She was neither the first nor was going to be the last....

She was neither the first nor going to be the last

Who was   hunted and chased by the vultures,

Crushed,molested and gang raped

Tongue cut, backbone broken, limbs paralysed,

The whole body and mind writhing in pain

Before she was finally massacred and murdered..

Buried in midnight in a forlorn place

By the State in a hurry with police honours?!

Denying the relatives to see her face

For the last time in this birth; 

The victim's relatives were confined at home 

Their mobiles were confiscated,

The entire village barricaded

Opposition leaders arrested, manhandled

And the daring journalists

Prevented from ntering the war zone 

With words of poison poured out by

The Drunken monkeys on the sordid event,

The script was complete...

It read like this :

The girl was not raped and the opposition

and the journalists were fomenting class tension

To tarnish the image of a well governed state

Others were instigating violence against the state.

Foreign hand  too was at work,

To destabilize the government and so on...

The indifference of police and Magistrate

The betryal of the state machinery

Frustrated and dominated by the State,

The silence of majority and distortion of truth

The denial to perform the last rites and mourn the death 

Continuing threats and intimidation of 

Victim's family .....enraged me, pained me 

I wrote to calm me down and prayed to 

The merciless God to rest her soul in peace.

It's the time to understand who we are and also love life as it's before us

While the poor are virtually thrown into vortex of unknown by the lock down and remain clueless and directionless about the future  , the affluent ones also have been afflicted with the fear of death.

With all material possessions and stock of wealth there is so much unhappiness and restlessness.. possessions have become burdens.

True there is destiny for each individual, but now the collective destiny of the nation engulfs both the haves and havenots, and hence this is the time to cultivate the community spirit and be of some help to fellow human.

This is the time to understand that noone  can live in an island and enjoy peace and happiness and it's dependent on the minimum peace and subsistent life to be guaranteed to others.

Poverty and inequality levels have deepened when desperate and dangerous disease has enveloped us like a Tsunami and we need desperate remedies .In the absence of effective government people have to step in.It is gratifying to note that in some pockets government has become more responsive and pro active to provide food  and other help....

The poverty of our country is so deep and it's unlike that of any other country. It has not arisen out of the natural scarcity but  rather accentuated by the misplaced priorities and the corporate centric governance as also the short sighted narrow political agenda.

It's widely acknowledged that the crisis of leadership has contributed to this man made disaster..one man's folly and ego, his blindness to values has made him the prisoner of himself and he is obsessed with only one thing:

Will my prestige be increased and with my own glory be augmented ?

It's time the stupid gaze, which is shallow and mute must give way to some tangible action.But we can't do much to alter his behaviour for he is one for whom everything in the world including central vista project becomes the occasion to serve his lust.The rest is accidental benefits that  the nation can hope to get with foreign aid and eventually it will be the states which will be delivering with all fiscal stress.

It appears the current pressure caused by the Indian variant of covid is unlikely to dissipate and give respite..what shall we do

We live in difficult times, indeed live in a  more turbulent period. Unless the governments act and people obey the laws of the road ,and co-operate with lockdown judiciously ,peace and quiet, job and growth, travel and merry making  will be a long drawn out process and we have to wait for the new new normal to arrive .

For the lesser privileged,for ages uncertainty about job and education ,have been haunting like ghosts and the main feature of life and now every step that they take dims their hope and disturb their determination and especially the migrant labour moves to their Home where there's nothing but love from nature and relations in village .

All of us are weighed down by the fear and just plain worn out unable to do anything.

It is not an easy moment for the economically impoverished  to get the necessary wherewithal.The mysterious disease has driven home that public health care system and universal vaccinations by the Government must be a norm independent of private sector network.

That is Amartya Sen matters and further means not Gujarat model and Jagdish Bhagawati will be just a matter of no consequence or significance.

It also underlines that the nation needs a leader who will not fool and behave like a baffoon but  can lead, set the pace,rectify the mistakes and plan for the rescue operation in both the short and medium run and take people and opposition into confidence .

We have seen the politicians of different shades waving their arm and shouting and more keen in winning election and they are scarcely visible now.

In this hour of crisis people have to help each other and quietly manauvre in learning lessons from survivors and educating fellow humans about the  impending danger of moving like a sheep in a herd mentality..

Let us hope that the semi virus which gets life only after entering into human body so to kill  the host will be cowed down by our tenacity and immunity...As it takes efforts to enhance its strength to cause havoc it goes without saying that  we too must augment our resistence and immune powers .It is a kind of war like situation.

Let us trust that the wheel of time will rotate with the grace of God deeply embodied  and we'll entrenched into health care workers, the frontline warriors and do the miracle and every cog in the administrative machine will  help the weak and the poor with all compassion and care.

Besides having faith  in the supreme ,the role of  science and rational attitude with heightened optimism when allowed  a free role  to play will go a long way in stamping out the cult of the devastating virus..

We can't be complacent and remain philosophical by saying it shall passe....if it is ...well and good .But the crude reality is already there is cry that Indian variant is  becoming strong and as someone wrote yesterday we will be lucky if it does not become Modi variant ..our inaction and bungling and our insensitivity in not taking care of the informal and migrant labour will have a serious consequences for the nation and huge spill over in the rest of the world inviting ridicule and retribution.

While the Director of PG centre Venkatasubramaniam was leaving ... after completing his tenure

Before joining the university I spent nearly a quarter century in the Pondicherry education al service and the newly established PG centre under the dynamic leadership of a chemistry professor imported from Chennai Vivekananda college embraced me in1989.Earlier I was at Bharathidasan from 1984 to 1989 

Those ten years were the golden days as I could operate in a congenial environment and teach.

This following extract is from my academic debris found yesterday, a simple text of the farwell speech to the Director.Usually I give an extempore address.This was an exception.

