Mann Jeete Jag Jeet - (conquer your mind & conquer the world)

(Radha Swami Beas philosophy, based on the teachings of mystics from all religions, has had its main centre near the river Beas since 1891. Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), with centres located worldwide, is a registered non-profit, charitable society, independent of any political or commercial affiliations. 'Radha Swami' means 'lord of the soul’, and ‘satsang’ describes a group that seeks truth) 

It was my second visit to the place. Previously I had a brief trip; even then I attended the satsang as I wanted to experience it. This time we had good time but as we reached the place late night at around 3:30AM so it was almost impossible to wake-up early; but our dear friend and host has different plan. So, we were up at 8:00 O’clock and ready for the Satsang.  

First of all I will give all praises to the administration staff of the dera. The infrastructure- roads, flats, play-grounds and above all the discipline; everything was just great. I wonder if the people roaming around were the same Indians who use to litter around, spitting all over, who seldom obeys road rules, who likes honking like if they are competing in a rock show. But here in dera you will feel like you are in some other part of the world but definitely not in India.

On normal Sunday’s thousands of people come to listen audio records of the satsang, but on the day of our visit the crowd was huge, in hundred thousands. Then I got to know the reason behind this massive gathering; Baba Gurinder Singh the present head of the dera was there that day. People came there from miles just for a glance of their spiritual guru. We also reached the Satsang venue after going through needless, over hyped security checks. Huge crowd in that gigantic ‘pandal’ but still pin drop silence. Again and again I was forced to pinch sure my-self ‘yes, I am in India only and this is Indian crowd’.

As Baba Gurinder Singh entered the pandal and took his seat on the extra high stage, every one bowed their head to the spiritual guru, most of them bowed to the projector screen. As the pandal was vast so there were so many projector screens installed for the people to have a close look at their mentor. I didn’t bow to him, you can call it my stubbornness but honestly speaking I didn’t find that divine or spiritual look in him. That radiance, that peace was not present at his face. He didn’t seem to be from that league.

Baba ji started from ‘Mann jeete jag jeet – conquer your mind & conquer the world’ and elaborated few more gurmukhi stanzas. One thing which I heard from almost every baba but none of them follow was, repeated here also. ‘Don’t bow to me to my photographs or sculptures, don’t compare us with god. But the ideologies and the work of the dear baba don’t go well with his words. People do the same things and no body stops them as if those words are not meant to be followed. In a dera which is so well organized and disciplined, these small wordings are not at all followed, this doesn’t go smooth in my mind. Infact, in every nook and corner of the dera, whether its langar hall or flats or other buildings almost every wall is crowned with the pictures of the Baba and his successors. You will not find even a single picture or wordings of any religious books in the dera.

I don’t think that an hour lecture can change anybody in particular. There were thousands of people in the satsang and I can say only few of them follow the right path taught by the Baba. Let aside common public even the baba’s are not following their high wordings.

The Dera vicinity is increasing at a rapid rate; even the boundary walls are made mobile, so that it can easily be moved to the new position whenever the area expands. The strange thing is, the dera authorities regularly announce to the followers that don’t buy any property in 5-6 KMs reach of dera, because as the Dera expands it will cause inconvenience to them. My question is what about the inconvenience caused by the dera expansion to the other people who live in near by villages? Or the dera does not care about the non-followers, or is it not inconvenient to those people to relocate. And why the dera needs expansion when it already has so much of land? And what about the words ‘non-profit & charitable’ which they use for their society?

There are number of property disputes going on between the dera and the common people. Few of them I know personally, and you can find many others on the internet. And it’s not only in Beas, but in other cities and countries also. One such case which floated on newspapers few years back is of Mohali Industrial Area satsang land which Amrinder Singh (then Chief Minister of Punjab) wants to acquire for developing Industrial corriodor and he offered another land to RSSB which obviously was rejected. Why? RSSB can’t relocate for the development of the country but yes, it can relocate people just for the expansion of the Dera.

