Wild at Heart

NOTICE: Do not search for unity or consistency. Look at the title.

They were all dancing in that red light while I watched them from a distance. Moments before I had read a poem of mine which had been much liked, and therefore, every now and then an unknown face would pass by me, and compliment me over it. I would nod and smile. I was looking at those figures---those well-structured bodies which had weight in all right proportions, and then started judging them. One had ample of flesh in hips, other had in cheeks, one had so much in neck that it was hard to know as to from where his face actually began and then---a hand was raised to the mouth , and I noticed the thickness of the fingers, and was visibly taken in by the largeness of the palm. He brought down his fingers to the palm and enclosed them into a fist. It was then I noticed that even his knuckles were expansive…  I thought I had to look at his face. I did. His face was ordinarily large. After noticing his extraordinary knuckles, his ordinary face came as a slap to my aesthetic sense that had been high… It was a moment of complete emptiness when that scene changed its form--- from a picture to outlines and my eyes---- my myopic eyes could not contain that vision. I lost all interest in the scene as meditating on flesh appeared no longer attractive to me. I had to leave, and therefore invented an excuse.

On my way back home, I kept on thinking why can I never be wholly present in a moment. Why do I end up feeling suffocated even when there’s too much of familiarity around to give me no unpleasant airs? I do not know what it is but it comes often in bits but always with force that I cease to be happy. Happiness isn’t absence of pain. So while I do not writhe in pain, I also do not feel light with joy. I have mentioned the storms that had raged in my head for more than two years before I came to terms with all pervading philosophy of gender. But somehow all that unhappiness and extreme sadness with which I had fought in that period has never left me. They metamorphosed into something whose nature I have yet to identify. But whatever it is---it makes me detached and desolate.

I walked in that same dark corridor. For no reason except the disgust over the slumber that is the order of things, a rage started to build in me. It happens like this. Again and again! I am seized with fever to say such things to people that may shock the propriety out of them. Say such stuff that may burn their ears and give them spasms in brains, so that they may understand that I at least of all can’t be played along. But then I am weighed down by generations of servility of those that have walked on the same ground before me. Sometimes when I consider the extent of kowtowing present in our cultural fabric, educational setups and family, I am forced to wonder as to how on Earth did I manage to be born with a Spine? People take months to do a piece of work that a willing heart with average IQ would take not more than a couple of days, and yet they have a class of people who run out of their creative faculties to spring excuses for their master’s ineptitude. When I meet them which I often do, I begin to suspect that perhaps the first word that they ever spoke was not ‘mother’ but ‘butter’!

Once I was sitting with a group which was waiting for someone in authority. I was amused by hearing all those well-decked men and women telling tales about their associations with this fellow who had no sense of time. He arrived around forty minutes late. Spoke nothing of importance, did some symbolic handshakes while someone flashed camera from different corner of the room—and-------destroyed my three hours.  Yet those well-decked people told me it was an honour for me to meet him. They congratulated us as if we had achieved something…  Meeting him could only merit a medal for patience!  People always run after people. For distinction, advantages, status and favours…  From home to ground, school to college and childhood to adulthood, I have seen nothing else but this. In that stinking atmosphere of littleness of mind, one day while looking at many walking on a path in the University, I said to myself that this(the road) is nothing but a boulevard of broken bureaucratic dreams. That whole education system is nothing but a funeral of civil service aspirations… That it is all about power!

One night while lying on my bed, I wanted desperately to talk to someone about some creative work of mine. I just wanted to say what was passing through my head which perhaps had no unity of thought. But then, it was a loud speech in the head which considering the fickleness of my thoughts could never become a paragraph but definitely had many well-constructed sentences. I looked at my whatsapp list in vain.  I came out of my room with that heaviness of night descending on my head, and sat on the steps of my veranda. I raised my right hand to my left shoulder and started caressing and rubbing it. It was a gentle reassuring movement.  It was then that it struck to me that perhaps a body doesn’t desire a body but a part searches for a piece. There can never be completeness.

One day I decided to write portrait of a self that I would like as a companion. Since I am heterosexual, I decided it must be a man (We can never think without gender, thought I!). I wrote two or three lines and then found myself dried of words. I abandoned him. His time hasn’t come yet. My time hasn’t come yet. We both have to walk a long way. We once discussed about finding core groups for people who think radically like me to draw support from. Since people like me always find it difficult to form meaningful friendships, such a core group helps in satisfying that primeval human need of forming relationships. I kept on thinking about it. I won’t run after relationships but we all need people at our side. Perhaps people have always used faces as currency notes to know the value of their lives. One day, I’d have people in my life who could be companions of my spirit. This would also be a determinant of my success in life. I need to know more of the world in that case. A Core Group!

I never had people in my life who could share my spirit. My critical line of thought that comes out in biting sarcasm… Added to it, life has always provided me with so many incompetent people to go about, that often I think that much of my hard work is for making allowances for people who are disgrace to the positions they are in. All I want in my life, is a place where people actually think---an education (somehow I can never overcome classrooms!) which is liberal not only in syllabi but in practice. That a chalk in hand wouldn’t vest a man with absolute power…  Adults who do not take age as the omniscient school of knowledge…  Sometimes when I see people making allowance of ignorance and narrowness of mind with unreasoned smiles and photocopies, I feel like it is a demand for a willing submission to buffoonery. That divorce your good sense and let me exploit you… Cognitive Dissonance! That I’d be fool to rejoice at jokes that is essentially going to make my whole life a farce in the long run. But then this is the game that every educational institution in the country plays, with better organization and sincerity than any real sport. When I often evaluate myself at that moment, I think of giving up formal education on the whole. But then it is too early to be disappointed in life. A wise man once warned me about this, and told me to keep myself in place when such a disappointment strikes my being. At that time, I did not know that keeping my spirits alive would be so difficult. I was thinking of this when I looked at that yellow building and said: “What is the point of all this when nothing in the world can provide me with shelter?”

Perhaps I am fed up by smallness of my existence. May be it is the powerlessness that haunts me. That despite of having a brain that can give many a run for money (I am not at all modest!), I have created nothing. I own nothing. Not even a room. One morning as I combed my hair, I was taken in by my face. My body… Even that is small. That I have arrived to adulthood, and yet I have occupied nothing.

Months back, when the result of the exam that I took was announced, many called to congratulate me. It was fine for a day but wasn’t enough to sustain my ego for a year.  I think this whenever I see those certificates of academic excellence, that all that I have ever produced is marks. That institutionalised sexuality of mind called taking an examination has been my only undertaking in my whole life… That the pregnancy of my mind would never end.

I saw her in that narrow lane while I was trying to avoid a dung cake. It was perhaps her brother who was at her side. This little fellow threw a ball that bounced back and landed on her head, making her cry in pain. I took a step towards her in order to soothe her, but she decided to take situation in her hands, and gave her culprit a blow on his head. He wailed, but she wailed louder. I was ecstatic. If I can find joy in such innocent moments as that then, surely I have a joyous life ahead. A settled heart is not the only happy one!

A good man on noticing the very evident traces of anger and disgust in my writing advised me to find some ‘working peace’---that which would make my quotidian routine easier. That whatever I have in me is not spent in senseless quarrels or strives… I left him saying that I would think about it, more because I wanted to escape that moment than with any genuine desire of giving it a thought. I knew it in my heart of hearts that he had a point for even I have begun to fear myself. There have been moments when I had to really hold myself before I could have said something scandalous. I am very capable of creating scandals.

What is ‘working peace’?

A euphemism for compromise.

I am free-spirited. In every inch, a rebel!  Perhaps the fellow played it wisely with me. For if he had used any other term- a more exact term, my bloated idea of myself would have been greatly insulted. With this economy of words, at least I was forced to think. After drawing an analogy between compromise and peace, I made an amusing discovery. All peace treaties were compromises. One party was given one thing and the other another. But what if it had not been strife or tensions, but a declared war? Then the Peace Treaty would involve war compensation. This line of thought was getting interesting. I need compensation, said I to myself. I had not rejoiced much at this when a more rational part of my brain silenced me with a knock of rhetoric. First identify who you are at war with…

There are moments in drawing room conversations and even in our usual meetings in parks that my ears shut down, and I become oblivious to what’s being said. So much so, that I can meditate upon movement of others’ mouths. How few take their chins out in order to emphasise…. Others widen their eyes and few have them disappeared… Some rub their hair… A friend who was intelligent enough to notice my inattention (I was mighty embarrassed at this!) said to me in good faith, “Not a conversationist?” I had to take support of my famed taciturnity in order to escape the situation. It is not that I do not talk. But then there’s very little that people usually talk that merits a response.  Most of the time it is stale thought that is being repeated again. People have such dynamic conscience and self, that their ideas have nothing consistent. How on earth can you follow them with success?

