Soon after the completion of Disney World, someone said-“Isn’t it too bad that Walt Disney didn’t live to see this!” Mike Vance, creative director of Disney Studios replied, “He did see it—that’s why it’s here.”
Feats are made. Failures are met. Nations rise. Nationsfall. And it’s all by the measure of the power that a vision possesses whichenables them to do so.
They say vision is hope with a blueprint. Integral to thisvision should be a profound respect and gracious sense for the dimensions ofordinary life. That’s why the strength of such a vision shapes the journey of anation to a just and humane future.
The recent happenings over here urge contemplation. In fact,it stimulates a lament for a historical massacre: the massacre of mind, themassacre of intellect. One fails to understand the efficacy of’conceptualizing, conceiving and creating’ of projects that aren’tlong-lasting, and that won’t even bring a modicum of positive and secure changefor this hapless nation.
The Babus of this place are fostering their ’empires’ about transitory tulips and laser dances around stinking waters of Dal Lake lining dilapidated boulevard.
One is at a loss to celebrate something that we are made to celebrate. From tulip garden to musical fountain rapture, the euphoria seems ridiculous as dust and doom hang in the air. In the background of challenging corrupt forces and inhumane attitudes that demean human life and environs here, it amounts to shaming this place.
Attaching a ludicrously chronic nostalgia around such eventsis also nothing but stupidity. It smacks of misplaced sense of loss among us.Perhaps, the ‘rulers’ want us to feel, think and act like so. We seem sufferingfrom an induced sense of historical loss that loops around only vanishing waterbodies, dying mother language, cracking heritage sites and withered gardens.The so-called culture-vultures and spin-doctors seem on a mission produced outof no priority.
The real loss is fading out. The loss that is lost and leftbehind forever. The loss of a glory that still goes walking in our subliminalselves. The loss of a history that still clutches round our bones. The death ofan Identity. The loss of a Vision.
Yes, when nations lose on critical things, all else crumblesdown easily. Rather, rest seems irrelevant and immaterial. It carries nomeaning except cosmetic camouflage over wretched life that has reduced us toprimitive slaves whose roads are blocked and travel permits stamped onhands!
Certainly, flashpoints do finally crop up in the historiesof nations, and course of things has no choice but to change. We have perhaps missedout on certain flashpoints, reeling back to square one. There has been noclarity of national vision or either national consciousness in us. The maincause of this national disaster has been the absolute failure of intellectualawakening as a whole. The elemental mistake that dogs our perception is that weassume ourselves to be ‘politically correct’ as ever. And that’s what makes usto listen, debate, applaud or react neurotically to the malarkey of lyingpoliticians and sycophant bureaucrats.
Bottomline: Carl Jung wrote, “Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens”. Kashmir has consumed many theories, plans and formulas. In addition to human lives. The cost of this conflict has been colossal. There is a bloat in manufacturers of its ‘industry’ and the feeders of its ‘luxury’ as well. Contrary to what some vested interests would have us believe, claiming things are okay here, it remains the most vexed human problem, a bloody interplay of politically maneuvered bluffs and blunders. Beyond beautiful tulips and marvelous fountains that make no sense amidst gruesome and glum music played in our vandalized backyard.