Some RSSB devotees might feel that it's wrong to post such criticism, but it’s just what I felt and it’s my view only.

Consider it; ignore it. Your choice……!!!!!

PS: No need to acquire acres of land, just conquer your mind – “Mann jeete jag jeet”

Rang De Basanti

While getting ready for the office in the morning I watched TV news channels for almost an hour. The headlines were ‘Sachin is not retiring yet’, ‘CAG report on Coal scam was false’, ‘Asia cup went to Pakistan’ Bla Bla Bla…… Not even single news about the great Martyrs Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev. Yes, it’s 23^rd March today; 81 years ago these brave freedom fighters sacrificed their life for the country, for us. But it seems, we Indians don’t even bother to remember those pure souls.

This reminds me of an event which occurred few years ago. 23^rd March 2006, our college organized a debate on the topic ‘India needs Bhagat Singh or Gandhi’. That day was celebrated as ‘Rang de Basanti’ day. First I thought to participate in it, but because of my shy nature or you can say my laziness somehow I didn’t participate. But I decided to attend that debate, before that I had not been to any such event, as a pure mechanical engineering students we kept our distance from every such thing related to study.

Before going there I was sure that votes will go in favor of Bhagat Singh, may be its because I am a great fan of him. But what I found there was totally different. Out of 17 participants only 5 were in favor of Bhagat Singh and the rest were in favor of Gandhi. I was completely shocked not because they didn’t think like me but because they didn’t know the ideology of the Revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh, Chandershekhar, Kartar singh Sarabha. 

Why blame these young students for not knowing about those Revolutionaries when there were many great personalities like M.K.Gandhi who totally misunderstood these freedom fighters. No doubt M.K.Gandhi did lots good for Indian freedom, but he did a big mistake in understanding Bhagat Singh and his thoughts. You will be clear about this once you study the history records of past conversations of Mr. Gandhi with Irwin & others about the Delhi pact and many more.

I think he (M.K.Gandhi) was not a thorough patriot as Bhagat Singh and his comarades, but a great politician, more precisely a kathputli of politics played by other congress leaders like Jawahar Lal Nehru. I don’t think that Politics and Patriotism can go side by side. These are totally different traits. May be there are people who wouldn’t agree to me. Actually I am also not clear about it.

I am not clear about the words Politician and patriot. Can a Patriot be a politician???? Yes’ of course  if the person’s like Bhagat Singh were given a chance to lead a nation they definitely would have been gone a long way to bring their nation not only nation the whole of  the mankind to a level which any human life deserve.

The problem with me and every youth of India is whenever we hear the word ‘politics’ a negative image comes out in front of us automatically. This is not our fault, infact we are seeing and hearing about all these stories of our bad politicians from our childhood. I know there are few good one also. But those few good things of few good politicians are buried down under many bad things of many bad politicians. There are many many negative things about India and Indian system but the need of the time is to find solutions of these problems. Everybody is worried about these problems but no body is concerned. The one’s who are concerned they are also not doing anything or can’t do anything.

India can only hope to get some good politicians in future. It’s tough but may be the one’s with ideologies of Bhagat Singh. In my view India needs Bhagat Singh now, it’s been more than 60 years but there is nothing fruitful by the so called Gandhiism Politics.

8PM - LIGHTS OFF for Gurgaon Administration

“What the Hell ……. Are we in Gurgaon” I exclaimed when I first put my foot on the soil of this so called Millennium City of India.

“Gurgaon nahi bahi……. Yeh Gandu Gaon hai” Sorry for the loose words but these are the exact words used by the Rehri vala who was over listening our conversation, when I & my friend Amit were cursing the Bus-stand facilities of Gurgaon. It was a pool of mud & sewage water; urinals were over flowing, there were more number of rehri’s than the buses in the stand, considering the amount of garbage there you can call it junk-yard of Gurgaon instead of Bus-stand. Some how we moved out of it and found a worn-out steel box on the name of local public transport; they call it 55-56 bus service, no need to mention that it was filled to the capacity of 5 buses.

