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.

Tuesday 31 July 2012

DEAR PUSSY RIOT, IT'S PUTINISM

Dear, dear, don’t you know Putinism? It was always there, in post-2000 Russia. Now it is exerting itself more audaciously.

Now you may be a punk rocker, synonymous with the rebellious origin and evolution of the genre, but, beware, Russia is Putin’s precinct. Also, one should not forget that Putinism sees Russia’s world might in protecting and nurturing the mercenaries of death like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

Russia has been in a mess in the recent past and developments tell it is to continue. A run to democracy was the undercurrent that led to the dismantling of the erstwhile USSR. But the subsequent run to instill institutions of democratic values did never have a smooth run. And it gave the tough guy Putin to raise hopes and takeover. But on the way, he started showing his dictatorial colours. It was intensified during his third term at the helm of the affairs as the Russian prime minister when the global recession started brining down the economic highs of oil and gas revenue figures.

Russia, with an increasingly autocratic Putin and a middle class fearful of bad days of recession, started slipping into chaos. Naturally, the results were emergence of many power centres. There is the state, there is the church, there are the protesters – and then there is Putin, who is hell-bent to symbolize Russia with Putinism after he wrested away the Russian presidency again.

While tens of thousands of Russians, powered by the social media tools spread the protests to the length and breadth of Russia against the rigged parliamentary elections last year continuing their rally to the presidential election this year, Putin kept on oiling his ambition to become the ultimate master of the Russians. Now that is he is fully in charge of the affairs, the Russian state is coming down hard on the protesters.

Latest in the series of clampdown is the court trial of the punk-rock band Pussy Riot. Three members of the anonymous feminist band had mocked Putin with a performance on the altar of a cathedral.


Photo sourced from Internet - AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel - From left, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, members of feminist punk group Pussy Riot sit behind bars at a court room in Moscow, Russia, Russia, Monday, July 30, 2012.

Pussy Riot formation follows Putin’s announcement of running for the 3rd presidential term. They chose a rebellious name and theme to declare their intent visibly clear in words of one of the Pussy Riot members, “Sexists have certain ideas about how a woman should behave, and Putin, by the way, also has a couple thoughts on how Russians should live. Fighting against all that—that’s Pussy Riot”.

They joined the group of protesters like bloggers, opposition figures and youth activists, supported by the increasing lot of the unsatisfied middle class. Two of the Pussy Riot members facing trial are mothers with children to look-after at home.

February this year, five members of the Pussy Riot managed to perform on the altar of the Christ the Saviour Cathedral of Moscow targeting Putin and Orthodox Church ties. No charges were placed then for this less than 60 seconds of performance but on March 3, a day before the presidential election, two Pussy Riot members, Maria Alyokhina (24), Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (22), were arrested while Yekaterina Samutsevich (29) was arrested on March 16. They have been charged for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or hostility” and arrested.  President Putin sailed in to victory for another six-year term on March 4.

The group is an anonymous collective, formed with intent of protesting Putin. They have no records out in the open. No one can say about their membership count. They mix with protesters in their coloured masks. “[The mask] means that really everybody can be Pussy Riot… we just show people what the people can do,” the Guardian quoted one of the Pussy Riots members saying. They sing protest songs and try to organize flash mobs to denounce Putinism.

Russia has tens of thousands of grudges against Putin and the dwindling economy can easily make them tens of millions. Putin understands this but he cannot control and dictate the economy the way he wants. He badly needs the oil prices to shoot up but that doesn’t look like a plausible possibility right now.

So he is doing what he can do. Suppressing the anti voices systematically. The Russian court is complicit in his mission. Anyway, courts in the dictatorial regimes have never been autonomous institutions.

Three arrested members of the Pussy Riot went to trial this Monday only, after five months of arrest. They have been consistently denied bail by every court they approached. It is when the charges are non-violent in nature and two of the arrested members are have children at home.

Clearly, Putin is out to there to show protesters that they need to be ready for the tougher times ahead.


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