An Ode To A Great Man

It’s a pity that we seldom care to find out about the lives of our near and dear ones. We take it for granted that they should know everything about us, but we never return the favor. The worst hit in this case are our grandparents. When we actually reach the age of maturity, they are so old that we think it is futile to relive the last century. I am no different. I was blatantly oblivious to my grandparents lives till realization hit me like a bolt of lightning and I felt ashamed at my selfishness. My grandfather, i.e. my mother’s father is the great Onkar Nath Dhar. I use the word “great” because I feel that it is high time he receives his due, at least from his grandson. For starters he was a freedom fighter. He went to jail at the age of fourteen fighting for the independence of a country that his state wasn’t even acceded to. He was the eldest of seven siblings. At that time it was not feasible to achieve a high level of education. But he still managed to do IAS and was one of the outstanding qualifiers there. In the sixties and seventies he served in the ministry of Sheikh Abdullah as a commissioner of tourism. He was revered amongst his colleagues and is still respected very well in the community even today.

That was his professional life, sketchy though. But that is not the real point of this post. My grandfather has been a great achiever in his professional life but has been quite successful in his family life also. He was a strict father to three daughters and a son. Their upbringing was complete and all of them went on to achieve a lot in their educational as well as their professional careers. He is also a doting grandfather. All his grandchildren have received his affection in equal amounts. He has never been partial to anyone. When my father lost everything while migrating from Kashmir, my grandfather provided us a shelter in Delhi for about a year. He has been an honest man, hence does not have the money to live a lavish life. But that does not prevent him to be generous towards his grandchildren. After his retirement, he started writing as freelancer, mostly for the Hindu. His views on political upheavals in Kashmir are still a matter of notice and discussion.

My passion for politics and writing comes from him. I have grown up seen him discussing and writing various political articles. He has been my mentor of sorts. My father has been my knowledge bank but my writing has been passed on from my grandfather. I do not know whether he will ever get to read this piece that I have written about him, if he does I know that he would give me valuable suggestions on my grammar and language. I remember writing him letters when he was away in London. I asked him to get me a memento of the France World Cup, but in my sheer ignorance I misspelled it as “momento”. In his reply, he said “Dear sameer, I shall try my level best to get you a Memento (with a capital m) from here”. Such is the man’s method. He is probably unaware about the impact that he has made on my life, on my passion. Someday I shall tell him, by perhaps writing him a letter, a handwritten letter. And maybe I shall deliberately misspell some words, just to make sure he replies and teaches me another invaluable lesson in life. Here’s to you Papaji, you shall always remain a hero to this grandson of yours.

Thank You For Smoking

(The curtain rises and he enters the stage from the right, the smoke machine is ready for him, it is going to be an act of a life time....)
I have been a chain smoker for the last twelve years. I am 25. Do not be shocked, this ain't a confessional.
It is a common story of a common man. My tryst with the deadly stick started with a curious puff. As a usual
adventurous teen, i wanted to experience what it felt like turning your mouth into an exhaust pipe. The puff, intentionally
harmless went on to become the first of probably a million that followed it. At first, it was cool (or so i thought).
I mean remember Humphrey Bogart? Or Gregory Peck? The cigarette dangling from their lips accentuated their masculinity.
Every thought seemed to be more deep if it was followed by a spaced out look on your face and a column of smoke from your nostrils.
Every action seemed to be more fierce if it was with a burning cigarette in between your fingers. What it led to was the worst (or best you take your pick) addiction
of my life. I was hooked on to the burning smell of tobacco. Not only had the style impressed me, the nicotine relaxing my nerves had actually
made me an addict. Such was the power of the death stick (sic).
As i progressed through my turbulent puberty, habit set in. Whether the cigarette was in my hand or not, it did not seem any different.
By the time i passed out of school, i had come to fifteen a day. It was running through my veins. Sinus, bronchitis all set in to make
me miserable, but nothing a smoke could not cure. When it was hot, the cigarette took away the frustration, when it was rainy the cigarette was a perfect
supplement to the ambiance and when it was cold it was a perfect body heater. Season, time and place irrespective, i was smoking and choking (and yet..).
College proved to be highly taxing on the brain. So the setting was perfect for two packs a day.Movie intervals, lunch sessions, hostel time, before sleeping,
after getting up, i was following a strict diet of nicotine and carbon. I am thin, so this was making me almost invisible. I am sure people my age (smokers)
have experienced the same things. It is probably the most common habit in colleges. If you don't have anything to do, smoke.
Now i have started working, will be drawing my first salary soon. At 25 i feel like 60, and its not a good feeling. The girls are sermonizing as ever,
friends are waiting for me to drop dead and enemies have become satisfied that i am doing their dirty work, myself.
So i made a resolution, not to smoke from my own money. As i have just started working and i am living alone in Bombay, financial planning is a must.
Hence ladies and gentlemen, I take a bow. It has been an experience to have done the maximum i could to get cancer and cause pollution.
I am half expecting Phillip Morris and ITC to send me a hallmark card saying "Thank You For Smoking".

