The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Saturday, 16 June 2012

ANTI-CORRUPTION MOVEMENT – A PHOTOGRAPH AND THOSE INITIAL THOUGHTS..

This gentleman with thick gold chain was one of the loud supporters of Anna Hazare during the high time of the August 2011 fast at the Ramlila Ground. While snapping this interesting paradox of flood of opportunist supporters, I came to know the gentleman was an aspiring politician and a muscleman.

It added to the natural thoughts already crept-in that the anti-corruption movement that saw a figurehead in Anna Hazare needed to be very cautious of such disguised supporters of distorted intent. The thought was weighed, especially, in the light of the controversies and the verbosity of the so-called Team Anna members after the April 2011 fast.

Who knew then the coterie forming the Team Anna was going to be just yet another bunch of people with disguised intent?

While sifting through my photographs folder, I came across this one that I had snapped when the anti-corruption movement was high on adrenaline. Today, it made me visit again on how the so-called Team Anna compromised on the anti-corruption movement and so on you and me. The movement didn’t allow the real workers to enter, banked on fake supporters like this gentleman, got too extreme in objectives and became too conceited. Result – it lost the connect and it happened too fast.


Like the photograph symbolizes, Anna Hazare is cornered after he allowed (and is allowing) his coterie of comrades to exploit him. The coterie has taken the centre-stage like this rowdy looking supporter acquiring the central ground of the poster.

Now after almost 10 months of the August 2011 high, the anti-corruption movement is efficiently killed by the politicians. The civil society members, willingly or unwillingly, wittingly or unwittingly, have been an equal party to this ‘crime against humanity’.

Like this mustachioed gentleman of anti-social credentials, for whom nothing but extending personal agenda is the primary concern in every activity, the civil society members, too, are busy in extending their agendas. Jan Lokpal has once again become a ‘not-so-often’ spoken word. It doesn’t stir emotions anymore.

It’s sin to give empty hopes. The common man had seen the rare ray of hope in fighting corruption and had started stepping out. But his advance was, once again, butchered in infancy. He is the loser ultimately. And he is hurt.

"It’s good to give hope to someone in need. It’s better to be participative in its follow-up. It’s best to become an unspoken contribution in getting that hope to its reality. It’s worst to give empty hope, even if the need is needless."

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/