Sparsh

Mental idleness leads to aimlessness and eventually despondency. To be a contented and creatively-active person, one has to keep doing something that keeps your zest for life alive and inspires you. For me it is blogging, it makes me feel alive. Today, Nothing to write but a zeal to express is there in the heart. I am observing that there has been shift towards how much you own, how much you can get paid for some skill that you have, and bargain hard to get the most you can. We've been culturally brainwashed to believe that the average products for average people, compliance, focus on speed and cost (the factory approach) is the one and only way. It's not the ideal situation. People deserve more and have more potential within. I feel that capability rather than domain knowledge is more important; Today, I find a beautiful paragraph on creativity by a famous poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz . In 1951 Faiz and a number of army officers were implicated in the so-called Rawalpindi Con...

Continued from the Part 1 , When there is no cultural, political or social movement in a country, alternative forces emerge. That's why I believe that the intellectual life of the Islamic republic has virtually ground to a halt. The fear of causing offence has helped undermine progressive trends in Islam and strengthened the hand of religious bigots. Secular Muslims have come to be regarded as betraying their culture, while radical Islam has become not just more acceptable but, to many, more authentic. There is less need to quote Quran and Hadith again and again for better understanding of Islamic doctrines. This trend has led to cherry-picking whichever paraphrase or translation supports whatever point one attempts to convey through holy book. Here, we have to understand the relationship between the Muslim and the non-Muslim world. The idea of two separate worlds divided from one another is wrong and violent repression is the seed of terror and militant Islamism in the I...

Udaan is touching chords of nostalgia of growing up amongst adults and charming the young with hope in the eyes. The undecisive youth wants time and emotional support to pursue his/her dream career. Udaan is going to be more than teenage success in coming years, a benchmark for coming of the age film. Udaan is going to be our own The Catcher in the Rye , an expression for the teen angst. Udaan was selected in the competitive section in the prestigious Cannes film festival. And the mainstream media and Bollywood reaction: silence. Unforgivable! Such efforts need encouragement in an early stage so that Udaan could have good outreach to global audience. Mainstream media and Bollywood fail us in great way. Now, when Amitabh Bachan likes the movie, everybody is hailing it as masterpiece. Udaan is a cinema based on real life and that has touched us in our lives. And people must watch it as its the voice and angst of mature teenager. I find ~uh~™ 's review enchanting and rational...

1-  One grey issue needs our attention :  The real tragedy of the media’s surrender to the state is that journalists have stopped reading books, especially history books. Speaking at the Fifth Al Jazeera annual forum Robert Fisk laments the state driven semantics that take over and alter grave debates:  Journalism and 'the words of power' ; 2- Media does not act out of grief or out of some sense of compulsion at the death of any celebrity. Media is merely pandering to the lowest common denominator for commercial considerations as the stories that combine sex, glamour and death find a ready market. So its like justification of drug peddler for giving drugs to victims as given by media on defencing its coverage of sensational gossips and celebrity lifestyles. 3- Let me remind you, there is a public service broadcast also in this mob of news channels for serving citizens of this  nation. That is called Prasar Bharati. B G Verghesse covers necessity of publ...

This is mine 400th post on the 'Sparsh'. It’s an eve of expression and celebration for me. I have a long journey of “unlearning" prejudices to gain insight of human nature. Also, the explosion of the blog phenomenon has exposed youths like me to a multitude of opinions. I had read, written and discussed about social, economic, and political opinions of importance and enjoyed sharing views on cinema. I read several bloggers but follow ritually for new updates on these blogs : Nimmy , Nimmy2 , Indianhomemaker , Rashmi Bansal , Atanu Dey , Devinder Sharma , TheSouthAsianIdea , Prof Abi , Sameer Bhat, anindianmuslim , Winds From The East , Calamur Harini , Vikram V Garg , Diptakirti , aPocRyPHaL , Anu , The Rational Fool , Nita , The Religious Policeman , kufr , Roshmi , Jaya , Santosh Desai ,  joie de vivre and Rajjo ; I read and like works of these Public Figures : Osho , Nadeem F. Paracha , Bill Maher , Christopher Hitchens , Dr. B. R. Ambedkar , P. Sainath , N...