REST IN PEACE PAPA

It’s exactly been two dark moons since papa passed away.
Sri Ram Kumar Singh, fondly called Lapetu Singh, born 6th of July 1948 at village Maniyarpur, District Vaishali, Bihar passed away on the 3rd of May, 2011 at around 1 A.M, inside the sanctum sanctorum of the age old Shiva temple the family deity, in a rather dramatic way, like his life had been lately.
Ever since, the episodes of last year, his perhaps only goal in life now appeared to be the resurrection of the dilapidated temple, in a record time of 10 months he had managed to construct a 81 feet, 3000 sq ft structure and was about to do the final rituals a few days later.
None of us were pleased with this single agenda program of his and had hardly cooperated. We didn’t see this coming, except for a lesser dangerous ailments like epilepsy, atrophy of the right brain and high blood pressure, he was a normal physically and a normal death would have been at least 20 years later.
But of course, rationality is subjective and in the most suited manner the man with the utmost pride walked out of his house in the middle of the dark night, prayed to his ancestors and worshiped his deity, seeked forgiveness from the souls he was leaving and slept the deepest slumber ever in the foot of his god with an absolute calm and peace on his glowing dead face.

Born to a 53 year old father Sri Nagina Singh and his second wife Uma Devi an 18 year mother, he was the only son and hope for the seven families of brothers and cousins who had no issues or hope left of continuation of their lineage, the family together owned 1200 acres of Zamindari then.
Father Nagina Singh had no interest in the property and lived with the British in Patna, running a motor company, in his early days he had lost his wife and kids in an epidemic and it was only in his last days of his life that he came back to the village, denouncing everything he had earned.
Papa lived his early life in Patna, but would travel often to the village and was pained to see his cousin grandfather the then “Malik” blowing wealth and the inhuman treatment he meted out the lower strata of society.
Papa turned a communist and would often boast to us later the big names he was associated with while running the communist party elections in Patna. After the death of the then Malik, Shree Panchu Singh, who ruled with an iron fist and, his father had no choice but to return to Zamindari.
Papa dropped out of his college pursuing the science degree, much to the annoyance of his father and engaged himself into the matters of property.
Soon the communist had turned into a Zamindar himself fighting the Government against land ceiling and the “parcha’s” distributed of his property to the poor he stood for against his grandfather a few years back.
He made his father stand for the elections of “Mukhiya” and had him uncontested take that post for next 20 years till his time of death. The government till date has not been able to acquire a single inch of land from the property he inherited, though my father must have sold at least 800 acres of land in his life.
Married at an early age of 20, he was broken the news of his wedding two days before his wedding, my mother Asha Singh, was 19 then, daughter of a Doctor and also came from a family of zamindar. Just that the priorities were different there and here. Back in their family, they would go for shikaar, have partridges and wild boar for dinner almost every day and sold land to have a feast.
While here, there were widows of seven families to be taken care, their sisters and some two dozen rustic managers. Husband had turned into a full time farmer, ploughing land as he could not sell due to the land ceiling cases. There would be an army standing every second day to violently settle the border issues of landed property.
But life was good for them as everyday was an adventure.
Father to two sons and three daughters, all been provided good opportunity for education, in different corners of the country, in a situation in those days, with hardly any civil society around, guns were one thing, we have seen in our early days, people walking with spears and other improvised arms walking around in their daily routines, bullock cart and horses and boats for travel as far as 20 kms to Hajipur the nearest Kasbah, all of this was till the late eighties. Father had the vision to send us all out in those days, when he was still grappling with a double barrel gun and an army of spear men to perform his farming.

