Shailaza's Blog

Tag: Rashtradoot Newspaper

  • The Pact of Chittorgarh: A Rajputana That Held

    History remembers the fall of Rajputana—kingdoms divided, betrayed by pride, broken by gunpowder. But what if Khanwa never happened—not because it was avoided, but because it was pre-empted by unity? This is not fantasy. It is the alternate heartbeat of a nation that almost rose together. Where blood feuds paused, swords crossed at the center, and silence dared to resist the roar of cannons.
    This is the India that could have been—if one pact had held.

    What you’re about to read is not fiction—but a historical reimagining.

    Based on real people, real battles, and real choices, this seven-part series dares to ask: What if the Rajputs had chosen unity before Babur crossed the Yamuna?

    We follow not myths but possibilities—where Maharana Sanga does not stand alone at Khanwa, but beside Rao Ganga and a young Maldeo learning at his father’s side,  Prithviraj, Karnavati, and forgotten nobles like Amar of Sirohi.

    There is no magic here. Only history, refracted through the mirror of imagination.

    This is a world where strategies evolved, pride bent to purpose, and silence resisted gold.

    This is the India that could have been—if we had held the line.

    The Turning Point – Mewar in Peril (1519)

    The sky over Chittorgarh burned red that night—not from fire, but from a bloodied sunset that followed three days of mourning. Maharana Sanga had returned from another exhausting campaign, his body weary, his resolve unshaken. Rumors whispered of growing threats—fractured loyalties, shifting alliances, and the slow approach of Babur’s thunder from the northwest.

    Across Rajputana, kingdoms stood proud but fractured—Mewar, Marwar, Amber, Bikaner, Jaisalmer—each entrenched in rivalry, blind to the northern shadow gathering force. Babur, the Timurid prince from Fergana, had crossed the Khyber. His cannons, his cavalry, his ambition—they spoke a language the Rajputs had not yet learned to counter. The thunder of gunpowder had echoed through Central Asia, but in the deserts of Rajasthan, the art of war still rode on horseback, drawn swords gleaming in the sun.

    But amid the mourning, Rao Ganga of Marwar moved with unexpected clarity. The seasoned ruler, often overlooked in broader politics, had begun listening to younger voices within his court—one of whom was his own son, Maldeo, barely a boy but already perceptive beyond his years. Though just a boy, Maldeo had already begun training in diplomacy and warcraft. His sharp mind was noted by court tutors, and Rao Ganga often said, ‘He sees what others ignore.’ Though still untested, Maldeo’s questions often stilled even veteran commanders. He was young, untested, but far from blind. He had heard whispers—of cannons that could breach fortresses, of matchlocks that could kill from afar, and of new formations that turned even small armies into immovable machines.

    Watching the flames dance atop Chittorgarh’s walls, Rao Ganga sent urgent missives across the land. His message was clear:

    “Let us not wait for Delhi to fall. Come to Chittorgarh. Bring no armies, only your word. Or we will die—not as warriors, but as relics.”

    It was a bold request. The Rajputs had never truly united. Honor was personal. Swords served lineage, not logic. And yet…

    Perhaps it was the wound in Sanga’s side, or the scent of Mughal ambition. Perhaps it was something deeper—a weariness in the hearts of warriors who had seen too many pyres, too many queens light their own.

    The rulers came.

    Raja Ratan Singh of Amber, Rawal Askaran of Dungarpur, Rao Suja of Bikaner, even the reclusive Jaitsi of Jaisalmer. And most importantly, the  Maharana Sanga himself, propped upon a carved sandalwood seat, his face shadowed but fierce.

    They did not arrive as allies. They arrived as rivals. But as they sat in the Sabha Hall, with dusk folding around them, young Maldeo stepped forward with his father’s permission

    He did not bow. He did not raise his voice. He simply said:

    “Babur does not know your flags. He does not care for your titles. He sees us all as one—divided, distracted, and ripe for conquest. He brings with him not just men, but machines. Weapons that spit fire. Cannons that crumble walls.”

    He looked at each of them.

    “But unity is stronger than any cannon. Strategy sharper than any blade. Let us build a council—a Rajput Sangh. Let us adapt. Let us learn. Let us fight the new war with new minds.”

    Rao Ganga placed his sword at the center of the stone floor but it was Maldeo’s words that had pierced the silence.

    “Let this be the last time we draw blades against each other. And the first time we raise them as one.”

    There was silence.

    Then Sanga spoke.

    “The day the sons of this soil stand shoulder to shoulder, is the day no foreigner will ever plant his flag here again.”

    One by one, the swords followed.

    That night, a pact was forged—not of submission, but of solidarity.

    And history, as we know it, began to split into two.

    The Gathering at Chittorgarh

    The morning that followed bore a rare silence. Not of peace—but of consideration. Of old kings weighing new truths.

    Within the Sabha Hall of Chittorgarh, a place once meant for royal court and council, the air had changed. The walls, heavy with tales of siege and sacrifice, now bore witness to something no bard had ever sung of: possibility—and tension.

    Maharana Sanga sat still, his presence commanded the room. His eyes—those fierce eyes that had once held the gaze of entire armies—watched each ruler like a hawk studying the wind.

    Raja Ratan Singh of Amber spoke first, arms crossed, tone sharp. “Let us not pretend this is noble. If we could unite, we would have done so long ago. Marwar mocks us with sermons. Do you forget the blood spilled between us at Merta, Maldeo?”

    Rao Suja of Bikaner leaned forward, his voice bitter. “And will we now take lessons from a prince still in his father’s shadow? Rao Ganga speaks through you, Maldeo. Do not mistake his wisdom as your own.”

    The Sabha bristled. Hands twitched near sword hilts. Servants held their breath.

    Maldeo, permitted by his father, stepped forward with fire in his eyes—more student than statesman, but sharp beyond his years. “Yes, there is blood between us. But Babur brings more. Blood that won’t distinguish between Marwar or Mewar. His cannons are not concerned with Rajput rivalries. His soldiers will not stop to ask which clan you belong to before they trample your gates.”

    He turned to Ratan Singh. “You fear Marwar leading? Then don’t let anyone lead alone. Form a council. Let it rotate. Let every kingdom hold voice and vote.”

    “And what of our spies? Our tactics? Shall we lay them bare before men we’ve fought all our lives?” asked Jaitsi of Jaisalmer. “What assurance do we have that this unity won’t be our undoing?”

    It was then that Maharana Sanga finally spoke.

    “Because we have already been undone,” he said.

    All turned to him.

    “We are not here because we trust each other. We are here because we do not trust Babur more. That is the only truth binding us today.”

    Silence returned, but this time it was weightier.

    Sanga continued, “If we cannot trust each other, let us trust necessity. Let us create a Rajput Sangh—not of loyalty, but of strategy. We will each keep our autonomy. But we will meet, every three moons, to share intelligence, to fund joint defenses, to prepare for what’s coming.”

    He leaned forward, voice edged with fire. “And if one among us breaks the pact for self-gain—then let all others descend upon him like the very army we now prepare to resist.”

    There were no cheers. Only silence. Then Rawal Askaran of Dungarpur slowly nodded.

    “A trial year,” he said. “A shared treasury. Shared scouts. Rotating leadership. But no oaths. Only action.”

    One by one, the heads began to bow—not in surrender, but in reluctant agreement. Not to each other, but to survival.

    And so, in the heart of an ancient fort, not with drums or fanfare but with grit and hard-won consensus, the first framework of the Rajput Confederation was forged.

    Not a kingdom. Not an empire. But something rarer—a necessity born of pride, transformed by fear.

     The Rajput Sangh – A Council of Swords and Sovereignty

    Three weeks after the gathering at Chittorgarh, the newly proposed Rajput Sangh met again—this time at Kumbhalgarh Fort, known for its impenetrable walls and remote vantage. It was a deliberate choice: isolated, protected, away from court politics and close to the beating heart of Mewar.

    The first agenda: structure. Who would lead? Who would speak? And what exactly would this council do?

    Rao Ganga proposed the outline. “We are not subjects. We are sovereigns. Let this be a rotating leadership—every kingdom to hold the position of Pramukh for three moons. Let decisions be made by majority, not decree.”

    “There must be spies in the north,” said Ratan Singh. “And diplomats sent south—to Vijayanagar, to the Sultanates of the Deccan. If Babur returns, we will not stand alone.”

    Maharana Sanga, despite his wounds, had already commissioned scouts to follow Mughal movements. He now proposed the appointment of a war strategist—a commander-in-chief chosen by the Sabha, not by birth.

    This drew murmurs.

    “A soldier above kings?” asked Rao Suja.

    “A soldier chosen by kings,” added Rao Ganga, with Maldeo nodding beside him, learning still. “One who answers to all of us, not just one of us.”

    Reluctantly, they agreed. And so, after much debate, Thakur Viramdev of Marwar, a fictional but plausible general loosely inspired by commanders of the Rathore lineage, a seasoned Rajput general known for his unconventional tactics and fierce independence, was named the first Commander-in-Chief of the Confederation Army. Merta was a Rathore stronghold. His real name, if ever sung in the bardic epics, is now lost to time—but his battlefield mind lived on in memory, forged in the fires of Merta.

    The treasury came next. Each kingdom would contribute grain, silver, and arms. It would be stored at a neutral location—Nagaur Fort—guarded by a combined battalion of soldiers from Amber, Bikaner, and Bundi.

    Then came the hard truth.

    It was Ratan Singh who voiced it. “For too long, we have feasted while our soldiers train with wooden spears. We have dressed in silks while our forts crumble. We have forgotten the calluses of our ancestors.”

    There was no rebuttal.

    “Babur is not merely stronger,” he continued, “he is prepared. His cannons are not myth. They are strategy. His muskets are not magic. They are metal, discipline, and fear.”

    Maharana Sanga’s voice rose next. “We must find those who understand these weapons. Reach out to the Deccan. To those who’ve already faced fire. Hire deserters from Babur’s own ranks. Let them teach us. Let our blacksmiths learn to cast more than blades. Let us awaken.”

    Maldeo added, “No more palaces without fort repairs. No more dances without drills. The age of idle honor is over. Let our pride be forged again—into readiness.”

    Finally, they agreed on symbols.

    A banner of the sun—Surya, the eternal witness—flanked by twin swords, one raised in defense, one lowered in restraint. The sun was chosen not just for divinity, but for its impartial gaze. The twin swords represented duality—courage and restraint, offense and protection. This was a new kind of Rajput warfare—not for conquest, but for preservation.

    “This flag,” Sanga declared, “does not belong to any one kingdom. It belongs to those who protect—not conquer—this land.”

    That night, they did not feast. They sat in quiet chambers, the weight of history beginning to settle on their shoulders. They had done the unthinkable: not united in affection, but in survival.

    And the wheels of a new future—imperfect, trembling, but resolute—had begun to turn.

    …To be continued

    This article by Shailaza Singh was published in Rashtradaoot Newspaper on 17 April 2025. Next part coming tomorrow—subscribe or follow the blog to read the full 7-part series.

  • Decoding Mandalas of Time

    Malashri Lal is not just a daughter of a very successful and renowned man, she is also a respected professor, critic and a bestselling author who is known for fiction and non-fiction books. However, her accomplishments extend beyond the prose. Her recently released book of poems, ‘Mandalas Of Time’, has proven that she is a master of the verse as well.

    Once while talking about the IAS officers of Rajasthan origin not going to central government on deputation, the common refrain that emerged was the poor standard of English in the IAS officers of Rajasthan origin was the main cause for the poor representation in the set up in Delhi. There were of course some exceptions like D. R. Mehta, Jagat Mehta and Bhawani Mal Mathur. But of these three, two studied outside and not in Rajasthan. So, when a local lass made it big as the professor and the head of department and dean in the Mecca of English in north India, i.e. Delhi University , it was a matter of exceptional pride for the people of this feudal desert state. It was like a domestic tiny sparrow flying high in the ionosphere on the strength of its wings alone.
    Beauty, brains and poise- Malashri had everything going for her since her schooling in MGD, graduation in Maharani College, M.A. in Rajasthan University. In the 60s, St. Xavier’s School Fair was the high point in the social calendar of young people, when the girls from MGD used to visit the fair.

    Malashri Lal

    Remembers Dr. Gautam Sen, the venerable cardiovascular surgeon of Jaipur, probably the first of its kind in Jaipur (he in mid-eighties now and probably a decade senior to Malashri) that Xavier’s boys and alumni used to wait for the MGDians to descent from their bus on to the fairgrounds. Even amongst the 20-30 MGDians who came to the fair, Malashri stood out shining beautiful and poised. The doctor’s reaction was also the response of most of the senior Xavierites of seventh and eighth class onwards attending the fair.

