मेरा बयान /राजबीर देसवाल

मेरा बयान /राजबीर देसवाल

मैं ब्यान करता हूँ की
मैं कातिल हूँ अपनी रूह का
अपने अरमानो का मैंने
गला घोटा है
गो ये जुर्म छोटा है
मगर मैं जल्लाद की मानिंद
रहमो-करम की
गुहार नहीं सुनता
मेरा तर्क है
इस का हक नहीं है मुझे
बेशक मज़ा आता है मुझे
देख कर अपनी मरी रूह का चेहरा
जिसे एक झटके से मैंने नई

शकल दे दी है

ये निकली ऑंखें मुझे भाती हैं
ये लटकती जीभ डराती नहीं
रूह की टूटी गर्दन
मुझे एहसास कराती है
की मैं वाकई जल्लाद हूँ
मगर मैं ये इकबाल
खुदा की अदालत मैं करूंगा
हल्फिया ब्यान देना है
तलाश है इक शाहिद की
जो तस्दीक भी करे
मगर एक शर्त पे खरा उतरे की

वो शाहिद एक एय्यार न हो

अय्यारों के शहर में बसर न करता हो
है कोई?
है कोई?
जो इस शरत पे खरा उतरे!
नहीं?
तो मैं शहादत दूंगा
मगर रूबरू उस खुदा के
जिसकी अदालत मैं
हलफ से

ये ब्यान देना था
राजबीर देसवाल

मैं स्वपन देख रहा हूँ/राजबीर देसवाल

मैं स्वपन देख रहा हूँ
ठहरो

मुझे जगाना नहीं

मैं देख रहा हूँ
बहारों और खिज़ाओं का
उन्मुक्त आलिंगन
मैं देख रहा हूँ
बेकली और चैन का

बेमेल संगम
मैं देख रहा हूँ
रकीबों से रकीबों का
गठ-जोड़ बंधन
मैं देख रहा हूँ
काटों पर छिड़ी

कलियों की सरगम
मैं देख रहा हूँ
लगाते शास्त्र स्वयं
घावों को मरहम
मैं देख रहा हूँ
शुआओं को सहज

सहलाती शबनम
मैं देख रहा हूँ
मृत्यु का मृत्यु पे क्रंदन
मैं देख रहा हूँ
बूढ़े बरगद पर आया
भरपूर यौवन
मैं देख रहा हूँ
नाव तूफानों का करती
खैरमकदम

मैं स्वपन देख रहा हूँ
ठहरो
मुझे जगाना नहीं ।

मगर यह कहीं

मेरी मानसिकता के विरुद्ध
कोई जंग तो नहीं
कोई साजिश तो नहीं
क्योंके मैंने तो देखा है
इंसा को इंसा का दुश्मन
आग को पानी का दुशमन
रौशनी को तम का दुश्मन
तूफ़ान को कश्ती का दुश्मन
भाई और भाई की अनबन
मज्हबो मुल्को कौम की उलझन
इंसानियत भटकती बन बन
हैवानियत इतराती बन ठन
निसंदेह, यह मेरी मानसिकता के विरुद्ध
एक जंग ही तो है
एक साजिश ही तो है ।
गवारा है मुझे फिर भी
ये जंग और ये साजिश
गवारा है मुझे फिर भी
हसीन धोखे की ख्वाइश

मैं स्वपन देख रहा हूँ
ठहरो
मुझे जगाना नहीं

राजबीर देसवाल

Ghalib was a mad man!

Ghalib was a mad man!
By: Rajbir Deswal
From my sick bed. Viral fever has taken the better of me. And once again, despite the discomfort and body-ache, I rather am enjoying my predicament in the sense that some rustic things which I cannot otherwise do, I allow them a full play now. And the family members too have their share of tickling their funny bone at my cost. No, no that they are not concerned about me, but the way I behave amuses them.
For example, I will have a full blown sneeze whiffed out of my system with all the saliva sprayed concoction adding a notation of a longish—Aa-k-chheeeeeeeenn!!! And for added effect I would always like to repeat performance even if it’s not coming out of me in a natural course of business. Then in the case of cough, I will make an additional phono of ‘khown-khoooown’ followed by a loud clearing of the phlegm chocked throat.
And the more amusing part of my falling sick as I said is watching the family members exchange glances and smiles when I will in a state of feigned disorientation blaming everybody around with exhortations like—O’ God, none in this house cares for meeeeeee!!! Who the hell should be bothered about meeeeee!
I send everybody burst into peels of laughter when I will remember my late mother screaming, “Hai-Maaan! What for did you bring me to this uncaring world? Hai Maaan, where are youuuu! I miss you Maan!!! Etc etc.
O’ yes, Mr Ghalib must have been really a stone-hearted man when he exclaimed, “Padiye gar bimar to koi na ho timardar/Aur gar mar jaiye to noah-khawa koi na ho
Loosely translated it means—If you fall sick, there should be none to look after. And if you die, there should be none who would have any connections with you. Mad cap! No, mad fool’s cap that he wore.
I am happy to have viral fever. And I am in no hurry to recover. More over, I will pray for all my friends, for the Bible believes that those who are sick, God hears them first. So, in my being indisposed, I am gonna dispose off your urgent matters pending finalization at Almighty’s hands.
Still if you want an early recovery for me, well thank you very much. Let me for the time being enjoy my body-burning and body-breaking; I mean jism jalna aur jism tootna!

