क्यूँ रोती तू मात बता

तू क्यूँ रोती हे मात बता,
तेरी व्यथा यहाँ कौन सुने,
तू करती रहे चीत्कार मगर,
कर्ण दान तुझे कौन करे.

क्रोध-काम में लिप्त हैं सब,
है लोभ इतना यह तृप्त हैं कब,
आडम्बर में आकंठ डूबे,
आनंद ही इनका ध्येय है अब

तेरी छाती चाहे छलनी हो,
व्यभिचार इनका चलता रहे,
तू करती रहे रुदन-क्रंदन,
सुख इनको बस मिलता रहे.

क्यूँ कष्ट उठाएं तेरे पुत्र,
क्यूँ तेरे लिए तज दें आनंद,
एक अंध दौड़ इनका है लक्ष्य,
क्यूँ तुझ हेतु पराभव-आलिंगन,

कोई क्रांति नहीं है हल इसका,
प्रत्येक बुद्धि ही भ्रष्ट हो जब,
क्या करे आदित्य दिवस देकर
मनुज अर्धरात्रि पूजे जब.

Spirit of Me

चाह मेरी हर हो पूरी,
भगवान नहीं मैं इस जग का.
हर मार्ग पर मैं रहूँ सफल,
भाग्य नहीं मेरे पग का.

पूर्ण फलित प्रत्येक स्वप्न,
नत संसार हो चरणों में,
मैं ब्रह्म नहीं, न नीलकंठ,
न श्रेष्ठतम सब वर्णों में.

देव नहीं,, न ही दनुज,
अलौकिक सामर्थ्य से विहीन.
एक पार्थिव सामान्य मनुज,
अपने स्वप्नों में पूर्ण लीन.

पर नयनों में रखूँगा स्वप्न,
देवपुत्र हूँ जो न देव सही,
सो देह में हर संभव प्रयत्न,
असफल वो आदित्य नहीं.

जो हम नहीं देख पाते-2

मैं विचित्र सोच रखता हूँ, ऐसा मेरे मित्र कहते हैं। और मनुष्य वैसा ही होता है जैसी उसकी सोच, तो फिर मैं विचित्र हूँ। हालाँकि मुझे सामान्यत: ऐसा प्रतीत नहीं होता, परंतु इतने सारे लोग तो एक साथ गलत नहीं बोलेंगे। अतएव मानने का प्रयत्न करता हूँ एक बार। सोचा, देखूँ तर्क से निष्कर्ष क्या निकलता है? पर मैं जब देखता हूँ तो मुझे तो संसार विचित्र प्रतीत होता है। आडम्बर में लीन, मनुष्य अपने ही ज्ञान का अपने ही विरुद्ध दुरुपयोग करता हुआ। मुझे ऐसा लगता है, औरों को नहीं। आडम्बर का एक उदाहरण दूँ? पर पहले उस पर विश्वास करने को तैयार हों तो। कम से कम न्यूनतम स्तर पर विचार करेंगे, इसकी अपेक्षा तो कर ही सकता हूँ। यदि इतना भी आश्वासन  नहीं दे सकते तो क्षमा करें, आप मेरे विचारों के लक्षित पाठक नहीं हैं।
मुंबई मैराथन का नाम आप सब ने सुना होगा। जो वास्तविक मैराथन है, उसकी कथा आपमें से कितनों के स्मरण में होगी ये पुन: चर्चा का विषय हो सकती है। मैं वो चर्चा यहाँ आरंभ नहीं करना चाहता। औचित्य नहीं दिखता मुझे उसका, अतएव स्वयं ही थोडा विषय से भटक कर वो कथा यहाँ दुहरा देता हूँ, अपितु कथा का सार दुहरा देता हूँ। एक धावक के शौर्य की गाथा, जिसने अपने राष्ट्र की रक्षा में अपने प्राण त्याग दिये। मैराथन दौड का आयोजन प्रतिवर्ष उसी महान दौड की स्मृति में आरंभ किया गया। आप सोच रहे होंगे ये मैं कहाँ से कहाँ आ गया? अब भूमिका के बिना कैसी विवेचना। तो पुन: मुंबई मैराथन पर आता हूँ। मुझे इसमें वास्तविक मैराथन के सार का दर्शन नहीं होता। एक आडंबर से पूर्ण, मनोरंजन से भरी, विभिन्न सिने तारक- तारिकाओं से सुसज्जित एक चलचित्र सी प्रस्तुति। इसके आरंभ के कई दिनों पहले ही आरंभ हो जाती है इस नाटक को बेचने की तैयारी। मैंने नही देखा किसी भी समाचार चैनल को किसी वास्तविक धावक की  जीवनी पर कभी कोई कार्यक्रम प्रस्तुत करते। दिनों तक कौन से नायक, कौन सी नायिकायें इस आडंबर का हिस्सा होंगी, इसी की प्रस्तुति चलती रहती है। मैराथन की समाप्ति पर ही कुछ मिनट उस वास्तविक धावक पर व्यय किये जाते हैं। मुझे ये निंदनीय प्रतीत होता है। और इसके कारण हम ही हैं। क्योंकि हम ही हैं जो नाटकीयता से भरे समाचार चैनलों को वर्ष प्रतिवर्ष उत्तम दर्जा देते हैं। पर हम ऐसा होने देते हैं, क्योंकि नाटकीयता और मनोरंजन ही लक्ष्य बना रखा है हमने जीवन का। वास्तविकता चुभती है, अतएव शुतुरमुर्ग बनकर आँखें मूँद लेते हैं। मूल्यों का मूल्य नहीं रखा हमने, और एक अंध दौड़ के प्रतिभागी हो गए। इसलिए कि मूल्यों को ढोना पड़ता है, उसमे आनंद की अनुभूति नहीं होती। आनंद ही सर्वोपरि हो गया हमारे लिए और सब तजकर हम आनंदमार्गी हो गए। अंध दौड़ में दौड़ते गए कि अधिकाधिक आनंद जुटा सकें। एक महान परंपरा कि आत्मा का नाश कर दिया हमने कि आनंद की प्राप्ति हो सके, थोडा और आडम्बर हो सके। विचार कीजिये, शायद समझ ही जायें कि अंततोगत्वा कर क्या रहे हैं हम?

