Music for Soul… and the new breed of politicians

After a day of making food (bhindi), doing pranayam’s, the much needed laundry, attending the amazing Prof. Botchway’s inspiring and informative class, making some calls in the sub zero temperature, I came back to the room to the soothing voice of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Was listening to the Night Song and Saanu Ikk Pal Chainn Na Aave… It’s like soul food, his music that is. Every word, every note tugs at the heart making it swell with joy and cry with pain alike- it’s pure spiritual ecstasy. It was started as soul music by fakir’s singing at dargahs and mazaars to connect their soul to the God as they traveled through Sindh, Punjab, Rajasthan and the surrounding areas; with different places having distinctive versions. We had our own Baba Fakir and Bulle Shah from Punjab. Whoever has heard “hun utth gaye ne gawandon yaar” by Bulle Shah will know what a real stress-buster is.

Moving on, there was a bit of news that I came across that lifted my spirits even more. Most of my seniors and peers just talked gas, and only a handful are really doing what they believe in (reading Priyanka and Vikram?). People like Tanmay Rajpurohit don’t join politics. An aeronautics engineer from IIT-Bombay, holding two Masters Degrees from the US, Rajpurohit should by now be a global citizen, shuttling between countries in a high-profile MNC job. Instead, he and five of his IIT’ian friends have started their own political party for ‘‘the Bharat of the 21st Century’’, and called it Paritrana (the act of relieving someone from distress). It includes Ajit Shukla, Amit Besseen, the brain behind the party, which also includes Chandrashekhar, S Vasudev and Dheeraj Kumbhat—all graduates from IIT-Bombay and IIT-Kanpur. On the party’s website, www.paritrana.org, Rajpurohit is more elaborate. He came back, he writes, ‘‘due to the current plight of India and the grim future facing the country...to do whatever is necessary for the Land’’.

I got this from a news website- A few months ago, Rajpurohit, who worked with in the tribal belt of Udaipur, was picked up and roughed up by Udaipur police. The illegal detention and the brutal treatment by the police seemed to have further fueled his discontent with the system. Chandrashekhar started out as a social worker but says he decided to join politics as he felt ‘‘betrayed by those who appeared to be the most enthusiastically concerned about the problems of the Land’’. Only if a few more of us think on the same lines and put our thoughts to action. Let’s start another party or join theirs… Any takers?