Given the situation, he excelled in his work, he was one of the active forces of the green and white revolution, the way he used the laws to save his property, in fact to an extent to reclaim what the family had lost over the years, is nothing short of brilliance.
Somehow, his lateral approach to life, though led to excellence in the projects he overtook, he lost out on a few essential things in life.
Passion, love and happiness.
He was a simpleton who still wore a lungi at home and a polyester shirt he must have bought in seventies. All the Arrows and Marks and Spencer’s still have the collar pins intact, the ones he was being gifted by friends and family.
Neither was he able to spend time with family nor did he make many friends and thus turned a loner till late. Living a solitary life in Maniyarpur,happy with his quintessential marijuana and bhang trying to make a heaven here, he forgot that home is where heart is. It’s made of humans and not of bricks and mortar. He was a friend of the latter, built a 20 inch thick 20 ft tall wall around his 2 acre campus, a three floored house with some 12 rooms and as many toilets and large halls and balconies for two people to live.
Various small and big halls and stores were continuously being made every year.
It was this affinity of his and that I had used to get my factory constructed without me spending a penny.
He must have spent a very handsome amount of money in his lifetime and the reason he had a few thousand rupees in his savings. He was just a spender.

Over the years he has left a very well organized and a consolidated empire of real estate, which could be taken to a next stage, but he has left a long list of people who kept waiting for his hugs and kisses and some good words.
He was an intense human being, extreme and unpredictive. But then who says all has to be well.
We have formed a trust yesterday, “SRI RAM KUMAR SINGH MEMORIAL MANIYARPUR SHIVALAY SAMITI TRUST” and wish to continue a little of his wishes of maintaining the temple that he was committed to and much more like building schools and hospitals and meeting out other human needs good in nature.
Many people will have many words for him; there were thousands to walk barefoot to the Ganga for his last rites, women who brought their children to touch his feet, mostly people he had never met, poor who could get sweets and feast only when someone like him dies. It is these people whom the trust will address to.
You had a right brain atrophy, which restricted you to think right.
The least we can do is think for your deeds.
REST IN PEACE PAPA.

Nawang Gombu - R.I.P

For me, when I first met him, Nawang Gombu was just an old time mountaineer who happened to climb the Everest twice, sat comfortably in the wooden office at the Himalayan mountaineering institute, Darjeeling and had a welcoming smile.

Then, to me like any other layman, Mountain meant Everest and mountaineer meant Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.

On my next meet, this perception has changed drastically, as I shook hands, receiving my certificate from the man, I could well understand every freckle on his face and what would have gone into making of those hard lines, as had just about managed to complete my adventure course in mountaineering. “Ah! I see you have some much required talent for a budding mountaineer” Gombu had remarked, with a slight grin. My citation read, “Excelled in hat speech, debate and elocution”.

The two week course and the climb up from Jorthang to Darjeeling, nonstop in 6 hours had surely left a remarkable impression on my life and an amazing admiration for this mountaineer.

Nawang Gombu, the first man to scale Mt. Everest twice, died at his home in Darjeeling early on Sunday, 24th of April 2011, after a brief illness. He was 79.
He was not an attention seeker and thus went quietly into the night, when Sri Satya Sai Baba coincided to leave his body on the same very day; Satya Sai Baba hogged the limelight, which should have been equally if not more, due to the great soul of Nawang Gombu.

Born in 1936 in Minzu, Tibet, he was the son of Tenzing Norgay’s oldest sister, besides holding many records in mountaineering, scaling many peaks for the first and receiving many accolades globally, was a perfect human being, humble and inspiring to the core.
He was the youngest Sherpa in tenzing’s team which conquered the world’s highest peak and then went on to climb the Everest on different peak twice and many other peaks, no one had treaded before, he even took his grand children along on one of his achievements.
In the present day of mountaineering with most of the true essence gone and mountaineers fighting it out for money and fame, Gombu's message to all had been, "Mountains cannot be conquered, and mountaineering is like a pilgrimage. We have been paying our respects to the mountains for generations. For mountaineering to sustain as an adventure sport team spirit and love for the sport is the need of the day. Mountaineering can never be commercialized."
He has been an inspiration to me as a simpleton, an achiever and an outstanding human being. I am proud to have known him.

May his soul rest in peace.

Anna Hazare, JP, Mahatma, Corruption and Public Money

Anna Hazare’s fight against corruption is getting trendier on the net. Facebook status, tweets and rejoinders from active netizens seem to be hogging the limelight just after the cricket mania. Well, like cricket, fight against corruption is also getting to be a trend and a peer pressure agenda.