What we don't see

We all have seen things in our life and have interpreted them in our own way, as long as it was possible to do it on our own. When we could not, we sought help from elders, friends, people whom we thought are wiser than us. And so we grew in our intellect, we got to know the world and got a perception, our view of life. Sometimes we forget though that everything has two sides, not necessarily exact opposites of each other, but surely different from each other. Things have different meaning for different people. We choose to see the side that is convenient to us and interpret it that way. How many of us choose to see the absolute side of a thing, a deed? Not many, certainly.
On Women's day I was reading an article somewhere. The article was about a tribe in which fat girls are considered beautiful. The fatter the girl, more beautiful she is according to them. Girls in the particular tribe have eating as their agenda of life so that they can get fatter and can get a husband easily. The writer of the article wondered about the sorry state of those women and their life, genuinely worried. Why those women get fat just to get boys? The tribe is supposed to be some South African tribe.
I wondered! I wondered not about the same thing but about the fact that does the writer ever reads the newspapers that we get daily in India? The very newspapers which have almost 20% of its pages dedicated to bollywood. Now you may wonder where does bollywood come from and how is that relevant? I'll come to that now. Not much time has passed when those said 20% pages were filled by reporters writing about a "phenomenon" in indian cinema history- Size Zero achieved by Kareena Kapoor. That became a craze. Every other girl in big towns, cities was talking about it. The media was obsessed by it, praising it as if she won a noble peace prize or something. Now, why was it a big issue? Because deep in our mind and sometimes quite obvious, girls here too treat their physical attributes as means to attract the opposite sex. This makes them feel good I suppose. Now do you see my point? I see hypocrisy there. Those tribal women are being worried at and these girls are called "Divas". We have tv programs in which girls try to lure guys to marry them and they are well followed by a very large pool of viewers. Nobody worries about this sorry affair. I don't understand the double standards. Do you get it now? What you don't see?

The complete misadventure of my lappy disaster - Part II

Normally my day at office starts with checking my mails as for most of us professionals that is supposed to be very important. And that too when you are in service industry directly in contact with your clients, being the front face of your organization, it becomes critical. Yet as now all of you know from my last post, my Ideapad had left me handicapped on that front. So getting rid of my handicap was the first and last thing in my mind at that point. Thinking of every way possible and getting the ideas from different people on my hour long ride to work to revive my lappy I was ready to fight that handicap.
I opened my laptop. Now stop there. I did not start it. I opened it, literally. Opened its back panel to flash its hard disk to the air conditioned atmosphere of my office and removed it from the socket where it was fitted seamlessly. The thing that my laptop is still under warranty had restricted me from performing this act for some time now, but no longer. I had no choice left. I plugged in an external CD drive and an external hard disk to the only two ports available on my Ideapad after that and put the power on to install Ubuntu in the external hard disk. And as now its getting boring and monotonous. So i'll skip to the last part.
Because in the end it does not matter how I did it or what I did? The thing that matters is I saved my data and have an OS running on my lappy that rarely gets affected by viruses and all, and even that rarely is rare. Ubuntu is awesome with its built in drivers. And though it took me two nights and a day, I'm happy to see the screen of my IdeaPad glowing and my clicks working. And for Windows, I'll quote Bruce Willis from the movie Die Hard "Yippie-Kay-Yay you ************ "

