Lalu Yadav as King Lear?

“How can we live, without our lives?”                                                                                                             -John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath

 I have borrowed the title of this column from a recent article by Uttam Sengupta, Consulting Editor of the National Herald, India.  It is fascinating to understand why Sengupta has symbolically compared Lalu Yadav, a popular Indian politician, to King Lear.

 King Lear is William Shakespeare’s 1605/06 play set in England.  The King wants to retire from duty as king, and decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, but the biggest share to the one who loves him most.  The two older daughters flatter the king, but the youngest doesn’t know how to express her love. So, the king gives the flatterers half the kingdom each, and in anger disowns the younger daughter. In due course, the king goes mad because of the mistreatment he receives from his two elder daughters, and finally dies of sadness and depression.

 Lalu Yadav’s eldest daughter is a member of the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian Parliament, and two of his sons are legislators in Bihar. Lalu Yadav, himself, is in jail now, sentenced by an anti-corruption court on corruption charges. What will become of Lalu Yadav in the end is the drop scene of this real-life play – one can only guess.

Conduct Yourself with Spiritual Politics!

“Who dwells in a glass house must not invite the hostile sentiments of pebble throwers!”

As she was quoted verbatim on the front page of the Express Tribune, Ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s angry, anguished and defiant daughter, Maryam Nawaz, reacting to the recently held APC in Lahore said, “All PMLN opponents are worth a used tissue paper.”  One simply wonders about the use of such language. Did things have to sink so low in the so-called democratic Islamic Republic of Pakistan?

I count myself one among the millions of Pakistani common folks, the awam, who are PMLN leadership’s opponents on the basis of political, ideological, philosophical, historical, analytical, and above all, moral-ethical reasons based on factual arguments and verifiable authentic evidence. However, let us consider for the sake of argument, the possibility that all of us, the PMLN opponents, may be absolutely flawed in our reasoning and the understanding of the entire political, economic, social situation in the country at the moment. The question that arises is: Are all of us “used tissue papers” worth nothing?

Why I Read Books & Yet Illiterate!

In an age of digital technology that controls our daily existence — mutual communication and human relationships by Facebook, Twitter, and above all massive electronically manipulated messaging by sophisticated telephones and other digital means — someone like me with a doctorate from an Ivy League university in the US is utterly and absolutely illiterate in the said field.  And, mind it, this illiteracy is by choice – completely self-imposed.  It is not, I must say, because of any mental-psychological impediment or intellectual disability. In fact, it may sound quite foolish, but I tend to enjoy my ignorance of the subject and the non-practice of it.  The truth is that there is implicit uncomplicatedness and simplicity in not being involved with digital communication; it is this personal innocence that I cherish.

My philosophical and conceptual view on the subject is that I do not wish to snap myself away from the intimate community experiences that I have grown up with, known and encountered.  No way! I cannot substitute digital messaging for real face-to-face conversations. Call me, if you wish, out-of-sync with contemporary civilization, but I have no desire to lose myself in this digital chimera that replaces intimate human relationships with an addiction for a vast global network of auxiliary acquaintances that exist only in an abstract sense through Facebook, Twitter and other digital interconnectedness without phenomenological and contemplative reality.