My heart is wild… I am wild at heart.

We were standing for Xerox when a worker at that centre took out a new bundle of A4 sheets of paper. He held one end of those realms of sheets of paper and raised the other from a little height, and released them in numbers from thither. Those sheets of paper reacted with such an enthusiasm on getting released that that they joined the other half of their selves in fraction of a second.  It was a beautiful picture… that what happened with those smooth edges. Such an expediency of action….It lightened my heart…  As I saw it, I was thinking of words to sufficiently describe the moment. But words did not come. They never come… Not even now. They all eluded me---their most earnest lover. Yes… It is wordlessness that’s the cause of these periods of melancholy. I have to write something to house me. That’s the only building that can provide me with shelter.

When I was thinking about all this, I discovered many of my poems that I wrote during those tempestuous days when I was trying to negotiate with gender. Many such emotions that I had confused with my lament over patriarchy were actually expressions of that wildness of my heart that has left me as an eternal nomad. I had that point of time christened these moments of rage, despair, distress and emptiness as the ‘seasoned greeting’. I think with these moments I greet what is essentially the purest in me and somehow welcome them. I was greeting those moments of hollowness with what is the most sacred in me… My words… My private speech is never silent, even when I have shut the vocal world away. It is finding words. Words to tell exactly what I feel…  My bloated self always assures the restless me that one day I’d be able to find words for all this. That this silence would be broken… This handicap of thought and company would be overcome. That the shelter can be created----

I walked and walked.  A little thing came literally out of blue, and gave me a pleasant surprise. She descended upon that white wall that had been by my side all this while. I looked at her for few seconds…her beak… her wings. Her eyes had a twinkle. I went close to her and felt that that twinkle was perhaps me. She was looking at me. It was at one side of the face, so the glance was definitely sided… Even she wasn’t ready to take me head on. I wanted to get close to her. Close enough to feel her… But she fluttered her wings and disappeared into the skies. So self-satisfied! She was but not for me, thought I with a smile.
What a human of a bird!

After What Can Be Said

“The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day.

I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.

The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.”

-Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

It would be a  winter’s noon with clouds scattered over the skies like drops of paint fallen to the ground from pallet of a busy painter which forms unrecognizable yet striking patterns , when I would wish and fantasize about some suddenness and activity in the firmament. After staring for some time into that massive blue, some white lines would get drawn into the space, and these whitish strokes would rise from their source to somewhere high up in the plane of vision. No matter how much I tried I could not hold them back--------they would rise and… rise, and I could do nothing but follow them with my eyes until they would be too high for a lowly creature like me to even aspire for. I was convinced that I had seen some spirit but neither was afraid nor worried. Somehow it was impossible to pinpoint the emotions that this would generate in my little heart. It was too momentary to be emotion … too subtle to be sensation and, too spectacular to be delusion. I grew up and this familiar experience moved into some remote corner of my brain from which I never summoned it. Three years back, I read Gitanjali and felt all of a sudden, the same hollowness of those passing moments when I thought I had seen spirits, and since I was still not able to recognize what it was, it left a tasteless flavor in my mouth that often comes with knowledge of defeat.

In our lifetime, considering man can think in abstract, millions of thoughts pass through our minds, which are amply supported by our sensory organs which link them to external world. Our senses help us to mould them into words. Thoughts which occur to us in flashes, and which aren't tied to words remain swimming onto the surface of mind; they travel in our consciousness and die with us without ever having a release, much like a bacteria that floats in the air and gets into one’s body through inhalation, and travels all through our system and then quietly leaves it in a bowel movement---like it had entered, without any ceremony or noise!

All my study of literature and philosophy brought me down to this conclusion: Man dominated the nature for he had the LANGUAGE. There are two aspects of language: extrinsic i.e. communication and intrinsic i.e. thought. All animals can communicate and therefore the extrinsic aspect is true to all in animal kingdom. It is the intrinsic part that eventually made a flyer out of a cave dweller. We can think in abstract---can sufficiently express the abstract---can understand the abstract… Therefore we could dream and imagine. We can not only remember things that are of our lifetime but know that of generations before. What our forefathers learnt, they passed onto us. One lifetime is not enough to sufficiently know a thing, let alone understanding the Universe. Each man is 1.6 million years old i.e., the age of Modern Man and of which we reached our youth only some 1000 yrs ago i.e., the dawn of civilization. Thus, we could have what is called the collective human consciousness. What a man can think at the moment and if he is sufficiently able to express and record (even if by word of mouth as was with the Aryans) he can reasonably be hopeful of his thought running down for ages in his kind. That’s why within such a brief time period (on geological scale), Man could dominate Earth. Otherwise there’ve been far more successful species in terms of survival than the Homo Sapiens. Dinosaurs lived for more than a hundred millions years while we are just a million and half old yet they could create nothing. We can.Yes, language and MAN’S LANGUAGE! In a class of psychology, we discussed Memory. What makes a tree? A group of features that we associate with the word saying which would bring to our mind the general picture of a tree. We learn similarly about people, things and places, by assigning them to certain entity i.e., word, an encapsulation of attributes. Therefore, it is no surprise that as a child learns more words, he understands more concepts of the world and remembers more things. Language is memory. Words, the fundamental unit of the memory have meanings. Meanings make recollections. Recollections make nostalgia. It is nostalgia that makes our autobiographical memory---your life as you know it. All your life is words.

Derrideans (followers of principles of Jacques Derrida and his Deconstruction) occupy a significant place in the thought processes of the modern world as they were the first of the groups who could successfully challenge the relationship of language to reality. Every single word that we use in our thought process has a meaning that is abstract for it doesn't exist in the concrete world. We gave tree the name ‘tree’. It would have been same, had we given it some other name. We can’t speak or think without alluding to certain established meanings---meanings that haven’t been defined by us in persons. Who says what must be understood with the word ‘language’? I did not. Yet, I am talking about it by using words whose meanings have been established even before I uttered the first syllable.  A certain state of arousal is anger but another with same degree of disturbance is attraction. Ages before, our ancestors came across a conical rocky thing and called it a ‘hill’. At a little distance, they came across another thing that bore a likeness to the previous one. They called it a hill too---another hill. As they moved about, they came across many more such conical rocky things. They called all of them ‘hill’ and since they were more than one in number, they coined a plural for it. Later on they saw hills that though rocky were not bluish black but red in color. ‘Hills’ began to be of various colors in our memory. Then when we crafted tales, we built them around ‘hills’ of hitherto unseen colors. Yellow hills! Purple! Orange… The Mythical Hills… And then we came across deserts we saw hills that were not rocky. Again metaphorical extension was needed… Our language is our history. With every word that we speak or write, we live history of our advent. The essence of man was his language. It is his language that kept him united across divisions of races, cultures and societies throughout the many periods of grave inequalities. The first of the human societies had a language that provided us with first of our metaphors (the 'hill'. Since then we have only added or modified their metaphors. That link with the original---of being offspring of same mother, is alive in our language—the testimony of a shared paternity. In 1786, Sir William Jones, a British judge in Calcutta discovered that main languages of Europe are related to main languages of India. The similarity between Sanskrit and classical Greek and Latin was established. . A certain state of arousal is anger… but another with same degree of disturbance is attraction. With every word you speak, you carry a past of thousands of years with you.

The older a past is, the more powerful its present is. Often when you deny a certain tradition or epidemic of an opinion, you are time and again forced to resort to words that were built on the beliefs that you deny. Like I found out that the most celebrated atheist of English Canon (and my darling) Percy Bysshe Shelley has used the word ‘divine’ too generously. All that is beyond body consciousness has been historically linked to certain omnipotent and all-pervading concept, called God. Therefore if Shelley had to write about certain metaphysical attributes or experiences, he had to fall back on words that had ‘God’ as their source of origin. That’s why often as a writer or as a thinking individual, one feels trapped and caged. One often discovers irony between the said and intended when you sit down to deconstruct meaning of words. I am a radical feminist, yet when I  have to write about mankind as a whole I use word ‘MAN’ thinking that it takes the other half of humanity in account too, though the image that this word evokes in our mind is essentially that of a male. Jacques Derrida rightly says that all Western languages are irremediably ‘phallogocentric’. There lies the irony. No matter how much we defy the world and its tradition, language (or speech) always maintains that thread with ages old concepts that formed the first of knowledge systems. Therefore gender remains in the languages of feminists and, religion in that of atheists.

So, shall we give up in face of our all-pervading past? No.

