Kashmir

                        Triumph or disaster?

Is it what I feel?

What I’m left with at the end?

A thing or an emotion?

A subtle sense of pride

Of besting the beast?

Or the harrowing pain

Of the tear in my stomach

Leaking more pain than I ever could handle?

Is it the result?

Or my reaction to the result?

What if I won Kashmir but

Lost the election?

Is it universal or personal?

A zero sum game

I am a hero sometimes.

It is how I sleep at night.

It can be neither

but actually it is both. 

                                        

Breathe

Completed 12 years of blogging last week :) 

As Shattered promises of tomorrow

Splattered all over my bedroom

I pulled out my pipe

Decided to exhale smoke

Rather than inhale hubris

for a change.

And listened to the tunes of yesterday

Since history is doomed to repeat itself

Maybe this once

it will bloom by itself.

Any which way

I am not going anywhere

I have nowhere to be

Except be me in this moment

Right now.

And inhale in all the terrible glory

Exhale all the grime and gory

Soaking in the momentousness of surviving today.

Antoinette

So taking inspiration from the french revolution and recently put on hold farmer protests in Delhi  , I present to you my first for the A to Z challenge "Antoinette". Also submitting it for Poet's United theme News Media which has much maligned this movement.

Atrophy

Asinine splendour

Avarice which just got grander.

The sound of a million gold coins

Tunes you deaf

To lesser men and metals

Acrimony and anthrax

Poisoned the air outside

Air conditioned rooms

Chilled you from inside.

Astonishing we find

The greed of the rich folks

Even our daily fight for food

Doesn’t come close..

Running a rigged race

You still keep scores

Stamping on our shoulders

You reach up

Now you eat our cake

And sprinkle some bread crumbs

From that balcony of yours,

When that gets over

You wear back your gloves

And ask us to eat cake

With no reason or rhyme.

Hence now we revolt

By sitting in front of (Y)our King’s office

Eating rats

Drinking urine and

Running naked to highlight our plight

Your media brands us as frauds

And he won’t even come out

To meet us.

We are just thirsty for some justice

Please don’t pour acid on it.

After August 15th

We have all studied history at primary levels at least.

Oh no. You don't get to yawn and leave today. Today is the day I have decided to write - after 3 months- So , Please read me out . 
Everybody seems to hate history and me being an exception to this rule, hates the current state of affairs very much. So much, that I started questioning some haters why they hate the topic so much. One of the standard responses is that why should we care about something which happened so long back? England is not ruling us anymore and we're even beating them in cricket now :P
While I can go on an on about how past experiences are invaluable to current scenarios , how history tends to repeat itself and how the mere fact that the area I was born in or the wooden table I am using is so soaked in history that I often can't help but get intoxicated with the romanticism of it all or how there are so many different civilizations which had so much in common and difference , I am not going to.
In this post we're going to address the problem of modern history. Modern history? That word sounds very oxymoronish to be true.

One of the major problem with our education system of history in India is that there seems to be a total disconnect from what we study and what we see today.  While it is pretty cool that Mahatma Gandhi walked miles to collect salt from the British and that we stunk of socialism in the independence era , nothing seems to correlate with what we see today.
The freedom fighting politicians of the yore seem to be substituted by blatantly corrupt ones of today. While we read about socialism and Nehru everywhere , we hear more about FDI in retail and the far reaching tentacles of globalization and capitalism.
Indian history to us Indians seems to end with August 15 , 1947  when India achieved independence. The very few who elect political science for high school or college degree learn a ridiculously more amount about our country.

We're stuck in that moment

Isn't it time to acknowledge that what happened for the 68 years afterwards to be also included as history? Not an entire subject , that would be asking too much. But at least 2-3 chapters covering important topics like the Kashmir issue , language reorganization , 1991 liberalization reforms which certainly changed the history of the country.
If pundits are unwilling to label it as history then it is about time that we give importance to political science as a social science. I was literally flabbergasted when a very well learned friend of mine, who studies architecture currently, told me that she didn't know Pakistan and Bangladesh were the same country before 1970's . :O
And it gets worse. When i told others about her ignorance , I found more from unexpected quarters.
This problem rises in significance when we take the rate of change happening around us into consideration. Every decade sounds like a different era and with the rate of growth of population and science and technology being equally precariously scary , it is time we read history according to modern contexts.
India has stepped into a new era or believes it has stepped into a new era by electing Narendra Modi into power. This is the first time a non congress alliance has got such a huge mandate and we can be pretty sure that the lawmakers would want to 'rewrite' history soon enough. Citizens must be offered an unbiased version of the riots , partition and violence which has been plaguing the country.

Things to be added in a social science textbook :

1. Partition - No point acting like it never happened. While independence was a huge victory , the partition was quite the opposite. The fact that Mahatma Gandhi never celebrated the independence is conveniently ignored. Some light on this hasty yet historic blunder would remove some prejudice we carry about our Pakistani neighbors. Both sides suffered . Sick of all the pakistani hate posts. Half the people don't know why/who/how we got separated but carry the hate though :/ 
2. Kashmir - Before yelling that article 370 is unconstitutional Indians must be taught ( unbiased ly ) how  really Kashmir was created. While demanding that Kashmir be ours is truly patriotic , learning what exactly happened before harping ill informed propagandized news is truly more worthwhile and patriotic . 

   

   Too beautiful to suffer :(

3. Hindi - There surely must be a lesson on the reorganization of states according to languages , the tensions and unity it created. The language politics , the true current status of hindi - the official and not the national language of India. 

A crash course on this would really enlighten many of us on current issues . Unlike science , every person can have an opinion on social science topics and well informed chapters on current historic problems would at least brighten us enough to not sound like illiterate buffoons on social media . 

Thanking you for the patience if you did read me out

Samyuktha (Semi) Jayaprakash