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.

Wednesday 30 October 2013

THE LADY, THE LADY FINGER AND THE ONIONS: THE ONION ABSTINENCE - THE TALE OF ULTIMATE SACRIFICE

Now that is what we call sacrifice.

Now, that is what we call selfless love.

Now that is what we call an innocent, true devotion.

Now, that is what we call the politics of commitment.

Now, that is what some of us may call the political altruism.

Now, that is what we call the ultimate exemplary precedent.

India had not seen such a touchy, emotional, ideologically notable and inspiringly laudable act by a politician since it got its independence in 1947, since the days of Mahatma Gandhi, Saradar Vallabhbhai Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose, Jawahar Lal Nehru and other revolutionaries in the colonial India.

Until three days ago! Until October 26, 2013!


When, the ‘fine’ line separating the ‘tears from onions’ from ‘the tears from high onion prices’ got blurred!

When, our beloved Sheila Dikshit, the chief minister of Delhi, who is also lovingly called aunty, a familiar motherly figure like the aunt-next-door, revealed to us that she had had onions after weeks on October 26.

She could share with us the pain, her secret that she so carefully kept away from us, so as to not to get us troubled, the pain of having not been able to have onions on her kitchen menu, only after her government in Delhi could arrange for cheaper onions for Delhiites. 

She so painfully observed abstinence on the skyrocketing onion prices. This exemplary act by her was a true tribute, an act of solidarity, to be there with the millions of Indians living in the National Capital of India, millions who could not afford onions, to be with them in their tougher times.

See the commitment, the devotion! Had it been with any other politician of the day, we could never have expected such a selfless act and such an innocent revelation of it.

A chief-minister of three terms, having a son who is Member of the Parliament, coming from a family having long political history of prominence – even if onions reach to the price-threshold of Rs. 200 a Kg, she and her family would have no problem affording the much hyped, most debated vegetable, without a trace of onion ‘tears’.

Even then, she chose to observe the ‘onion abstinence’, just because millions others (irrespective of who voted her in power) were not able to afford it.

And she ended it (the onion abstinence) only when she could provide the people of Delhi with onions at reduced price, wiping ‘some’ of the tears from their crumbled faces. 

But, idiots will remain idiots! There are some idiots who are raising petty issues like questioning the quality of onions being sold by aunty’s government at subsidized rates.

They must see the quality of ‘these’ onions in context of the ‘quality’ of Sheila aunty’s emotive quotient, its ‘picture-perfect’ appearance, its ‘audience-connect’ brilliance.

We need to salute her and also the lady finger moment that introduced us to this inspiring side of her. We need to get ‘emotively attached’ to this “after weeks I ate onions today with 'bhindi' (lady finger)” - (NDTV) statement to pay back our gratitude to her when we go out to vote in the Delhi assembly polls next month.

After all, it was another pleasant shot by her when she put the meek, not-so-famous, very unkingly lady finger in the league of almighty onion, making it overnight famous! 

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