Thursday, July 30, 2009
Ashoka: A Misconception for India to be Global Power
Ashoka has been coined as the ‘Great’. Was he really Great? He wasn’t so great after all for what he did to the then India, and of course current India, and the Indian psyche as far as the safety, security, military and people’s view on ‘peace’ and ‘forgiveness’ to the enemy is concerned. What we lost in Ashoka’s quest for antiwar mindset after his Kalinga war, was a total disbanding of military and propagating peace and anti war culture. His furious Buddhist forays within India and around India made him a Great leader but created a citizenry of coward ‘peaceniks’ who believed in less and less of military thereby losing marshal and military skills and strategies. Consequently after Ashoka, India was broken up into small principalities and eventually we had Prithviraj Chowhan and Mohammad Gauri fiasco. We lost India’s might and independence for ever.Now, we must learn a lesson from our past and get rid of this ‘peace’ cloak. Our scripture Gita says that peace can only be for those who can defend it with their might. This might as we call it has to be built over time with a lot of people investment and financial investment. We must prepare our intelligence skills for covert operations and military, i.e., army, navy and air force, for overt operation and we must not shy awat from taking proper action at the right time. We must not waste time in waiting for results by offering ‘peace’ carrot instead of teaching a lesson with mighty ‘stick’ to bend the trouble makers and terrorism sponsoring nations to co-opt for peace themselves. This mighty stick should have a built-in big covert operation that could destabilize the enemy in their plans to use terror as the state policy. For that we need a real gung-ho set of intelligence operatives and funds. Also, we need to use cooperation of like minded highly skilled intelligence forces like Savak or Mosad or CIA.We have to take on twenty first century problems head on and fight fire with fire. Let’s not get our down and keep losing our pride, men, peace and, of course, the land in our attempt to be termed as ‘good peaceful guys’ in the comity of nations. Every one of these nations laughs at us for our cowardice. The only time we got our heads high when Indira Gandhi had the first nuclear test and then when covertly we repeated again with umpteen tests that were even more powerful and mightier that the previous one. Our first Prime Minister Mr. Nehru died as a result of shock of defeat from our Panchsheel Friend and Brother China! So much for peace!Wake up and pull up your socks. Tell your government to prepare India to become a Global Power. Use your voting power to impress upon this theme. Also, influence your media, both print and electronic, to start the theme of mighty and powerful India devoid of poverty and controlled population growth and to be economically and militarily strong Global Power. We can align with other nations to tackle both China and its menacing partner Pakistan!!So, friends and Indians! Let’s get rid of this folly of useless syndrome of peace and cowardice of Ashoka. We got to come out of ‘Ashoka the Great’ mindset!
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DARK HORSE AND THE SEVENTH SAMURAI
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Uday Agnihotri
Preamble:
My dear Readers,
As I wrote the book and it unfolds before you, I felt that I wanted to tell you why I have chosen such an abstruse/esoteric a title for my book. The way the story progresses, that actually totally defines/connects with the protagonist. My effort of choosing such a title for this novel is totally intentional and conscious.
The definition of a dark horse is that in a race there is a horse participating, which is least expected to win. However, in spite of all odds and claims against him the horse actually wins in the end. So, the definition of a dark horse is that it is that horse in the race that no one believes will win. That’s the connotation I have used for the protagonist. The protagonist is from a very humble background, not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he doesn’t have any financial backing whatsoever It was his sheer hard work, grit and perseverance, with which he wins the race of life and excels in his endeavors.
Seventh Samurai is the term borrowed from Akira Kurosawa’s famous award winning movie in which the poor terrified villagers request a brave warrior, a samurai, to help them fight tyrants and robbers and save their village from plunder and rape. The Samurai takes on the challenge. He looks for six more men and coaxes them to join him to make a brigade of seven samurais and unite in his effort to free the villagers from the tyrants. This brave Samurai who arranges the six other men has been coined as the Seventh Samurai. They actually fight off the rogues and robbers and free the village from tyranny as a result of the unique wisdom and organization of the Seventh Samurai. He was the real winner.
So, this is my novel’s starting point. I have taken the metaphor of a Dark Horse and associated it with the Seventh Samurai. The Seventh Samurai is a lone rider, who ventures into an honorable battle, I believe for this fiction that the Seventh Samurai doesn’t have a nice and proper stallion since the villagers could not afford one. So he settles for an ordinary horse that does not have any history of victories. Yet it was this dark horse that did not let the Seventh Samurai down and leads him to his success. That is exactly how I compare the protagonist with ‘The Seventh Samurai’ or ‘Dark Horse’ or one riding the other, to prove his point of personal achievements of people like you and me. This scenario is interwoven in this work of fiction. This portrays the person winning the battle in spite of being the dark horse because with sheer hard work and intelligence even the dark horse turns his fortunes into a winning combination.