I had a chance to meet the man in the temple that he lived in Ralegan Siddhi, a village in Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra, India and his efforts for establishing it as a model village, for which he was awarded the Padma Bhushan by Govt. of India. It was summer of 1991 and I along with a friend had gone to do some recce work in Ahmednagar, when we decided to see what this man was up to,
Taking on the most powerful Sharad Pawar by his horns in those times could make anyone feel inquisitive about his nerdness. But with little intellect that I had in those days, I could figure out, that this man was not afraid and was pure.

Anna sure did not do this for a few days of glory on the virtual world; he is like Jaiprakash Narain, who is a simpleton, focused to his cause and very down to earth. Unlike the mahatma, who had a global perspective and a flair to identify with smallest of local issues, Anna has always fought for local issues without a larger picture. All these men have one thing in common, credibility and integrity.

Though, this could be different, fight against corruption is no fight, it’s like fighting a shadow, everyone will join you, even the most corrupt. Jaiprakash fought against corruption of the congress party, his army men included, Laloo and Paswan and Mulyam and many more third front socialist. We all know what happened to them.

In this fight, if it reaches somewhere, of which it has the potential, will emerge a new class of pure citizens, who will be lured to rule from the front, maybe, the lokpal bill be amended and a few clean leaders from the dormant political front be a part of the punishing crew. In time the white khadi wearing new clan would put up statues of Anna and decide the fate of billions of rupees to be spent.
This has been the history forever. Anna might be the catalyst this time, like mahatma was to Nehru and Jinnah and JP were to laloo’s and Mulayam’s.

Along with this crusade what one needs is rational principled approach with a plan and a strategy. Gimmicks like indefinite fast is good to grab headlines and will also be forgotten when the IPL arrives.

The root cause of corruption is allowing public servants and legislators to disposal of public money and power, which in turn happen in the name of social good and equality and to eradicate poverty with social schemes like, free education, free health, free food, agro subsidy, MNREGA and other umpteen programs.

It is these social goods and goodies that Anna and JP and mahatma supported that lays a foundation for higher taxes, fiat money printing, government borrowings and all this in the hands of the corrupt and powerful.

Social good happens, it happens if you leave the society alone, if you let law and order prevail and contracts validate.

If corruption happens, it happens because your sheer basics are wrong. If a service is in short supply and there is a back door, is it not common sense and animal instinct to queue on the back door and fight on the front window?

Anna you are a nice man, and so are those 150 fasting with you, but don’t try to perfect a system which is wrong in the first place.
Mahatma fought against taxes, no tax on salt, as small an item as salt every common man could relate to, corruption I can’t relate to, in fact it helps me get my job done.
Taxes I hate! I will sit next to you if you take up a cause against taxes....Hungry till i Die!!

Time to fly

Getting a confirmation from able souls, on what you wanted to do in the first place, is a very reassuring feeling.
I have been wanting to write a lot on the events of past few months, but have been holding back, for it might be averse and jeopardizing my already dwindling career.
Writing not only clears my clogged thoughts but also correlates the events of past into a lateral motion.
It is easy for self and others, especially in this virtual world to make sense out of irrationality of the place called “our world”.
Doesn’t make much sense! Does it? That’s the point! This world does not make much sense, we are just trying to act intelligent, which is just a way of survival and quest for an improved and a unique DNA.
So let’s see, what happened here!
Like an annual event, as it has started happening these years, the assets of the company that I have built over past decade were up for public auction, and the hammer went down on the 9th of February 2011.
Besides the fact, there were no bids for the unit, which might take a new enterprise to incur a couple of million to set up, the mortgaged property belonging to my mom and dad, did get auctioned for half the market rate. I had surely not expected anyone to bid for a property belonging to my father, who is well known to be shooting around for no reason, but then even dawood’s property had bidders.
The new SARFESI act has given the banks claws and teeth that would shame the third Reich, it’s the beginning and if they don’t do much about it, it would turn draconian soon.
We had gone to the courts with a writ, the hammer had fallen by the time the list got shorter, and we are up for hearing soon, there is a good possibility that banks might want to settle with allowing me to sell my property myself to settle all dues.
Banks want their money back and we are in no situation to return all of it.
In the dark alley that night outside the lawyer’s house, I did break down profusely, like I did same time last year and the year before last, so it was after all an annual event!
To correlate things, returning after a refreshing forced medical break and some good company, I am quite convinced that my bread earning exercise needs a little less adventure.
I would settle my dues soon as possible, with the property already sold, it sure is an agony to live with the blotch, but I am sure in a picture of larger things, a property in Hajipur was no penthouse in Gurgaon.
The good part is there are no buyers for the factory; reason obviously being, and the location in one interior village of Bihar. So, the unit survives debt free and with zero capital.
We have stocks, which could eventually help in accumulating capital, but the scale would be so low that it would not be able to survive me.
This is a time, when I can share a little secret. When we started a decade back, we had zero capital and went on to have a balance sheet of 2 crores on either side. Hundreds of people survived on the industry, including me. It does have a brand and a small network, a patent for a promising product and goodwill.
If we did dispossess an idle plot of land, we had not lost much, if at the end; this was not really an end! Picture abhi baki hai merey dost!
Entrepreneur and the enterprise both need a break from each other.