Police for sale! A Review

Marketing lessons for police

Reviewed by Rajbir Deswal
IN a popular Bollywood flick, the entire rhetoric of materialistic possessions by Amitabh Bachchan comes crashing when juxtaposed with brother Shashi Kapoor’s matching them all with their mother, asserting, "Mere paas Ma hai?" Apart from the physical self, the mother here carries her affection, compassion, care, concerns, besides bearing and rearing. By the same token, the police service seems to measure up to being quantified in terms of value, if you believe author Rohit Choudhary, an IPS officer of Punjab. For the police to be saleable to people at large, it has to be dependable and deliverable; accessible and accountable; and satisfying and suitable.

The police service can be marketed like any other commodity with a definite business plan despite intangible manifestations of human dispositions that can be attributed to their not-so-conducive behavior. There exist compliers and violators both. Rohit Choudhary’s recommendations inter alia include fundamental transformation of systems and organisations, ensuring efficiency, effectiveness, adaptability and innovation, with toppings like incentives and accountability added to the marketability of police.
The private sector management concerns largely involve citizen-focused service, performance management, balanced scorecard, strategy map and an ingrained and imbibed inclination to change while vying with other competitors. Factors that go against marketing the police service are its intangibility, heterogeneity and inseparability since for a product you can always have a better value substitute. The crux of Choudhary’s suggestions lies in consumer satisfaction when in a ‘glocal’ (global + local) environment, citizens as customers of police service assert their rights of having best value for their money paid as tax.
For police to sell like merchandise, the author embarks on plans to improve its organisational culture incorporating changes in the police delivery scenario through (i) SWOT—strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats besides (ii) Eight P’s—people, products, price, promotion, pace, process, place and policies. A roadmap for the marketing plan that promises superior value, builds customer relationship and creates customer delight is the hallmark of the book.
Quoting extensively from the police commission recommendations and other resource material drawn from very renowned subject matter specialists on police and policing, the author admits that the police in India is "underpaid, undermanned overworked, demoralised and publicly despised". He presents a comparative study of police systems in the UK, US, Japan, Singapore, China, Korea, Ireland, Canada, etc.
With lack of functional autonomy in pursuing investigations, the police in India is still imbued with their ruler supportive ethic. Old laws and procedures, large number of new legislations (with no public consensus), accusatorial system of criminal trials, presumption of innocence and burden of proof, distrust of the police and a very poor conviction rate, add up to make the police helpless, inefficient and unworthy in social audit.
"Nobel cause corruption" which is almost institutionalised in the police functioning and encourages padding, planting and fabrication of evidence to ensure conviction also does not do any good to the service delivery system, the author believes.
The rank and file in the police in India deserves to be empowered with more of decentralisation of powers, less of regimental hierarchical steel frame and a participatory accountability. The sub-culture in police needs to be evolved to the level where even the lowest ranking foot soldier has a feeling of alignment and belongingness. "Happiness Model" is suggested to ensure community policing with human resource development within the organisation.
Continuous correctional and developmental appraisal is the key to building up human resource. Police training needs to shun pedagogy systems, and adopt andragogy model—a self-directed learning style. The quality of leadership in the police should be "each one serves and leads". "Management by walking around" ensures knowing on ground difficulties.
The police in India needs to come alive to customer needs by "hearing citizens voices" roping in community empowerment through pro-active and collaborative policing rather than being reactive. The conservative police culture has a rigid and para-military structure, which is not amenable to change.
Reducing cost by making marginal adjustment in budgets, spreading costs to other authorities for special police forces, enlisting self-help from citizens, out sourcing, retention of revenue generating areas will surely help. Accumulating, concentrating, complementing and recovering the resources would sustain the police in having a systematic approach to develop, acquire, accumulate and innovate. Effectiveness roped in by redressal of public grievances and streamlining cross-agency processes is also worth taking care of.
While advocating all kinds of technological support, the author dares to reduce political interference by putting in place regulatory bodies for the police. An open policy, integrating involvement of stakeholders to prioritise police tasks will help. The police also needs to have a media policy involving maintaining public relations with a police-public interface. In some countries, participative policing is the norm.
The book, recommending identification of internal issues and external influences with the focus on customer satisfaction, high performance and new-age entrepreneurial demands of the business, should be the ‘Bible’ for every policeman besides being a very well-documented research treatise.