    These Xavierites now in their 60s remember most about her after her beauty was charm and poise, she exuded, probably inherited from Mohan Mukherjee, her father who also happened to be the chief secretary of Rajasthan, still remembered for his gentlemanliness, politeness and patience. He was a person to go to for young IAS officers when faced with knotty situations which was often in revenue matters and other administration where laws and procedures were almost copied from UP or Bengal governments and not evolved in the legislative assembly after long discussions and deliberations.


    One aspect of Malashri’s personality which probably most Xavierites and Jaipurites were not conversant with is the academic excellence and poetic depth of Mohan Mukherjee’s daughter as is reflected in the ‘Mandalas of Time’, a book of 75 poems she has presented to the literati. Here Arbit is making an attempt to showcase these in its columns.
    The word literati is deliberately used because though Jaipurites were not fully aware of the academic and poetic heights of Malashri’s pen, but to the literati of Delhi and abroad, it was no secret. In fact, Bashabi Fraser, professor of English and creative writing, Edinburgh, Napier University writes, “Malashri’s poems are a lifetime labour of love, embodying and resolving the dichotomies and different loyalties and loves that the poet has carried with her through her life.”


    “One the one hand, the poet has the memory of watching and listening to the Bhopa singers accompanied by the dancing folk epics in her home town of Jaipur in the 1960s, performed by the roving artists against the light of the oil lamps in the Jaipur mela. On the other, there is the deep resonance of her heritage, finding a voice which is steeped in Rabindranath Tagore’s atmosphere of Bengali culture and literature and cultural freedom practiced at Shantiniketan.”
    As Malashri puts in one of the poems:
    “The feudal heritage of my childhood
    Fights with the reformist Bengali lineage,
    My troubled feminism struggling
    Between the Poshak and Purdah.”
    The awareness of today’s threat of climate change as Malashri writes reassuringly , “the moon is so far from the earthly pollution” in spite of the “footprint of human ego.”
    In the poems, Malashri proves herself to be a consummate wordsmith who combines in her multifaceted self her multicultural identities bringing world’s together through telling imagery in compelling rhythms.
    The poet recalls the lessons learnt from Tagore:
    “…I learnt from Gurudev,
    Emotions have no fixed language.
    The merit has no physical limits.
    Music resounds in the open sky,
    Dance is the joy of a free spirit anywhere”
    Bashir Fraser writes, “Mandalas of time is the expressive voice of a true free spirit who creates harmony through her voice. These poems sing of “life renewal” affirming a “beautiful certainty.”
    Another “fellow traveller” friend and well-known literary critique writer Ranjit Hoskote writes thus “The sensuous abundance of the natural world pervades Malashri’s Mandalas of Time. These poems celebrate the arboreal and the floral. They evoke a profusion of trees, shrubs, fruits and flowers. But, nature to Malashri is not a grand theatre that enfolds to its own music offering to delight but rejecting our participation. On the contrary, she approaches nature as an intimate, integral party of a continuum that includes the human realm with all its discontent.”
    It is a fact even as nature infiltrates our consciousness in subtle ways we exert a claim over nature through language and scientific scrutiny. Malashri’s poems record, intuitively, the process of pull-push that results from this, our own desire to carve and the resistance on the part of the things we seek to name.
    And yet, Malashri celebrates the colours and flavours, the aesthetic surplus and memorable inner success of Indian culture, she never loses sight of all the elements with the tradition that calls out to be confronted and critiqued.
    The joy in the textiles, the vistas and the epics of Rajasthan is balance by her elegiac awareness of female infanticide in that region. Her poems never shy away from revealing the suppression of female will and desire that often serves as a foundation for the myths of the feudal patriarchal order.
    She interestingly asks when the mountains have brought low by global warming, the forests denuded, the rivers poisoned, where can the gods live now? In the same breath her poems urge us to ask: how do we live, by what rules, by what canon of conduct towards others -human and more than human- with whomever we share the planet? Shall be merely survive or could we yet relearn to flourish and learn to flower with, and not flower at the expense of. Let us learn from “the supple leaves” that:
    “Flat and curved
    Cradle the flowers that have no other family.”
    Malashri herself quotes Khalil Gibran when talking about her poetry, “Poetry is a dash of joy, pain and wonder with a dash of dictionary.” She also quotes Andre Horde
    “ […] Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we can predicate our hopes and dreams towards survival and change.”
    “In the larger context of my life narrative, I have come to believe that poetry is a balm for the troubling dislocations that are an inevitable part of the experience. The biographical aspect drowns under the issue of transition and transformation that poetry hopes to articulate.”
    “Only poetry captures the inner dialogues, the cracked mirror of troubled consciousness, the silent cry of those who travelled beyond tears. Its value resides in principle of integrity, and genuineness.”

    Malashri Lal with her husband Robey Lal and friend Sudhir Mathur


    According to Malashri, “The inner transition too and these poems are perhaps the most challenging. Every poet and novelist in every language from time immemorial has carved stories from a store of emotions. My personal poems are droplets in the same ocean of desire for an immutable world while coping with the angst of its forfeitures that dawns the realization that bereavement, heartbreak, betrayal is both individual and universal.”
    She remembers Tagore’s anguished call, “when I stand before thee at the days end, thou shall see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healings.”

    Mohan Mukherjee with Y B Chavan, Maharashtra’s first chief minister


    Looks come from genealogy and grace and poise from upbringing given by parents. But your achievements are your own, acquired through your hard work, determination and honed talent. One creation of hers that in totality, embodies different aspects of her creativity is called “Ardhanareesvara”
    The poem shows her philosophical sensitivities, her comfort level with mythology and folklore and her sympathy, sensitivity leading to rebellion against patriarchal society and values. She seeks equality and fairness between man and woman and leads to the ultimate equality i.e. Ardhanareesvara.
    Ranjit Hoskote writes, “The dyadic interplay of opposites- the dvandva, in classical terms- forms the ground rhythm of Professor Lal’s poetry. Nature and human kind are one such pair; Shiva and Shakti another; Radha and Krishna yet another, each incomplete without the pulsation and presence of the other. Krishna’s flute, cast aside in the Vrindavan of his teenage years as he goes away to Dwarka, adulthood and kingship never to return- Radha picks it up and preserves it as a keepsake, but it will never be played again, a mere reed emptied of affect and significance. Shiva cannot achieve his fullness without Shakti and the poet evokes them as an inseparable composite, the Ardhanareesvara. Such ideals of communion, to be regarded as at once sacred and worldly- for these, too are a dvandva in Indic thought, not binary poles- emerge in Mandalas of Time, from a world of seasonal festivity and cultural expression offered in dedication to the Cosmos.”

    //Ardhanareesvara
    “Indivisible unity, Parvati and Shiva forever entwined.
    Women and men interdependent,
    Infused with traits of each other
    A softer left lineament draped in finery,
    a muscular right stretched over taut skin
    Artistry overlaying a deep philosophy of a shared destiny
    Symbols associative of power and grace
    But not attributed to a dichotomous gendering.
    Sages, sculptors, storytellers knew the eternal truth
    That form bellies essence much of the time
    Masculinity and feminity are the same word,
    Read in reverse
    To denote the other
    That too is an illusion
    In Creation there is only One
    Ardhanareesvara
    The God who is both woman and man
    Ubiquitous, limitless reminder of equality.”//

    To be continued…

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on Wednesday 24th April 2024

  • Investor Decoded

    He is immaculately dressed. He offers you a chair the moment you walk in. Anirudh Rathore exudes an old-world charm which is sadly missing these days. He is the author of ‘Investing Decoded’ which has been well received especially by those who don’t understand investing at all and he runs two very successful hotels too. So, what more could a man want, you would ask! Well, a lot more investing, he would say!

    He doesn’t have a degree in finance. He is not your typical bespectacled finance guy who spouts numbers at the drop of a hat. In fact, he and numbers didn’t see eye to eye a few years back but today people seek his advice on investing. When I met Anirudh Rathore at his hotel in Dera Rawatsar in Jaipur, I was expecting to meet some sort of finance whiz who would be talking on three different phones at the same time. But to my utter surprise, Anirudh Rathore turned out to be your friendly neighbourhood entrepreneur who owns two heritage hotels and is now a proud author of the best seller ‘Investing Decoded’.

    He has written a book on investing which has been well received by the public. So, was he a numbers person from the very beginning? No, not at all! I was never into numbers at all. I used to run away! My weakest subject was mathematics in school (Mayo College, Ajmer). As a matter of fact, since it was such a nemesis, I gave up mathematics after my X class. I was so happy to leave mathematics after X. In XI and XII standard I studied arts. I studied history, geography and English. After that I did my graduation in history honours from St. Stephens.

    So how did he get into investing? After I finished my graduation in 1993, I applied for a lot of jobs but got no calls. Now, that was the time when the Indian economy had just opened up and all the graduates were rushing to join the private sector. But there was obviously catch to it. If you wanted to join a good organization in a good position, you had to be an MBA. My classmates and me realized that we had to do more to get a good job. At one time, I was almost on the verge of joining the army. Both my army exam and the MBA entrance exam were on the same date. Although my parents wanted me to join the army, but that time, there was such a craze of joining the private sector that I sat for the MBA exam instead of joining the army.

    But wasn’t the MBA entrance test all about numbers again? True! It was. In fact, before appearing for the MBA entrance exam, I devoted a year for preparing for the exam and learnt math all over again. I got through the exam and joined MBA in the Rajasthan university. After MBA, I joined banking.

    From a history graduate to MBA to a banking professional. What made him go for banking? From my very childhood, I have a tendency to dive deeper and explore things I don’t understand. As a child when I used to watch these people in the bank, I was always curious to know what they did there sitting all day long! It seemed very impressive to me to see people working in Grindlays, Barclays and all such fancy banks. They spoke in a language which was understood by no one except them. So, I thought that was a very cool thing to do and be a part of. So, once I completed my MBA, I applied for a position and luckily, I got through and joined as a trainee assistant manager in IndusInd Bank and was posted in Chandigarh.  Initially everything was new to me. I enjoyed all the different aspects of my job for the next couple of years. However, after a while it became a routine and standard work and I wanted to learn more since banking and finance is such a big and diverse line. Just joining a bank doesn’t teach you anything about finance. Banks are massive, there are so many departments and when I was in IndusInd bank, I realized that it was only catering to retail banking. There was nothing about investment banking or things like that. So, I started looking out for new avenues. As luck would have it, I got to know about an opening in HDFC bank in the private banking segment. There was no other bank in Rajasthan that was dealing with private banking at the time. Although I knew nothing about investing, luckily, I applied and got the position. Suddenly a whole new world opened to me. A world which people were either quite clueless about or they found it very intimidating. That set the pace and tone for me. We were part of a very selective group of people who were doing something which was very unique. No other bank except HDFC used to do private banking in India and only we 20-25 people were doing it in India and I was the only person in Rajasthan doing it. There the quality of people I interacted were crème-de-la-crème.

    I remember once during my MBA class, I got up and asked my teacher about the Harshad Mehta scam which was in the news at that time. But the professor himself didn’t know much about the scam and said that he could not answer the question and that I should meet him after the class. Then I went out to all the bookstores of Jaipur which could help me to understand this scam. But to my great surprise, I could not find a single book on the topic in the entire city! After some years, I went to Delhi and got books like The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis that gave me an understanding of the subject. To put it in perspective, it was only when I got into this private banking sector, I completely understood the Harshad Mehta scam. I doubt if even today people in those MBA classes have a clear understanding of it.

    What made him write this book? A couple of years back, I noticed that though there seems to be a lot of information regarding banking, investing on the internet, there also is massive confusion and gaps in that knowledge. People who want to know about investing feel as if they need to climb a mountain to understand investing. Most books on this topic are either difficult to understand or they simply talk about the experiences of the author. They don’t explain the main things you need to know or the kind of psychology and mindset you need to succeed in this field.   I also feel that people who do talk about investing are just saying or doing things that have been said before or are hearsay or are in vogue. Even many investors are just blindly following news channels or influencers. Of course, some of them are right about a lot of things but there is a gap which made me think about writing a book which can simplify things. I myself am no professor in finance and neither do I work as an asset manager in a company or handle people’s money. Like most people, I am self-taught and I have learnt these concepts on my own and have learnt to apply them on my own. So, I thought that maybe I could relate to people by writing a book which they could understand. 

