NP'S Journal

I lost my daughter, my only child, but I was creative enough to make the loss the pillar of my success.                                                                                 - Author  Success is an achievement of something that seems impossible in the limit of the socio-economic system of a given society by the term of the popular recognition and brings possibility of a host of following things-- 1) Those who have got success in one field, have merit to get success in any other field. Those without a success either have been deprived of one or they did not try for any... Success in the Human System-- 1. Success is always autocratic.  2. Success is madness. 3. Success is sadistic. (Incomplete)

                                        MAMA                                    By N P Samal  Once upon a time, there ruled a king, named Rudra Narayan Das-Verma, in Dhamnagar, a powerful kingdom of Odisha. Rudra Narayan was a very kind-hearted, good and loving king. He was always dedicated in the welfare of his kingdom and its subjects. He protected his people as well as each part of his kingdom from enemies with his sheer bravery and military skills. All the people of the kingdom loved and worshipped the king as their God and lived happily. By virtue of the king's strong administration as well as his excellent systems of management in the fields of environment, health, education, food, sports, and culture, Dhamnagar was famous in the whole world.  Rudra Narayan's wife, Kalyani Devi, was a...

THE UNIVERSE AND YOU The Corona lock-down is being extended. Indefinitely. Interminably. At first, you had thought it would be a matter of roughly two weeks. But to your dismay, it did not end. Then two months. You thought you would die.  But you did not die. Now six months already into the lock-down, you have not died. Neither Corona nor your fear has been able to break into the shell of your life, although you have been deprived of the zest. You have been sitting idle. Nothing really is interesting inside the house. Everything is hackneyed. Everything is uninteresting. So, you are curled up in your armchair, legs bent up into the tight hold of your arms, head hanging down the lower jaw resting on the knees and the eyes are wide open but seeing nothing as the interior of your visual limit looks insipid... Please listen to me! Just do one thing to get freedom from COVIDIOCY as well as to exercise your workability with the following activity : Take a set of crayons and a drawing she...

THE VIRAL CONFUSION  COVID-19 or Corona, aptly the Virus of the Century, has already taken a heavy toll on the life and living of the modern humans worldwide, and is going stronger by the day. In a matter of months, the nondescript invisible virus has influenced your mind so much that the huge nuclear stockpiles, terrorism, corruption, exploitation, horrific superstitious practices, hunger, malnutrition, genocides, caste violence, environmental pollution, extinction of species, traffic accidents, industrial accidents, urban crimes, cancer, other dreaded diseases...have failed to do for decades. The virus is killing people outside and you are hiding inside. Your body is numb. Your mind is restive. There is indecision. There is ineptitude. And you are caught in an utter confusion... Your work-free, yet hugely anxious mind now hosts the whole lot of questions : Is Corona indestructible? Is the problem irremediable? Will the virus kill all of us like it is killing in Europe and America...

MY GOD, YOUR GOD A theist, or a monotheistic, or a polytheist, or a heathen... A fundamentalist, or an evangelist, or a prorselytizer... A die-hard, or a convert, or a secular... A Hindu, or a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Buddhist, or a Sikh, or a Jew, or a Zoroastrian...  You may be one from the above list, or all. But definitely, you are not an atheist, or an agnostic, or an infidel, or a pagan, or a savage. There is God in you. If there is Lord Krishna in you, you are a Hindu. If there is Allah in you, you are a Muslim. If there is Jesus in you, you are a Christian... Just wait. Can there be God inside a human body? May He be. I admit there is a God within your body. But I swear, there is no God in me. God cannot live within my body. I know I am impure. I know I am not sacred. My body contains filth, toxins, impurities and germs. I smell foul. Headaches, heartaches, stomachaches, backaches,  arthritis, maladies, diseases - all have made their burrows in my body. My mind is ...

A GIANT IN ME There is a giant in me. He has alwsys been in me since times immemorial. Yes, the giant is sleeping in me. No! He is not sleeping. He cannot sleep while I am awake. He sleeps only when I sleep, and wakes when I wake. He remains awake, wide awake as long as I am wakeful. He walks with me, runs with me and hops with me. He goes with me and comes with me. He does not leave me alone. Now that I have been locked in, he is sitting inside me with his eyes red and round, open and wide. He has a violent stare. He is lurking...On the prowl.  I do not know when he came and settled in me. I only can remember he has been inside me since the root of my existing memory. Over years, he has grown powerful and deadly in me. I can realize knowingly or unknowingly I have cultivated him in me. Now he has become too obstinate. It is not possible for me to move him out of me. He has been in me as a necessary devil. In fact, the giant is loyal to me. He is serious about my well-being. He fig...

PRIVACY  There is a life inside. There is a life outside. Before Corona, you mixed them together. You confused your private life with your public life and the public life with the private life. You were a hybrid of waywardness and homewardness. Being in one, you had urges for the other. Occupied in one, you faced demands from the other. However, you managed both the lives with constant adjustments and compromises. Sometimes, you felt well-adjusted and sometimes, ill-adjusted, but you would manage. It kind of was customary. All others did, so you did. So you were not much critical of your disturbed privacy. You took that hybrid life for granted.  Now just over two months into Corona isolation (In fact, country-wide curfew/lock-down was imposed in India in March 2020), you find there is a clean divide between your private life and your public life. You realize that private cannot be public and public cannot be private. For the first time since your birth, you nurture yourself in...