The best of authors are those who contribute to the knowledge systems of the world and this means creativity with language. They create a language with new kind of metaphors. The reason why I like Gitanjali so much is because of that creativity with language. The poems are said to be hymns but on reading it, I felt that it is prayer to someone and something beyond the concept of ‘God’.  Many of it were mere sensations, that one can communicate to oneself but not to others. that it seeks to express what we feel but can’t make sense of.  Like I was reminded of those moments of optical illusions----what my heart felt at that precise moment when I felt distinguished. Tagore created a new range of metaphors.  His language though old in its syntax and phonology, was new in meanings. That’s why even Europe could like it.

They say the whole of our history has been nothing but quest to understand ourselves.  Therefore, our questions have remained much the same throughout the ages, although our answers have been different in different times. They say mind can never be silent (unless you are in a state of comatose). No matter how silent the surroundings are, there’d still be images in your mind or that eloquent ‘private speech’ that never waits for an audience to speak--goes on and on… Sometimes when you invest a lot of time with yourself, you may feel for a moment or longer stillness of a kind that you’d forget all of our past. Your language would be devoid of all those metaphors which remind you of your past. Then when you speak to yourself (the private speech) or pick up a pen. It would be a language of naked human self, which only knows quest not conquests.

A new kind of knowledge system can only be built by reaching that naked human self. This would mean understanding ourselves in a new vein. This would facilitate creation of a new set of metaphors. A new kind of language would come into existence. When sex would be stripped off gender, the word ‘Man’ would be replaced by something that would evoke picture of the other half of the humanity too. An androgynous society would come into existence. But I would not be alive to see that.

One day, after reading a bit about Brontes and that feverish passion in which the sisters wrote, I was struck with an odd idea. Why is all our literature such a celebration of abstract? Passion! And great deal of passion! I was conversing with a wise man about the essence of man and his evolutionary history. We moved around the idea of immortality, and concluded that if and when man would be able to avert his destruction through aging his abstracts would change in a dramatic fashion. Or if we are able to form a thriving colony in Mars then Homo Sapiens as we known them would be a thing of past. Such a Man with new sets of abstract and different kind of passions would not be able to identify the passions that we have hitherto lived with. Even if you try to read certain historical romances, you’d be at loss to understand many of the ideals of those ages that they celebrate. I could never understand chivalry and therefore, was much at loss about romantic love (the famous knight in shining armour tales). And then he and I were not talking of some shift in historical forces , what we were talking of would change the very fabric of our being.  The results are bound to be dramatic. What is one thing that doesn’t change with ages? That doesn’t get affected by historical forces, and whose meanings we are likely to cherish for longer periods of time. The answer is inanimate. In eternal time, our relationship with the inanimate alone holds significance. There have been very few works (I do not why) about Man’s relationship with inanimate or our understanding about it. They never talk of water and water beds, but shores and sails.Man can feel with the inanimate but can’t feel for it. Last month, I read Jean Paul Sartre’s Nausea. It tried to explore Man’s relationship with the inanimate. Some hours before, I had cut myself and knew naught about it until I saw a stain of blood on the paper I was writing. I was immediately transported to that image that Sartre depicted in his book. Four lines on a white paper, a splash of blood, together that makes a beautiful memory. My blood on that paper, just a stain… no message in blood! No love letter written in blood or threat given in a bloody fashion… just a proof that next to that white piece of paper there once sat a body that was warmed by blood that moved inside it with a remarkable sense of velocity… A clever piece of writing to present an image devoid of established metaphorical connotations. No abstract. A new line of thought! A new set of metaphors!

People who are able to do what I am talking of are mightiest of beings. You’ve power to rule the mind for only way to defeat a man is by words. Also, the only way to win over a man is by words. When you get into a man through this route you force him to recall your chosen words as he makes sense of the world. When he does that that he unknowingly sees things and says things like you did. The language that you built becomes the fundamental unit of his mind. His memory is of your words.

I am reminded of a conversation with a guy who was reading poetry of Nida Fazli. He told me how he would spend recess all by himself. I was of the same lot though for a different reason. My friends were in relationships and therefore every second that they could spare was spent with their beloveds, and it meant great degree of solitude for me. He did not only spend the recess alone but locked in washroom, often having his tiffin there. I asked him was he bullied. He said yes and mostly because he pissed them of. This made me look at his body. The fellow was too thin to even pose a serious challenge to me and therefore, I was forced to ask him: “How?” He said with some degree of attitude: “I insulted them in very creative ways. By the time they could understand what I meant, I would have slipped off from their fingers. Often I was hunted down for few things that I said days before.” I broke into laughter. I am still smiling as I recall his words. People who have command over language and can understand its semantic intricacies possess great power. Throughout the history of mankind, the only people who could live beyond a lifetime were people who had command over language. It essentially doesn’t mean writers. The geniuses of any discipline, be it literature or science, knew very well as to how to make themselves clear. The change makers are always creative people, and creative people by definition possess knowledge to tie words to the flashes of thought. The greatest leaders, dictators, tyrants, national heroes or even Prophets affected people through their speech, and it was there that they were unique from the masses. Hitler could make stir passions in thousands that gathered to hear him. Gandhi though shy by character, was challenging and exact in his words.

Invent your own language. Write about what you feel. Draw your own images. There are so many ‘hills’ to be crossed in our understanding of ourselves. Let us all try that together. Go about the world with your images, and see the world with your own mind… Hear others, read others but express yourself. In that case, your life would be a legacy of thoughts that needs no heirs to carry forward. The world would be your child. 

Call of the Sea

Few days ago, a friend put a little pouch in the palm of my hand, telling me that it’s a gift. I opened that shiny little purse with all eagerness for nothing excites my heart more than a beautifully presented gift. When I opened it, I found scores of tiny sea shells.  I broke into a dazzling smile (I am never judicious with my smile, in any case!) as it was one of the most thoughtful gifts that I have ever received. They were beautiful: tiny, elegant, patterned and mostly brown. They say that shells carry the sound of ocean, and that if you listen hard, you’d be able to hear it. I tried but found no truth in that widely circulated charming story. I look at them several times a day, and as I am writing this post, I am casting a glance on them every now and then. She said that she collected them from a beach on her visit to Mumbai. I was immediately transported to that scene where against a timid sun of the evening and audacious waves clashing against the surface, one walks on sand and hears the silence of the seas despite of its seemingly noisy waters. My heart picked up a pulse but just a moment later dropped two for though the image catered to my love for seas, it also brought alive that familiar yearning to see one---this yearning took hold of me and wrung peace out of my passionate heart. I kept imagining that scene, and the many colours of a moonlit night on loose sands…

My favourite poem is ODE TO THE WEST WIND. It is a beautiful lyric, and many critics call it to be the greatest of the English language. I may be blinded by the personal connotations that I have attached to the poem and therefore extol its beauty, but this can be said with objective certainty that not even the severest critic of Shelley can deny his genius of myth making. Shelley was a rebel and that too in every sense of the word! That powerful imagery of the childhood freedom, and instinctive joy that characterised that stage, I have felt all this (like you too must have had!). But you know how that childhood zeal and quest for freedom, and that belief that the world is your play field are presented? They are presented by drawing an analogy between them and sense of expansiveness that the powerful zephyr of the West Wind creates in the Mediterranean… How Shelley provides you with that overwhelming sensation of getting consumed by a superior force by using images of sky, wind, clouds and above all SEA… How he makes you uneasy by awakening those existential questions which lie dormant in your heart—that’s Poetic Genius!

Somehow sea has always proved to be a source for poetic inspiration.  Perhaps, because it is endless for the human eye!  No matter how hard you try to see, you’d never see the complete picture. There will always be something left for your imagination to work upon. Who likes a complete story? There must always be something left for you to brood upon and interpret. For so is our human existence. We live in a void and yet aren’t hollow. So beyond that horizon is a world for you to imagine, fantasise, conjecture and dare. And that’s where the beauty of the sea lies.

On some extremely sad yet captivating night I read David Copperfield’s Chapter 55 entitled ‘Tempest’ which had fantastic description of the sea as a destroyer. For hours I was consumed by the sensation that it created and kept on thinking again and again about those masses of water in that great water mass which carried everything away. Looking at waters into which you wish to drench in while being enveloped with gusts of moist wind, as roaring waves that dash against the coast blast your ears, while some unseen but potent energy makes sweeps over your body… and for one moment, just a brief moment, you forget everything but remember what is around and yet can’t recognize any of it… I do not know what it was, that I had imagined that night, and I can’t even tell how it felt. It comes back to me at some rare moments by some stimulation, as certain smell that I feel in my palate. That night my love for the seas was solemnised.