    What is investing from his point of view? According to me investing is a combination of  about 70 percent psychology and 30 percent analysis. For example, when there is a sale in a department store, all of us will rush to buy but when there is a sale in the stock market, people will cringe in fear because they feel that whatever they are going to buy will fall in price even more. We are programmed to operate in either fear or greed or ego. If you notice at any point in time, you will find that either you are exuberant about something or you are scared about something or you have a personal ego about something. These things if you cannot master, you cannot master the stock market. We have so many vices build inside us. Let’s say you have a sum of 1000 rupees that you can invest. You have even analysed the company. Now the hurdle that most people face is when to invest and how much to invest. They keep wondering whether they should spend these 1000 rupees ten days later or today or should they wait for the price to come down or they follow the television which tells them that the market is going to collapse or this is going to happen or there is war in Palestine or Ukraine. There is so much of interplay of information that is going on which confuses and scares the person and he is unable to take a decision. Instead of one thousand rupees, he ends up investing only 100 rupees. This is because there is so much of chatter in his mind because of these vices. He is not able to make a rational decision.

    Is there a way to mitigate this fear and banish this misconception amongst the common people? Yes, there is. I can give you small and easy example. Let’s say some one has five crore rupees to buy a flat in a place like Mumbai. In a real estate market, that five crore rupee flat will fluctuate between four crore seventy lakh and five crore thirty lakh. That is the price range of plus or minus five to ten percent that it fluctuates in and hence people are not afraid to invest in it. But in case of a stock, if you happen to invest five crores in a company, that stock may fluctuate between three crores and eight crores in the same year. It is volatile and that’s why it scares people because the fluctuation is uncontrollable and then it plays on the human emotions. But a good investor takes advantage of this volatility. He plays on the same emotions. He doesn’t get scared when the value is down. He knows that the true worth of this company is five crores but right now the stock is for three crores so he buys the stock and waits. He knows that the stock will again hit eight crores and that is the time he will make a huge profit on it. Here the bottom line is that a true investor knows the worth of that particular company since he is done his research. For me, if the stock market goes down tomorrow, I am not afraid. In fact, I will buy more stocks since I will get them at a cheaper rate rather than getting worried or upset or fearful. For people who are quite new to stocks can first get their feet wet with mutual funds and understand the market.

    What is the reaction of his family and friends to his new found love of investing? Anirudh laughs! There is this constant tussle for the remote between my wife, my children and me. I would always watch the finance news and they would get irritated since they wanted to watch their own channels. I had not told them about my book being published with Penguin Random House. But when I revealed this bit of news to them, it was then that they realized why I was hooked on to those channels! My classmates who had studied history with me were totally taken aback because they had all expected me to write a book on history!

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on January 8, 2024

  • The Ziddi Administrator

    …Hardworking, innovative, out of box thinker, so much admired, but never a favourite of any politician

    He had about 34 postings in 33 years of service. Some of the postings have lasted just about 4 months. Yet P N Bhandari, former IAS officer has never complained. In fact, he is almost arrogantly proud of what he has achieved in his three decades of government service, seeking justice rather than mere adherence of law.

    P N Bhandari, former IAS officer and Addnl. CS

    Once the CM Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, asked a senior officer who knew PN Bhandari from his childhood days and hailed from PN Bhandari’s home town Jodhpur ‘why is P N so ‘akdu’?’ The senior bureaucrat laughingly told him that as the legend goes, that all Oswals of Jodhpur were Rajputs who converted to Jainism. The last of this lot who joined this transformation were the Bhandaris of Jodhpur. Hence, they are more like Rajputs.


    It is worth mentioning here that Bhairon Singh was a great admirer of Bhandari as a bureaucrat. In fact, once in the assembly, when he was the leader of the opposition, he got up to defend Bhandari, who was commissioner, sales tax and was being attacked in the assembly by young Nathu Singh, a leader of Bhairon Singhs party for waiving off interest amount in an overdue payment worth crore. Bhairon Singh told his young MLA that PN Bhandari’s integrity and commitment is unquestionable, so there should never be an iota of doubt about his honesty. Later when they met at a social function (marriage), Shekhawat Saab told PN Bhandari that he defended him in the assembly ‘because if an officer like you is attacked, it will actually sully our credibility.’
    But where did Bhandari get this steely style of conviction and governance? How did he have such self-belief which over time developed into hardened, unchangeable, intense commitment?

    Aristocratic Taste
    After talking to his friends, it was evident that Bhandari was greatly influenced by two people in his life- his father, who was a government employee in the labour department and his maternal uncle, Justice Inderjeet Modi who later on became the chief justice of Rajasthan. Both were men of letters, very disciplined, very meticulously painstaking in their work. Both came from mainly Marwari speaking background, but both were known for their exclusive English as is evident from Bhandari’s father’s letters written to his son and Justice Modi’s judgements that he penned in the court.
    However, Justice Modi was known for his aristocratic taste, his love for expensive cars. He was also quite close to the Hanwant Singh, the erstwhile maharaja of Jodhpur. Bhandari’s father died early and the family sent Bhandari’s sister and him to live and study with his mama Modi. Bhandari inherited both the men’s dedication and fluency in English language, but he did not inherit the aristocratic sartorial taste and style of his maternal uncle. Till today, whether it is about his attire or tastes, Bhandari is a simple man almost austere in his mannerisms. The question is where did he get his ‘akdupan’? The general belief is that he developed his unique style on his own.
    This style also entails a single-minded devotion to work. His son Rajneesh recalls that while growing up, he hardly got any time to interact with PN Bhandari. Bhandari was working or dwelling in his work where ever he was posted. There was a library at home of about 5000 books but not Perry Mason type fiction but substantive and heavy reading ones. There was no television at home till Rajneesh passed his twelfth standard but every weekend his mother would pack up some lunch and the family would be out in the country side where Bhandari would meet people to talk to them alone or in groups. This was his style of getting feedback.
    The night before the family left for this (‘holiday’), Bhandari would give Rajneesh a book, a serious and fat one. All throughout the journey Bhandari would intensely and passionately discuss the contents of the book: analysing, debating, illustrating with examples and incidents.

    Strong Conviction
    Once as the car journey started, Bhandari realized the book was in the dickie of the car. He parked the car and opened the dickie to retrieve the book. The bonnet fell on his head as he was rampaging through the luggage for the book. The hook got embedded in his head. There was massive bleeding as Rajneesh recalls he was frightened out of his wits. Bhandari was rushed to the nearest hospital. The treatment took some time and stitches under anaesthesia and the doctor asked him to have complete rest in the day. But Bhandari ji was back on the wheels and resumed the discussion on the book as if nothing had happened and the intermission or the tea break was over.
    Rajneesh also remembers from his childhood, that at home there was such great intensity about work that there were no diversions like even going out to eat. Rajneesh says he studied in nine schools of all types: Hindi medium, English medium, government schools, private schools, all over Rajasthan, wherever his mother was posted in government college and Bhandari in the government in the same place.
    It was often discussed in government circles why Bhandari did not take a posting in Delhi where his innovativeness would have found a wider and more appreciative audience. Probably the answer is that he needed the money; because the salaries of wife and self were required to run the large family of five brothers and sisters and he happened to be the head of the family. Oh yes, there was one cheating. Wherever he was posted in rural, semirural or urban centre, there used to be almost once a week, late night movie on Saturday night in the hall because then and even now Bhandari and his wife are fond of movies but not at home or Netflix or television. Television even today is only meant for news as a part of Bhandari’s effort to know what is happening in the society.
    This single-minded concentration had helped Bhandari top the Rajasthan judiciary exam. The mama, the great jurist was surprised. He said, ‘you can become IAS officer. Study and take the exam.’ Bhandari protested, ‘You are the only one who prevented me from trying for IAS. And now when it is almost too late, you are asking me to do it. Only one chance remains for me to qualify.’
    But mama persisted and told him, ‘Take your cousin D.R (Mehta’s) notes. He had worked very hard and prepared extensive notes and has just got into IAS (the first one in the family).’ The rest is history. Bhandari became the second IAS officer in the family.
    Even today his nature of cutting the fuss and getting along with the work keeps him going. After retirement, he took up law, nothing greatly unusual but during COVID when his stenos found it hard to come to office or home for dictation, he learnt at the ripe age of 80 plus the use of the computer from his granddaughter who returned home after completing her course in innovation and engineering. Now he is so adept at it that he handles (types etc) long, lengthy complex files of his cases all by himself.
    As you get to know him better, you realize that the so-called arrogance is actually an unyielding, uncompromising style in work and general existence. But what really dawns through is his conviction. His views are so well shaped in his mind that they are almost etched in his psyche and personality. He feels that his conviction in his thoughts don’t need any correction. This strong conviction gives maybe him the strength to stick to his views and out of the box thinking no matter how unconventional or irritating his approach may appear to his seniors or colleagues.
    Out of the box as implied by definition is not simply about not treading on well-trodden paths mentally but almost shunning these conventional methods and trying to find new and solutions. For being so daring, one has to have a lot of self-belief.
    To be continued…

    This article by Shailaza Singh was published in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on 5 May 2023

  • A Doctor With His Eyes Wide Open

    It is often said that when a student is ready, the teacher appears and when he is truly ready, the teacher disappears. Dr. Pavan Shorey’s life has been a roller coaster of a myriad of emotions which he has learned to deal with. He believes meeting his guru helped him to gain a new lease of life.

    Dr. Pavan Shorey

    The well-known author Louise Hay says that the professions that we choose are more than our bread and butter. They also represent and help us to find our purpose in our lives. Dr. Pavan Shorey, who is actually a poet and a writer at heart, chose to become an ophthalmologist, a doctor of the eyes. He has helped millions to see the world but little did he know that finding a guru would also help him to see the world with new eyes.

    ‘In our initial meetings, my guru told me that though the tragedy has happened but life has to go on. He told me to wait for time to heal me and in the meanwhile do my karma of looking after my parents and my son. He wasn’t one of those saffron clad gurus with ashrams. In fact, he was a householder. He never asked his followers for any money or any materialistic thing. In fact that is one mark of a true guru. He will never ask you for any money or anything materialistic. Every evening we would meet in his house in Jaipur. There were 10-15 of us who were regular attendees. He had a lot of followers in different countries too. We would start our sessions with a meditation. After that, there were discourses which were mostly about the questions that his disciples asked. In the end of the session, we would recite the Hanuman Chalisa.’

    The Valley of Flowers

    So, what made him write ‘Conversations on a Park Bench’ and ‘The Mountain Deer’?

    ‘I was associated with my guru for about ten to fifteen years. He had helped me to overcome my grief and see the world in a different way. Though he passed away in 2018, even when he was around, I always wondered why can’t there be a book with his teachings in it? When I sat down to write ‘Conversations on a Park Bench’, in 2012, I had initially thought of writing about a lady who is groped by her boss and experiences vishadh and wonders about the purpose of her entire existence. But then, I thought of taking my story and fictionalizing it.’

    How long did it take for him to write the two books? ‘I finished ‘Conversations on a Park Bench’ within a year. My friend Nihal was incredulous when I told him that I had written the book in a year. According to him, a book takes years of research and writing. However, I took four years to write my second book ‘The Mountain Deer’.

    But why didn’t he think of writing an autobiography? ‘I don’t believe that I am that important. I had read somewhere that the great author Khushwant Singh had once told Amrita Pritam that the story of her life was so inconsequential and tiny that it could be written on the back of a revenue stamp. I too am of the same opinion. Moreover, I believe when you write fiction, you have the liberty to create conflict to keep the narrative flowing. A personal story is quite boring because you just keep listing your achievements and failures.’

    So, are there some instances in the book where fiction meets real life? ‘Yes, in fact many. But there is one incident that I can never forget. In my book ‘Conversations on a Park Bench’, there is a chapter titled ‘Who Am I’ where the protagonist Vivek is going to a meeting with his colleague Prashant. He waits for him in the parking lot of the building where he sees the watchman sitting with his wife. Their small daughter (who is toddler) is playing nearby. Prashant comes down and they get into the car. Just then, Prashant’s phone rings and he starts reversing the car while talking on the phone. As he backs the car, they hear a thump sound. They get out of the car to find that the watchman’s small daughter has been crushed under the car. Vivek is shaken by the incident but he sees that his friend is so materialistic that he has no qualms about what he has done. He strikes a deal with the watchman and the doctor who was in charge of the case and wriggles out of the situation by paying both of them some money. When the watchman protests, he tells him that the child was a girl and had she lived he would have had to pay a lot of money for dowry and her marriage. So, this amount is good enough for him. Later he boosts to Vivek about how he used his ‘marketing skills’ to get out of the situation. Vivek feels revulsed and it is then that he questions himself about his life and who he really is. This chapter was based on a real incident. There was a man who brought the body of a small child to the hospital and I could see that the poor mother of the child sitting and crying helplessly. My friend got out of the situation by giving her a mere 30,000 rupees. Tears came into my eyes when I saw the plight of this couple and I was revulsed and repulsed by the whole thing. How can someone be so callous and cruel?’

