He leaned towards the brook and saw someone. He was like the many he had seen. He moved, and saw that he moved too. Until he understood that they moved together. He and him… That he was him. He stood up tall to that figure and, knew that he was seeing himself as whole. They smiled to each other, and he knew the Quest for the Self had begun.
I was thinking: People are not enough! So I looked into the mirror. It felt as if a stranger was looking at me. One hardly sees oneself—at least not enough! It is good to sometime just move a hand over your body, move all over it. Often there is a need to reach yourself----- with your hand. Since I am usually clad in pants or pajamas, I rarely see my legs. So, I decided that I must see my legs for one good time especially without a tap running over my head. Last time when the sight of my legs were a regular feature for me, were way back when I used to wear skirts to school. But that girl used to have broken knees. I rubbed my hand over that raw skin, and liked the sensation.
There is something that Michelangelo’s David and da Vinci’s Mona Lisa say, that even the most ingeniously minted words cannot. One presents a moment of great glory another of desolation… But both need a human face. ‘Heavenly jubilation’ and ‘sorrowful unto death’ lie on either side of the axis called the human body. Sight of a telling face of a man can bring us to those rare moments of our consciousness when we have to owe futility of our tongue. A language-less state! Extreme joys and extreme pains, and even those emotions that haven’t been sufficiently named, all can be felt through an expressive body. That’s why I think that sculpture as an art is the most successful in preserving its context.
Human body is symmetrical. Left is very much like the right. If one look into the mirror, right asserts left with such a success, that lateral inversion never disturbs him. In anywhere else it would disturb us but not on our body. Many have tried to explain our love for order by this natural condition that we are born with. That symphony, harmony and balance are our natural tendencies, and feel depressed when we are denied that. That the way we are made is the way we wish to create.
…
He was dead. In that drain that overflowed with mass of black stingy water, his eyes--- dark with vision, were so captivating. I had to look beyond him, for one could not just stop at him. He was a part, not the whole! He was grey—hairy and grey, and his greyness was so dark that it escaped black by a nick. I knew I was wearing a sweater of his colour underneath my coat. I pulled it a little from the side to establish the analogy. Perhaps a tone lighter, but it was definitely much like his bearing.
Colour of my costume--- colour of his body. Body is colour. Nobody can be colourless. Colourlessness is transparency. Body can’t be transparent.
I was discussing with a good man about democratization of meanings---that people must have a right to challenge myths. Our discussion led us to capitalistic cultures, and he told me how on Delhi metro station he found people looking so similar to one another that he felt like he was in some dystopian world where only copies exist. “I felt people were nothing but copies of copies” said he. He said it seemed like the Man has again been reduced to herds. Some weeks later, I went to a mall. My companion took me to a certain clothing outlet. Years back, I used to be similarly in awe of brands as people of my age were, but that time has really passed. This time I was cajoled to buy some quality clothes. There was this blue top that really looked good. Immediately, I looked at its price tag. Yes, I could afford it. I took it out of the stand with all intention to buy it when I noticed that six similar tops were hanging behind the one I had taken out of the array. An array of blue--- gave me blues… ‘Copies of copies’ echoed in my mind. I could no longer buy it.
‘There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them,’ declared Virginia Woolf in Orlando (1928), adding that ‘we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but [clothes] mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.’ Clothes are more than a physiological or as in the case of our specie, a psychological need. They are costumes through which we can become a part of the act. You must have the right ones and number of them, if you wish to have a role. These costumes carry with them a number of metaphors. Class, race and above all gender! Can there be a life outside costumes?
I read about a Victorian woman who for years dressed as a man with such a success, that it was only after her death that her true sex was discovered. The more I began to think, the more I felt that clothes and clothing fashions are forces to keep the existing social order in place. That we are either uniformed or costumed… That a proper costume must be sexed, and even classed. We have been culturally conditioned to think that a place where norms about sexual costumes are defied would be a dystopia, much like Eliot’s Wasteland. A man must be dressed to the likes of his gender and class to assure people that social order is still in place. A differently dressed person challenges their metaphors and narratives. That’s why transvestites always found it so hard to get accepted in the society. He/She not only owns his/her body but often makes you realize that you don’t own yours.
