Rag Ranjan

Instagram handle: ranjan_rag

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@dildarakhtdilli पाँचवा फूल “खिलेगा तो देखेंगे”

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@universe_u70293 Gulzar 😊

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@dildarakhtdilli उन दिनों में भी भीतर चुपचाप, भाषा के परे कुछ रचा जा रहा होता है। लिखा जाना अपने समय पर हो जाता है, रचा जाना हर क्षण हो रहा होता है।

[Maria Dubovikova @politblogme]

One of the most heartbreaking examples of nonverbal communication to emerge from Iran.
I cannot call this a mere propaganda piece. It is the unbearable truth, laid bare through the profound art of cinematography and animation.

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

“My crime was feeling everything too deeply, my punishment was surviving it.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@TiwariNivedita Unrelated to this poem, but I just stopped by to say I��ve listened to your rendition of “तुम मेरे कौन हो” several times and have had tears rolling down my cheeks every single time! There’s something magical about how soulfully you recited this epic poem. 🤍

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@Joseph_Fasano_ Hi 🤗

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@dildarakhtdilli परछाईं म��ं पलता है प्रेम

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@dildarakhtdilli The square with three women in it - art!

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@dildarakhtdilli पाँव के तले कहीं दिल पड़ा मिले अगर… गुलज़ार साहब के शब्दों में!

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@dildarakhtdilli “A teardrop on the cheek of time” - Tagore on Taj Mahal 🙂

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@dildarakhtdilli निर्मल जिस तटस्थ भाव से मृत्यु पर लिखते हैं वह अद्भुत है। कहीं उन्होंने “एक मरी हुई रोशनी” का प्रयोग किया है - जबकि मृत्यु एक ऐसा taboo टॉपिक है कि उससे जुड़ी झिझक हमारी भाषा में, साहित्य में भी चली आती है। आम बोलचाल में हम अक्सर मृत्यु के लिए कोई दूर का शब्द इस्तेमाल कर लेते हैं

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@Joseph_Fasano_ Moved to tears...

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@TiwariNivedita Loved it...! Might make an attempt to translate into Hindi :)

[Arun Arora @Arun2981]

जय हिन्द

जय हिन्द की सेना

🇮🇳

[Joseph Fasano @Joseph_Fasano_]

How does Authoritarianism happen?

It starts slowly, in slogans and small acts.

It starts in the eroding of decency and empathy.

It starts with a "Leader" undermining faith in any "Truth," the deliberate disorientation of the citizen's mind.

And then? It stirs in the heart of the common man, whose world has become too complex for him. He looks around and finds a world that is frightful, complicated, new. He sees his falling bank account. He loses his job. New media bombards him with changes he cannot understand. He despairs. He is filled with an unnameable terror.

When he can take the fear no longer, he abandons his reason. He hands his mind over to a Leader—a Fü*rer, a Chairman, a Figure He Never Had—who promises to simplify his thoughts, his feelings, his life; to tell him the one, concocted, state-sponsored Truth he wants to hear.

And that Leader will do exactly that.

Authoritarianism, therefore, thrives on the one-sided mind: the individual, and ultimately the group, that has become alienated from, or has repressed, a part of itself, usually in an attempt to avoid feeling what it is terrified to feel.

The one-sided person seeks to control the ways in which others express themselves, and he does so for precisely this reason: he unconsciously envies those who can feel what he cannot feel. Authoritarianism always begins with a reductive philosophy that despises empathy, that views tenderness as a weakness, that seeks to police how others love.

Dostoevsky once wrote that hell is nothing other than the state of being unable to love. Authoritarianism is nothing but the small mind's fear of the myriad riches of this world. Even as its rulers acquire material wealth, they wish to deprive the world of the spiritual riches they cannot have.

Thus, as a movement, the ultimate unconscious wish of Authoritarianism is always destruction, self-destruction, s*icide. It longs for stillness, not growth; its nationalistic fervor is a not-so-hidden desire to be alienated, to sever its bonds with other nations and peoples. It ends as H*tler did in Berlin: alone, isolated, taking everyone with it into the dark.

It is predicated, always, on a false nostalgia: a longing for an ideal, imagined past. Its slogans are vague enough to inflame the fantasies of the one-sided mind: be great again, blame others, your life is hard because of Someone Else.

Most catastrophically, then, the one-sided mind projects its repressed half (its shadow or its tenderness, its spirituality or its feeling) into this Other, and seeks to oppress it, then ultimately to destroy it. Genocide, tyranny, oppression: these are acts of the fractured, one-sided mind, afraid of encountering and experiencing the other side, the other opinion, the Great Other, in whose presence it would be challenged to face the whole of what it means to be human.

Art, mystery, poetry, education: these things reconnect us to our wholeness, to the varied voices within us. When we act from that grace, that state of openness, of listening, of synthesis and integration, we practice the lost arts, the arts that all power structures inherently desire to devalue and repress: empathy, compassion, creativity, love.

Where is the wise way between societal extremes? Where is the movement that supports the worker, the common citizen, without stoking his deepest fears and using them to divide society and conquer it? Where is the form of government that wishes for its citizen to be whole?

A fractured, one-sided mind is a mind that can be controlled, can be sold reductive narratives, can be induced to want and to purchase any artificial fulfillment. A whole mind, even a mind that strives for impossible wholeness, is free. And that is why real, radical wholeness is a threat to the status quo, to tyranny, to propaganda. As is art. As is grace. As is empathy. And that is why love, radical love, even in the darkness between two bodies, is a revolution that can bring kings to their knees.

—Joseph Fasano

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@FamyRasheed

[Vats @VatsMusings]

A good piece of editorial in today's @the_hindu regarding #HMPV . Its really important to present News without sensationalism and unverified facts. That's why I still prefer Newspapers for News because it takes time to present text with context.

[Rag Ranjan @rag_ranjan]

@FamyRasheed Keep up the good work. I regularly follow your tweets which are based on authentic research and insights. Much appreciated.