    ‘There is another incident in the book that has been inspired from real life. In the book, after his wife Radhika’s death, Vivek’s father-in-law asks him to return the flat which was a wedding gift to the couple. Vivek feels bad but his guru advises him to become detached with such materialistic things and return the flat. This again happened with a friend of mine. When his wife died leaving behind his infant son, his in-laws took away the baby on the pretext that he will not be able to take care of the baby. They held the baby to ransom and demanded his wife’s provident fund money, jewellery, car etc. My friend was distraught and asked Guruji for advice. Guruji promptly asked him to return everything and get his son back.’

    In both his books, death has been the turning point in the story. Being a doctor, how does death affect him?
    ‘As a result of years of medical training, doctors develop a clinical detachment from death. Though in my speciality deaths are quite unheard of, yet I too have developed a detachment from death. This is not taught; it is just something that is passed on from seniors to juniors. But then, years of studying spirituality have also taught me that even when the body dies, there is something that remains alive. I remember an incident that I have also mentioned in my book where I had gone to meet a friend’s wife in the hospital. She had 80 percent burns as a result of a gas cylinder that had burst in her home. In such a scenario there are almost nil chances of survival and the doctors cannot do anything except give palliative pain killers to the patient. When I entered the room, she was lying in covered frame. She asked me who I was and when I said it was me, Pavan, she recognised me. It was then I realized that though the body had almost gone, there was something in her that was still recognizing and responding to me. She passed away after a couple of days.’

    From a bystander’s point of view, Dr. Shorey’s life has been quite a journey. So, doesn’t he feel lonely? ‘No, I don’t. I have my practice where I see my patients. My son who is 37 years old is married and we keep meeting every now and then. I spend a lot of time with my friend Nihal and his family. Apart from this, I regularly go on treks to the mountains. I have trekked to the Valley of Flowers, the Great Lakes of Kashmir and many other such places. When I am at home, I like to spend time gardening. I love to see my flowers grow and bloom. I like reading and listening to the works of Meena Kumari, Sahir Ludhianvi, Neeraj and many other famous poets. I love the bhajans of Mira Bai. But my all-time inspiration remains Robert Frost. I also keep writing new stories and poems. In fact, I have recently written a new poem that talks about my life at 60 something.’

    I am still a young 60 something

    I used to walk a kilometre in 10 minutes,
    Now I do it in fifteen.
    I get a little breathless, a little tired,
    But I am still fit like a teen.
    I am still a young 60 something.

    I get a muscle pull in my bums,
    Or a sharp pain in the back.
    Docs say it is aging,
    I say I am fit to lift a wheat sack.
    I am still a young 60 something.

    I get up from the bed,
    The whole world reels around me.
    My friends say cervical spondylosis,
    But I can easily bend over backwards for all to see.
    I am still a young 60 something.

    I get up twice at night to pee.
    My friends say it is prostate,
    I have too many fluids at night,
    Guys, you have this negative trait.
    I am still a young 60 something.

    I see a beautiful woman,
    My heart skips a beat.
    Where the mind goes, the body doesn’t follow,
    All fantasies take a retreat.
    I am an old 60 something.

    Please join us on the 15th of January, 4 p.m. for an exclusive interaction with Dr. Pavan Shorey where he will be talking about his books, trekking, life and much more at Sudharma, Chameliwala Market, Opposite GPO, MI Road, Jaipur.

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on 15 January 2023.

  • From the eyes of a Poet Doctor

    Dr. Pavan Shorey

    ‘And they lived happily ever after!’ This phrase has perhaps been a part of ninety five percent of the fairy tales, movies, stories that we may have read during our lifetimes (except for those who have a penchant for tragic endings). Most of them are simple stories – A boy and a girl meet, they fall in love, they get married, have children and they live happily ever after. What if it’s not happily ever after? What if one of them passes away? What does the other do then? Can someone still lead a happy life without your better half? How does one deal with such a loss?

    A couple of weeks ago, in a strange reading binge (these days watching binges are more common) I read two books by the same author- Dr. Pavan Shorey.


    His first book ‘Conversation on a Park Bench’ narrates a story about a 28 year old man Vivek Sharma, who loses his wife Radhika in a car accident. In one moment, they were happily speeding at the speed of 100 km per hour on the Jaipur Delhi highway when a truck coming from the wrong side hit them and changed Vivek’s life forever. In the aftermath of the accident and Radhika’s death, Vivek is constantly plagued with guilt and depression when he meets Dr. Madhav who helps him to conquer his grief and gain a deeper insight into life through insightful conversations. The book is peppered with conversations which weave in stories about human existence.

    Conversations on a Park Bench
    The Mountain Deer


    His other book is titled ‘The Mountain Deer’ which is contemporary retelling of Katha Upanishad, an ancient Indian scripture which narrates the conversation between Nachiketa and Yama, the God of death. In the Mountain Deer, a young man Sarvagya ‘Shelly’ Pant, a resident of Mumbai starts questioning the very meaning of life when his grandmother breathes her last in his arms. When he has a heated argument with his father, the latter banishes him to his hometown in the Himalayas. The book takes the reader into Shelly’s tryst with the truth as he starts questioning his very existence and embarks on a very interesting spiritual journey.
    Naturally, when one reads such books (which have no picture of the author), one inadvertently creates the author’s image in the mind. In our first meeting, I was almost expecting to see a saffron clad monk-like, serious, solemn man who would start talking about purpose of life the moment we would meet. However, the person I met was casually dressed in jeans and T-shirt with a chilled-out vibe. His friend Nihal Mathur describes him as a doctor with a heart of a poet. So, I was prepared to hear some serious poems on the trials and tribulations of life when he recited a poem on a completely unexpected theme-


    The Bespectacled Girl

    Your spectacles
    You set aside
    For they imprison your eyes
    Your eyes, they seek release from the glassy cage
    You have so fashionably put

    Your eyes
    So distant
    So remote
    I seek warmth and mischief in them

    For your eyes stripped off your spectacles
    Will open windows to your heart.

    He was quite candid. “In medical college, I had developed a huge crush on this senior student who used to wear spectacles. I wrote this poem for her but never shared it with her.’
    So, does he write poems often? ‘Oh, yes! I have been writing poems from eighth class. I had written another poem which talked about the plight of the migrant labourers during the pandemic.

    A Migrant’s Song

    I drag myself up from a bed of stones
    My legs stiff as Bamboo poles
    l have many a hundred miles to walk
    Will I make it to my home, my goal
    Sab kuch hai Ram Bharose!

    l am a 10th fail, only job i got was of a labourer
    Half my wage I sent to my family
    l slept in a Juggi, six persons to a room
    There were times I had to sleep hungry
    Sab kuch hai Ram Bharose!

    I have no work, the factory is closed
    Hunger will kill us before the virus can
    I sold my phone for two thousand rupees
    I save it for a bus ride, if I am lucky to find one
    Sub kuch hai Ram Bharose!

    On the way, some are runover by trucks
    Some are crushed by trains
    We were abandoned like orphans
    It is not in our right to cry out in pain
    Sab kuch hai Ram Bharose!

    I bandage the foot blisters with rags
    I curse myself, I curse my low birth
    We do not matter, we do not matter
    A helpless rage in me, we the scum of the earth
    Sab kuch hai Ram Bharose!

    The sun is up in the sky, I settle down to sleep
    I drift into a dream, wind whistling past my ears
    I am on a motorcycle with my wife and son
    I am so happy, I never was in years
    But dreams dont last, I wake up and trudge on
    The never ending road ahead of me
    Sab kuch hai Ram Bharose!
    Sab kuch hai Ram Bharose!

    An alumnus of St. Xavier’s School, Jaipur, Dr. Shorey believes that the Fathers of the school helped him to discover his love for poems and stories and hone his talent.

    “I loved reading authors like Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn. I had a strange hunger to delve int the English vocabulary and a penchant for selecting long and difficult words like ‘dilatant’ from the English dictionary and incorporating them in my writings. Once there was this essay competition in the school. Father Mayer came to announce the results and he said that the winning essay was almost like a ‘mud cake with stars’. My classmates thought that he was talking about one of their essays and when he inquired about the writer, they tried claiming it as their own. It was then that he remarked that the person who has written the essay is completely oblivious of the fact that it was his essay that was being discussed. Suddenly, it dawned on me that it was my essay he was talking about and I stood up and he appreciated my work. In fact, Father Mayer and Father Strauss were some of the first people who appreciated my writings which gave me a lot of impetus. My friend and classmate Nihal too was instrumental in enhancing my English because he used to get me books written by Dostoevsky even when I was in medical college.’

    Did his parents encourage his literary talent? ‘My father was an army officer. He never read my writings. In fact, my mother loved Hindi Literature, so I developed a liking for Hindi because of my mother.’

    So, how did such a literary aficionado end up becoming a doctor? ‘I actually loved English Literature. I loved writing stories and reading books. But I am the only son to my parents and I have four sisters. So, it was expected that I would take up a job. So, I decided to pursue medicine.’

    Dr. Shorey with his wife Sunita and son Aviral

    Though his family is originally from Himachal Pradesh, Dr. Shorey resides in Jaipur and is a practicing ophthalmologist who specializes in retina. He completed his MBBS from SMS Medical College after which he became a resident at Lady Harding Medical College in New Delhi. It was there he met the love of his life, Sunita, who an anaesthetist from Pondicherry. The couple decided to get married and were soon blessed with a baby boy Aviral. However, their happiness did not last for long as Sunita was diagnosed with lung cancer which was in its last stage.

    ‘Lung cancer is a very tricky disease and often gets misdiagnosed. In fact, when we finally came to know it was lung cancer, within a week she got a stroke.’

    Soon she passed away and life was never the same for Pavan and his son.

    He says, ‘When this kind of a tragedy happens in your life, you have the time to reflect on what has happened and why it has happened. I experienced something called ‘vishadh’ at that time. It is similar to what has been described in Bhagvad Gita’s first chapter where Arjun first sets foot on the battlefield and feels depressed when he realizes that he has to fight his own kith and kin. I was merely 37 years old at the time. My parents moved in to take care of my son. Even though I threw myself into work, I couldn’t understand what has happened. The persistent questions were ‘why me? Or ‘What have I done to deserve this? When Nihal realized my state of mind, he called me to Jaipur for the weekend and that’s how I started coming back every weekend to meet him and my other friends.’

    But the questions still remained and so did the quest for the answers. ‘I didn’t understand what had happened to me and was constantly questioning my life, my existence and the purpose of my living. When I was working in Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital in Delhi, I was in touch with another doctor was in touch who I knew had lost his wife. He advised me to meet his guru Mr. Ojaswi Sharma, a law professor who lived in Jaipur at that time.’

    So, did he believe that a guru would help him to ease his plight? Was he actively searching for a guru? Dr. Shorey believes that you cannot find a guru by searching for him. He is simply revealed to you at the right time. But though he believed in God, he did not believe in this philosophy. Yet, on the behest of this doctor, he decided to meet this person and attend his sessions.’

    Did the meetings help? ‘Although I found his sermons and sessions to be very different from the usual preachings of most gurus, I was still sceptical about accepting him as a guru. He being a realized soul noticed my reluctance and told me I was holding myself back. He told me to let go. Yet, I felt that I did not need a guru. But one day it so happened that my son Aviral, who was studying in Central School in Delhi at the time did not return in his bus at the usual time. I set out in my car and was madly searching for him. When I couldn’t find him and nothing was working, I prayed to Mr. Ojaswi Sharma. After a minute, I saw my son standing right in front of me. It could have been a coincidence but I took it as a sign that he was indeed the guru who would help me to find all the answers that I was looking for.’

    To be continued….

    Please join us on the 15th of January, 4 p.m. for an exclusive interaction with Dr. Pavan Shorey where he will be talking about his books, trekking, life and much more at Sudharma, Chameliwala Market, Opposite GPO, MI Road, Jaipur.

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on 14 January 2023

  • Of Classics, Racism and Robbed Nostalgia of Childhood

    If we go by the recent uproar about Enid Blyton’s and Rudyard Kipling’s works and implied racisms and other issues in those works, every child who has read these books while growing up must have become a racist of sorts! But has that really happened? Shailaza Singh introspects.

    I remember my parents gifting me a series of Enid Blyton books on perhaps what was my sixth birthday. I eagerly took out the gift wrap to see three books on Noddy, which I knew my father would later read out to me. To me, Noddy’s books were all about toys because he belonged to Toyland, the place where all the toys come from. Later on, I was introduced to Mr. Pink Whistle, the half brownie, a magical creature who loved helping out people especially children and making things right for them. Her stories about fairylands, toadstools fired my imagination to a new level. Whenever I would go out, I would look for toadstools and mushrooms and try to see if I could spot any tiny magical creatures around them. I even trained my younger brother to look for fairies and pixies, lest we are able to find them and have our own little adventures. However, blame it on the constant change of houses, we never succeeded in our quest!


