वह तोड़ती पत्थर

First line of a poem by I guess sumitranandan pant .

When i first read these line I was too young to understand and anyway I had not read the full poem but when I got to read it a few years back I felt same the way poet would have filled.

A mother working to get food for his baby or sister for fee of her brother and so on.... but still maintaining their dignity in this big bad world. These kind of scenes actually re establish one's belief in indomitable spirit of humans. I have myself been witness to many such scenes and trigger to write this post came because yesterday on one of traffic junction here in Bangalore I saw a tribal Rajastahni woman in her full attire , wearing may be best chunari she possess, and all her bangles selling tissues on traffic junction.

First feeling was that there is a looming danger of drought as she had to come to work so far from Rajasthan, then disgust at politicians and local bureaucrats who would have siphoned the money meant for rural poor's job and in process throwing this woman to unsafe outside world but then a certain sense of assurance came to my mind looking at her confidence and her fighting instinct with life, like taking life from its horns.


A slightly different thing I saw a few months back when I was at Singapore. In one of the food courts at an Indian curry shop some Chinese guys were ordering food and when Indian wife made some mistake in understanding it , the husband ( also an Indian) taunted her in Hindi with words which only Indian husbands are capable of thinking that no one understands Hindi there. I cursed myself to have reached there just then as when eyes of the lady met with me I could see humiliation in her eyes as she knew that I could understand and hear what her husband had just said who was standing shamelessly and unrepentant.

Why Indian marriage is such an unequal institution and why parents prefer heartless arranged bridegroom for their daughters then someone who will care for her emotions


When I visited constituency of Ms Sonia Gandhi just before last general election ( I was on my training with a thermal power plant) . I happened to see a Muslim woman in her traditional gear with her daughter working on a field trying to get some remnants of crop for eating. It was a heart wrenching scene and I wondered why can't Muslim haters and Muslim lovers both see the suffering of this mother child duo. It reminded me of a story of a poor Muslim woman who feeds and spends lavishly on a distant male relative who comes to stay with her in hope of getting her elder daughter married to him but that bastard deflowers her younger daughter and runs away and local clergy punishes all three women on different charges.


But I would end this post on an optimistic note and this is from my childhood memories. It was the year of severe draught and we like many people in are had hired service of water bearers to supply water at our home from local well and this job was done by a Gujjajr woman. She was tall ( 6ft easily) and well built and could become a model if she was born in new york , had a husband who was lanky and suffered from TB due to working in mines, lived in a hovel in a community housing from old mill days of indore near the well. It was scene for my young eyes to see how fast she walked rather literally ran with two full cans of water in both hands, balancing her poise, her ghoonghat, her thick silver anklets, yellow chunari and white angles till shoulder with her confident strides when I ,pampered son of household (5 year old I was ) could not lift the bucket of water for my bath.
She fought with life and succeeded later I learn t she learn t reading and writing and got her daughter who was already past 10 years or so admitted in school. She made a house for herself at outskirts of city and moved there and since then I never heard of or seen her but in my heart I believe she must be doing well but that scene of that tall woman walking fast with those two cans and leaving behind a trail of water is etched in my memory since that time.

House of People aka Loksabha aka aristocracy

I was wondering over recent trend of making sons and wives of political leaders contest elections and felt that almost all parties across India are doing this and so I decided to check and results are startling some 17 MPs died in this Loksabha, four of the seats are still vacant in other 13 except 3 seats where CPI(M) won ( two in bengal and one in kerala) all other parties BJP, congress, SP, Shivsena, JMM, JD (U),TDP put sons or wives of deceased leader as candidate and barring 2/10 in 8 cases they won also.

muzaffarnagar up SP empty
hathras up bjp empty
chikmagalur karnataka bjp empty
thane maharashta SS son of late MP Paranjape his opponent was son of NCP minister
betul mp bjp son of late mp vijay khandelwal
bidar karnataka bjp Basavaraj Arya, son of Ramachandra Veerappa
mumbi nw maharashta congres priya dutt, daughter of sunil dutt
trivendrum kerala cpim P raveeendran
asnasol bengal cpim bangsagopal chowdhry
sangli maharashta congress prateek patil, son of veerendra patil
malda bengal congree abu hasem khan chowdhry, brother of abdul gani khan chowdhry
katwa bengal cpim ayesh mondal outsider
bobbilli AP TDP K naiduson of late MP, congress nominated wife of a mnister
bikramganj bihar jd u mina devi wife of deceased mp
balia up SP son of late PM chnadrashekhar BSP candidate was sone of a minister
jamshedpur Jharkhand JMM punam mahto wife of late MP
tehri gahdwal UttaranchalBJP Late MP (who was former king and MP since 1957) his son lost. Agaisnt him was congress candidate son of former CM

So this partly explains why political parties find it difficult to get workers when an average worker has no hope of getting ticket ( most of these MPs were contesting election since 5-6 times) and even if old men die their sons and wives take the mantle then what remains for the worker.

At independence congress leaders were vociferous in their demand for abolishing princely states but our democracy has created new princes in just a time of 60 years. At least those princes had a moral duty towards their subjects while these new princes are brazen power mongers.


This loksabha had one more distinction almost 40 MPs resigned in five years while another 27 were expelled so in all 84 MPs were not member any more. this almost 15% of total strength which shows how much importance party gives to candidate selection for Loksabha. even if one is old, of questionable reputation ,has criminal antecedents or an eye on local state politics he is chose for loksabha because he can win and add to that magic number of 272.