Policing: Reinvention Strategies in a Marketing Framework By Rohit Choudhary. Sage. Pages XX+306. Rs 395.

Also at http://rajbirdeswal.instablogs.com/entry/police-for-sale/

Man, Moment and the Millenium

Man, Moment and the Millenium

By: Rajbir Deswal

I wrote this piece at the turn of the Century and the Millenium(Y2K-Remember?) but I tried to liken the moment, a unit of time to ‘Man’. I don’t really know if I really relate the two but The Tribune and The Pioneer published it. May like to read my analogy!!!

How important should be the moment which will tick the old millennium off, out of its existence by kicking right near the cusp and bring the new one to its being. How crucial should be that moment which will quietly roll into eternity and heralded a new beginning. How signaled out would be that moment which both millennia would claim to be their own. “Oh to be equal in status to that moment!” many may cherish.Moment after moment, minute after minute, hours after hours, day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, and likewise such a moment takes shape and fades out. And so will that special, that unique, that different moment, take birth and make history.History of its being. History of its end. History of its importance. History of its relevance. And History of its nothingness. Could a man be likened to a moment?Countless people would feel their existence quite differently in the 21st century. Others may not even know of the change. Still others may find in that situation as if nothing moves except nothingness.At the same time there would be innumerable people who would enjoy every bit of that precious moment. Its beginning, its being and its end. Isn’t it surprising to be dwelling so much on one moment? One single moment? One special moment? One moment like other moments? Just another moment!Then why so much anxiety? Why so much curiosity? Why so much of wait? Why so much of concern? Why so much of so much?—for a mere moment: I never knew that a moment was such a complex entity.Surely then, moment can definitely be likened to a man. Moment and man in their glory. Moment and man their being. Movement and man in their spacing, where space does not exist at all. All the more, moment can be “felt” like man.But hang on. I have a visual right in front of me purely in bones and flesh I see the merry-makers. I see those rejoicing. Some drowned in drunkenness. Others sun in spirits. Still others frolicking in frenzy an euphoria. One fellow sleep-walks trampling, he other sleeping on a walking path of me metropolis roadside. “Hay, wake up! Scoundrel! New millennium has arrived! It is the turn of the century.“The scoundrel” wakes up not really agitated, takes a turn to the other de (like a century) and sleeps over. The moment has come and gone. The man has woken unturned and slept again. The millennium has awaked and will end soon. Yes, very “soon”!Moment after moment. Tick after tick. Pulse after pulse. Well, tick and pulse can be likened. So can be moment and man. Tick enlivens up and consumes the moment pulse enlivens up and consumes the man. Welcome Millennium—ticking, pulsating and consuming.

Research on Couples on The Mall!