Our nightmare ended when at last we reached our office, for which we were here. (As a fresher we had that curiosity to see our future office, when we got placed in a MNC during campus interviews. So we were here in Gurgaon just to visit our future company, two months before the actual joining). The office was just great, the building itself was a marvelous piece of Architecture let aside the facilities in office. Infact every building around the office and on the way were beautiful and presented a perfect picture of a beautiful modern city. We went back to college with big dreams of joining the bustling crowd of the millennium city very soon.

Few years down the line – Now, I am part of the mad crowd of this millennium city. But now I could not find any reasons to be happy about the city. The city which has beaten the country's capital in private sector development. The city which is now home to most of the big corporate houses of the world. The city whose real estate market is increasing out of any leaps & bounds. The city which spawned a huge 'mall' culture with plenty of opportunities for shopping, entertainment, fine dining and bars.

But that is where the all good ends. While the private sector rose to the new heights, the government administration has failed miserably. Here you find nothing on the name of basic infrastructure. The non-existing roads, the poor public transportation, zero rain water drainage system, erratic power supply, and worst sanitation. Which ever way you look at it, it is more like a corporate slum.

In between, there seemed to be some hope with the development of the Metro that too by DMRC not by the state government, but that to fizzed out with no such further development of public transport. The district administration is failing in every segment and the latest in the league is the diktat to ask women to stop working after 8 in the evening.

It is perhaps the most stupid diktat. It is like if the administration is screaming: We are useless. We shun our responsibility. We cannot provide safe place to the residents of the city. Our police force is good for nothing. We can’t nab the culprits so it’s better to bind the probable victims. We admit this lawlessness is beyond us. Brilliant, isn’t it? 

Everywhere on TV, newspaper, FM we hear ‘INDIA SHINING’. Is this the picture of shining India? Instead of inching forward we are moving backward towards 19^th century. If this continues soon there will be few more diktats, not to wear jeans & shorts and then a more to wear a veil. And why this upheaval about late working only, Isn’t it applicable for shoppers? Or the rapist will first ask if the woman walking out is an office-goer, or a shopper or a BPO employee or a bar employee?

These are the problems that need to be tackled head on. Giving diktats such as what the administration has done is even worse. It shows that the administration consider women a problem instead of the culprits. It is enough to shake the confidence of the city residents on the administration and law & order of the country.

THE WALL

Somewhere in future – India 2 down for 1 on a greener wicket; then we will miss that straight bat of jammy.

Plenty has already been written ever since Rahul Dravid retired from international cricket. I am neither a cricket expert nor a journalist to pen down ‘THE WALLS’ cricketing graph. But my fondness for the great player and my likings for those perfect cover drives forced me to write a tribute to that extraordinary team player.

A man whose work over 16 years needs no certificate and whose worth is quite obvious. His ability to play great knocks under pressure, his supernatural ability to score match-winning innings. Like most of his fans who have seen many of his classic innings, but there’s one - which I agrees to be his best: his superb 180 against Australia in 2001 Test match at Eden Gardens. Of course, like many of Dravid's innings it was overshadowed by VVS Laxman's 280.

This is not the only innings where the limelight was taken away from him. But, Dravid was born with a curse to be always Number 2, a curse to play second fiddle. From his debut test at Lord's, where his 95-run knock fainted under the strong image of Saurav Ganguly; until his retirement he always remained 2^nd best. Dravid grew as a player but his curse continued. In a team with Sachin, Laxman, Sehwag all waiting to attract all the limelight, Dravid got very little of it.

Besides his second fiddle image in the media; Dravid was a class act, a perfect team man, a player who not only played for his country but also played for the game of cricket. He played a major role in most of the victories abroad in the 2000s by agreeing to don the wicketkeeper gloves, batted at every position the team required, even opening the innings in Test cricket. When he played, he did it for the team's good, when he decided to move on; he did it to clear way for the young players.