    MAGICAL STORIES
    But all said and done, my world has been shaped by authors like Enid Blyton and Rudyard Kipling who introduced me to fairies, pixies, gnomes and animals like Sher Khan and Bagheera. When I grew up, I loved reading the Famous Five series where Julian, Dick, George, Anne along with their beloved dog Timothy would have adventures and solve mysteries everywhere they went. In fact, their adventures inspired me to develop my own streak of independence! Reading stories like “Five Go to Billycock” or “Five Go Off In a Caravan”, made me want to travel on my own. Two of my cousins, my brother and my dog Duke pretended to be Famous Five and tried to discover mysteries in our own army neighbourhood. One evening, a couple asked me the whereabouts of an apartment in my building. The detective in me started questioning them just like George would and I discovered that the lady was my class teacher! Regardless, this misadventure did not put me off any mysteries! However, today people are talking about how the entire series reeks of sexism since George tries hard to be a boy but is always told off by her cousins while Anne is forever the girl, a soft target for most baddies. On the rare occasions, where she displays her bravado, praises are heaped on her by her surprised cousins! However, did it change my perspective of masculine and feminine as a reader? No! Instead, now when I read the series again (I still read them for their amazing content), I find that the characters who are quite like the real life where we have cousins who are forever trying to show off their prowess to the girls and girls who love being tomboys! Enid Blyton’s ‘The Faraway Tree’ and ‘The Adventures of the Wishing Chair’ had the power to catapult me into a world where I could climb up a tree and visit pixies and fairies living there or visit the lands that regularly come on the top of the tree or even fly away on a wishing chair (a chair which grew wings and could fly) to where ever I felt like.
    Today, when I read about how people like Enid Blyton and Rudyard Kipling are being called out as sexists and racists, I for one cannot really understand the whole issue. In my school days, I must have read hundreds of novels written by Enid Blyton, but the thought of discriminating amongst my friends or classmates on the basis of their colour never crossed my mind. I read about Sambo, the little black doll whose owner does not accept her till the time ‘the rain washes her face and it becomes pink and clean.’ Even though, it may sound racist in today’s parlance, to me it didn’t even matter because we were never taught to think on those lines. In fact, reading these books during my school days helped me to enhance my vocabulary and imagination to a great extent. They taught me to believe in magic and that nothing was impossible.


    ADVENTURES IN THE MIND
    Mark Twain was another author who was quite interesting. Reading his works like ‘Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’, I could travel to the 1840s America. I realized life was the same for all children, whether American or Indian. Every growing child has an inherent disdain for authority, loves to explore the world despite all the admonitions from his elders and believes that he knows everything about everything. I could understand Tom Sawyer’s love for his vagrant friend Huckleberry Finn to the extent that he could even go to the graveyard with the latter. However, today, this kind of brotherly behaviour has been misinterpreted entirely in some places in America where some parents feel that the book has a lot of racial slurs.


    THE BEAR WITH A T-SHIRT
    Another character that was a favourite during my childhood days was Winnie the Pooh. I was friends with his friends, Tigger, Owl, Rabbit, Piglet and Christopher Robin. Winnie the Pooh was always dressed in a red T-shirt and nothing else because well, though he felt real, he was a teddy bear and that is what teddy bears wear around the world. Real bears are a different story. Actually, I still am looking out for a shorts wearing bear! However, some people feel that Winnie the Pooh might not be a good influence on their children because he does not wear shorts! So much so that he was made to protect his modesty by covering up with a book on the Hollywood Walk of Fame! But I never realized that Winnie the Pooh was inappropriately dressed all these years! And then why didn’t they talk about Tigger, who never wore anything at all except for his stripes? However, this has been completely overlooked by others who believe that ‘talking animals are an insult to God’ , which is even the case with the classic ‘Charlotte’s Web’ by E.B. White.


    TINTIN TO THE RESCUE
    We have all grown up reading the adventures of ‘Tintin’ by Herge. We have read about characters like Chang Chong-Chen or Sheik Mohammed Bin Khalish Ahmed and the Maharaja of Gaipajama. I never thought of Tintin as the white American hero who rescues the natives. Rather, I enjoyed his adventures. But now, if you pay attention to all the noise around you, it seems Tintin was not the innocent detective who went about fighting crime!


    SATANIC VERSES
    When the Harry Potter series was published, the books became a sensation. To me, the books were way better than the movies because in them was a magical world which coexisted with the regular world but was quite different. However, these books too were banned in places and criticized for their ‘satanic content and occult preaching’. As a reader, I have never been inspired to call the Satan or practice occult after reading these books. All I have probably ever done is to marvel at the imagination of the author who could create such a world with mere words.


    THE REAL PLAN
    The recent uproar has made me wonder about the minds of these authors. Did they actually sit down to write a book to channel their spite towards the world or train children to become racists? If so, I can say that they did not quite succeed in their aim since I and millions like me did not even think about it! Were they actually planning characters that would show the ‘natives’ their true place? Were they psychopaths who sought solace in writing elaborately veiled hate pieces whose codes will be cracked by the superior beings born in 20th or 21st century? From that argument, does it imply that the authors like Agatha Christie or Fredrick Forsythe or Sidney Sheldon or Jeffrey Archer were imagining the crimes that they would like to commit and wrote about it? Or they were simply writing stories that were dictated to them by their own experiences, imagination and intuition?

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on 21st July 2021.

  • It is all about Khusrau!

    He lives Khusrau, he breathes Khusrau; so much so that he even dreams of Amir Khusrau, an Indian poet and a Sufi mystic who lived in the 13th century. For Pradeep Sharma ‘Khusrau’, the Sufi mystic has reached out to him beyond time and helped him to discover his calling.

    A man possessed
    I had only read stories like Laila-Majnu or Heer-Ranjha where people gave up their entire lives for the object of their affection. I had seen movies like Darr, where Shah Rukh Khan’s character does not stop at anything to gain the affection of the girl he is madly in love with. However, I could never imagine these stories in real life because after all, most of us are quite practical, worldly wise people who understand that we all need to work for a living. However, a meeting with Pradeep Sharma ‘Khusrau’ changed it all. He is ridiculed by his relatives but respected by many in the world. He may not be rich but his self-created ‘property’ is probably worth millions in the international market. Pradeep Sharma ‘Khusrau’ is not your ordinary collector; he is man in love with Amir Khusrau. For him, his day starts and ends with Khusrau.


    Reprogrammed
    A graduate in fine arts and a cartoonist, his tryst with Khusrau began when he happened to listen to a gramophone record titled, ‘The Multifaced Genius of Amir Khusrau Dehalvi’. As a result, he started developing interest in Khusrau and his works. However, he was diagnosed with neuro psychosis in 2006.
    Says Pradeep, “I was afflicted with neuro psychosis, a disease which has no cure in medical science. Till about 2010, I was bedridden and could not go anywhere. The doctors had no clue why I was afflicted with this disease. However, they had prescribed a lot of medicines which I had to take every day for the rest of my life. According to them, if I didn’t take these medicines, the next option would be a mental asylum. I used to either sleep for 20 hours in a day or be awake for days at a time. I lived on sleeping pills too. I was quite depressed that my life had taken such an unexpected turn. During this period, my father consulted an astrologer who said that I would be bed ridden for the rest of my life. For me, this was the most depressing period of my life.”


    The Magic in Dreams
    Pradeep had almost given up hope of leading a normal life again. He started getting bizarre dreams where he met a strange old man with a beard. Sometimes, he would be accompanied with another old man.
    He says, “In 2009, I started getting strange dreams during my sleep. I used to dream of sitting and crying in a deserted place with old monuments. In these dreams, an old man with a white beard used to talk to me. I kept getting these dreams repeatedly. The old man used to talk to me in English. He would always assure me that my current problems would soon be over. He said that medical science had no answer to my disease but he could cure my disease. When I asked him why was I facing such problems, I was told that these problems were as a result of my past deeds and this was a self-purification period. He said that my suffering will come to an end but I had to throw all the medicines given by the doctor because these medicines were making me dull. However, when I talked to my mother and doctor about this, they dismissed it as a bad dream and did not let me throw away the medicines.”
    Pathar Wale Baba
    “In 2010, I had visited the shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin with a friend. I met a semi-nude fakir who was called Pathar wale baba, who rarely is seen by any visitors. He gave me a bottle with water and told me that to drink this water any time I felt depressed or sad. He told me that as I finish the water in the bottle, I will also be cured. The old man in my dream also advised me to drink the water.”
    Persisting Dreams
    We seldom remember our dreams when we wake up. For most of us, dreams are nothing but vague images and impressions that make no sense in the real world. However, for Pradeep, dreams became his guide. When he could not throw the medicines for the fear of his family and doctors, he dreamt about the old man again.
    “After about three months after I had the first dream, the old man visited me again. This time he did not have a beard. He admonished me and asked me if I really wanted to get well. He told me the doctors had no idea of what they were doing and asked me to throw the medicines. I ultimately threw the medicines but could not sleep for the fear of turning mad without them! However, I slept that night and got up at 11 am. My father who believed that I was merely using the illness to avoid work was quite upset about this. However, my mother was convinced of my problem because she knew the kind of medicines the doctors had prescribed. Soon, I started feeling well again. I no longer felt dizzy or scared again.
    Dream on
    However, this was not the end of these dreams. He kept getting dreams where he was instructed about everything.
    Pradeep says, “The dreams continued to guide me. In my dreams, the old man used to give me detailed instructions about whom to meet, where to go etc. I used to get up in the morning and write down all the details. Based on these dreams, I made a project report. When I shared this project report with professors and other senior people they were taken aback! They thought that this report was a work of some great professor. They could not believe that I made it! According to them, it was impossible for a common man who had not studied or learnt about Amir Khusrau in detail. I still get those dreams and receive instructions on what to do or how to proceed.”
    Family Matters
    As a result of his dedication to his passion, Pradeep had to face the ire of his family members. They felt that he was simply wasting his time on this frivolous pursuit on Khusrau and not earning any money.
    In Pradeep’s words, “My parents aren’t very encouraging when it comes to my passion. My father threw me out of the house twice. However, I came back. He felt that my passion towards Amir Khusrau was nothing but madness and it was not letting me concentrate on building a good career. But during that time, I was in a state where I could not understand what my parents were trying to tell me. I was totally oblivious to their admonitions and was only focussed on Amir Khusrau.”
    “I was married twice. The first time, I got married to a lady who demanded 10 lakhs within 2 months of being married. When I refused, she filed a dowry and domestic violence case. Ultimately, I had to shell out around 3 lakhs rupees to get out of it. The interesting thing is that I or my parents hadn’t asked her for anything yet I feel she was a woman who made a living by marrying unsuspecting guys and then using the dowry law to extract money. I didn’t want to marry the second time but my parents pressured me into it. However, this marriage also did not work as a result of fights between my parents and wife and my financial problems. I have a son who stays with my wife. We are separated for the last 2.5 years.”
    “Even today, my relatives, my cousins keep calling me and tell me that I am ruining my life. I believe no one has the right to judge anyone. They are not feeding me or fuelling my passion in anyway. I don’t listen to them. I believe whoever has become great in the world was first ridiculed for his passion. I love Khusrau and that is what my purpose of life is.”
    Happy days
    For most of his life, Pradeep Sharma Khusrau has spent money on acquiring works of Khusrau from various parts of the world and faced backlash from his family. However, there was a time, he was paid for working and researching on Khusrau. He says that was the most beautiful period of his life because he was getting money to follow his heart.
    “In 2012, I received a phone call from Hazrat Nizamuddin from a gentleman called Farid Ahmad Nizami. Everyone at the Dargah knows me as Pradeep Sharma Khusrau. The gentleman told me that the Aga Khan Foundation in Delhi is looking for someone to help them in their research on Amir Khusrau. At that time, I was working as a drawing teacher in a school with a salary of 20,000 INR. The next day, I attended an iftar party with some of my friends. I was talking about Khusrau in a group, when I was approached by a gentleman from Agha Khan foundation who said that they had been looking for me after they got to know about my passion and expertise on Khusrau. He told me that they couldn’t find anyone though they had approached well known professors and experts and even given advertisements in newspapers. He said that though the people who came were qualified but none of them had the relevant expertise when it came to Khusrau. He asked me to come to his office the next morning. I was interviewed by a panel of 5 people who asked me about 50 questions on Khusrau. They were so impressed with my answers that they immediately gave me an appointment letter as a researcher on Amir Khusrau.”
    “However, I told them that I was working as an art teacher and needed to serve the notice period. I talked to the principal who did not agree to relieve me. When I shared my predicament with the people at Agha Khan foundation, they offered a part time arrangement. So, I used to get up at 5 am, go to the school to teach. At 2 pm I used to go to the foundation and work there till 8 or 9 pm. The project became bigger and finally I was asked to join full time. I explained my problem to the principal and I was relieved after my notice period. Then I joined the Aga Khan foundation at a salary of 70,000 INR. Initially the project was for two years. However, they liked my work so much that they asked me to work with them for two more years. These four years were almost like a golden era for me. I travelled to 22 states in search of Khusrau, organized concerts, programs, symposiums and seminars. I was immersed in Amir Khusrau day in and day out. My folks also did not trouble me because they were happy with the money coming in. After four years, I was given another year-long project on Mirza Ghalib and Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan.”
    Office Politics
    Pradeep’s golden days were soon riddled with office politics and colleagues who resented his success.
    He says, “Soon people started resenting me for my knowledge and work, I had a tiff with my senior who wanted me to take the short route for everything. I couldn’t do that because Khusrau was a passion and I wanted to do everything properly. So, she started sending negative reports about me. As a result, I was asked to leave. So, I worked till 2018 and since then I worked in two schools and today, I am unemployed. However, I am still working on spreading Khusrau’s work and words.”

