Rainbow country

Over past years I have been traveling (purely for sustenance) I have been fortunate to see quite a few countries and places. And have been often asked if I have visited LA and Las Vegas. If I was blessed with wealth to throw around and if it was a few decades ago well then the idea would be tempting. But not any more, more because there are more Spartan places that gives you goose bumps.

I remember the few moments I spent at the Rjghat in Delhi. That was like visiting a haloed piece of land .It was awe filled indeed.

But then the visit to the SOWETO in Johannesburg South Africa was one unique  experience to the heart and mind.

A tour operator of Indian origin from Meerut UP was my guide. He took me around in his tour taxi. He was a third generation  migrant in South Africa.

SOWETO gives one a cultural shock of sort. Perhaps it would have been a traumatic one if I went there in the seventies. But now the roads into what is called the largest slum in the world have a four lane traffic running all way through the town. The slum as it is blithely called is a far cry from the sweltering dusty sewage dump that the slums of  Bombay  are. The houses are decent looking and all sported satellite dishes. Only in some interior corners did I notice shacks,open drains and muck. Though traffic and traffic rules are impudently ignored! Prominently even now, not a single white is seen in SOWETO. The tour guide told me of an instance in the seventies when two Afrikaner policemen who unwittingly wandered into SOWETO were lynched by a black mob. Their body was never recovered.

I was eager to visit Nelson Mandela’s house. We went past a steep gradient- a hillock and past what is even now the official residence of Winnie Mandela.. The former residence of Nelson Mandela is now  museum. It was from here Mandela oragnised the ANC resistance against apartheid. It was here he had those undercover rendezvous with his colleagues in the resistance Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo etc.

The house was made of red bricks and could not be not more than 500 sqft. It was on slightly larger piece of land perhaps 1000 sqft. Spartan I thought, was an understatement and blasphemous if one can compare it with the official residences of the Pontiffs who head the religious flock in different corners of the world

. One is engulfed with unbridled excitement when one enters through the small gate and steps into the drawing room. It was like going back into the moments of history. A rocking chair, a pair of leather boots, a single wooden cot a sofa, a table and a couple of chairs were all I can remember in the house. It had one living room a bed room and a kitchen. There were now photographs of the past, displayed. I was told that Mandela came straight from Robben Island off Cape Town after his long incarceration there to this house and lived here for a few days. 

                                                              

The guide, a young black who did his History major told me with impassioned face how he as a little boy along with his little friends peeped through the air vents on the compound wall and saw Mr Mandela sitting in a chair on the verandah. The guy was quivering with excitement. He showed me bullet marks on the wall of the house. They were gun shots that were randomly and indiscriminately sniped at the house by the Afrikaner police force when ever they got the information of Mandela’s presence in the house. The three quarter of an hour I spent in that small little place of history  will be etched in me for ever.

The Regina Mundy is a catholic church in SOWETO and is a symbol now of the resistance. It now sports a new look. But there are bullet scars that tells the agony of the past. It was into this church police fired live ammunition at students who were taking cover from the police firing during the SOWETO uprising in 1976.

                                                     "Where Hector Peterson Fell"

The Hector Peterson Museum tells the story of white mans savagery and reminds you of the days when more than half of the white race over the world turned a Nelson’s eye to the brutality of the white Afrikaners. This museum stands where Heector a little boy of 8 fell to police bullets while unsuspectingly walking with his sister during the students March against the white rule in 1976. The photograph of his sister running wailing by the side of a black man (who was never seen since) carrying the lifeless body of Hector Peeterson is haunting in memory. The photographs and the  video feeds in the museum  sometimes can bring out the gut from your stomach. It tells us the appalling and gory level human beings can go down when in relation to a fellow being.. And the revelation came to me was that it was not the English perhaps who inflicted the most horrifying savagery on the natives all over but the Dutch in South Africa and the Spanish in the Americas.

                                                         IN SOWETO

When one leaves these symbols in salutation to the human spirit and sufferings it is difficult to understand the heart and the vision of Nelson Mandela that would plead for a ‘rainbow nation’ after all that took place on its soil.

I felt that not even many trips decades ago to LA and Las Vegas with my pockets filled with green backs would let me experience the experience that these places in SOWETO rendered.

Lust for Gold 'Akshaya Tritiya'

Humanity’s craving for gold, an insatiable lust, has been cunningly channeled by bullion merchants through the sudden elevation of the obscure Akshaya Tritiya into a marketing gimmick. The success of Akshaya Tritiya as a tool to drive gold sales reveals how gullible people can be. Even the Bombay Stock Exchange operated on Sunday, May 16, to capitalize on this so-called auspicious day.

Until a few years ago, I had never heard of Akshaya Tritiya. A glance at Wikipedia reveals fascinating myths: Jains consider it auspicious, yet, paradoxically, a faith rooted in renouncing worldly desires endorses a day of material indulgence. Hindus celebrate it as the birthday of Parashurama, who, according to legend, created “God’s Own Country”—an act with consequences we now view with irony.

Why, of all metals, does gold hold such reverence on this day? Why not platinum or even shimmering carbon, which surpasses gold in value? The obsession is baffling. Recall the fable of King Midas, whose greed turned everything, including his daughter, into lifeless gold. If buying gold brings happiness and success, what of the millions who cannot afford a single meal? Are they excluded from the divine scheme? Does purchasing gold trinkets on Akshaya Tritiya absolve past sins? If karma determines one’s well-being in this life and beyond, how does this ritual of acquisition promise prosperity?

Why not channel this wealth into community service instead? Imagine redirecting even a fraction of the money spent on gold to feed the hungry. Investing in gold for financial prudence is understandable, but linking its purchase on this day to a promised deluge of heavenly blessings is absurd. This is yet another example of mindless tradition masquerading as wisdom. The lust for gold—paraded as virtue—is nothing but vulgar vanity, a uniquely human folly worn proudly on our sleeves.

Poems of hope

When I began scribbling in the Blog the first thoughts I aired was on "hope" . And the prehensile hold on hope still somehow eclipses moments of despair.
Two poems that may enliven ones mind........................in moments of despair.

When by my solitary hearth I sit,
And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

When’re I wander, at the fall of night,
Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray,
Should sad Despondency my musings fright,
And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away,
Peep with the moonbeams through the leafy roof,
And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof!

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night!

When’re the fate of those I hold most dear
Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow,
O bright-eyed Hope, my morbid fancy cheer;
Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow:
Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

Should e'er unhappy love my bosom pain,
From cruel men, or relentless fair;
O let me think it is not quite in vain
To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air!
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

In the long vista of the years to roll,
Let me not see our country's honour fade:
O let me see our land retain her soul,
Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom's shade.
From thy bright eyes unusual brightness shed
beneath thy pinions canopy my head!

Let me not see the patriot's high bequest,
Great Liberty! How great in plain attire!
With the base purple of a court oppressed,
Bowing her head, and ready to expire:
But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings
That fill the skies with silver glittering!

And as, in sparkling majesty, a star
Gilds the bright summit of some gloomy cloud;
Brightening the half veil'd face of heaven afar:
So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud,
Sweet Hope, celestial influence round me shed,
Waving thy silver pinions o'er my head! 
John Keats ( Hope)

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

IN the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

IT matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

....William Ernest Henley ( Invictus))