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 26 July 2014

ARVIND KEJRIWAL VS BARACK OBAMA??

Did you say a wild comparison?

After all, one is a 49-day chief minister of Delhi, India’s National Capital Territory, who had to apologize for his ‘act of absconding’. Though he doesn’t accept it morally, the electoral and political compulsions after his ‘political martyrdom’ efforts  tanked down in the Lok Sabha polls forced him to own the disaster his decision to vacate the Delhi CM’s office in order to look for greener pastures had become. He was forced to accept the ‘deserter’ tag in his own toned-down version.

And the other is the successful (though debatable on who sees what) President of the United States of America, the world’s only superpower (still). The world’s most powerful political person is in the second term of his Presidential office.

Professionally, Arvind Kejriwal began as engineer and graduated to become a finance professional working for the Government of India. Barack Obama is a Harvard educated lawyer.

So, where is the ground for comparison?

It is there, thanks to the Norwegian Nobel Committee and thanks to the Delhi electorate!


If not qualitatively (and certainly not), the two factors certainly give the pretext to compare them – when your pen intends to play with words in some lighter moments – and a wild thought crosses your mind.

The case of Arvind Kejriwal and AAP is much like the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award the Peace Nobel to Barack Obama, the first African American US President, for the ‘hopes and aspirations’ that he raised with winning the US Presidential election in November 2008 after a heart-winning campaign.

The electorate of Delhi awarded the new political outfit with an unexpected 28 seats in the House of 70 making it the second largest party while not giving clear majority to any party and thus opening the door to the possibilities that later on allowed AAP to form the government. Besides AAP’s door-to-door campaign, the voters had in mind the anti-corruption movement of 2011 led by Anna Hazare. Arvind Kejriwal was its central strategist. Public was frustrated with the regime in office and saw the possibility of change in Arvind Kejriwal led outfit and awarded him hoping he would deliver. The hopes were legitimate and the aspirations were high.

While we cannot compare the Delhi’s sociopolitical situation with the global geopolitical equations that the Nobel Committee had in mind while sealing Obama’s name, the grounds were similar – thoughts aspiring for change – thoughts of millions in Delhi – and thoughts of the select few of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

While Obama’s post Peace Nobel performance has been debatable, he has gone on to win the second Presidential term and remains one of the most acceptable global leaders.

On the contrary, Arvind Kejriwal and AAP look in the state of inertia. They are still not reading the rule book clearly to work on organization and its political ethics. They see a chance to win back the Delhi assembly elections and that is legitimate. But the way they are trying to do it makes the intent and the strategy behind it questionable. They are again making it person-centric and Arvind Kejriwal is concentrating all the resources available to further his political career (like he did in the Lok Sabha polls that he contested from Varanasi against Narendra Modi) when there are practical needs to look in other directions as well.

One has honestly tried to live up to expectations and aspirations and has been satisfactory so far, even if has not been able to justify his Peace Nobel.

The other has killed expectations and aspirations by manipulating the meaning of people’s trust to further his self-centered political agenda. He has been an absolute disappointment so far.

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