begging votes from the nation and being idolized as a raunchy national sensation? It is not wrong to expose yourselves at a young age, but if the exposure is holistically yielding and safe, then not only is it less traumatic, it also sustains the essence of talent.
Moreover, children are being made to behave like ‘crafted adults’ and this appearance is rather incongruous. I remember seeing a little boy on television one day and was rather awed by his spirit. He spoke flawlessly on issues pertaining to love and told us his own love story (which I personally don’t think is true) and backed it up by pecking the host and showering flying kisses at the audience! The entire sequence was followed by a riveting song that urged a ravishing trot of hip shaking and made the audience whistle! Is this what parents really want to do? Do they want their children to be mollycoddled by the entire nation so that one day when their little one loses, the trauma shall shun the talent inside him/ her?
So, who is responsible? Well, according to me, a very large motivator of this diabolic competition is the media. Families have inculcated this halfway and the media that is airing such programs on television meets the other half. So, competitiveness no longer remains personal, it is being transmogrified into a social issue that demands sensitivity and care.
Really, this arena of competitiveness is rather intimidating. How can I forget what I heard some time back on one of the popular music shows; the brother of a seven year old spoke “We depend entirely on my little brother. With the money he makes on winning this competition, we’ll get our sister married and buy another house for ourselves!” I mean, is this what the sole duty of a little child remains? Should he not enjoy the fruits of childhood? I fail to understand how people can even think of treating children like sources for money? What difference does that leave between childhood and adulthood?

BENAZIR~ Another Martyred Bhutto

Perhaps the whole world saw Mohtarma retire to her inevitably draped bed of flowers, blood and tears. As her peach coffin was lowered into the familiar sands of Ghari- Khuda- Baksh, she lay dead, but her spirit, entranced by the wanderlust of Jannat at once must’ve begun its journey. The crowds smitten with sorrow and pestilence collected coldly at her burial (chanting amidst wails) and rummaged through the sudden outburst for the ‘truth’ that lay shadowed in her death.
The Bhutto blood had always been tough. Zulfikar- Ali too, like his daughter, was martyred in his early fifties. Educated at the University of California and the University of Oxford, Zulfikar was known for his mercurial brilliance and wit. Becoming the 4th President of Pakistan in 1971 was indeed a great achievement, as was his entry into the United Nations as the youngest Pakistani ever. Zulfikar founded the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in 1967 following which he delivered various speeches owing to his charisma (a trait seen in Benazir also). In 1951, Bhutto married Begum Nusrat Ispahani from whom four children were produced.
The Youngest- Shahnawaz had always been a high aspirant. His desire to excel in higher studies drove him to extend his hand abroad much like his father. In 1789, when the military dictator Zia- Ul Haq hanged Zulfikar, Shahnawaz was studying in Switzerland. But tragedy resurfaced in the Bhutto family just a year later as young Shahana (as he was called lovingly) was found dead in his French Rivera apartment in Nice, under mysterious circumstances.
Another child, not frequently talked about is Sanam, Zulfikar’s younger daughter. Since early womanhood, she kept away from politics and this is why she has ‘fortunately’ lived on as the only surviving blood relation of Zulfikar and Nusrat.
Zulfikar’s elder son Murtaza was born in 1954. A socialist rebel, he took to arms after his father’s assassination in dubious circumstances. Murtaza chaired the military wing of the PPP namely the al- Zulfikar and organized a number of attacks on Beirut, Damascus and Lebanon, under the garb of socialism. He too much like his father, died a matyr for Pakistan one evening, as a group of terrorists fired at his contingent, shooting incessant rounds at him.
The eldest daughter, born to the Bhuttos in 1953 was Benazir. Her name much like her quick witted personality meant ‘uncontrollable’. Tenacious and charming, Benazir was a rather shrewd young lass. This helped her lead the Oxford Union, while she studied at Oxford University. Later on, she was also invited to attend Harvard. At eighteen, she charmed everyone at Simla, when she had accompanied her father Zulfikar. “Part and Parcel of every discussion, Benazir also brought a smile to the likes of Indira Gandhi” reminiscences a witness of the Simla treaty in 1972. Benazir was sworn into office after her fathers assassination in 1979 to lead the PPP and then again in 1988 to become Pakistan’s first woman Prime Minister. After a tumultuous stint of over six years in hardcore ‘dirty’ politics, Benazir fled to London fearing a threat to her life.
During the interim, Benazir’s PPP operated from London with the help of her controversial husband Asif Ali Zardari, who had also served as Pakistan’s Environment Minister during Benazir’s reign. She lived safely for eight years only to return to her doom in 2007, just after addressing her last rally in Rawalpindi, following which a suicide attempt, made Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Shaheed or Martyr.