At some eternal moment during our evolutionary history, we became ‘self-aware’. We live in groups but love and mourn for the individual. We hunted in numbers but were artists in caves. Our questions are as much as external as internal. Literature is nothing but testimony of the ages of our self-awareness (as specie as well as an individual) and that’s the definition of literature that I believe in. It contains not only what we know but want to know. So we read about our achievements and celebrate our hopes and aspirations.  Indian literature is full of rivers and rains. It is a testimony of our self-sufficiency i.e., that we never needed to look beyond our subcontinent. We sang about monsoon and rivers, but never yearned for the sea. That ‘call of the sea’ that is a part of the earliest of the Anglo-Saxon poetry and which came down in English, and remained as a clarion call up till the nineteenth century, was never a part of our literature. India is a peninsular nation and therefore, this absence of sea as a force, a destroyer or a hope is quite surprising. We were a fortunate group for the nature provided us with the most fertile of lands on Earth, and therefore, we unlike Europe, never had pressing needs to make us desperately look for the ‘beyond’. So we never became raiders or in present context sailors. The closest that we came to sea was in the songs of the fishermen. Even the phenomenon of monsoon was discovered by the Arabs. If we had had bad soils with open seas around us, we would have definitely ventured into them (or crossed the Himalayas). Even our scholars never went outside India. Our sufficiency made us close and in long run a sick society. How else can you explain casteism , a system that is unique to India?

I would talk a little about caste and how absence of seas played a role in it. Caste is in the very fabric of the Hinduism, as we know it today. I am not here to debate on core principles of Hinduism and therefore defendants of the faith may rest in peace, for I am not listening to them. Hinduism as I know today, Hinduism at the time of what is called the Bengal Renaissance and Hinduism at the time of birth of our nationalist passions, was a religion structured on caste system. I have mentioned elsewhere too as to how stagnation breeds disease. We as people who didn’t move beyond our land for ages are bound to be chronically sick. People who do everything---from eating to sleeping, in strict accordance to caste dogmas, would not get into ships where the deck would force them to mingle with each other, and therefore, loose the sanctity of their caste. Therefore historians have identified specifically in Indian context a strange cultural phenomenon called, CROSSING THE SEAS. Some days back I read a text that said that ‘crossing the sea’ that embodied the fear of losing one’s caste and therefore, religion added significantly to dreadfulness of ‘kaala paani’ . In fact, our colonial masters played upon this fear of ours. While developing the penal settlements on Andaman and Nicobar Islands they banked on Indians’ fear of seas and sought to inspire such horror in us that would make disobeying them unthinkable for us.   I even read about a rebel king (who took part in the Revolt of 1857) who on learning that his death sentence had been commuted to deportation killed himself, for ‘crossing the seas’ inspired more fear in him than ‘crossing the bar’.  If you read about indentured labours you’d know about many who were duped into working overseas for even the most desperate of Indians would not agree to cross the sea and give up his caste. You might get some inkling about the role that this fear played in our society by reading about mathematician Ramanujan, who was denied a proper funeral because he had crossed the seas. Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy is based on ‘crossing the seas’ phenomenon. Read it and you’d understand what the absence of seas has done to our society.

Sea has lived in our collective human consciousness as a challenge which time and again we have tried to overcome. People have travelled such difficult waters and explored such far off lands with so limited resources that you are left in awe of our spirit. Read how humans spread to other land masses after the end of Ice Age and you’d understand what I am talking about. America was not exactly a new world but a lost one. People had known about it centuries before it was rediscovered but this knowledge was lost with passage of time. All this with just 10000 years of evolutionary history with us! Surely, what a piece of work is man!  Have you ever read any of the songs of sailors? That thirst for adventure… quest for liberty… hope for achievement and above all valiantly carrying your shroud as cloak over your shoulders … How beautiful and true to the nature of our specie! That challenge that those endless masses of water posed to us was just a minute fraction of the exponentially larger one that the immense unknown that still surrounds us does. That sense of littleness and extreme vulnerability in face of a Universe that seems to be bent on effacing us…  We still live with it. We have greatly overcome sea. But we have discovered space and sky and learnt how insignificant are we compared to their limitlessness. That explains why the terminology that was used in context of ocean navigation has been extended to that of sky and space.  We are still doing which we sought to do ages before when first of our vessels managed to cross a mass of water. Yes, it’s an eternal war that we are fighting: a never ending struggle with the nature that rejoices in killing us.

The reason why I am so attracted to sea is because it represents boundaries. Boundaries! Time and again we as humans living in this body of flesh and blood are reminded of them. How far can this physical self go?  A body isn’t just a vessel to contain you but often a cage to limit you. But then boundaries can be shifted or moved away, creating spaces where none were. We know there can be things beyond one’s body and therefore ‘transcendental’ exists in our vocabulary. I hope one day I’d experience something for which I would use this adjective. 

If you’ve something that inspires the same passions in you as sea does in me, tell me about it. If you do not have it, then search for it. Something that stimulates you to an extent that the senses fall short in number for truly capturing and taking in everything and, you desperately search for some other way to experience beyond what usually can be for you can’t let go even a minute part of it… Using your senses to the optimum level is a must for achieving knowledge about oneself.  They provide you with the best of moments to affirm to life which even a life time with metanarratives would not do. 

Meditations On Death

Gazing at the stars is one of the earliest forms of entertainment known to mankind-- yes, from as early as when we inhabited caves! On some silent nights, the noble savage must’ve looked up into those starlit skies and surely would’ve wondered with that insatiable curiosity which would eventually make him the best of the species of the Earth, as to what lies beyond that blue. Men bury their dead on earth yet throughout the ages they have looked for them in skies. He must've searched for his people too.There must have been fears of ghosts and spirits, and whatsoever supernatural his tribe might have invented to make reason of their surroundings to torment him; he would’ve pictured all of them.  Then certainly impermanence of life---his life, and the thought that what would become of him after death might’ve haunted him. Like his modern descendants, he would’ve also shrugged the thought off as it is too scaring to live with. But then he would have been restless for several minutes...

I have in many places mentioned as to how strongly consciousness has made us what we are. Man can think of the abstract, therefore he created death out of the dead. If you study the history of our civilization… turn over pages to see development of human psyche, you’d definitely come to a conclusion like I have, that Man’s life has throughout the ages been guided by the abstract not the concrete. And the greatest abstract living in our consciousness is death. Since most of my readers are very young---in early twenties and youth is characterized by a sort of arrogant denial of death, I doubt that whether you’ve really thought about death or not. Whether you have thought about it or not, death in its abstract form has lived with you since your birth.

Most of you are followers of a certain religion for atheists or the likes of them, the agnostics are very few in numbers in Indian scenario.  So if I want to address masses, I cannot escape talking about faiths. That’s why faith has been integral part of my posts. Every single religion of the world has stemmed out from death. None of the major faiths of the world assure you of a judgement in your lifetime, but definitely promise a reward or punishment in afterlife. Their philosophy is built on the premise that you’d die. Since the day of your christening or namkaran to that of your burial or cremation, there’d be a priest around, preparing and hoping for a comfortable after life for you. You grow up learning sacred verses and grow up incanting them fearing that you’d be otherwise punished by death or in death. In fact, Muslims have the concept of setting their ‘aakhirat’ right, and your greatest evils are believed to worsen it. So you see their whole lives are anchored towards death. In fact a thorough believer once told me a list of names that that defied god’s authority and consequently were killed early in life. Our belief is for the death. Most of the Indians do not think of iceberg when they talk of sinking of Titanic but that its makers were the people who challenged God. And since it is a Capital Sin and therefore, it was met with Capital Punishment, though it is a fact that none of those who died were makers of Titanic.

As I write this I am reminded of a conversation that I overheard a year ago. It would serve as a good example of how death is the guiding force of our religions, and therefore of our lives. This lady was expressing her grief for her only son had married a girl of different faith (she never accepted the couple in the family). “You sister”, said she to her listener “can at least hope that someone would baksh for you, but my daughter-in-law and son cannot even do that for my soul. I will never be in peace.” So in simplest terms, she didn’t reconcile with her son, for she would not receive right incantations after her death!

The first time I saw a dead body, I was twelve. I had sufficient intelligence about death to not to get horrified by the dead but even when people were elevating her to great heights merely because she was no more, I could not help but feel such revulsion from the sight that I never came near it even though the body was in our premises for several days. Since she was not an Indian citizen, there were many formalities to be completed, and one of it was taking pictures of her lifeless body. Later when I saw those pictures, I remember thinking how ugly she looked. Death and dead are always ugly. The only think that can make your body beautiful is the life force that resides in it. But somehow over the ages, we have glorified death to such extremes that people could even find face of the dead ‘happy’. Literature is replete with such angelic dead bodies.