The complete misadventure of my lappy disaster

When I woke at 4 that night, I looked at that small screen. It was glowing and showing my idle desktop wallpaper. I smiled I guess, thinking that finally its saved. Finally its working again. I shut the lid and went to sleep again.
It was the evening before that night when it all started. I sat down infront of my lovely blue-white lappy and when it asked for my password, with no premonition of any dreaded things, I typed it in followed by a hit on the return key. And that was the moment when hell froze. Actually my IdeaPad did. For several minutes I waited to see that wallpaper, "bliss" as windows call it, but all I could see was "Loading your personal settings". I had no other choice left other than to make the forced shut down. It irked me. It irks me if anything does not behave like it should and that too at the time when I need it to. Several re-runs of the same drama did not yield anything fruitful and frustrated I packed my IdeaPad back in my bag. Thought of having a look at it at my leisure in the comfort of my home.
Now at my home, you just can not start working as soon as you reach. There are few choruses you have to do before you settle in and start resting yourself. After all my family members, especially my little niece, do not see me the whole day and I need to give them some time too. So it was not before 11 that I could start to have a look at the problem in hand. The first thing that I used to do when I was in college at such times was to format the disk and reinstall the OS. But here I couldn't do that. The reason of concern was the data that was there in my hard disk. Apart from some very important personal data, those pictures, videos and the application bank that I have made in past 5 years, the thing was that it contained critical official data too which I could not afford to lose. Even having an external hard disk was not of any help as I could not copy the data until my laptop works for one last time. Tried to run it in safe mode and once I was there, I tried to uninstall one particular application, which was causing the problem according to me. But that was where I screwed it big time. My lappy refused to operate in safe mode too. Irritation took over all other feelings and I left the Ideapad to get restarted in safe mode one last time and went to sleep, not bothering whats gonna happen?
when I woke up at 4 I saw the screen showing the wallpaper "Bliss". I thought it started to work and shut it down. Now that is where being sleep deprived hurts you real bad. What should have I done there? I should have taken the backup of the hard drive and then shut it down, which I did not do because my mind wasn't working. And in the morning when I got up, my lappy did not. There was no time to attend to it, as I had to rush to office. What happened in the office will constitute the second part of this post. Stay tuned....

And the last phase begins....

There are many things that surfaced in the last few days and most important of them all are the changes in me. Yes, myself, the very person carrying the name Kumar Aditya. Being an extremist doesn't help much. Neither it helps if you are stubborn and are not ready to change yourself according to the needs of today's world. Then which changes I'm talking about? These are the changes that happened not for my desire to change or to gain something that this world does not have to offer otherwise. These changes did not happen to what I believe in. These changes have happened to my behaviour. From being a person who wanted to see the result at any cost, by doing anything in his power has changed to a person who is now letting things take their course. Becoming a person who accepts the things as they are, not how he wants them to be, who is ready to see things unfolding themselves and is ready to be surprised. Becoming a person who has stopped worrying about the "what ifs".
Another news - My dream venture Mallone has entered in its last phase of creation. Almost 3 years after its conception, it will be getting out now in a few days time. It feels great to see one process working, in which I believed. People have laughed over it at times, few people were sarcastic and very few supported it. But as Mahatma Gandhi said "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win" and winning matters. That is one thing that hasn't changed and will never change...

Change and the reason behind it....

Many people I meet want me to change. They say my views are not practical, they are not realistic and certainly they do not meet the need of the hour. I have, as it has implied already, a different take on things around me. The words practical & realistic mean differently for me. I never understand what people call as practical and realistic approach. How can giving up my values, my character and my principles to gain something materialistic be practical when I can achieve that by following a different path but keeping my inner-self intact, keeping my values intact. May be a bit delayed but still within reach. What is practical? For me everything that is possible to do is practical. A thing that is doable , I believe I can do that and what is doable is practical.I work, I work hard. I aim high, and I plan to achieve that too. I work on executing that plan as well. All that I do differently is having a people-centric approach. Feelings, promises, loyalty, love, integrity, these things mean more to me than achieving some materialistic objective. I believe in values that I got from my family, from the learned men who gave the society its intellectuality. I take things on their absolute value. I weigh them as if they are right things to do in an absolute environment or not? Not in a perspective, not in any comparison. Cheating somebody is wrong in an absolute environment, not being loyal is wrong in absolute environment, losing my integrity is bad whatever be the reasons behind it and so I'll consider them wrong irrespective of the conditions. When I resigned from AIESEC, I didn't leave with a cordial relationship with the organization, but that does not stop me from doing anything that can help the organization grow. So why would I change my values if somebody did something of his or her choice that was against or in favour of me? I am not saying I am a saint. All I am saying is that I do not change because the world does something or does not. I'm not against change either. It is inevitable, but it should be for progress. Progress of the society, progress of the people, progress of the individual at intellectual level. Change for the sake of change, at the cost of values, at the cost of integrity should not be acceptable and there I differ from today's world. A world which is hypocrite. Which taught me one thing and asks me to do the opposite. I'll keep my integrity, my sanity, my loyalty, my honour and I'll grow too, achieve too without changing myself. If I commit to something. I'll honour it, whatever be the implications. And that this world can not take away from me, whether it thinks that as practical or not.