Wish list

(1) Villager

A diminutive shack perturbs me not
As long as it integrates my blood- brothers taut

A vivacious flurry of boyish souls
Shall resurrect my fields and enhance my goals

A lucid income if I may strive
So that I mustn’t a sickly mother deprive

A nominal saving for daughter’s wedlock
May rid me an array of burden and block

A prayer for seasonal harvest will
Adorn my land a whiff of money still

A vague frugal plan shall resurrect
And from my hardships debt protect


(2) Industrialist

A fine-cemented dwelling empowers us
As long as my share is autonomous

A frontier shall open for my young lass
If I may attune her with the societal mass

A blatant income lacking the strife
Keeping me young in the wrinkles of life

A phenomenal ‘giving’ for daughters jolly
So her nuptials may reek my monopoly

A venture of impractical politics
Lacking prayer, Vermillion or incense sticks

A malevolently etched forge plan
Adding monetary laurels to my rich clan

A Bemusing Romantic Reverie

4 / 5

Set in the exquisite and delightfully enticing backdrop of a zestful fairy colony, this version of Shakespeare’s highly acclaimed ‘comic revel’ is speckled with unmatched romp and foolery deserving to be called “a triumphant revival” of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
If you thought that gone were the days of those stupendous ‘musicals’ then think again for Michael Hoffman’s direction charms you with it’s scenic spectacles and troops of balletic fairies, often allowed to sway amidst a fancy riot of upholstery, a fine flurry of dulcet sounds and a truly indispensable blitzkrieg of hue.
Certainly, if you wanted gritty realism, you’d find scarce of it in the film. Instead, you find fairies, autocrats, rural buffoons and a bizarre mixture of captivating surrealism, moulded in which is the grace of magic and pungent human emotion.
The popular tale that traces its creation back to the 16th century could have never received such a magnificent tribute as this one. Hoffman uses his myriad experience to completely translate the happenings of fairy world and incorporate them into this immensely inviting comedy. Its lyricism, magical transmogrifications and cynicism are surely some of the most cunning ever. The supernatural and the mundane, the illusory and the substantial, all are shimmeringly blended.
Lysander (Dominic West) and Hermia (Anna Friel) are two fiery lovers, curbed by the forever patronizing Egeus (Owen Trusome) forcing them to drive their contorted lives into further complexities. Both run deep into the thicket of a forbidden jungle and find themselves part and parcel of a petty argument stemming from the misunderstandings of a bashful Titania (Michelle Pfeiffer) queen of immortals and her king Oberon (Rupert Everett).
Thus begins a tale of loud confusion as the suave and stoic Robin Goodfellow (Stanley Tucci) pleases master Oberon by trickling a drop of magic potion in the eyes of Titania. On another extreme, Puck jeers ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’; but the joke may be on him and his master when the voluptuously amorous Titania embraces Bottom(Kevin Kline) the weaver, his head transformed into that of an ass.
Love is treated as tragic, poignant, absurd and an outrageous brew of mayhem. Demetrius (Christian Bale) is another lover of Hermia, touched in the head- and his bum chum, the vivacious Helena (Calista Flockhart). Thus sets in a vivid tale placed on the threshold of magic bound by the terribly eerie potion song:
What thou see’st when thou dost wake, Do it for thy true- love sake
Be it ounce or cat or bear, Pard or boar with bristled hair
In thy eye that shall appear When thou wak’st it is thy dear!

With spectacular performances by Pfeiffer and Everett and told with a brave and attractive combination of fantasy, common sense and of airy feyness Michael Hoffman’s remake is definitely one of the most holistically meaningful films ever made. It is fiercely fantastical yet realistically evocative. “I wonder what she sees in him?” -mumbles a disgusted Oberon on seeing Titania fly to the ass turned Bottom- is a remark sometimes heard at a wedding or “He’s making an ass of himself” can be heard at receptions too!
Hence, a true visual treat A Midsummer Night’s Dream is surely one of those “delicacies” you’d want to enjoy while at the table with family or at the theatre with friends! A must see for one all! Such stories that illustrate the thin borderline between the human and the bestial are surely rare, making you feel you have woken after a long summery trance (lasting merely two hours!).

The Vehemence and Malice of Garbage

Perhaps we are under the influence of some grave charm thus we have become completely ignorant of the fact that while we are brewing convenient cups of coffee at home, the colony dump is overflowing; its potentially hazardous garbage is encompassing our city Gurgaon and corroding its luxury.
The fact is that each and every scrap we toss aimlessly into the dustbin lands up in the dumps and thereon remains etched there. What we don’t seem to understand is the power possessed by a single flock of poly- bags or any such scrap for instance. Unknowingly it is constituting our doom.
Yes, it may sound overrated but the spite of garbage is tremendous. And in not standing forth pragmatically, we are letting the scrap engulf us. It seems we are in awe of it.
Gurgaon is termed the millennium city but with the new millennium came a new evil urge- (to make hygienic garbage disposal impossible or so it seems!), which has stripped us of a clean whiff and clean environs.
Everyday, while travelling to school, a third of my journey is consumed in blocking my nose so as to avoid the ghastly stench emitted by a local garbage dump. With the regular scraps of plastic and household junk, there are a series of astounding sights waiting to disgust you if not cause some disease. Crippled cows flock the vicinity coupled with fresh corpses of stray animals. Is this anywhere close to what our city government proposes under the garb of waste disposal?
If yes, then we are seriously in a stance of peril. Because the garbage lurching out there is capable of transmitting serious diseases caused by an array of pathogens. Bacteria and viruses are thriving and infecting the air we inevitably have to breathe.
So who is to blame? Certainly the poor rag picker cannot be accused conveniently because the first step of waste disposal, which is garbage segregation at home, lies in our hands. Most of the times we are unable to segregate the biodegradable waste from the non- biodegradable one in dustbins due to some severe superiority complex or lack of awareness and thus we occasionally palpitate for a clean breath.
Gurgaon is developing at a good rate no doubt, but they are issues like these that pose obstructions. And the issue of waste segregation is certain a drawback for us.
The colony dumps have become so polluted that now the question of refurbishing them is dim, but not queer. The garbage dumps that have recently been opened near our homes must be cleaned on a regular basis and as responsible members of Gurgaon we must ensure so if we want our societies to yield fruitfully.