    • This article was published in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit section on 12 June 2021

    …To be continued…

    By Shailaza Singh

  • Net Time- Virtually Yours

    Most people would like to find their love online these days. They love the sense of adventure, thrill that comes with it. There are millions of options available no doubt. However, the net also has an abundance of scammers who are just waiting to ensnare those besotted with love!

    One goes, others come- Bus, Train and Chats!

    Sunita, 39 was quite upset. Her online friend had not been talking to her for an entire week now. They had been friends for over two months. He did not answer her calls and just sent a cryptic message saying, ‘will talk later’. One day, her friend Mansi came to meet her. ‘Why are you so upset?’ she asked. Sunita told her the issue. Mansi nonchalantly said, ‘he must have found someone more loaded. After all, its an investment of time!’

    Sunita revealed that her online friend had asked her for her photographs which she refused to give. Since then, he had become distant and kept saying that she did not trust him enough. Mansi nodded, ‘yes, he wanted to have a little bit of ‘fun’. When he could not get it from you, he decided to try his luck elsewhere. Remember, in real life or net, when one goes, other comes whether bus or train or even a chat friend.’

    Options Galore

    Dr. Anamika Papriwal, a psychologist says, ‘When one goes on apps like Tinder or TrulyMadly or Aisle, they are given an impression that there are plenty of options to choose from. It is like being in the biggest supermarket of the world where you have millions of options to choose from. So, you will always keep wondering if there is anything better than the one you currently have or if you don’t get the desired features from that product, you will have no qualms about leaving it and trying for the next best option. As a result, the relationships online are hardly long lasting unless you disconnect from the app once you have found the person you were looking for.’

    Need based transactions

    When Arunima 41, decided to come to India for two months, she knew she would be lonely without her husband and daughter. She comes here regularly to take care of her business and stays for months at a time. She says, ‘Every time I come here, I start scoring for people who are looking for a casual, no strings attached fling. After all, why should boys have all the fun? I have a family back home and I am not looking for any kind of melodrama or complications or monetary problems. There are many who are looking for the same thing and we get together. Once the two months are over, we bid adieu and promise to never be in touch again. So far this arrangement has worked for me quite well.’

    Kaveri Banerjee a psychologist based in Delhi says, ‘Online relationships are nothing but simple transactions that are a matter of convenience for most people. They are mostly need based and not based on emotions or long term. When the need is met, the people go their own separate ways.’

    Agrees Govind, 35, ‘I am a single guy who is not looking for long term. When I meet a girl online, I want to meet her immediately so that I can evaluate if we are a good fit. If she delays the meeting or does not want to meet before knowing me and chatting with me, I tell her that I don’t have either the time or the patience for such conversations.’

    Honey! I want your money

    Vihaan was 50-year-old widower, settled in Chandigarh. His sons and daughters were married and were living in different parts of the country and the world. Vihaan stayed alone in his house with his servants. One of his friends advised him to logon to Tinder, an app for single men and women. Vihaan liked the idea because he could look at prospective matches from the comfort of his house. He chanced upon Aparna, a single mother working in a not-for-profit organization (NGO). She was a 45-year-old divorcee who had a college going son. They instantly hit off and Aparna even introduced Vihaan to her son Nikhil.

    They talked for long hours on end on audio and video calls and Aparna told him how she had single-handedly raised Nikhil after her husband walked away with another woman. Vihaan felt he had met a kindred soul in Aparna. He talked to his friends and they advised him to go and meet his dream girl. Aparna readily agreed to the idea. Vihaan had booked his tickets for the following week. Before the day he was to travel to meet her, Vihaan got a call from Aparna at about 1 a.m. She told him that Nikhil had met with a serious accident and was in the ICU. He had lost a lot of blood and the doctors would not operate until she deposited 2 lakh rupees. She said she did not have that kind of cash and asked him to help. Vihaan asked her for her account number and promptly transferred 2 lakh rupees. After about five minutes, he received a ‘thanks’ on WhatsApp from her number. He tried calling but now her number is always switched off.

    Sonakshi was a 44-year-old single lady living with her parents in Hyderabad. She was a very successful entrepreneur who had been too busy for marriage during her youth. Now, she felt the need to share her life with someone. Her friends advised her to download a dating app. Soon, she got connected to Raghu, a businessman who was based in New York, USA. Raghu was an issueless divorcee who was looking for his soulmate. He was a great conversationalist and Sonakshi discovered that they could talk for hours on end about every topic in the world. After about two months, Raghu told Sonakshi that he will be coming to meet her. He wanted to marry her and take her back with him. Sonakshi’s joy knew no bounds. Raghu sent her pictures of all the expensive gifts including Apple iPad, diamond jewellery that he had purchased for her. Sonakshi’s friends warned her to be patient and not get blown away by such gestures. But Sonakshi could not wait. She was ready to meet her Prince Charming. On the day that Raghu was supposed to reach Mumbai, Sonakshi got a call on her phone. The man speaking on the other end said that he was calling from the customs department in Mumbai airport. He told her that Raghu has been arrested since he had items worth more than the permissible limit and unless he paid, they will not let him go. Sonakshi asked them to send the details where she could send the payment and the person sent her a link. She was asked to pay 1 lakh, which she immediately paid without even thinking. Then she got a call from the concierge at the hotel where Raghu’s stay was booked. She was told that though Raghu was supposed to make the payment to book the room, his phone was out of reach. So, they asked her to make the payment of 50,000 INR. They sent her the link and she made the payment. After sometime, she got a call from Raghu who told her that the custom’s issue was solved and he wanted a business class ticket from Mumbai to Hyderabad. He asked her to transfer 50,000 INR and said that he will return it as soon as he meets her. Sonakshi transferred the money. She later tried to call Raghu but since that time his phone has been switched off.

    Dr. Anamika Papriwal, a psychologist says, ‘I have heard of women talking to men for days and they asking them to pay their children’s fee or give them money for their daily expenditure. Many of these people who pull off such scams have an innate understanding of the human behaviour. They first befriend the person, establish trust with them and then spend time talking to them. Once the person starts trusting them, they start with small transactions which they promptly return to again establish trust. Once that is done, they move in for the kill. In a way, it is an addiction where the person gets addicted to the other person. You can get anything done from an addict who needs his daily dose. That is how this works!’

    Truelove.com

    However, not all is gruesome and gory in the world of online dating. There are stories where people have found true love too.
    Thirty-year-old Puja met Nikhil on a dating app. Initially, she thought he was quite arrogant and snobbish. However, when they started chatting, she realized that he and she shared the same dreams and values. Nikhil travelled to Baroda to meet Puja and her family. After a while, Puja too visited Nikhil and his parents in Lucknow. Soon, they were married and are now blessed with a baby boy.
    Arjun, a 35-year-old doctor living in Gurgaon had faced rejection from a lot of girls. Online, he met Shruti, an interior designer who was also living in Gurgaon.  Shruti was beautiful but suffering from self-image issues owing to her weight. They connected and realized that they had a lot in common. They got married after dating for two years and are still going strong.

    This article was published in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit on 2 June 2021.

  • How I got rid of Oggy and his cockroaches

    A few years ago, like all children, my daughter had fallen in love with cartoons on Cartoon Network. She used to watch all kinds of programs including Tom and Jerry, Shiva, Chota Bheem and the cringe worthy Oggy and the cockroaches. As it is, for me the very word ‘cockroach’ is enough to induce a sleepless night, the three cockroaches made it worse! My daughter sat spell bound as the cockroaches and Oggy kept battling it out in Oggy’s refrigerator and at times literally tore the kitchen apart in pursuit of vengeance! The icing on the cake was that the voice-over artist sometimes mimicked voice of Shahrukh Khan, sometimes Nana Patekar, Sunil Shetty and other such then popular actors. After some months, I was so fed up that I asked my friends to help me. One of my friends downloaded and shared a Japanese Anime ‘Spirited Away’. At that time, there was no Netflix or other OTT, so we had to make ado with the subtitles. I showed the movie to my daughter and she loved it! And that was the reason enough to discontinue the cable service.

    It has been a decade since I and my daughter introduced ourselves to subtitles and movies from different countries and languages. Earlier, we downloaded these from different sites like YouTube and torrents which offer ‘free’ movies. Initially, I was quite scared that some kind of Internet police might come and catch me for going on torrents and other such sites. I had prepared a list of counter arguments and kept it in my bedside cabinet for such emergencies and foreseen circumstances. Some reasons given in the list were:

    1. Downloading movies with subtitles is better than letting the children watch serials produced by Ekta Kapoor or other such people. Though the children are intrigued by the idea of saas-bahu politics (children are born politicians) and repeated plastic surgery (they love the idea that they can hide behind a new face if they do something wrong) and multiple divorces and remarriages (my daughter was simply hooked on to the idea that for each marriage she will get at least three to four new dresses with matching dress and jewellery!)
    2. Watching other movies with subtitles is actually education! One of my friends told me that her son who goes off to sleep in the English class at school actually learnt reading by watching movies with subtitles. He loved Hollywood action movies like Rambo and would actually read the subtitles to understand what actors like Sylvester Stallone were saying (most of them actually mutter under their breath). With time, his English literature teacher was actually impressed with his ability to read in the language!

    However, my list of reasons kept lying in the cabinet because no one ever came! So, we read the subtitles and we watched movies. An old friend was curious about why did I go through so much trouble for movies with subtitles when most English movies either had Hindi subtitles or were dubbed in Hindi. It was then I told her about my experience with the well-known movie Jurassic Park’s dubbed Hindi version. In that movie, there is a scene where the female protagonist says ‘I want to see the dinosaur’s shit.’ This dialogue was translated into ‘mujhe dinosaur ka gobar dekhne hai.’ I am not arguing whether it was the correct translation or not but from that point onwards, I steered clear of dubbed movies!

     I also bought a lot of CDs and DVDs of good movies that I believed would help her to inculcate some good values. Some came with subtitles while others did not. We kept our CDs very carefully lest they get scratch marks because then the CD would not either play certain segments or would simply get jammed . We also did not jump tracks because that again could lead to scratches and bad unplayable sectors. The CDs could only either be played on our computers or television sets which meant sitting in the living room, switching on the television or the laptop, inserting the CD and then waiting for it to play. When my daughter complained that it was a cumbersome process, I told her stories of the VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) in which we had to insert this huge video cassette, rewind it and then play. She rolled her eyes. She said that idea was unimaginably old fashioned and preposterous!

    New entries

    Then Netflix breezed into our lives. I deleted all my downloads and tore the long list of reasons. The CDs were forgotten in an old cupboard.  Even today, I don’t know what to do with my huge collection. I thought of turning them into plates and decorations but then a friend advised me to wait because according to him one day, these CDs and DVDs would be treasured as antiques and I would be able to make a lot of money by selling them! I am still waiting!

    With Netflix and later Amazon Prime and other such OTT platforms, my phone became my new cinema hall. I could walk into it anytime and watch the movie and the scene of my choice again and again- A far cry from the first time that I was introduced to cinema in Jaipur in my summer holidays!

    Back then, my maternal grandfather hated movies with a vengeance! He believed that movies did nothing except corrupt minds of young people. So, on the pretext of going to the vegetable market, my aunt masterminded the great escape and smuggled my grandmother, mother, my brother and me in a matador car and took us to the Rajmandir Theatre to watch the matinee show Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘Sharabi’. She even paid a friend to shop for vegetables and fruits. When the movie finished, we went to Niros Restaurant, ate food, picked up the vegetables and fruits and went back home! Till date my grandfather is unaware of these little escapades!