This was the crux of gita, which I should have known from day one!
I should have only been a trustee, a manager of this venture, never burdened the business with my load.
All enterprise is for profit, which could be monetary or otherwise, profit is pure and only motive for survival and improvement, confusing it with greed is a big mistake.
Only if I had understood this, even when I was running it an NGO style, I would keep my motives pure and unattached; I perhaps would have been in a lesser pain, in these years.
I understand this now, it’s like letting a child go, and marrying your daughter or similar experiences, the enterprise has fully grown if it’s not attached to your identity or your ego attached to the enterprise.
I must have done my duty well, for the child to be taking its own decisions.

A decade back, when I decided to come back, there was no phone or electricity had mud filled roads and any hope was a distant dream.
It took me 3 years of Public interest litigation to get telephone, and when it did, cell phones made them outdated.
2 years to get a transformer in the village, when electricity never came through and captive power lit the villages.
First we parleyed to get access to weapons for self security and eventually surrendered them for the security of others.
Integrated farms and Set up a unit to rid of traders and industry fleecing the farmers and sooner was fleecing the farmers ourselves.
The village which welcomed the first smokes of the chimney as a growth sign, soon complained of pollution, opportunity to labor turned to hue and cry on minimum wages.
The incubator became a burden.
Guess, life has come a full circle and the caterpillar has wings and it’s time to fly!

Dorothy Smith - R.I.P.

"Dorothy Smith known by all as Tashi, a good friend and regular visitor to Auroville, 47 years old and of Burmese/Indian origin,
passed away today at 7.45 am at PIMS. She had a chronic heart condition which worsened recently, said NO to surgery and
decided to go the natural way surrendering to Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

...Dorothy had spent much of the last 5 years in and around Auroville, helping at the Matrimandir. She was loved by everyone who met her."

Dorothy passed away on the 16th of December.
After a gap of almost 10 years, we had been in touch over the phone and facebook for last few months.
I invited her often and she invited me, only if I had any inkling to this destiny and this hurry the gods had we would have surely met.
Dorothy was a cousin to a close friend Sean and that's how we met, for us she was a "firang" who we thought was too sensitive to the issues of Indians, to an extent of ridicule.
the beggars on the streets of Bombay were the largest beneficiary of her doles and so were we at times.
Her extreme views and true passionate concern for poor was often our topic of debate.

It was Her and Paul on who's invitation I had the chance to rid my donkey life.
An envelope with the transportation keys and some pounds awaited me at the Gatwick Airport.
She had particularily advised me to carry my international driving License and she made me use it, more than often.
Every time she got back home or we went for treks or outings, she must have bought me more chocolates than my parents would have got for me.
I missed my flight on way back, she came all the way back to London to arrange for my stay at Claudia's, her sisters house , made arrangements for me to attend all London parties, even with the Hollywood biggies, Salman and Sangita Bijlani.