So, with such visions of conquering the impossible, I set out to show every day Joe, my protagonist, whom I shall here call as OJ, who takes life head on and coming out a winner at the end of it all. So to speak, it turns Kafka’s portrayal of the common man on its head since OJ does not fall prey to the rat race, each rat following the other and does not live a very mundane ordinary life bound by the bureaucratic maze. The protagonist makes his own destiny with his own hands. He is not part of the herd. He does not follow the headless, mindless persons, robots if you will. So from here let’s go on.
DARK HORSE AND THE SEVENTH SAMURAI
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Uday Agnihotri
PRELUDE.
OJ was an IIT Kharagpur alumnus in India. He had finished his undergraduate degree from there. Even with his impeccable credentials from the most reputed institution of the land, India’s economic conditions in 1974, resulting from Arab-Israeli war of 1973, precluded any worthwhile gains in his line of work. He chose to create opportunity for himself rather than wait for something to happen. He went global in his search and wouldn’t give up in spite of lot of negatives in his way. He had won the race when he got into IIT against gigantic odds and then in the professional world he could take on large numbers of brilliant guys and winning it again. There was an in campus search for a suitable candidate by an Iranian company offering good remunerative job in Teheran. OJ stood up the challenge and sailed through a stiff competition and got the job. This meant that he would have to leave India and move to Tehran. He was now poised to win the war for his family and people, earn a name for himself and come out winner in the true spirit of the metaphor ‘the Seventh Samurai riding his Dark Horse’.
DARK HORSE Author: Uday Agnihotri OJ flew to Tehran. For OJ, the entire twist of fate was like a beautiful new tapestry of Iranian ethnicity and culture. A new dream world had opened up before OJ who had come out of India… His interaction with the people of Iran brought him face-to-face with a rare beauty, an Iranian girl of exquisite looks. It did not take long for him to fall in love with her. Her parents started liking him a lot and ultimately offered him her hand for marriage. The destiny dished out a different script for him. Her entire family got involved in a tragic accident and they all succumbed. OJ was devastated.
ReplyDeleteHe decided to go for an advanced degree in the US. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh offered him admission to the Graduate Studies program, a full tuition waiver and research assistantship.
In the meantime OJ got involved in a very cozy mutual relationship with an American, Deborah, an animation artiste. Eventually they fell in love.
It was the fall of 1977, OJ went to the US. In a couple months or so, Deborah got a temporary relocation at Pittsburgh. She and OJ were together for some three months. During this time both of them got married legally. He performed well at CMU. She went back to Iran as planned job even though Iran was beginning to be in turmoil. In the meantime, things turned awful in Iran. There was a revolution against the Shah of Iran. Americans, Indians and some other nationalities were not allowed to leave Iran. The revolution was no freedom rally. It was religious fascism. People still suffered. Life became miserable for Deborah. OJ got actively involved to rescue her from those fascists. By April 1979 OJ with his professor worked out her release, she was now free to go to India based on her marriage to OJ, an Indian.
Finally, in July of 1979 Deborah was united with OJ. Yet all was not well with Deborah. In Iran she was subjected to rape, assault and suffering. She still had fear psychosis. It became a nightmare for her and depression made her nerves panic all the time. He couldn’t pay much attention to Deborah. He didn’t even bother about the problems surfacing in their relationship. One thing led to another and they started drifting apart like two icebergs. Around that time, OJ got a very good job offer in California. OJ decided to go to California. Deborah wouldn’t go with him and went her own separate way. She went to New York to be away from him. In California, OJ made great strides. He soon became a project manager handling complex multiple projects in the company. In the meantime OJ went on to become the president, and then director, of the firm he was working for. At this point of time he met a young lady, Rupa, a student from India, at a friend’s party. Her motive with him was to grab the Green Card and split. It wasn’t love but it was merely a relationship of convenience. Soon she found out that he was married to Deborah and not divorced yet. So she went on her way. Deborah had some rough time in New York but she did come over her trauma. She decided to make a clean break from the past. She found a new friend in John. Though he wasn’t suited for her type of person but she decided to marry him. So she went to OJ in Sacramento with their divorce papers for him to sign. He was awestricken seeing her with those papers. He after wavering for a few days, finally, signed them. Then came along Sheba, an Iranian. They both had a matured loving relationship. They both wanted to have a child of their own and finally they did. They had a baby boy. He turned out to be a fine boy. Around beginning of 1991, he felt like going to India to do something for his mother country. His friends tried to stop him from taking such foolish step. There were some moments of vacillation for Sheba. But finally OJ and Sheba decided to take the plunge. The same year they packed their bags and took off to go to India to set up and start a big Information Technology University. So perhaps the Dark Horse could still win the race once more!