As a child, I remember reading an eponymous story ‘BALGOBIN BHAGAT’. What remained in my little mind for longest was the titular character celebrating the death of his son, for he believed that his son had united with God while his poor daughter-in-law wailed with grief in some corner. I’ve already said that faiths have originated from death so it is necessary to think as to how our faiths have treated our knowledge about death. Hinduism has treated death as transitory phase, and therefore, you’d hardly find tales about long periods of mourning in its holy scriptures. But all Abrahamic religions regard death as final, and also there’s no concept of union with god. In all death is more melancholic in Abrahamic religions. I was much fond of the teleseries BOSTON LEGAL. In one of its episodes, Alan Shore asks his mad-cow stricken friend, Denny Crane as to whether he believes in afterlife or rebirth or not. Crane gave an affirmative as an answer while adding that otherwise is too great a hollow to live with. This brings me to the second major vein about my meditations about death that is impermanence of life. Since we are conscious of our impermanence and are sorrowful with the realization, we have invented or what believers would want to say, discovered afterlife. Think about it. 

I began with the noble savage because death is a savage realisation and has been passed down to the civilisation. Remember, the Stonehenge was for the dead! So you see this knowledge and brooding on death is in our genetic makeup. This morning I read a little about the collective human consciousness and how the fear of unknown rules us. What can be more unknown than what is fatal to know? So we are fearful of death. And all our philosophies are towards overcoming that fear. Yes the religion… the new fag word ‘spirituality’, yes! all to overcome that fear!

On one evening I began to think as to how exactly does one feel as that life force begins to drain out from his body? What does he feel, if he can? And above all what is usually the last thought as your consciousness dies? We do not know answers for any of these because they are few of those ever-lasting questions that are going to plague mankind for long. People who had near death experience say that they saw a kind of whiteness as they lose themselves. Most of them turned into thorough believers after such an experience as white is believed to be a divine colour. Scientists and psychologists are of opinions that as our systems successively shut down our mind sees a kind of blankness that they believe to be that reported whiteness. Up till now there has been little research on as to what exactly happens with your consciousness as you die. Death of Mind is a virgin area as far as our understanding is concerned. They say that if we somehow understand how our mind perceives death, we’d make a giant leap in understanding of our brain itself. So you see how important death as a question is for our specie!

After the discussion above, it would not come as a surprise to you that just a handful of writers have tried to write about the sensation of dying, and when I say writing about dying I mean the death of mind in the strictest sense of the word. The only noteworthy example that I can give you is of Tolstoy’s short story THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH. It is full of that sensation. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s CROSSING THE BAR is also a good work on death albeit it is not about sensation of dying.

Hitherto I have only talked of your own death but what about death of people who surround you? How does death of others affect one’s life? Let’s deepen our discussion now… So, what about others that die and you who sees them dying? If you read about people who try to cope up with loss of their loved ones you’d notice that all efforts are towards making senses of the deceased’s death. No matter what absurd conclusion you come down to but you must always be able to understand the loss. This is a psychological need which when left unattended leaves scars for life. I have this dictum in order to understand much of the mankind: Death is always hard for the living. Death must not be absurd else the living carry it to their graves. Just think for a moment, succumbing to some untreatable disease is still understandable but losing your people to some senseless accident, political strife or worse being used as a pawn in the state machinery, is simply too hard a morsel for human deglutition. Read Mahasweta Devi’s MOTHER OF 1084, and you’d understand what I mean by this that death ought not be absurd for the health of the living. If someone with a thriving life force dies because of poor roads, tires, cruel authorities or vested interests, it seems as if he was simply of no worth. To be negated to zero, is simply intolerable to man’s ego.

Since it is an irreversible change and mankind while been blessed with memory has also been cursed with nostalgia, so those who lose their dear ones to death search for some way to stay connected with them by whatever is left of them behind: their name, idea, belongings or as is the practice worldwide, their soul. So dead are remembered across all cultures and faiths.

For those of you who wish to really think and who think, you can never escape the enormity of death. All schools of philosophy have only moved around this question, and would continue to. If you really want to control your life by your free will, you must brood on what is death and since we are an egoistic lot, it would be incomplete a query without thinking on your death.  

In Quest of the God of Small Things

I have mentioned in one of my posts that as a thinker, I am greatly influenced by postmodernist theories.  Postmodernist theories stem out from the premise that the objective truth is impossible. We are born to a system and beyond which we can’t exist. Which other system is universal to all societies other than gender? Class. In third world countries and especially in the Asian societies, this class structure is very rigid. When I speak of class I do not mere talk of the purchasing capacity of a group or indulge in that Marxian debate of proletariat and bourgeoisie. Class, this is especially true for the Indian society, comes with a set of values. It is this distinction that forms the oeuvre of the social commentaries and novels of that kind. Class divides, and these divisions become stronger when they are overlapped by any other such system of differences. For instance, in India caste is easily the determinant of your class. Studies prove that the lowest of the castes are the poorest of the country. Want to get a better example for overlapping differences? Consider the term: ‘Black Poverty’ in the context of America. These overlapping differences segregate a group from the rest of the society and in some extreme cases, it leads to a point where the parts no longer see themselves with the whole. The class structure of our society aided by the notorious caste system has caused deeply rooted divisions in our society. Class, dear reader, is a poignant force. The greatest of revolutions of the History of the Modern World are result of aspirations or anger of a particular class. And in our country elections have always been an implicit form of class struggle. The middle-class has been an effective force in this LS election across the borders of religions and creed by being victims of propaganda, the elite class by funding parties and the lowest class by voting in it. The top level plays, middle class loves to get played and the lower class is usually played upon.

One of the major events of my life was the discovery of the Russian Literature. It is literature of a century and a half before, when Russia unlike the Western Europe was an absolutist regime, which is my favourite.  Russia might today be a super power or as a totalitarian regime of the Soviet Union a big player in the world politics, but then it was poor and underdeveloped though large enough to be of significance. For those who want to read difficult things, try CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, and I swear by my pen, that if yours is a brain that thinks, you’d never be able to get over with Dostoevsky. It had this character Sonya, who owing to the difficult circumstances of her family had to resort to prostitution.  Russia was a society of tradition and had the same set of rigid values about sexuality that the rest of Europe had (though not equal to the Victorians) yet the characters were more than accepting about her. I am not talking about the University enthusiasts and radicals, but the ladies who were little better than an illiterate. While talking to a wise man about the book and this beautiful oddity, he said to me that those who are at the lowest strata in the society are the most open-minded. My experience since then has assured me that there was wisdom in his words.

The society that gives its members a second chance and treat them with understanding especially those who are abused in as traumatic a manner as Sonya was, deserves applause. We Indians have so many taboos about sex that the only reason that I think it is tolerated is procreation. While reading an article about the great crusader of rights for sex-workers, Sunita, I read as to how difficult the integration of the victims of sex-slavery is to the very society that at first abused them. The only examples of successful integration and that includes having a partner, were from the lowest strata of the society.  They were the people who worked with or and in some cases, married them.

I came to a conclusion. Taboos or any such abusive outlook only exist where they can be afforded to. If you do not have the luxury to entertain them, you’d not. Look at the figures of the victims of domestic violence, the majority of them who spoke against it were women who struggled to make ends meet.  I’ll give you another example, and this one is bang on. The first of the thirteen British colonies was planted in North America in the early decades of the sixteenth century. If you read the early history of the continent and how Europeans tried to survive in the wilderness of Prairies, you’d find heart rending tales of survival. What kind of society can be formed where you have to start from the scratch? I’d tell you one thing and you’d understand as to how hard America was: America was a land to be deported to for crimes. Now let’s get back to my question. The answer is very simple when you start from the scratch you have no time to entertain warts.  And so, marriages in America were arrangements, and also theirs were the first of the ladies to walk out of bad marriages. What would be the base of the society whose members have no possessions? They’d have nothing to guard and everything to earn, and to them ability is the only answer. So they were the first to have the feminist movements, divorce and concept of American dream (i.e equal start for everyone).  If you’ve read David Copperfield you’d recall that even a woman like Emily who had been totally lost by Victorian standards, could live with dignity and appreciation in the far-off land of Australia.