Now, no longer will we ever see Rahul Dravid walking in at number 3 in his whites. But, we have a chance to see the master again when he takes to the field in IPL-V. I hate this IPL more than I love the game of cricket. But this time I will see it as Dravid’s last chance to go out on a high. While we're on the subject, it was the same side (Rajasthan Royals) with which Shane Warne showed that he was indeed a remarkable captain, who could never lead Australia. Now, can Dravid prove that in a same manner?

As a tribute to the legend I will repeat those great words by Sachin Tendulkar "There was and is only one Dravid. There can be no other."

SCIENCE vs GOD

“Please….. Don’t be superstitious” these are the words which I had used so many times whenever I hear something strange from my parents, something which I don’t think is possible. But obviously they have their own logics and past experiences which for me, are hard to absorb.

“Is GOD real or just an outdated concept?” Number of times in my life I questioned the existence of GOD, more than that about the existence of those super natural powers. And time by time GOD gave blows to my so called logical thinking. But my recent experience jolted my scientific & logical mind completely and forced me to re-think about all this again from the scratch.

In my maternal village there is a Samadh (A temple of a famous baba, after his death he was cremated at the same place). It’s very popular among the near around villages and all the villagers have high respect for it in their hearts. The baba is famous for Deemak (Termite); villagers say that this baba has an army of termites. I had heard so many stories about the termite army from my mom, my grandmother, my uncles and aunts. Once my maternal family organized a langar (community lunch) on some occasion. Some how they forgot to offer the Prasad to the samadh, before starting the langar; and in minutes the whole food stuff was attacked by the termites. It kept increasing until my grandfather went to the Samadh to offer apology prayers.

I never believed on such stories until Feburary 2012.

I was in a small town of Haryana to attend my cousin’s marriage. The function went well and the next morning when I woke-up; all the relatives were busy in packing their stuff to move back to their normal life schedule. There was some noise in the kitchen area where my aunt (massi ji) was packing some sweet boxes as a return gift for the relatives. I moved towards the noisy area and the scene there was very shocking. The ladoo cartons were full of termites; we pulled other sweets boxes out of the kitchen, every box were attacked by the termites and that to in millions of numbers. I was astounded by the scene in-front and couldn’t believe on my eyes.

My logical thought process again asked questions, if there were termites already in the house or somewhere around? But the answer to all my questions was a NO, and if there were so then also, why they attacked only the sweets? My grandmother asked us to stay away from the sweets area and she rang up my uncle (mama ji) in my maternal village to go to Samadh to offer prayers. In the meanwhile my massi ji went to puja room for her part of prayers. It was strange but within an hour every nook and corner of the kitchen was free from termites; we could only see some of them on the floor, that too lifeless.

Again my grandmother explained that my massi ji, might have wished from the Samadh for the smooth proceedings of marriage of her daughter but she forgot to thank the Samadh after all the work went fine. The cross questioning by our generation (me & my cousins) was obvious which ultimately came to an end with only one word ‘FAITH’. If you have faith in God anything is possible.

The Termite experience was really eccentric but it altered my view towards ‘GOD – SCIENCE – FAITH’

LOndOn DreAms - Chak de India

Hockey: National sport of India, it’s hard to believe but true. If you ask a child today he will not hesitate saying Cricket is the national sport of India.

More shocking is the pathetic condition of our national sport. The sport in which the Indian team is most successful in Olympic history with 8 Gold, 1 Silver and 2 Bronze medals. Dhyan Chand, best known as “Hockey Wizard”; the greatest player of all time and most remembered for his goal-scoring feats and for his three Olympic gold medals (1928, 1932, and 1936), while India was dominant in the sport. He scored more than 400 goals during his international career. You can imagine his greatness from - August 29, Dhyan Chand's birthday, is celebrated as National Sports Day in India; the Indian Postal Service issued a postage stamp in his memory. This Padma Bhushan award winner died of Liver Cancer in a general ward of AIIMS due to ignorance of Indian Government. That’s the history of Indian Hockey.