विचारों के मध्य का अन्तर

आज मैं बहुत दिनों के बाद यहाँ हूँ। इतने दिनों से आया नहीं, क्योंकि उलझा हुआ था कई सारी परिस्थितियों से। आज आया हूँ कि कुछ उत्तर चाहिये थे। उत्तर जो मेरे पास हैं, और मैं जानता हूँ कि वो बदलेंगे भी नहीं। तो यूँ कहिये कि अपनी कुछ बातें लाया हूँ। इन बीते दिनों में अन्तर देखा है मैंने, अन्तर जो मेरे विचारों और मान्यताओं, और बाकी दुनिया के मान्यताओं के मध्य है। परन्तु ये अन्तर इतना विराट क्यूँ और कैसे? मैं भी तो इसी सन्सार का अंग रहा हूँ। आखिर कहाँ पीछे रह गया मैँ इन विचारों के परिवर्तन से?
मैंने माना चरित्र निर्माण ही ध्येय होना चाहिये मानव जीवन का। मैंने माना प्रेम हर सम्बन्ध का आधार और विश्वास ही परिणति होनी चाहिये। मैंने माना कि प्रेम,विश्वास और प्रतिबद्धता स्तंभ होने चाहिये जीवन के और अपने बचपन से यही पढा भी। यही पढा और सीखा कि चरित्र ही सबसे बडा धन है। धन के लिये आगे बढने की दौड में विश्वास करना नहीं सीख पाया। केवल आगे रहना है, नहीं तो दुनियाँ हेय समझेगी, इस पर विचार नहीं किया कभी। कोई भी कार्य इसलिये किया क्युँकि खुद करना चाहता था। इच्छा हुयी स्वयँ करने की, इसलिये किया। बस ध्यान रखा इस बात का कि जो कर रहा हूँ वो नैतिक, कानूनी और मर्यादा की सीमा के अन्दर हो। इसलिये किया कि कुछ सीख सकूँ। सीख्नना ही ध्येय था। यह ध्येय कभी नही रहा कि सीखूँ ताकि उसका प्रयोग कर बाकियों से आगे निकल सकूँ। संसार मायने नहीं रखता था उस कार्य में मेरे लिये। संसार महत्वपूर्ण था और है, पर इसलिये कि भावनायें महत्वपूर्ण हैं, इसलिये कि स्वयँ से प्रेम नहीं कर सकता, इसलिये कि अकेले जी नहीं सकता। संसार इसलिये महत्वपूर्ण नहीं कि उससे मुझे लडना है, उससे मुझे जीतना है, बल्कि इसलिये महत्वपूर्ण है कि जो भी सीख सकता हूँ, इसी से सीख सकता हूँ। और सबसे महत्वपूर्ण इसलिये है क्यूँकि प्रेम इसी में रह्कर मिलेगा, इसी से मिलेगा।
मेरे यही विचार आज उपहास का विषय हैं, क्यूँकि आज संसार में आगे बढना ही महत्व रखता है। क्योंकि आज जो हम पढते हैं, वो सीखने के लिये नहीं पढते,उसपे विश्वास करने के लिये नहीं पढते, बल्कि दूसरों से आगे निकलने के लिये पढते हैं, मनोरंजन के लिये पढते है। प्रेम का औचित्य नहीं है, विश्वास का औचित्य नहीं है, क्योंकि ये आपको आगे बढने से रोक देती हैं। इनका औचित्य है बस तब तक जब तक ये आपके हर्ष में, आपके मजे में आपके सहायक हैं। परेशानी लेकर प्रेम और विश्वास के साथ अडिग रहना अब मूर्खता है।
मैँ नहीं मानता और ना ही मानूँगा कभी। आज भी मेरे जीवन के आधार स्तंभ वही हैं और सदा वही रहेंगे। जिन्हें ये हास्यास्पद लगता है, हँस सकते हैं, जिन्हें मूर्खता लगती है, बिना सन्कोच मुझे मूर्ख बुला सकते हैं। पर मैं नही मानूँगा कभी कि संसार में प्रेम, विश्वास और प्रतिबद्धता से महत्वपूर्ण जीवन में कुछ भी है। पता नहीं आप सहमत होंगे या नहीं, पर प्रतीक्षा रहेगी आपकी प्रतिक्रियाओं की। मुझे समझना है इस अंतर को। मेरे विचार पढने के लिये धन्यवाद।