Words are not enough

By -
वो  जानवर  का बच्चा  है
माँ को ढूंढता
माँ बन गयी ग्रास शिकारी का
बच्चा  भी बनेगा

वो इंसान का बच्चा है
माँ को  ढूंढता
माँ बन गई  ग्रास शिकारी का
बच्चा ज़िंदा रहेगा

मौत से बदतर ज़िन्दगी
किसी अपाहिज  भिगारी की
या बंधुआ, आजीवन
या  ……

क्योंकि वह आदमी का बच्चा है

I have just returned from Jharkhand after visiting Korba and Birhor. I could not express myself in better words
  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is Anthropology?

By -
 Despite being a serious student of Anthropology for almost 50 years, the question makes me uneasy. I must admit that I have not been able to pinpoint what Anthropology is not. That could have made my job easy. Here I start with some historical facts. 1.       When Aristotle defined man as a “featherless biped walker” did he know he was defining the limits of Anthropology? 2.       In Class 9 th or 10 th I had read a poem starting with the couplet: “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man”. Doesn’t Alexander Pope, the poet, sound an Anthropologist? 3.         Again, the same year, we had a poem by Tennyson on Crimean War, The Charge of the Light Brigade which most of us   must have read; I remember a few lines: “Canons to right of them Cannons to left of them Cannons in front of them ………… Into the mouth of hell Rode the six hundred” N...
Read more

Anthropology Returns..... With a Bang

By -
Image
Dear Readers! For me the Caption of this article is misleading (though, in the beginning you may not agree). The fact is that results of Anthropology in the last decade (except for one year) have been constantly good — more than 10%. However, after IAS 1996 it is for the first time that three in top then have Anthropology as their Optional. [In IAS 1996 three of our students  — Nilesh (7th), Manish (8th) and Piyush (9th) held this record]. Therefore, it is a special occasion for me but I may be disjointed,  as I have to say a lot on different aspects. I “I love anthropology because I’m insatiably curious. Anthropology uniquely spans the arts, humanities, social science and natural sciences, and touches all fields of human endeavor or inquiry. Human origins? Uh huh. Human rights? Certainly. Ontology and the nature of being? Got it. Genome sequencing? Check. Poetics and aesthetics? You bet. Cross-cultural psychology? Please. Climate change? Down cold. Migration and displa...
Read more

Where are the Tribes

By -
Tribes, more often than not, are in the news mainly for the crimes committed against them. Most of us just glance through the news as if they are aliens to us. Unless we are particular about it, most of us even don’t know who amongst us are tribals; or whether tribes exist at all. The exhaustive definition of ‘tribe’ given in ‘merriam-webster.com reads as: Definition of tribe 1a: a social group comprising numerous families, clans, or generations together with slaves, dependents, or adopted strangers b: a political division of the Roman people originally representing one of the three original tribes of ancient Rome c: PHYLE 2: a group of persons having a common character, occupation, or interest 3: a category of taxonomic classification ranking below a subfamily also: a natural group irrespective of taxonomic rank The synonyms of ‘tribe’ are: blood clan, family, folks, house, kin, kindred, kin(s)folk, line, lineage, people, race, stock. In that sense any social group with a particular c...
Read more