(And the curtain falls, he exits the stage stage left, and the smoke machine blows the stage centre full of smoke.)

Indian Idols

“History teaches us not to commit mistakes and yet………history repeats itself”



Every action has a reason and every reason has logic. Irrational as it may be, logic is relative. My sensibilities over the years, have acquired a logic that may seem too extreme to others, but is very reasonable to me. I am an Indian; no part of me denies the fact that this is my motherland. But are these my people? India, according to me, was never a country; it was and is a vision. A vision that borrowed from other ideologies of the world to come up with a new ideology socialism. I am no political expert but just an observant layman; socialism is an idea that propagates the collective functioning of the society as a whole and thus is more progressive, theoretically, than capitalism or communism as the latter two only focus on one particular wing of the society. So, 56 years hence, are we socialists? No, not even to the closest micron, because some where along the way we lost track to individualistic approaches and ideologies. My anguish arises not from what I have endured as a Kashmiri migrant, but by the revelation of the truth…………..



January 30th, 1948, a day no Indian can or will forget as this was the day a bullet seared through the heart of the man whose reference in history is preceded by the word ‘Mahatma’ i.e. ‘high-soul’. Nathuram Godse assassinated the Mahatma, so is Mr. Godse an anti-Indian? Funnily, he is seldom seen as a man whose ashes have yet to be immersed due to the fact that in his will, he has asked for the immersion of his ashes in the waters of the Indus of unified India, but as the demonic harbinger of the Mahatma’s death. Indus of unified India, an anti nationalist thought or a secular outlook, you decide. It pains my heart to see the ignorance of the fact that Nathuram Godse too was an Indian, a true Indian. I do not intend to blacken the Mahatma’s image, just want to point out the flaw of an ideology. M. A. Jinnah requested to become the prime minister of India which was denied, so he demanded a separate state altogether. History that we have read in our schools. But do we know that his intentions were not to harm but to progress? Suffering from cancer, his only outlook was that of a secular state. He resented the ignoring of the minorities from the first cabinet spearheaded by Nehru. So, he demanded either a post or a nation. Irrational to us, but very rational to him. But the decision of handing him a nation still defies my logical reasoning power. He died a few months after the formation of Pakistan, converting his stature to that of a demi-god for Pakistanis; a man who lived for the people and not for the chair. So, Jinnah’s descendants including his immediate family live as mere mortals in India, but his status is equivalent to God in Pakistan………..



Now came the bone of contention- the crown of the geographical outline of the country- Kashmir. Pakistanis invade Kashmir; Hari Singh, the king of Kashmir gives last minute letter of accession to India; Indian army push the Pakistanis back completely and then retreat to a position known as the line of control (LOC). History of school books revisited. But again do we know, that the Mahatma himself approached the U.N and asked for a plebiscite i.e. a vote in Kashmir where the people decide whether to go to Pakistan or stay with India? A vote that has yet to take place, 56 years hence. At that time the idea behind the vote was simple ask the people. But is it that simple? In 1947, it would have been fair but now, after years of insurgency and the spurt of the anti-India fervor in the state of Kashmir, a plebiscite spells doom for India. So much for vision and ideology. I ask you my fellow countrymen, how many wars have been fought for this issue? All the wars had a central issue, why the delay in plebiscite? Pakistan’s ideology may not seem so irrational now; a vote was promised and it did not take place, so they attacked. So, Pakistan is not irrational, we never attacked Pakistan so we were right to defend ourselves, yet millions of lives were lost. So who is to blame? Hindu? Muslim? Politics? Pakistan? India? Think about the answer yourself. A man can be great but that doesn’t mean that his ideology is always rational.