That was then, we met briefly in Calcutta in 1999, she was still erratic, smoked a lot and had more penchant for going real out of the way for helpless and needy.
she would take favors to an extreme of making someone uncomfortable for the cause of an unknown and deserving in her eyes.
This time she wanted to fly some one out of Nepal to Hyderabad and London as that girls life was miserable here.
That was the last I could do much for her.
I am really sorry for have not taken you as much seriously the last conversation we had, with time and responsibilities, we tend to read beyond the words and i will repent it for life.
I wish you were around and I had one more chance to undo.
Rest In peace, Dorothy.

Judgement Of Democracy

The courts of the great nation called India, on who rests the responsibility of justice to some, one sixth of human population have done what is being popularly known as justice.
The title for the disputed site of 2.7 acres of land has been equally divided among faiths as per majority of the believers.
Justice, democracy style. India after all is the largest democracy in this world.
Meticulously, ten thousand pages have been devoted to rationalize the judgment which is as simple as 66% to Hindu’s 33% to Muslims.
This is the same ratio by which Hindu’s and Muslims could be divided in India, more or less.
India has this strange culture of going by the popular demand. Giving In to the majority.

It’s not that, Indians do not understand the judicial system, if we look at the number of cases, pending and filed in the Indian courts, one will clearly realize that, we are not seeking a popular vote in the courts of law. This could be easily done at our age old panchayat system, or what you could call a “loya jirga” of Taliban, Which was more of a populist court, easily influenced by religion or many such factors.

A fair trial and a fair decision is a core of a civilized society. Without, which no civilization could ever move ahead. The governments would always have vested interests to influence the judiciary, because they are perceived to be the representatives of the majority. Only, the courts of law have the authority to cut the govt. to size. What better way, to reduce the judiciary to pressures of popularity, which is the biggest and only strength of the elected govts.
They would introduce the “Panchayat Raj” so that popular decision could be taken at the grass root level, by the elected bodies of Sarpanch. A grass root judge elected by its own people has the authority to sentence his people to rigorous prison. One could guess how honorable the Sarpanch would be to sentence his opponents.
The Allahabad court has brought the Indian judiciary to a level of the panchayat.
A title suit is the most important legal proceeding to recognize the rightful owner of a property.
Even if the evidence was not clear enough, it cannot or in this case surely it should not have been divided as per popular beliefs and faiths.
Justice should not just be done it should be seen to be done.
Every decision becomes precedence; the courts know it too well. This cannot be anything other than a sinister design to surely set precedence.
This is the first step to chaos and anarchy. It might sound too harsh, but strangely, if things persist like this and we set truth aside for so called peace and tranquility. If we forgive the sinners for some complacent attitude of ours! It surely is an invitation to anarchy.
“India has moved on” wrote the influencers, it surely has, for the govt. and the agents tried really hard for last one month harping upon the date of the decision. Revisiting the shameful days of Babri destruction, images and speeches, to a generation, who had either forgotten or did not care or didn’t know. The agents of power, made sure that an event was created.
But to their dismay, India had after all moved on, they didn’t really care and it will be a forgotten episode for another 30 years after this common wealth games.
Like Pakistan, Kashmir and many such bad dreams.
With our complacency we allow the so called prideful democratic representatives to mold our futures in populism.
What we need to learn for the future of our children is to stand up for truth, so what if it is for someone else.

Ego

An existence so small
Much a little smaller than the mole
An identity perceived so huge
Larger than the largest deluge

That “I” is the center of the universe
Woven is destiny around this energy
A Force to survive
A reason to live
Uniqueness meant to fight death


Is it some periphery of obscurity
Webbed to stay stuck
Being stimulated by the more aware
Cuisine for the masters
A purpose for the absolute transience
Living so that I could eventually die


Or does I have shades of either
Maybe neither
Wholesome could be this “I”
Ego so large, so holistic
Where the universe would submerge
All identities merge
Purpose, reason, existence and end are all but none
Forgiveness, love, in concert, futile and naïve
Bliss, untrue, pure to thrive
Maybe “I” is such a life