Indian Hockey team’s condition is also same like Dhyan Chand’s last days. You can judge the deplorable condition of Indian Hockey from this; once an unbeaten team for 6 Olympic Games in a row, now plays qualifying matches for it. But on Feb 26th 2012 the players gave a little tonic to the ailing Hockey, the Indian men's national hockey team has qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London after a gap of 8 years.

In the just concluded qualifiers after a long time Indian Hockey team seems like one unit, it was fast, it was energetic and hungry to win. It seemed like the good old times are back. The players performed so admirably, Michael Nobbs (Indian Coach) has done wonders; the players looked fitter, faster. This is just the beginning of the journey and the destination is still very far and the ride is only going to get tougher from here.

But sadly the officials are still the same, busy in pulling each other down. The fight B/W two sports body (Hockey India & Indian Hockey Federation) is getting nastiest. Just few days are left but still the players are not sure whether they are playing in WHS (World Series Hockey) or the Olympics Camp.

In this kind of administration the road to the Olympics is going to be harsh. Dear officials please resolve your differences and provide better platform to the team and bring back the lost glory of the National game.

Good wishes from a Hockey lover to the coach and the players to fulfill our London Dreams. Here's hoping for some more surprises from you guys……… CHAK DE INDIA

Exploring the D of Delhi - Surajkund Fest

After pushing me for over four years, this year at last she won. Neiha was asking me to visit Surajkund fest since quite long, even I wanted to but because of one or other reasons we missed it every season. But this time she pushed me so hard that we landed straight into the mela and that too planned just a day before.

Around noon we (Me, Neiha, Vicky, Jyoti) were on our way to Surajkund. Gurgaon-Faridabad road was under construction so we got some bumpy ride till we moved to surajkund road; from there the road was a good curvy retreat and what made it more beautiful was the cloudy weather. 

But that beautiful feeling of being a lonely animal in lush green fields soon disappears as we reached close surajkund. It seemed like people from all the nearby cities and villages thronged to the place. Long traffic queues and then fully occupied miles of parking space gave an impression like we are going to witness India Pakistan world cup final. Finally after crossing two parking areas we got space to park our car. I was excited to visit a mela after so long (I remember I went to one when I was in 5^th or 6^th standard). But with every step closer to the fest my excitement was fading down because of the excessive crowd.

Finally after struggling with the long ticketing queues we moved in (sorry crawled in – We didn’t have that much space to move). As always we were hungry before reaching our destination and with no doubts in our mind, Neiha & Vicky were the big bhukhas among us. So we moved directly towards the food court. The best thing about the fest was its location, it’s like deep inside the jungle, greenery all around; but that feeling of isolation in a jungle was badly crushed down by the massive crowd. Anyways, let aside the struggle to get the food, the quality & variety of food was very good and one can have every dish in the Indian food menu from idli sambhars to the pizzas pastas.

I was exhausted even before starting our pedestal walk, thanks to Jyoti for giving me company in the same feeling. As always Neiha was super excited to visit every nook and corner of the place and she was the one who kept us going. There was lot of stuff to shop for from woodcrafts, artifacts, bone-china material, clothes, antique statues, lamp shades. There were many dance performances at different locations but we could not see any, infact it was almost impossible to have a glimpse of those as every venue was over occupied. The most attractive stall for me was that of Tihar Jail Inmates shop, they are selling every stuff from candles to soaps, from greeting cards to diaries, from potato chips to biscuits and all the stuff was handmade by the jail occupants.

After listening to our repetitive cries at last Neiha agreed to leave the place half searched and move out; because it was getting wearisome, bumping to people again and again.

We were on the way back home, so were the birds. And they gave us the best view of their flight I had ever seen in my life. A group of white storks flying too low along the straight road, it seems they will hit my cars wind shield but at the last moment the birds pulled up. Our jaws dropped on this mesmerizing experience, we stopped the car to say thanks & goodbye to the birdies. “See you again on next year’s fest, but definitely not on a weekend”