Our very first prime minister showed his immense love for the country by taking up the job that required strength and compassion as needed to nurture a seedling to full bloom. India has gone to war a in total five times. Thrice under his rule. 1947-1966, nineteen years of governance, three wars and a legacy that continues till today. His ideology was to make sure that Jinnah did not blackmail the country to accept him as the prime minister. Correct, as an individual, but principles are seldom put before the nations interest, in my view. Again a great respectable man, but somewhere his ideology was not compatible with the vision of India.





Succeeding him was his daughter( hereditary monarchical type of government in a democracy, poetic). 1971 war, 1975 emergency any anti congress or anti-Indira Gandhi activist was arrested and put in jail! No surprise that she had no competition left after that black period in our brief history. Indira Gandhi was quite literally the mother of Indian politics. Her fierce methodology appealed to the youth at the time. She was hailed as the ‘New Dawn’ in the political system of our country. Her no nonsense attitude left many stunned to actually think logically. She, along with Sanjay Gandhi, proved it once again that the face of the person appealed to our senses more what they think. A majority of the voters did not even know whom they were voting for, what she stood for, all they knew that she was the daughter of their beloved Jawaharlal Nehru. So was our action rational at that time? After all we voted her into power only to be assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards which led to the 1984 Hindu Sikh riots which eventually led to the heightened insurgency in Punjab. She ordered to open fire on the Golden Temple, the right intention at that point of time but with a repercussion that left millions dead thereafter. My brain starts to play tricks with me as I link history. But am I linking history? Or am I linking one individual in history to the plight of our country? Think who gave support and consent to Nehru to be the first prime minister? Indira became the prime minister due to whose demise? Doesn’t it all add up miraculously?







After mother’s assassination a son came along who unleashed his army on his own countrymen sent to Sri Lanka by himself. No wonder he ended up in bits and pieces. Now we have a new mother, another Gandhi, another great person, another ideology but with one little flaw; she is Italian. During this entire saga, who suffered the most? Did we even for a minute stop to think about India? I, ladies and gentlemen, am writing this article away from my home land because I was driven out of there by an extreme but rational ideology that if I and my compatriots are out of Kashmir, the long overdue plebiscite will be more favorable to Pakistan. In Punjab, a friend of mine has lost his entire family to insurgency and down south another one has lost a brother and a father in Lanka. Not to forget the names of all those martyrs etched on India Gate who have died fighting for the ideology of a legacy that still continues. People may be great, but their ideologies aren’t right always. I refuse to accept the ‘Mahatma’ as the father of my nation- so am I an anti-Indian?

Losing hope in paradise

Losing hope in paradise
I am a Kashmiri pandit who has been living in delhi since 1990. Like scores of other Kashmiri pandits i have seen the worst that can possibly be dreamt of, destruction of your home in front of your eyes.That too when home was paradise,not only for us but for anyone who visited.Why? I ask this question perhaps a thousand times, why did I flee.I was only eight, so my decisions were left to my parents. In a fit of rage, i blamed my parents on their cowardice to abandon their home as do many second generarion displaced kids like me. But my father's eyes told me about a fear that i may not realise or understand today, a fear that haunts any father.........the fear of losing a family. Slaughtered, thats what we would have been had we stood in the way of the violent uprising. Valiant but slaughtered. More than martyrdom we desired a life full of oppurtunities and more importantly, we desired a life. Is there anything wrong in being hopeful?We were born humans and remain humans to this date. Fear is a part of human nature. Isnt it the fear of god that keeps us from wrong. The fear of god is considered as a prayer, then why is the fear of death cowardice? One who fears death is one with hope, hope that eludes this staggering community still coming to terms with the harsh reality of our homeland.

I destest the stands of biased journalists who talk about Kashmir as an issue between India and Pakistan. We as Indians should know by now that there is no issue regarding the ownership of kashmir. Kashmir was and will remain a part of India. The issue is us, where do we go? We are a community that has a literacy rate of close to a hundred percent, yet a majority of us are forced to live in camps. I have never seen NDTV or any other news channel visit a Kashmiri camp. Why? How many of you have made a conscious effort to find out about the real reason behind the plight of that state?We are too bothered with pakistan bashing and human rights violations in the valley to ignore the core issue.What about the thousand homeless families that are still surviving on the relief program. For crying out loud, relief for sixteen years. It is a plight none of us can imagine sitting in our homes. Yet no NGO takes up the cause of these people. Why? Is it because we are cowards? Or is it because our existence is not important? I may sound bitter, but thats what this issue has turned us into. I am an Indian too, i have a right to exist, i have a right to hope, hope that seems lost in a paradise of hopelessness.