I stand before this august assembly to express our profound affection and regards to our Director who was chosen by the destiny to guide, nurse and nurture our infant centre  during the crucial formative periods and cement its foundation.Its continued existence and nourishment by the government depends on many its and buts.

When you came over here  as an outsider you had a definite comparitive advantage  in the sense that you could be least influenced by our actions and lobbying.

We were captivated by your scholarship, erudition, and right leadership and to me personally your command over language  and the free flow of thoughts and most important your fine rapport with the faculty.

Sir to put in my economics language  about your tenure, I would say that Adamsmith' s invisible hand and enlightened laissez-faire doctrine were at work during your regime and scarcely was there any surveillance over us  and we enjoyed the full degree of academic freedom given to us. Sir, may I tell you that we live d up to your expectations and the trust reposed in us.

Being academically strong and vibrant and administratively more demanding you ensured a healthy and competitive environment and you made the institution to grow from strength to strength.

When you leave , you can have a justifiable pride and satisfaction that you have done a neat job.

We will miss you and  pray  that God will shower upon you good health and peace.

A letter to the new Vice chairman of the corporate University seeking solace and comfort.

Dear Professor,

This is purely a personal letter not to be quoted for public consumption and nor  is to seek any kind of redressal of my academic grievances and injuries deeply into the layers of my heart and mind .Many things in life can wait.I am not in a hurry.

I am a faculty in the Pondicherry presidency college turned into a corporate University, a student of Madras presidency college and a product of Prestigious Gokhale institute of politics and Economics (M Phil and PhD,1978 to 1982).

Currently I am on sabbatical leave.

The ambitious target / agenda is to distill the essence of my reading and writing in the last three decades of my academic life .In the face of my stupidity in nt striking a responsible trade off between work and home ,I would like to take atleast first draft before joining my duty and do my teaching which I love most .

I must have written to you when you talked about academic corruption..

I have converted my anguished anger and irritations  with that subject you talked about by writing more than 100 to 150 poems under the title :

The wild Tigers can't be caged ..This publication can also wait

This letter is meant to share my joy over my lecture at RBI Chennai yesterday November 19 on the theme of " managing interest rate,inflation rate and exchange rate to top level RBI officials" from 11 am to 4 15 pm.

Absence of the title Professor was not a handicap.They addressed me as Professor..

Many a time I have had the fortune of enjoying  15 minutes of fame  but this was something special.

I do not want to die now 

Will you please give appoinment to meet you around the end of December.

Thanking you.

Professor Sam Sahayam

The reply did not come 

Sam also did not bother to see him after joining duty

It was a kind of love hate relationship.

Sam withdrew himself into a shell and kept aloof and got alienated from the system...

He is the best friend now to Sam.

Yes my text has been stained with tears

Long ago, not so long ago when my academic modesty was molested, virtually a gang rape by political animals 

Disguised in academic garb ,

Reading and writing came to my rescue

Wrote poems and that slim volume will appear later

Under the title :

A Silent Soliloquy on the Campus Politics:

The wild tigers can't be caged .

The opening para reads like this:

"Never again will a single story

be told as though it's the only one "

Says John Borger on whom

My literature daughter did MPhil dissertation.

Gentlemen of the jury,

There can never be a single story,

There are different ways of seeing,

When I look at the events gone by

It appears as if it's an incredibly a sad tale 

Of academic jealousy over my intensity in 

Teaching and the relevant writing on contemporary

National and international economic events...

The fear that it aroused 

The hatred it kindled

Culminating into the wicked acts of a 

Few stupid Heads at micro and macro level

Soaked in academic misery and drought

I did not commit suicide and instead

Embraced prof Paul Krugmans International economics

And taught with vengence...

My text is inevitably stained with tears.

This opening lines do capture th current crude reality of Modi's india unable to negotiate the covid storm

Transforming the nation into graveyard.

Following is my post Adelaide diary for perusal

By the true Indians to take stock of the situation

As the inept handling has more ramifications

For the future.

"Like tiny birds fallen, too soon from a nest"

The following lines were written when I was sitting in the comfort zone of Adelaide in 2020  freed from the stress of covid 19 but getting worried over the calamity in my home country.i am revisiing them now.

Conditions have become much worse now and life is just withering away just like that and corana is unleashing death in its own mysterious ways.

Samuel Becket comes to my rescue and console me :

One day we were born, one day we shall die,the same day the same second...

Birth astride of a grave, the light gleams as instant then it's night once more

A match flickers, but does not light.

Corana has taught what philosophy has laboured hard to convey:

Life is so fragile that it's merely an instant, it's in the moment right before you and just live .what about those who can't access economic wherewithal and sell their wares as inevitable lock down will put an understandable stress.

If treatment is given early after proper diagnosis and supplemented by doctor's help there is no problem.But the problem is neither the doctor nor the affected ones  do not know the impending dynamics in a world of uncertainty caused by scarcity of oxygen or vaccine or even food.Life has changed . confrontation with death is not at the appointed hour.The unbearable, unjust and unexpected presence of death just stare at us ..what possible sense could be made and what words I could use for their comfort.

Death of brother, classmate' s wife demise and the daily news of departure of known facesis just intimidating and paralysing the mind .

The existential dilemma of not just the poor but also the rich the super rich is real..

In a complicated and crisis situation like this ,corana kind of illness can either bring you together or it can tear you apart.All of us have to be there for each other.

Many do not think about death and assume that they will be here for ever...The isssue is not about living or death, but what kind of life is worth living and how are we going to live at margin...

Albert Einstein says:

There are only two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle

The other is as though everything is 

We shall be grateful for the roof over our head and a job that assures food on the table.

We shall treat everyone with gratitude and render all possible help to those who are in need .

(Adelaide diary2020 revisited)