There’s this person of whom I am reminded of as I talk of lesser of the beings. I met her few months before and she won brownie points from me when I heard that despite of being an orphan, poor and uneducated the lady had guts to leave her alcoholic husband. Marriage, dear reader because of the importance that mankind has given to this institution, is quite a determinant of your character. The reason why you enter into it, why you stay in it and how you function while being in it, tells a lot about what a man or woman thinks of himself / herself. I’ve found best marriages in that stratum of the society. I am reminded of someone else too. This one came to take his aunt from our place one day, and in the fashion of those wagging tongues of the gossips, I picked up that he had married a woman of different faith. I could not help liking him for my diary records at least two love affairs that ended because the lovers belonged to different faiths and castes.

One of the many reasons as to why this class of the social structure is so accepting and accommodating is this that they move. This movement is not only physical but mental. A commendable feature of the otherwise saddening phenomenon of rural to urban migration is that these migrants when they come to a new society lead their lives entirely on their rules. Community might inspire words like ‘belonging’ in you, but it is beyond a second thought, in practice an enclosure.

I began by talking about elections and shall resort again to it. The power to vote is the best assurance of security that a state can provide to its citizens. No matter what wonderful connotation that people may attach to the Constitution like that it is the instrument of their empowerment or the result of their values and ideals, it is best defined as a security against the exploitation. This is the definition that I believe in. In practice, our judicial system (since we are talking about exploitation alone) is class conscious. I don’t say that poor aren’t given justice but they’re not allowed to overcome victimization. The extremely time consuming nature of our judiciary contributes greatly to it. Do you want a proof of it? Just see the number of under trials. They are a large number but they are small things for the state to be bothered about.

I am no authority on politics, my fame rests only on my good sense. I have grown up hoping for a better India, and comparing ourselves with those who are better off. I have learnt that the only parameter for evaluating a country’s state is the state of its citizens. Ours is deplorable.  Majority of Indians struggle to make ends meet, and so all our economic policies must be chiefly aimed at them. They say India is a land of resources, but I say, India is the resource. The only resource that a country can’t do away with in order to survive is the human resource. Yes, those large figures but small things! Rest everything, natural gas, petroleum, coal, flora or fauna is secondary. India’s large population is not a problem. Just a convenient excuse for all maladministration and chaos that we choose to live with! We do not invest in our human resource. We do not tend to those small things.  I read a lot about communism for almost a year, before coming to a conclusion that it talked more of domesticated animals than a thinking man. This quite naturally led me to think of something that’s the opposite of it.  A friend of mine is an active supporter of capitalism and he advocated capitalism for India. Most of us have grown up seeing the prosperity of America and have developed a favoured outlook towards it which I suspect is the case with my friend. On paper, capitalism makes sense. But remember one thing when you talk of capitalism: It is never just about the business. Big capitalists have always been king makers, and so do not be surprised if you find major parties taking hefty funds from prominent business groups. I would always have problem if my leaders are influenced by anyone but me. The result is not surprisingly, that the world’s largest democracy is the most people-unfriendly too.

A little time before when the newly formed NDA government released its railway budget, our gardener came one morning looking disgusted. My mother questioned him. He told her that now he had to think thrice before taking his family to his parental village. With the great hike in fares, it was impossible for his family of six to make more than two visits in a year. It is never easy to survive in a city for an emigrant for the cost of living is usually high. A cousin with marked apathy towards the fellow remarked that he should’ve never brought his family with him. For haven’t wives and children lived with their in-laws and grandparents respectively before? Let’s keep the fact that an urban setting provides better educational and health care facilities aside for a while, and think again what we are truly asking from the man. How can you possible ask a man to live for months without his family, and to become nothing but an ATM for them?  Then they complain about the rise in crimes and especially the sexual ones. Sex is a great relief and recreation. If you keep their partners away and continue to suffocate them with that pressure of urban life without a release, these sexual crimes are bound to happen. I know that rise in fares is justified and as they said necessary too. But there’s larger truth to every policy or political move. It is always about people.

To think that someone is lesser than you merely because he or she does not have as fancy a life as you have, tells that you’re incapable of reason. I am neither less than any man who sits in an SUV nor more than any one who walks for miles because he can’t afford a ride. The only thing for which you are allowed to be proud of is your character. Nothing else… 

I have worked in an NGO and, have seen families leave their children in shelter-homes because they are not able to provide for them. It is heart rending to see that desperation and helplessness. I am neither a charitable person nor kind. But I am just. Of all the forms of justice known to societies the most underrated ones are economic and social justices. India of my dreams is a just society. By denying that god of small things, we’ve given birth to devils. Let’s hope we are not devoured by them.

The Rhymes of a Lover

The air is sharp as windy spirits howl at my door.

And the sky is soon overcast with every cloud being lured,

To thaw loud enough to deafen, and blind as it turns black from azure.

I recognize the familiar conspiracy: “Many a battle was fought on sunny days,

But lovers always have only the tempests to grace.”

It’s the hour, the pendulum tells me. You’d say it’s not wise,

But I’d go as promised, for a man is sized

To his little finger if love can’t make him rise.

I’ve gathered some blossoms for her as you see it lying there!

A lovely corsage to rest on her vibrant ginger hair!

Forgive me for being dandy, but a little powder is a want

A man must always look at himself—make additions to his charms!

Before he suitably takes his place in his lady’s arms!

I see, you’ve been looking at my stump. Yes! I am maimed.

Because Sir, they always punish the body, if souls are untamed!

Since you’ve stayed so long, I guess you’ve been hearing of my melody,

I sing not of wars, strife or heroes---that’s a capital perjury!

I play the cries of new-borns. Not of wounds but recovery!

I quench that innate thirst- to be, to have and to make enough,

In celebration of your being! Sir, I sing of love.

You can’t hear it today for I am in haste. You see, she’s on road.

It’s of no use to reason, to dissuade and goad

Me to not to go!  For me of all the men, you can’t hold.

Many a man has died of sickness, wounds and scourge.

I’ll end best! Sir, there’s no greater glory than to die of love.

I do not sing of dividing of rivers and, more,

For they can’t divide waters but divide oars.

Nor we would ascend to heavens, or examine sores

Of the sinned spirits. It is too great to talk of death.

And so am I for my fame would in the living rest.

Oh! So you wish to accompany me? Then,

Let’s go! She says that I don’t have enough friends.

The introduction with you, would make some amends.

She’ll know that I have not abandoned the world.

Though Sir, I believe, she’s for me, one soul enough.

Be careful and wade through the water! It’s slyly seeping through our feet

You see that fence across! There, we had our first meet.

Our eyes met, cheeks blushed, and then the smiles would greet,

There after each other.  It was there that I came to recognize

That she didn't worship my god, and forever kept that recognition tossed aside.

The music that you hear is from that corner-----by that lone tree!

The merriest place, I knew! It was the shed for many of our clandestine sprees.

 For lovers are nowhere happier than in bed---- it now sings an elegy.

I see you raise brows. You must be an Indian—denying but rough!

My friend! Love without desire is as degenerate as desire without love.

Look, we have come to the square.  The tempests still rage,

And if you look at the sky Sir, it’s not likely, in anytime, to assuage.

Do not mistake the anxiety on my visage.

I fear not for me, but with deepening of darkness, she’d be terrified,

She is alone and lonely, and I must run to be there to pacify.

Ah Sir! Come see, this was where I gathered her after she broke into pieces,

Into my arms.  And declared, of all for me, she is it

The heavenly apple, courteous banana and deceptive peaches!

Love Sir, though it unites, is a plural.

It is tactile, loud and above all, preconditioned to be mutual.

We have reached. Just a walk more! But I see you are unclear,

Oh it is just the lightening that wears

One’s courage. C’mon! Jump over the fence and come here.

But seeing his companion shocked and paralyzed

He abandoned him, and moved alone towards the graveyard, on his right.

He mutely watched as a pathetic soul walked upon those yellow pestilence-stricken paths,

He saw him sit down as he placed the wreath, and end his pilgrimage,

As the blades of fallen leaves were carried away, the timid moon read her epitaph:

“Love is neither death nor life,

Neither unbroken peace nor continuous strife,

It mounts from little to reach much,

For love is to live with and for something, which death can touch.”

Beyond What Is A Man And What Must Be A Woman

NOTICE: Yes, it is long for it wasn't meant to be a nursery rhyme. Do not read it if you are foolish or coward or obedient for it might cause your blood pressure to shoot to dangerous levels.  

We all grow up under a collective unit as children and get divided into a man or woman only in our adolescence. While the puberty widens our definition of our body,  the identification by gender narrows the scope of it. I grew up in an extremely patriarchal family but studied in a co-ed school, which I believe, was the saving grace of my life. Therefore in an ironical way my greatest friends are boys.