    Today, with Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hot Star, and other such platforms, my daughter and me huddle up in any corner of the house and watch these movies and series regardless of their language. Sometimes, we hook it up to the television and even binge watch with a bowl of fresh popcorn. We hardly realize that we are reading the subtitles. The interesting bit is that we keep discovering new things about distant lands. One day, my daughter told me that in Japan, people are not scared of haunted houses because they believe that each house has its own spirit. So, whenever they move in to a new house, they thank the spirit and ask him to take care of them and their family. This fact she got to know from a movie called “My neighbour Totoro”.

    Covid time pass

    The good part about these movies with subtitles is that one has to pay attention to understand what is going on. Hence most of times, in this era of COVID, online movie watching is quite engrossing! Not that we have achieved nirvana but cartoons have been replaced by a lot of meaningful content and thank fully Oggy and the cockroaches have been completely forgotten!

    However, the danger still looms large as I just discovered that Salman Khan has launched another no brainer ‘Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai’ on OTT. While Oggy and the Cockroaches rile me with goofy no brainer conversations, a Salman Khan movie brings up questions like ‘why cannot Salman Khan protect India from COVID?’ or ‘If he is so strong, why cannot Salman Khan help in dealing with the pandemic?’ Wouldn’t it be great if these OTT platforms had questions to these answers in subtitles too?

    This article by Shailaza Singh was published in Rashtradoot Newspaper on 12 May 2021

  • What’s Cooking? Science in the great Indian kitchen!

    What’s Cooking? Science in the great Indian kitchen!

    What happens when a software engineer enters the Great Indian Kitchen which has been the undisputed domain of women for centuries? Nothing much except that the engineer in him starts tinkering with all the ingredients, process and unravels the mystery of the Indian cooking!

    A free wheeling conversation with Krish Ashok, the author of ‘Masala Lab’ a book that says that cooking is really an every day science in action!
    Even today, guys are seldom into cooking. Some of them consider boiling Maggi noodles as their lifetime achievement. Now, it seems many men are getting more interested in cooking. Do you think this is a revolution of sorts? How do people react to the idea of a man cooking at home!
    Things are really changing at least in urban India more than rural India. Infact they are changing more than in South than in other parts of India. It is not as odd in South India to find a couple sharing cooking duties and chores at home. However, in a larger sense this is clearly changing in other parts of India. The pandemic has also forced some of this change, especially for young men living by themselves. Beyond a point, just ordering from Swiggy is not a solution. I think the lockdown and the fact that there were really times where you could not order food home forced people to say ‘I have to learn to cook’. Regardless of whether it was a two-month period or not, it did force people to really think of cooking as a basic skill. However, when it comes to men, there is no dearth of male professional chefs.

    In fact, a vast majority of men are professional chefs. Again, this has to do with gender bias in the sense that women were not allowed to go down the professional route. They were supposed to cook at home, within the four walls of the kitchen.
    So, it is not surprising that I get a lot of attention simply because I am a guy who is writing about home cooking and not restaurant cooking. But I do think things are changing for the better. In fact, as much as men are changing, young women of this generation are also clearly not accepting this kind of a behaviour. Today, they are openly saying that certain rules cannot be gendered and cooking is one of them. Just like taking care of a child beyond a point cannot be gendered. Otherwise, it places an unreasonable number of restrictions and challenges for women aspiring in a professional career since they have to balance everything including their career. Things are changing but these are still very early days since we are a big country. Even in my family, even today, a vast majority of men do not cook. The older ladies in my family really get awed if a guy can boil noodles or make tea but won’t bother to appreciate a woman cooking a fantastic dish because as per them, women are meant to do that. However, I think that after a couple of generations, things will really change.


    Do you think cooking is a life skill?
    Absolutely! In our world, there is climate change happening, there is an increasing awareness about sustainability practices regarding food. So, hence understanding what you eat and where it comes from has become essential. If you go by what’s currently happening with the farmer protests and the other problems of the world, I think the public knowledge of not what just you are eating but also of how it comes is also all the more important. I am not saying everyone needs to learn how to grow their own crops but at least they need to understand where something like bread comes from. They need to understand what is local. The fact of the matter is that there are reasons why certain ingredients are used in certain parts of India. They could be used because they are local, they grow in those climatic conditions and they will not deplete the resources of that area. But these days things are changing just for making money. For example, we have sabudana being grown in Salem in Tamil Nadu, where no body eats sabudana. All of it is exported to places like Gujrat and Maharashtra. You have basmati rice being grown in Punjab, which is not a rice eating part of the world at all. This is tremendous drain on the resources. I think we need to encourage a greater awareness about being more mindful and having an understanding about what you are putting in your body. At the end of the day food is the only foreign object you put in your body; that too willingly and twice or thrice a day! So, it is important that you pay attention to it. Cooking is an essential life skill because at the end of the day, the business of restaurants or the commercial supply chain or processed food industry is not sustainable because it has high carbon footprint and does not use local ingredients. It is salty, sugary and uses tons of preservatives to make food tasty and addictive. Let’s face it that at the end of the day, they have a business to run!


    How would you convince the parents who believe that it is not a man’s job to cook to allow their boys to learn cooking?
    Cooking is the basic of science. In schools, I think we should have a cooking lab next to all those sciences laboratories. In fact, my editor (who was from humanities background) said that if the science is anything harder than class VIII or IX, this book won’t sell. So, she told me to explain all the science behind processes like heating the oil, browning the onions or making curd in simple words. The book is doing so well that I am actually now getting requests from schools. In fact, I am going to be soon doing a demonstration in my son’s school (who is in class 3), along with the physics, chemistry and biology teachers. It is one thing to read about things like structure of a grain or its epidermis and another thing to see it in action in a wheat or a rice grain in a cooking laboratory. You could explain albumin or yolk in an egg, structure of a muscle or anything using the kitchen as a laboratory. So, all I have to say is that beakers and test tubes are all okay but seventy percent of the science practicals in a high school syllabus can happen in a kitchen because that is the place where biology, chemistry and physics intersect. You can explain thermodynamics of heat, you can explain basic chemical reactions, salt, acid, bases. You can explain the defence mechanisms of plants through spices! So, if we help parents of all those boys to understand that kitchen is the basis for their child’s education, then no one will have a problem in letting their boys learn cooking.
    These days many children don’t like to participate in household chores! What can be done?
    One thing that I have learnt from the west is that their relationships are about love but they are also transaction and negotiation based. The parents tell their children that they will give them the money but they need to do the chores first. They can play the videogames but they need to also do the laundry or clean up the kitchen. I think it is important that children should take part and participate in the household chores. Like my son has to put the clothes in washing machine and wash them. It is easy. He simply puts them and presses the right buttons. You need to ensure that your children do their bit in the household chores but these chores should not decide on the basis of gender. These days people send their daughter for helping with the car repair and son to help with the kitchen work.
    But if every one will learn all the secrets of cooking, how will a woman reach a man’s heart? After all, the way is only through the stomach!

    With all the apologies, if the only way to man’s heart is through the stomach then the man might as well learn cooking!

    This article appeared in Rashtradoot’s Arbit section on March 1, 2021.

  • Gulabo Sapera: The Girl Who Survived and Danced

    The mesmerizing dance of the Kalbeliya community has become famous all over the world. But, about 50 years ago, this community of snake charmers could never have thought in their wildest dreams that their daughters would dance and popularize this folk art. This phenomenon can only be attributed to Padamshree Gulabo Sapera- a woman who refused to stop dancing and living!

    The sand dunes of Rajasthan have been a silent witness to the changing times. They have been mute spectators of a time when thousands of new born girls were buried alive in their sands and died without a whimper. But then they have also witnessed the miracle of Gulabo Sapera, a girl who was buried in their folds minutes after she was born and lived to tell the tale.
    Today, the world knows her as Gulabo Sapera, but she was christened Dhanvantari after the Hindu god of medicine and nectar, after she was found alive despite being buried in the sand dunes. She belongs to the tribe of Kalbeliyas who are known for their ability to catch and tame snakes.
    Gulabo reveals, ‘We are gypsy people who live in the jungle, catch snakes and make them dance to earn money. Our people used to go from door to door asking people to feed the snakes milk and collect dakshina. In the old days, most girls were killed as soon as they were born because most of our tribe lived in the forests. There was an unwritten rule that no family could have a lot of girls in their house. If they wanted they could keep a single girl child but not more because abduction of girls was quite common in those days. Then, we were quite poor and most families don’t have enough money to ensure that their daughters along with the sons can be fed, clothed and protected or pay dowry in their marriage. When they had to marry their boys, they used to get girls from the chhabri community (basket weavers) by paying the bride price and marry them. These girls were brought from their families at a very young age. A lot of women in my family have been married like this.’
    The famous model and actor Milind Soman may have married Ankita Konwar, a girl who is 25 years younger to him but this trend is not new to Rajasthan. Gulabo says, ‘My father is 25 years older to my mother. Infact, my father was taking care of my grandmother when she gave birth to my mother. He travelled 10 kilometers, went to the village and got the things required for the delivery for her. So, my grandfather proclaimed that this newborn girl would not be killed and will marry his son once she grows up.’
    Having witnessed female infanticide in such close quarters within his family, Gulabo’s father was quite against it. ‘He wanted that men from our community should marry the girls from their own community instead of getting girls from other communities by paying the bride price. He believed that girls of his own community were far more beautiful and talented. He worshipped Goddess Chamunda and was dead against female infanticide.’
    Gulabo’s three elder sisters were protected by her father when they were born. ‘The people of our community were quite upset about the fact that my father did not allow any one to kill his daughters. I was the seventh, child, born after three sisters and three brothers. I was born on Dhanteras. My father had gone to buy some goods for the festival of Diwali. My mother slept out of exhaustion after the delivery. So, seizing the opportunity, the midwife who had come for my delivery, along with my five year old brother took me and buried me in the sands. When my mother woke up and demanded to see her new born, she was told that the baby had been buried. She insisted on visiting the place where I was buried and dug me up. Some how, I was alive despite being buried in the sands for more than five hours! As a result, I was named Dhanvantari after the gods of medicine and nectar.’
    However, her struggles were far from over. The next morning the village panchayat admonished her parents for saving their daughter after she was buried in the sands. Gulabo reveals, ‘My father received a lot of flak from the village panchayat. In their eyes, it was a sort of rebellion. But my father said that since I was found alive even after five hours of being buried in the sand, I was no longer his daughter but the daughter of the Earth Goddess! He told them to spare me and punish him in case they deemed fit. At that time, my father saved me from being killed. However, people were not happy seeing me alive. My father ensured that I did not stay in the village but travelled with him for his performances.’
    It was this travelling that helped Gulabo learn dance from the snakes. ‘I used to watch those snakes dance and I imitated them. Slowly and steadily, as I grew up, I learnt to dance like the snakes on the music of the been. After a while, I started dancing with the snakes wrapped around me. People started liking my dance and gave money to watch me dance. However, people of my community again objected that how could my parents allow me to dance and earn money? This continued but I did not stop dancing and people continued appreciate it. They started calling me Gulabo. When I was eight years old, I was dancing at the Pushkar Fair on a sand dune when I was discovered by the people from the tourism department of Rajasthan.’
    But her struggles weren’t over yet. ‘There was again a huge hue and cry in my community after I started performing in dance shows. But I paid no heed to them because now I knew that this was what I wanted to do. I was scheduled to travel to America for my first dance show when my father passed away on the eve of my departure. The people of the community said all sorts of things to me, they blamed me for my father’s death. They wouldn’t let me go. However, I begged them to let me go because I knew my father was my biggest supporter and he wouldn’t have stopped me from taking on such a big opportunity.’
    It was only when her name started figuring in newspapers and other journals that people of her own community started realizing her true worth. ‘When I came back from America, people of my village were awed at my popularity. Many of them told me that the people from other communities invited them to their homes and honoured them because they were related to me. They, who were treated with nothing but contempt had never witnessed such a change of heart or received such respect from the villagers.’
    As Gulabo’s fame grew and her art was revered in 153 countries across the world, the people of her community started viewing their own daughters in a different light and realized their potential. The infanticide which was so rampant earlier started declining as the daughters were finally allowed to live and dance. ‘They said that they wanted their daughters to emulate my success and help them to live better in the world. Today, girls are no longer killed in my community. In fact, they learn dance and earn for their families. Some girls manage to educate themselves. My husband supports me. We have five children, two boys and three girls. My girls love to dance. All my children are educated and have studied in English medium school. We will soon open a school for these girls where they will be educated and will also learn dance.’
    However, despite her success Gulabo feels that girls are still not viewed as equals in many segments of the society. ‘Girls still need to be careful lest they give the wrong signals. My parents always advised me to be conscious of my step in the public. They told me to always be alert and understand the body language of the people I talk to. The girls have to remain strong.’
    Gulabo’s journey is as legendary as this dancer herself. She has not only been an inspiration to the people of her community but has also helped people to realize the true value of girls!

