A Tribute to Kamlesh Tiwari

Lotus God

Cry beloved Hindus

Cause you lost your voice

Amidst the barbarian horde

We are few that survived

Some of us out of many

Only dared to fight

To them the fate that befell

Was truly a gruesome sight

 

As the throat was slit

With daggers cruel to slice

Cuts, piercing flesh so prime 

Allah was avenged to delight

 

Arise, awake be counted right

for secular slumber is a blight

Weld, unite to congeal tonight

Motherland wants souls alight  

Quarantine Musings

Never imagined we would be all cooped up in our homes since 22^nd March 2020 when the Prime Minister announced the ‘Janata Curfew’. It was priming us to act voluntarily what the Govt. eventually enforced afterwards looking at gravity of the situation worldwide. Now here I am roaming about in my house doing all household chores which I loathed to do. It’s a surreal feeling of living in dystopian world where humans are caged and nature returns back with a vengeance. With sparrows & itinerant sundry birds making an appearance on my balcony it’s me who is inside while they are flying free. We frequently come across a doomsday scenario in movies & novels and I must confess that this pandemic has made us realize the fallibility of human nature. We are eating beyond our means and in the process endangering flora & fauna of Mother Earth that’s unreplenishable and this reminded me of the movie Avatar where human are trying to destroy balance of nature in a faraway moon of Pandora. Its human avarice and lust to satisfy our taste buds & olfactory nerves that has unleashed a number of pathogens like the recent Covid-19, H1N1, HIV/AIDS just to name a few.
As it is human nature to survive I believe we will overcome this adversity too but with many people across the globe having to pay with lives unfortunately. This pandemic has forced us to rethink our lifestyle and the world will be a different place once this scourge recedes. All countries are in turmoil now with world economy in a tailspin and will take years to stabilize. Health and hygiene has suddenly become of paramount importance and I am reminded of the simple but scientific lifestyle of our forefathers. Footwear were to be always kept outside the house, on coming from outside one had to take a bath and put the clothes for washing, fasting was an regular affair to allow body systems to rest while Namaskar was a way of greeting and human activity coincided with the path of life giving Sun. It’s time we return to our roots & reclaim the wonders of our civilization that is unchanged and unexplored     

From Namaskar to Sampeah

On the spur of the moment I decided to visit Cambodia a fairly known country in South East Asia for two reasons. My guiding beacon was the world famous Angkor Wat the largest Hindu temple in the world whose name has been like a lighthouse to the marooned travelers floating in the cities of modern monstrosities that snare unsuspecting tourists nowadays.    

Cambodia as a country is not seeking to entice tourists with its glitzy cities or sky hugging towers or gaming destinations. But what it is offering to the perspicacious tourists is something as simple as its history! It’s a grand celebration of its history and believe me it’s a history which many countries shun if it’s not in line with its current national ethos. Cambodia is 95% Buddhists but it celebrates its Hindu ancestry with such pomp and gaiety that would put any Indian (Hindu) to shame. Everywhere you see a celebration of Hindu symbols and divinity and appreciation of a culture that was of their forefathers few centuries ago. Cambodia as a country and Angkor Wat in particular is a unique experience in syncretism. It’s a melting pot where its Hindu origins are effortlessly fused in its present day Buddhist moorings. When you enter the hallowed ruins of Angkor Wat you can visualize the grandeur and scale with which it must have reverberated in its times of glory. It retells Indian stories about Hindu Gods and celebrates Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. It will delight any visiting Hindu when they feast on these wondrous monuments and the intricate craftsmanship that adorn the temple complex. I am sure majority of Hindus would blush at the ease with which the guides in Angkor Wat tell you about our religious epics. I was flabbergasted when I heard some fellow Maharashtrian trying to correct our Cambodian guide about a particular aspect of our epics admonishing him that these were epics of our country.

The most wonderful aspect I found was the respect accorded by ordinary Cambodians to these monuments of yore. They treat them reverentially and protect them as befits a national treasure. Indians need to learn from Cambodians how to treat their national monuments & respect their cultural heritage.    

The second reason for the visit to Cambodia was of course the infamous killing fields which is a living reminder to the horrors of the communist plague ‘Khmer Rouge’ that wiped out millions of innocent Cambodians. It saddens your heart to see the havoc and plunder ushered in by his deviant ‘Red Army’ which unleashed a reign of terror during their short rule from 1975 to 1979. All youths passionate about the communist ideology should visit Cambodia to understand how pernicious this ideology is, which has impoverished millions across the globe while retaining the fig leaf that it protects the interests of the workers. Not only these thugs murdered their own countrymen but also destroyed temples and killed the Buddhist monks. It is apparent that communism as an ideology perpetuates rule by a cabal and aims to destroy the religious belief of the people implanting in their mind devotion towards a ‘Big Brother’

The excesses committed by the Khmer Rouge are there for all to see and the way Cambodia has come of out this shameful period is remarkable indeed. Even though this piece of history is inconvenient to say the least, still Cambodia took this opportunity to present to the world the real horrors of a communist experiment gone awry. The reverence with which they have preserved the torture chambers particularly the ‘Toul Sleng’ genocide museum is remarkable and it fills your heart with pathos to imagine that one human being can be so cruel to another just because of a wrong belief. The mass executions that were carried out at ‘Choeung Ek’ popularly called ‘The Killing Fields’ is heart wrenching to imagine and even infants were not spared and killed mercilessly by banging their heads on tree trunks. The Buddhist stupa at the site which houses skulls of the victims who were massacred is a solemn tribute by the people of Cambodia paying homage to these unfortunate countrymen of theirs.        

The contrast in history that is presented to a tourist is so breathtaking that it can blow away one’s mind and stun your sensibilities. At one end you have the majestic   celebration of religious splendor in Angkor Wat and at the other end you are taken to the depths of human suffering at The Killing Fields. This variance is not easy to fathom and can make your mood alternate from joy to suffering which is what I grappled with during my brief visit to this beautiful country.