During the last year of my school life, when discussions over my future became a regular affair I realized how strong gender is and how strongly is it embedded in our minds. This hit me as a strong blow for before this I had never believed that the world can be unjust to me (we all live with myths about ourselves!) . Whatever I read or saw or heard, I could not help but notice sexism. To me the world had suddenly become an awful place to live in. I felt that there are not only two major divisions in humanity but two entirely different worlds coexisting on the same planet---one so idealized… so dominant that the other has been pushed to the periphery! My newly gender conscious mind, noticed for the first time that all ad films show women standing by the dining table while their family members ate. This standing by the side phenomenon no matter what brilliant digestive reason one attributes it to was a revolting sight for me. As the days passed, the fact that in spite of being able bodied, I was immobile like an invalid started to haunt me. I have already told you that I think hard, and therefore wrung my grey matter for next two years to make sense of gender. Like many beginners, for a long time, I revolved around that preliminary protection clause that has justified belittling of women since centuries. If you are a good reader you’d have come across sentences like he took her into his protection.  

One fine morning while putting clothes over the line, it occurred to me that to protect means to say that the protected is vulnerable and therefore, can be exploited. Protection implicitly declares a potent possibility of exploitation. And this is not just a semantic inaccuracy but I believe a philosophical shortcoming. Textbooks define gender in different but insufficient terms and since I do not beat about the bush, I’d be very exact in its definition: Gender is a philosophy. And like all major philosophies of life affirmation, it draws sanction from fear. Fear that you’d be destroyed if you choose to be otherwise than what is espoused. Alternative will be frowned upon, threatened and excommunicated. That explains 377.

My heart soon overflowed with disgust against the whole world. Since there is no alternative world where I can live in, my hatred against the existing one made me to increasingly withdraw from all social conventions. I remember how at nights I had found it hard to sleep and stared at walls up till dawn. Happiness includes positive thoughts. I was entertaining none of those. I  was sad and convinced that life is beyond repair. Marquez says that everyone whether satisfied or dissatisfied has a secret life. If I have to tell you what was mine at that time, I’d use three words: distrustful, cynical and hateful. Ya! I was melancholic. In the mornings the newspapers would be full of instances of violence against women and that only made the world more hateful for me. Violence against women has always existed in large measures in the society but it had never been so much discussed nor so greatly reported. In a way, this has been the best of times for women. Anyway, protection question was bound to stay with me for a long time. I even read an article that described the paranoia over sexual violence by saying that we live with rape schedule (that our lives are guided by the fear of being raped). One morning I began to think what if men were similarly under the threat of castration? Will they be confined to their houses and think of themselves as an invalid as I did?  That something can be destroyed is a reason enough to not to let it grow?

Time eventually provided answer to my ‘protection’ question but in a very tragic way. It relieved my mind greatly but I shall always be sorry for the medium in which some peace was restored to my troubled heart. It so happened that a friend's brother had been missing since days. He had gone to a relative's and in spite of being warned took a bus at night. After informing his parents on phone that he was coming back, nothing was heard of him. His body was finally found on a route that the bus wasn't taking which implied that he had fallen prey to those gangs of highway thieves. He was a man and yet was exploited. 

I realized that 'Protection' is a fancy word. It might fan the vanity of one in power and saves the vulnerable the trouble of looking over her shoulders, but it is fundamentally flawed. Self-defence is what we are born with and anything that promises more than that is making a fool of you. Have you ever tried to raise a toddler into air? If yes, you’d have noticed how tightly he grasps your hand so that he doesn't fall. Self-defence is our innate tendency. When you do not defend yourself or are denied of that birth right, the result is, quite naturally--lawlessness in the society, as is the case with India. This self-defence argument is in fact the basis of gun laws in many nations. The state can’t protect every citizen. The family can’t protect an individual. And therefore I concluded that ‘protection’ is a misnomer. But this was just the beginning for me for when you try to reason with something as invasive as gender making inquiries is rather a lifelong phenomenon. The more I thought, the more miserable I became. I suffered. It was the days when I stopped maintaining a journal. My entries became irregular for my heart was full with despondency so great that I could not talk of myself truthfully and for the record, I’d die before being dishonest with my pen. 

"The world has always been divided into masculine and feminine", said I to myself. This is ancient but since I do not believe in eternal recurrence, there must’ve been an origin. Therefore I examined many prevailing philosophies with which we tend to make sense of our existence to understand how it began. I discovered not surprisingly considering the state of the society, every single one of them to be greatly sexist in their concepts. This necessitates a short discussion over religions. All Abrahamic religions glorify the status of the obedient wives while warning that when women are left to themselves they err like Eve who led to the Fall. The Bible even says that the Satan approached Eve because she was weaker of the two sexes. This was as bad as Manusmriti. As a teenager, I had asked my father as to why some Islamic states believe that the statement of one man equals that of two women.  To this he had replied that women are emotional. I would not get into those debates of supremacy of heart over mind, but in this case, what I deduced was that it sugar coated the fact that it held women as dishonest. Abrahamic religions mention scores of prophets. In Islam the figure is above lakhs and then there are four esteemed prophets-Moses, David, Jesus and Mohammad, but none of those lakhs of prophets was a woman. It seems like God has been partial to a particular sex for making all divine revelations. Once I sneaked into a philosophy class where they were discussing Descartes. The professor said that we have vision of an ideal supreme self. That ideal self is God. They say, God is projection of human ego into the Universe. That ego is invariably a male.

Every marginalized community has always looked back to history, dwelt in its facts and tried to ascertain the causes of the social injustice done to them. Similarly as my abhorrence for gender roles increased, I began to look into history to understand the exact origins of this philosophy. I began with this premise:  the Noble Savage wasn't a chauvinist. This is supported by the fact that the tribal societies always had greater gender equality. Many tribal societies living in India had been unknown to sexual violence until independent India introduced them to it. That means they never had those foolish ideas of 'protection'.  Let's not forget that the great river Amazon was named after seeing women warriors on its banks. I went for Marx too. The Marxist History which claims that history is progressive and would culminate at a point, says that the primitive society was the society of Mothers' Rights. It remained a mystery to Marx as to how that ideal primitive society was converted to that of Father's Rights. Marx believed that sexual monopoly had its origins with that of private property. When a piece of land was owned, its master demanded that it must be his children who should reap the harvest. Therefore the woman must belong only to him. So, sexual monopoly was an important event in the history, and perhaps the single greatest contributor to the eventual domination of the philosophy of gender. And then not to mention, these confined ladies bore children by scores. As nurturing increasingly became job of mothers and only mothers', little time could be devoted to anything else. Virginia Woolf rightly aims at this in her classic essay A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN when she asks women to have babies by twos not tens. (Read it and I give you my word you’d be give a feast to your mind.) I remember, I wrote somewhere that birth control has been single greatest contributor in women’s movements.

As a thinker, I have been greatly influenced by postmodernist studies but I do not deny that the grand tradition of which T.S Eliot talked of is a potent force if not in our literature then definitely in our psyche. The figures that attract us-of whom we talk of—aren’t they gender stereotypes? Think please. What does our history and our culture and, the dead part of it—the literature offers us? We as Indians have no heroines who left their husbands or took many lovers. Since I believe marriage as an institution represents the most concrete form of philosophy of gender, I have only searched for instances where women walked out of their marriage. And I must tell you we have no significant examples of it. One of my Hindu friends was of opinion that Draupadi was what I have been searching for. Draupadi is definitely one of the mightiest achievements of our culture but she, if you read the Mahabharata well, carries within her the seeds of that sexual monopoly I’ve talked of. She is in a way the best example of what I am trying to establish. Draupadi though took different husbands in turn, was an eternal virgin. That’s the material point. In cultures of virginity like ours, this is important to note that are heroines have always been sexually pure. We live still in that centuries old ideals of sexual purity and this can be gauged in phrases that we use like ‘outraging her modesty’. In one of those many readings it occurred to me that Paganism has been more liberal to women than any of our monotheistic faiths. We grow up with tales about sexual monopoly over women. You take a wife. I have to yet come across a sentence that said she took a husband. 

 On a journey on a train, I saw a man sitting at the door of the carriage. I was tempted and wanted to similarly sit at the edge. This sight has been produced in motion pictures umpteen number of times. But there has always been a man at the door, never a woman. As a child, I was so fascinated with adventure tales that I wanted to be a swords-woman and sincerely dreamt of putting down heavy weights in duels. When you reach puberty that difference between physical strength of a girl and a boy starts to show strongly. One learns to accept that the boys are strong. I only stopped dreaming of becoming a swords-woman in my late adolescence. This made me think: Were the earliest of women suppressed by that sheer superior physical strength? H.G Wells in his HISTORY OF THE WORLD tells about some other specie of genus homo who lived in tribes and as to how when one of these tribes would attack the other, females would be abducted so that victors have necessary mediums to increase their numbers. If Wells is factually correct then subjugation of women as an event in history was a very early occurrence. Is muscle strength a determinant of a sex’s supremacy? The answer came in a moment of inspiration. I smiled as I took my pen in hand and wrote this down: Elephants are any day stronger than humans but humans rule the planet.