    This article was published in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on February 25, 2021.

  • The Man and His Beliefs : Prasoon Joshi

    ‘Jaipur is a melting pot of art and culture. People here not only revere and love to explore their heritage but also are open to new music, ideas and concepts. The entire ecosystem of Jaipur which includes people and infrastructure along with the attitude of the business people here make it an ideal place for such events.’ –Prasoon Joshi

    It is generally said that business and art seldom mix. People often feel that those who are adept in business cannot be accomplished artists and vice-versa. However, Prasoon Joshi who is not just a marketing guru but also an award-winning lyricist, poet and screenwriter loves to defy conventions and enjoy all that comes his way. We caught up with the man who believes that there is nothing more important than life itself at the Jaipur Literature Festival.
    You are not just a marketing guru but also a lyricist, a poet and a screenwriter. How do you juggle so many hats at once?
    I believe that we should try to do justice to the life that has been given to us. I really admire people like Asha ji (Asha Bhosle) who have been able to balance family, raise children and yet have a successful career. I too strive for the same thing. I have my aged parents who live with me and I love taking care of them. I believe we need to first fulfil our responsibilities towards other people and then towards ourselves. So, if you have a dream, a talent or an ambition, go after it by all means but don’t forget your responsibilities and the people who love you or are dependent on you.
    These days a lot of people talk about battling inertia, stagnation? How does one counter that?
    I don’t understand these words. Where is inertia? Where is stagnation in life? The thing is we are looking at very narrow definition of the word engagement. People think engagement is just about work or projects. No, the truth is engagement is about life. You may not be doing well professionally but you can always find engagement in your personal life, with your family members, with the people you love. When I am not working, I love talking to my daughter, travelling with her, helping her to do her homework. Engagement can be anything. To me, engagement is collecting memories. My grandmother was a village woman who did not start her education till the age of 19. Then she studied and retired as the principal of a school. Look around you, life is thriving. There is no dearth of things to do. All you need to do is to broaden your perspective and listen to your heart.
    What about writer’s block? How do you deal with it?
    You just need to shift your focus to something else. Stop getting stuck in a place. Move on and it will pass with time.
    How do you get your ideas or inspiration?
    Ideas have a life of their own. They will come to you, provided you have the right intent and vibrations. If you are in the creative zone, sooner or later you will get great ideas!

    What do you say to yourself when you look at the mirror first thing in the morning?
    Actually, I don’t really look at the mirror except when I am stepping out of the house. I like to look at the stars, the sky, the flowers and the grass. Nature is the biggest motivator for me because as all know, I have spent my entire childhood in the lap of nature in Uttarakhand. So, whenever I need energy or inspiration, nature rejuvenates me, inspires me and makes me feel truly alive. My music is inspired from nature. I love pahadi music, the feelings and emotions it imbibes in the listener.


    Do you ever talk to yourself?
    I love talking to myself because I believe that is how I am able to sort myself out. In fact, I have quite a pronounced dialogue with myself. I penned down all the conversations that I have with myself in first book that I wrote Main aur Woh (Me and Myself). I think it is important to talk to yourself because that helps in sorting out your feelings and emotions and even get an inner connect. These days we are so busy talking and chatting on social media, mobiles and phones that we have forgotten to talk to ourselves. We are no longer in touch with our own feelings and emotions which is why the youth of today have such issues with relationships. If you do not have a relationship with yourself, how will you have a relationship with others?
    Music has travelled in time from gramophones to cell phones. What do you think is the next phase of music?
    The term music has become quite broad. What do you define as music? You have songs, then remixes, words without music (rap). Right now, the definition of music encompasses almost everything. Somehow, I feel the next phase of music will be utter chaos. I was telling Gulzar saab the other day that he and his generation of poets and song writers had more meaningful and beautiful words to choose from as compared to today’s world. Today, people are resorting to short forms, shrinking and mutilated words. Sometimes, I simply hate the kind of songs that are written today. Even with music too, we will probably not know what is music and what is not music. However, after this chaos, the audience will start rejecting the bad music and they will start searching for melody and rhythm again. Now that our planet is more or less a global village, the interaction of world cultures will also impact music to a large extent. You will get to hear more fusion music and amalgamations that will be in a class of their own. Moreover, festivals like these will increase since people will also crave for authentic and pure music, books and arts.


    What’s your favourite food?
    Food is a memory device. I love what my grandma used to make. It is called Churkani and it is made from black soyabean dal and rice. The taste and smell remind me of my home in Uttarakhand. However, I am not fussy about food. When I was a child, I was not given a choice about what I could eat or not eat. We ate whatever my mother cooked. She cooked seasonal vegetables and food which she felt would be nutritious for us. We were not allowed to waste food. My parents always told me to be grateful for food because there are many people who do not even get two square meals a day! I am not a foodie but I do like to try the local foods of the places I visit to understand the culture of the place.


    What is your favourite colour?
    I like all kinds of colours like green, blue, white and black. I am not very fussy about clothes. If I like something, like a shirt, I buy five. I don’t like thinking much about clothes and prefer if someone just gives me something to wear. I like many colours but when it comes to wearing clothes, I like black and darker colours because it allows me to look always dressed.
    What is your favourite day of the week?
    I love Mondays since I can go to work. I love working.


    What is your favourite destination?
    I love travelling but mountains will always remain my favourite destination.
    Why do you think Jaipur is becoming a focal point of most art and cultural activities whether it is music or literature?
    Jaipur is a place which provides an unbiased and non-judgemental platform which respects every artist. It is also a melting pot of art and culture. People here not only revere and love to explore their heritage but also are open to new music, books, ideas and concepts. The entire ecosystem of Jaipur which includes people and infrastructure along with the attitude of the business people here make it an ideal place for such events.

    This article was published in Rashtradoot’s Arbit on 21 February 2021.

    Shailaza Singh
    Published Author, Poet and Youtuber

  • Virtually Yours- Jaipur Literature Festival 2021

    Will the virtual version of Jaipur Literature Festival be able to enchant its audiences like its real counterpart? In this post pandemic era, will the readers be able to digest this literary reality?

    On my way to the Diggi Palace Hotel, scenes from the last year’s Jaipur Literature Festival flashed across my mind’s eye. People carrying books in their hands, their bags bulging with books. Hundreds of people queueing in front of the kiosks, eager to get their books signed by their favourite author. There were some who had positioned themselves next to their favourite spot for the next session and were patiently waiting for the next session to begin. Elsewhere, many die-hard foodies were sampling the exotic dishes that had been painstakingly prepared by the chefs of Diggi Palace Hotel. Some die-hard fans were deep in conversation with their favourite author over a cup of tea or coffee! The green of the lawns of the sprawling palace were hardly visible amidst the colourful tents that were erected and the audience that occupied those lawns for the author sessions and discussions.

    As I entered the gates of Diggi Palace, my reverie was broken by the cry of a peacock. I looked at the empty lawns and the peacocks who were walking across them as if they owned the place. And then the reality that I had refused to accept struck me! Jaipur Literature Festival would be an online affair in 2021. I walked to a corridor where Sanjoy K Roy, the managing director of Team Work Arts, the company which produces the festival was talking to a handful of people. They were waiting for B.D. Kalla, the art and culture minister, who was to officially inaugurate the Jaipur Literature Festival 2021 which is being held from 19 February 2021 to 28 February 2021. When I asked him for his views on the online change forced by COVID, he was quite upbeat about it, ‘Yes, this time people all over the world have registered for the festival. When the festival was held here, hardly any people from Germany could come. But now, we have so many people registering from different countries like Germany, Saudi Arabia and all across the world. The reach of the festival has become global in the true sense of the word.’

    I remembered the bygone times, where the tourists and the people living in Jaipur would plan to spend their entire day at the Diggi Palace Hotel. Once they entered the venue, the visitors did nothing else except listen to author sessions or explore the various delights the festival had to offer. Some of them would even get their durries to have impromptu picnics in a corner of one of these lawns. Would the online version be able to captivate the audience in the same way? Would this online audience have as much dedication and staying power as the audience in the physical version of the festival?

    ‘We do hope it would,’ said Sanjoy K Roy. ‘To engage our virtual audience, we have curated a great line up of authors and speakers who would talk about a variety of topics ranging from books, nationalism, pandemic and more. This time, instead of having multiple sessions at the same time (in the physical versions, there were different sessions conducted by different authors in four different venues at any one given time), we will only have two sessions at the same time, so that the people don’t have to worry about missing out these sessions.’ Going forward, once the physical version of the festival is restored, will they still continue with the online version too or is it just for this time? ‘Definitely,’ said Sanjoy K Roy, ‘the online version will now be an integral part of JLF since it has definitely helped us to expand our reach and increase our audience across the globe.’

    But would the viewers spend their entire time listening to the sessions as raptly as they did in the physical version? Sanjoy K Roy shrugged his shoulders, ‘May be not the entire time but from our experience during the pandemic time, I can say that the average viewing time was about 18 minutes per viewer which is more than the average of 7 to 8 minutes on OTT platforms. Moreover, while we could only accommodate a maximum of 15,000 people in the front lawn in the physical version of the festival, in the digital version we have received an average of 32,000 views per session, which is way higher.’

    Our conversation was interrupted by the entry B.D. Kalla, minster for Art and Culture, Rajasthan who had come to virtually inaugurate the festival. I watched as Sanjoy K Roy greeted the minister and then took him to light the lamp to signal the commencement of the festival. One could actually see the effect that the pandemic has had on the world as people wondered whether to light the lamp with or without wearing the masks. Ultimately, they decided to film both the versions and take the decision later. Last year, there was a crowd present to witness this inauguration, this year there were only peacocks and a handful of people.

    When he was done with the ceremony, I asked Sanjoy K Roy about the controversy surrounding the venue of the festival- Diggi Palace Hotel. Weren’t there articles and rumours about Diggi Palace Hotel no longer being the venue of JLF? And if that was the case, what was the future of JLF in 2022? ‘As of now, I am glad that thanks to the pandemic, the venue has not changed and I hope that will remain the case in the next year.’ What if the venue is changed? Where would the festival be held? ‘It is too early to comment on this but yes one thing is for sure that JLF will not go out of Jaipur.’

    During the 13 years of its physical presence in Jaipur, JLF was not just an event that people looked forward to. It had become an important source of tourism and income for hotels, tourist guides, autos, busses and many street vendors who waited for the festival to earn their yearly income. The festival may have survived by donning an online avatar, but what would those people do this year? Sanjoy K Roy smiled sadly, ‘What can I say? It has been the case everywhere. The pandemic has impacted every one including us. Just this morning as I was coming here, I met the guy who used to sell his wares outside the palace during the festival. He told me how difficult it was for him and his family to survive this year since there would be no tourists or festival to sell his wares. We are hoping that we are back to business as usual in 2022 so that people are able to compensate for their losses.’

    Ever since the onset of the pandemic, the world has been reeling with the deluge of online conferences, webinars, meetings and all sorts of virtual events. Many employees swear by their power naps and zoning off techniques to cope with the online information overload. It is indeed a challenge to sit glued to one’s chair and listen to the ever-droning colleagues and bosses without switching off.  Students all over the world have been earnestly hoping that they are able to physically attend their schools since online classes no longer hold their interest.  Some studies have suggested that it is difficult for human beings to concentrate on online events for an extended span of time. Moreover, most celebrities, authors and other speakers have their own channels in Instagram, Facebook and YouTube where they keep talking to their followers about their books, achievements and activities frequently.

    In such a scenario, will an event like the Jaipur Literature Festival be able to hold the attention of the netizens? In the real world, the authors sessions were punctuated by coffee breaks, question- answer sessions, a visit to the book store, author signings and interactions and many more such activities which cannot be replicated even in the most technologically advanced version of the online festival. The question is even if the festival has been created using the most curated list of authors and advanced technology, will it be able to satisfy the audience’s need for a face-to-face conversation with their favourite author or smelling the pages of a brand-new book in the book shop or getting it autographed by its author? Will this virtual version be able to replicate those moments and experiences? Will the audience learn to love this version as it loved the physical festival? Maybe or maybe not! Only the people and time will tell.

    This article by Shailaza Singh was published in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on 17 February 2021.