...kho na jayen TAARE ZAMEEN PAR..!!

Sunken beneath the burden of books.....

....or high atop over the mountains of expectations...

the place where they find all solitude.....

.....and they drown or fall apart, left with incinerated fortitude......

....Childhood, the most beutiful span of our lives, when our unravelling mind is intermingled in its own world of fantasies,dreams, hopes and imagination - far away from the harsh realities of this savage world. It is a spell when the foundation is created, the plinth is settled, the base is strengthened, so that it determines the extent upto which we can strive, survive, fight and sustain in this combative society. But what if this base is weak....!! The building collapses in its early period itself...and thats what is happening today.....

Every now and then, their are news of CHILD SUICIDES and such cases of chidren indulging in extremely violent activities and crimes so serious as murders...

For an inctance, Mumbai recently witnessed shocking cases of children committing suicides which were just enetring or have entered their teenage. A girl hanging herself from the roof when she had a minor argument with her neighbour. A boy commiting suicide in the same way, with a suicide note telling that hehas no apecific reason to do such and is just fed up of life. Bangalore witnessed a case of 4 school girls commiting suicide together by taking poison, alleging that - there's no reason that compelled them to do so, just that they wanted to live as well as die together.

These are just some of those several cases where the children doing so, have no particular reason as such; apart from those inumerable ones in which the reason is either a failure in exams or in their so-called premature love relationships. It has been now a trend to catch few lines of such Teenage suicides at the time of and after the declaration of the results of board examinations.

Then to talk about the teenage violence and crimes, we all can never forget those breath-taking incidents cited all over the world-media, one being the famoue case of an American university where a Korean student enraged and massacred some 20 students in the campus by a machine-gun. Then there was a case where in the University of Lousiana, two indian students were shot to death.

Reciting those eye-pinning headlines from the pages of indian dailies,i think everyone of us have read the famous case of a Gurgaon, school boy allegedly killing his classmate with a gun he took from his father's shelf. Then, there are are cases of such incidents where a children indulge in such gang activities.

What's the bottomline ?? What's the psychology behind such merciless and tragic incidents?? Why is the sprouting generation getting devoid of human feelings and who is to be balamed for inculcating those levels of insecurity, fear, and rage that a child's mind, which frightens by a mere sight of rumpus, doesn't beseeches on giving or taking a life...??

The most common trend of today's society is formation of Nucleur families and to add to the 'essence' for the loneliness of children, both the parents working. They yearn for their parents love, affection, time and vigilance. They feel as noone cares for them or is affected by their existence. This creates a sort of emotional void and psychological numbness.

Another demon to be blamed for such pityful condition of the young generation's mind is the media - television, internet and film industry at a glance. Now, in my opinion, parents are no more the first and foremost teachers to their children, its the TV. They watch different kinds of shows, and all sorts of vulgar entertainment served by the television. Fashion, glamour, sex, crime, betrayal...are the various commodities of media. Eventhough not meant for children, they can not remain untouched by these untimely 'lessons' that they gain from it. Child crimes, early puberty are all sort of visible changes seen by all of us in these recent years.

Competition is another upheaval in a child's innocent life. Right from the day he goes to school, he's faced and forced to compete in the arena of merciless cutthroat competitiveness where his imagination is all buried under the burden of hopes and aspirations of his parents and the society.

Whatever the reason stands, howsoever these upbringings done, the only victim is the inculpable childhood. We will have to understand this that no building can be made out of a fractured bedrock, and similarly a progressive nation can only be built on the culmination of these young healthy and unsullied youngsters.

A year it was.....

…….getting noted into the scripts of the historians, the year 2007 will certainly find its place in the top where the events of this young millennium will be written. To begin with….in fact to end with the year, the world lost another prominent and radiant of its leaders Mrs. Benazir Bhutto in her ruthless assassination by the terrorizing and communal forces of the world, giving democracy and peace a setback.
Mrs. Bhutto was a light, a hope for the struggling Pakistan, a hope for the whole world. To save Pakistan’s smothering society, to retain its peace, to make the dream come true of those millions of citizens of Pakistan who are looked down upon, considered terrorists by the world when there nationality is revealed, Benazir returned after her 8yrs of exile when she had nothing to lose or nothing to gain. But once again, the extremists were successful in muffling the voice of that ‘iron women’ whom they considered no more than a vulnerable female who should have been restricted to the dark confinements of ‘purdah’ and not to enter the male dominated politics of male dominated muslim society.
Another flame of hope to furbish the polluted politics of Pakistan has been quenched. The new year will certainly bring changes unexpected or unthought for Pakistan and the world whose eyeing upon it.

Then to talk about the country, we had cherished the year with lot of progress seen by our economy- the 9% growth, the 20k landmark crossed in sensex and a lot more;even when a part of our country was facing stringent struggle for its rights to live, to speak, and to retain its land as of the events that took place in Nandigram and Singur.
To talk about the goodies first, we had a boom in our economy with a stiff growth of about 9% which, even with some ripples in the world economy, continued to flourish, no matter whether it be american economic crisis, rise in crude oil prices, or equal competence with China. Rupee saw an all time high appreciation of 39.2/- a dollar, inflation saw an all time low for few years of around 3.06.
We brought with us a lot more, our companies domestic or overseas, marched with excellence, fluttering their success pennants in the world by mergers and acquisitions, some very huge as that of Mittal-Arcelor or Tata-Corus and so on.

Then there was,this mantra of CHAK DE INDIA that seemed to work not just in the field of hockey, with a men and women title, but also the 20-20 world cup tournament win, the asia-cup football league and a lot more to come yet.

This year, our borders with Pakistan, the Kashmir people saw less bloodshed than it could have. But,this was compromised by the violence within our country. The Maoists, naxals continued to mark their presence as the 'terrorists within the country'. Rules were altered, governments went to rampage with hundreds of people massacred at Nandigram, more or less like a hitler regime where women and children were slaughtered, raped, abused, thrown out of their hoses and lands by the CPM cadres. Is this what the communism is all about? Or the Marxism? They were the people or the system to be considered to work for the lower classes,the farmers and the peasants. But they exemplified something else.

Then their was this inhuman, callous act that surfaced at Nithari where the deadbodies of children were found each crying out the story of the merciless flesh trade, child molestation, human organ trafficking and everything that we can not imagine to do even with voiceless animals.

Also an year it was.....of unfulfilled obligations..like the Nuke deal which,apart from its unignorable gains and positive aspects, remains under the speculations and opposition by the NDA. The timeline, and also the US patience now seems to run out and if it does, we may lose a handful of opportunity of getting into the broader picture among those developed nations which intend to drag us out of the 'developing' league by offering us a hand.

Hopefully, the new year brings end to all those rising controversies too....like the ones faced by great virtuoso Tasleema Nasreen and M.F. Hussain( he prefers to remain under controversies..!!). Hope there is some positive outcome of the Modi effect in Gujarat and it leads Gujarat out of the 'still haunting' communal riots storiy and ghosts of Godhra....
May India continue to shine brighter and brighter in the year and years to come....