Drudgery of daily living saps life of its every joy. In drudgery, I do not imply the bleakness of ho-hum chores that comprise work. Most challenging tasks fall into a pattern with numbing familiarity when performed repeatedly over a long time. Even a creative art, be it writing, music, acting, film-making, etc., that seems to promise a fresh perspective every day is just a professional work for the artist. Only those who practice it with the rigour of an artisan excel in their field and create a body of work that public admires as their contribution to the art. I use the phrase drudgery of daily living for the tyranny of work that is necessary to sustain life yet blights it simultaneously. This is the lot of most men - A life of bondage with no redemption in sight. When stuck in this station, they must work incessantly from day to night to afford the means to preserve the breath, only to wake up another day, and begin once again the life-scorching saga. Few people are fortunate t
Life is an ever-growing collection of unfulfilled desires; each alike Ghalib’s thousands, worth dying for: हज़ारों ख़्वाहिशें ऐसी कि हर ख़्वाहिश पे दम निकले Last month I gratified an old longing - For three days I witnessed the annual festival of music in Chennai, The Margazhi Kutcheri. Utter solitude of the unit where I was posted after internship, more than three decades ago, had forced me to look for means to while away the idle hours. As I wrote sometime back, I discovered Kishori Amonkar in these fumbling efforts. Then, a young officer from Kerala often saw me sprawled on a lawn chair, reading, and listening to music, as he walked across the corridor facing my room. He suggested that I listen to Yesudas’s Carnatic albums, which he said were popular in Kerala. A few weeks later he brought me two cassettes of Yesudas’s music, seeing I had not heeded his advice. I liked the music: the fast pace and the fascinating drums. India Today had launched Music Today then, a presti
A friend, now nearing sixty like me, has had a guilt-laden conscience for decades. Her daughter who is a successful professional, married, and in a well-paid job, blames her mother for what she perceives as failings in her nature: fastidious personal habits, intolerance for views of others, inability to trust friends, capricious mood swings, and even her obsession with eating healthy food. Her main grouse – reinforced by similar opinion of a psychotherapist she often visits – is that my friend did not devote enough time to her when she was young, as she valued her job more. The friend cannot rid herself of the remorse - Were it not for her demanding job, would her daughter have grown into a happier, more contended, and a self-assured person? Children spawn a new life for their parents. Birth of a child is an epochal moment in their lives. Young child is dependent on the parent for all her needs for a long time, stretching for years, perhaps the longest in the biological world. It is th
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