Gender is abusive. To both the sexes. While it weakens women, it denies tenderness to men. Since the law of a nation represents the psyche of its people, it becomes necessary to see how law in practice has gender as its guiding force. Since men are believed to be aggressive and score low on warmth traits, the custody of a child is rarely given to the father. Last year while conducting a psychology experiment, I found that not even 30% of the sample attributed warmth traits to men. If you want to see how gender abuses men just take a look at divorce cases. I never believed in those grand tales about motherhood. Parents no matter what revered position they occupy in our Asian grand tradition see their children as an extension of their own selves. Psychologists have noted that notions of power have a lot to do with parenthood. I know I am digressing but the point I’m trying to make is that the motherhood is not divine. The philosophy of gender has glorified motherhood so greatly that father has been reduced to nothing but a material provider, and at hand security guard. 

No matter what divine status we attribute to womankind, the truth is that that none of those grand narratives that we grow up with treats them as equals. I have a high self-esteem and ardently in love with myself. If anything said, believed or practised belittles me, I'd discard it that very moment. When you question even one aspect of the system that you are born into, very soon you’d begin to question every other aspect too.  I never thought that taking the course of feminism would one day leave me as a borderline nihilist. The best part about thinking about a woman to be equal to a man in all terms is that you also begin to take a man equal to another, beyond the divisions of class, race, religion and caste. It certainly makes you a better person.

While crossing the I.T square, I saw a couple making queries to a tempo driver about a ride. While the man negotiated, the woman stayed behind. I felt a fire in the pit of my stomach and I realized how dangerously I had begun to hate gender. It was time to come to an understanding about the storms that had been raging in my mind for almost two years. What was that I sought to establish? The fact is that I hoped for a world beyond what is a man and what must be a woman, is because I want my identity to be exclusive of the many notions that comes with my biological capabilities. 

 A sensible creature once said to me: “Nida, gender is in the very fabric of the society. You may be the best of the specie but still you’d be defined in words as half-witted as a ‘woman’”. I hate to admit this but he was right. We all see the world the way it is and then think how it ought to be and finally are disgusted by the chasm between the two. This helplessness and disappointment over belonging to a part that is beyond repair is one of the greatest sufferings ever known to the mankind. I wanted to be argumentative not passionate in this entry, but let me tell you, as a friend, it has been a painful and lonely journey. I took it because I want to live a life stripped off illusions, and become a self-sufficient being. I want to be honest and just, and free. Gender doesn't let you to be any of the three. But for the record, I am fine now. 

Gender as a philosophy originated through some historical forces, and became dominant by grand narratives that led to foundation of monotheistic faiths. I conclude by hoping in good faith that a millennium or two later this philosophy with perhaps similar play of some historical forces would be supplanted by something that is inclusive of individuals not divisive into types.

Of Beauty And Its Beholders

She was trying to catch air within her palms and tried to intimidate her foe in her language. This is the best part of watching over a toddler. One can't help but get amused by their animism (associating every non-living things with the characteristics of a living). I have observed for I have never lacked babies to play with that all babies see air as their adversary but it was an experience of a much disturbed night that has made this quixotic chivalry very special to me.

Years ago, on one September night there was a baby in my house.  His mother was sleeping like a stone for she had worn herself out by the day's work but he had no inclination to imitate her. He climbed up and then down her, and crawled all over the bed. His crib was too small for him to exercise his talents, and on seeing the width and enormity of the bed he was delighted .I had to watch over him for I feared that he would fall down from the bed in his jamboree over his new found freedom. Very soon the lion had explored his territory and on being satisfied decided to direct his attention in some other direction. So he began to babble and throw fists into the air. It appeared like he was challenging some invisible forces for a duel. I was engaged. This memory would've induced feelings of a completely different nature in me had the cruelty of forcing a drowsy head to stay awake wasn't adequately compensated by the musical laughter of that little Don Quixote. A child's laughter is the most melodious of all sounds that the human ear can hear.

As I thought about him while I watched her reenacting the same tricks, I said to myself that this was beauty. And beauty always engages. I remember a classroom discussion over beauty. Khushwant Singh in his 'A Portrait of Lady' says about his grandmother whose pen portrait he was drawing that she was 'not pretty but beautiful'. And so we discussed that day what beauty is. Our teacher said that beauty has spiritual component attached to it and that differentiates it from what is mere pretty. I have always had reservations with the use of word 'spiritual' which is rather a favorite of literary critics. It is a kind of an umbrella term for anything that arouses emotions whose nature can't be identified. English as a language may enjoy many distinctions but even its most ardent admirer can't pride her for semantic correctness. This distinction must be reserved for other European languages. Perhaps the correct word for that other component is 'soulfulness'. Spirits are invoked but it is soul that can be touched.

Beauty must beyond anything, tranquilize. It must be hollow enough to dive in but not vacuous. So there must be something that holds you--the nature of which if can't be defined at least be identified. One of its easily identifiable characteristics is that it invites a second look. Secondly, even if only for a moment it must fill your heart with a sense of enormity by being invasive. That's why I said beauty involves the soul of the beholder.

Contrary to the popular beliefs, the eye for beauty is rather a widespread phenomenon. The only reason why the phrase is so greatly used for artists is because they are too flamboyant. This brings me to the third characteristic that is, it is personal. It could be a food joint where you had a good lunch after being lit on fire by hunger or a friend's face seen unexpectedly or sand-castles of childhood or many airy castles of adolescence! It reminds me of William Hazlitt who said in his On Going A Journey that on travelling one might encounter sights the associations with whom would be so extremely personal that the most worded of men would not be able to explain its importance to his companions. He tells how a certain river is important for him for he came to one of the most beautiful realizations of his life on the banks of it. One might've been feeling broken and saw a septuagenarian crossing a busy road or heard a child worry about not passing in a test while he suffers with a heartbreak...The next time when you see an elderly struggling with road, you'd be reminded of that moment and that grief, and since you survived it you know that the struggle on road is not a thing in passing. What would follow is a sense of enormity like any other creature would feel whose life is not just a moment and that makes us deduce the role of the autobiographical memory.

Our autobiographical memory is an important tool in our affairs with beauty. Beauty becomes from the beholder and is becoming of the beholder. I would not explain the epigram further for if the reader was earnest enough to survive the above paragraphs, he would not be lost to the meaning of my aphoristic conclusions. I need to tell you about the Prophet of Beauty, John Keats who gave to English Literature one of its most beautiful openings: 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever. I implore you to read it (the first Canto alone). I swear by my pen, you are going to quote it for the rest of your life. Keats is rightly soulful, indulging and personal (Keats's 'Endymion').

Can a face be beauty? Yes, if it tranquilizes, indulges and becomes personal. It all depends upon the meaning you attach to a sight. Humans are spectacular. I have my share of things of beauty and one of them is a man's face. He has a fine pair of eyes. I tend to look back at them and they have indulged me so much that I picked up my pen and tried to describe them but all my attempts to describe the impact those hooded eyes had on me were short of any significant success. Their beauty has become a 'bower' for me to resort to when I want to look for a face that is more than a figure for me. Since I've already said that beauty must be personal, the standards that social conventions set for us of what is beautiful are nothing but a dogma. It lacks that ethereal hollowness for one to fit in. Take this as a commandment: What doesn't involves you doesn't affects you. Therefore, Remedios the Beauty was not a beauty by convention (from my darling One Hundred Years Of Solitude). She never followed fashion and never dressed to be admired. In fact, Marquez has (quite brilliantly!) made no mention of her physical attributes. But those who tried to forcibly touch her like the man who peeped in to see her bathe, died. When you do not attach your personal legend to the sights that arouse you, what you gain is nothing but a complete vacuum or as in this case death. You can run behind a pretty face but what stays by you is beauty.

I am not going to end this blog by saying that you must go and seek those moments.with beauty. You already do that but you had been hitherto oblivious to it. But next time when you'd indulge into beauty you'd be reminded of this blog and then perhaps for a moment you'd look for the characteristics that I pointed out in your thing of beauty. Some excesses of memory might sweeten this blog further to you. Its loveliness would increase. And then one day you might realize that what discussed beauty to you has in itself become A Thing Of Beauty. Then you'd smile on realizing that there's a quiet bower for your to sleep in and dream.