The Mall Watch

By:Rajbir Deswal

Walking on The Mall in Shimla at the fag end on 2009, and watching couples of various ‘amalgamations’, I was reminded of a ‘research’ we carried out at Nainital. This was pulished in The Hindustan Times.Here we go...!!!
The best part of the training course we were undergoing on Government Management at a popular hill-station last summer came at the end of the official proceedings. After our fill of lectures, audio-visuals and interactions we had much interesting stuff to look forward to in the evenings, which not only soothed our tires eyes but was refreshing and rewarding.
Free of the academic constraints, we would be ushered into a more ‘enlightened’ world a la Buddha, when some half a dozen officers daily visited the Mall for a ‘research’. In that wanton crowed of revelers and holidayers, the scope of our study was limited only to the youngish category of couples. Excluded strictly from our eagle-eyed observation were the oldies, even if they walked more couple-like.
We would position ourselves at a vantage point from where we could have a researcher’s view of the subject under study, the topic of which was no less interesting: “the dynamics of the relationship between the malling couples.”
Here we go:
The came walking not only hand in hand but with a bodyline-to bodyline contact, resting their head on each other’s shoulders, turn by turn. The man’s hand would go reconnoitering the posterior of his partner once in a while. They would not lift their eyes to see the world around them, picking their way through a romantic realm in which others didn’t exist. Thus, sleep-walking, they would every now and then bump into a passer-by, pleading an unmeaningful “sorry”. The collided one could only look back at the apologetic couple, forgiving their “blindness” with a smile. Well they were the honeymooners.
The second category of couples looked more homely. Without hanging on each other literally they preferred walking their own, self-confident way. The man would ogle at other women, and the woman by his side would also not force herself to ignore the admiring glances coming her way. The man would carry a shopping bag in one hand and the woman her purse both with a firm grip on their belongings and their sentiments acquired through experience. Their’s was not a hush-hush talking tone, rather others could also hear the stuff. Perhaps they seemed to be hiding nothing from the onlookers. They were surely married couples of about five years conjugal bliss.
The third category of couples looked ready to pick-up a fight not only with each other, but with all others, be he a shop-keeper, a hawker, a passer-by, or a rickshaw-puller. They walked keeping a safe distance from each other, but carrying on a conversation all the same. One could very well hear their arguments on the child’s progress in school or the mutual tirade on managing household affairs. They would talk about their budget and postpone further individual purchases in favour of a pair of jeans for their teenaged son or a dress-set for the daughter. Surely, these couples were in the bondage of matrimony for a decade and half.
The fourth category was not of the couples but a “coupled” heterogeneity. This man-woman duo cast their apprehensive looks at the on-lookers. They were quite close to each other yet the fear of being caught strolling together was quite evident on their faces. Flamboyantly dressed most of them were husbands and wives of other wives and husbands. Or one partner of this combination might have had a marital status and the other might have been unmarried. The strain of trying to look natural only confirmed the forbidden aspect of their relationship with each other. If someone passed some remarks on them they would simply choose no to have heard it. They were, as the Bard of Avon put it, “no other stuff than what adultery is made up of.”
The last but not the least important category that came within our study was that of the unknown and unexplained relationship of man and woman walking on the Mall. Well, they could be at least cousins, if not, brothers and sisters our for some fresh air, while the parents relaxed elsewhere, with not a worrisome thought.

Real Happiness is in it's willingness to share!

Meridian divide

By: Rajbir Deswal

Let me confess at the outset that real happiness lies with people who are willing to share it. The present epsode relates to the year 2002 and was published in The Pioneeer.
India has too many crorepatis these days compared to the past when even a lakhpati was recognised as the son of a “twice-born”. My experience last New Year’s eve compels me to think whether real happiness lives this side or that of the meridian, that answers to the calling of “class” in the capitalist world.
We got passes for the 31st December celebrations at a five-star hotel in the Capital. We were excited to be a part of the much-hyped extravaganza. Our little family made a small group, and made it to the gaiety-gymnasium past 10 pm. The flash-lights beamed in succession from different angles and played their gremlin-game in a multi-coloured range of spectrum, lighting up the revelers’ faces in diverse hues every now and then. The tapping of the dancers’ feet made music with the DJ’s dexterous fingers while near-licentious looks felicitated one another. It was gratification of sorts, with not even a modicum of “concealment”.
The meridian-moment arrived and the entire gathering went into a frenzy, bidding good-bye to the old year that was a new year only 364 days back. Welcome 2003! Happy New Year! Handshakes, bear hugs, embraces, instant and excited calls were being made and received on cellphones. Every thing was there. But I noticed that one-to-one greetings were restricted to members of only the self-same group, big or small. None seemed to be genuinely interested in greeting a reveler who wa a stranger. Persons beyond acquaintance were deliberately chosen, not to be felicitated; or so it appeared to me.
We decided to rush homeward. Stewards, bearers and staff on the way back accosted us. Our small pack was ushered out and the guards, bellboys and the tall, show-cased sentinels, wearing huge turbans, all invoked the lady luck for us in 2003. We started walking towards the parking-lot outside the hotel. The drizzle, which couldn’t dampen the spirit of the merry-makers throughout the day, had stopped. But a chill wind almost pierced through.
Some youngsters, who couldn’t secure an entry apparently for the lack of money, were dancing in rustic exuberance, as if to a average for their hard-luck in the year gone by. They too hailed us. The parking-lot attendant had a muffler round his face and I could see droplets of condensation of the freezing wind, settled on his broomy moustache, when he signalled and helped us pull the car out. He too wished us a happy new year. Reaching home, the domestic help wished each one of us in his Nepali accent: “Naya shaal mubarik hou.”
Till I retired for the day with a wish-list of hopes and dreams, something in my mind was troubling me. Why can’t the rich tide over their islander-mentality and cut across the tiny words of their own creation, of self-proclaimed superiority?” And why are the comparatively poorer people always so willing to please others, with their humane gentleness, character and disposition? Real happiness does not live on this or that side of the meridian; it is all-encomp-passing and all-pervasive.