A bird has made her nest on my terrace and I often visit her with a bowl of water. It is good to see that she is not afraid of me. She keeps me company when I bathe in the rare suns of January. When I see her un-costumed, I feel that the only thing that perhaps make human lives so difficult is that it is more metaphorical than concrete. Her wings are much like my hands, but I cannot spread it far and wide as she does, because I am forced to care more about my breasts than my flight.
…
She was running all over the place with little care about her clothes that had become undone. She smiled, she laughed and threw kisses into air, but people were more concern with her navel. How many times in a day do you see people smile purely out of delight? Looking at her I thought that one would pay through his soul to see a delightful face .
After I reached puberty, I came to an understanding how public spaces are divided. Men would sometime shy away from looking at me, making me think often that there is some of invisible code that is asking me to rush inside. That before an individual, I am a Sex—and other sex. Why is there so much tension about body? Why don’t we grow up accepting and respecting one another’s bodies? Osho was of belief that children must be allowed to bathe together so that they do not get disturbed by their natural bodies. That knowledge of nakedness becomes neither an hour of guilty pleasure nor a sin.
Only children or lunatics can overcome diktats about clothing. They aren’t costumed so are not playing any part. They are ignorant about their natural state. And so is the well-dressed man who scorns at petty clothes of his poorer relations. The former is innocently ignorant but the latter is cunningly. Then who is wise? Perhaps the picture of a laughing Marilyn Monroe with her skirts flying away in all directions can give some answer... If ignorance is costumed then knowledge must be naked.
The thing about human body is that it is natural, and this is the crux of the matter. People are so ashamed of their bodies, that I think that given a chance to exist outside it they might gladly do it. Since throughout the ages women have been sexually objectified, therefore it wasn’t surprising to note that women are more ashamed of their bodies than men are. Therefore we see that women find it impossible to talk about something as natural as menstruation. In a lively conversation with some women, I came to know that few find it embarrassing to see a pregnant woman in public spaces. I did not know how to react to it. What can be embarrassing about pregnancy? I came to this world through one such pregnancy, and there’s no part of my being that I can be embarrassed about. What nonsense was this!
Once at school, our physical training instructor passed a womanly advice to our team. She said that girls must always carry a little stoop. The reason for it is not hard to guess i.e., to hide the woman’s breasts. The next morning when my best friend came towards me, I noticed his gait. Apart from the fact that he walked ruler straight, I also noticed the pelvic thrust in his posture. For several days after that I looked out for boys, only to see how they walked. Even the boys who had waist lengths of not more than six inches, walked with pelvic thrust. Before I could pile this observation as another example of male hegemony, I was arrested by another waist. This one wasn’t walking with pelvic thrust for he was too thin to support his tall frame with such a disregard to physics. But here was something else that was more telling about body politics than my notes about pelvic thrusts. This boy, in complete disregard to all fashion sense and under extreme pressure to assert his masculinity, was wearing low waist pants. I wrote that while women are sorry for their bodies, men are in constant pressure to have enough of it.
…
“Why did the Phantom of Opera hide behind a mask?” asked the Beauty while drawing circles in water.
The Beast went dry hearing this.
“Because he was ugly” moaned he and created a ripple.
“No! Because he thought he was ugly” said she running her hand over the surface of water.
And he was drenched.
It is impossible to achieve peace of mind without achieving some degree of understanding about your body. Plus there is a touch of independence and even assertiveness, when you owe your body in disregard to pressures of every other body. If beauty isn’t commanding then it isn’t beauty. Two years back I met a Buddhist lady. She was trying to find her way in the University and happened to ask me for directions. Since nuns wear pretty loose clothes, I cannot tell you exactly how her frame was, but she was pretty thin with small and easy shoulders. I liked the way she walked. I liked the way she disregarded those who were staring at her as if she was a piece from a museum. I dare say, if any of those staring gentlemen and ladies had approached her, she would have unsettled every nerve of theirs by her calm demeanour. That’s the peace with my body that I want to achieve (I haven’t yet!). That you must own your body and even if generations claim for it, you can stand on your toes and say “Go away! My Territory!”
I had a friend in school that used to make all sort of tattoos on her hands and give our physical trainer nightmares. I was in council then, but I never had the heart to check her for this. A friend of mine defiantly maintains a beard though many communal sections of his extended family taunt him of becoming a Muslim. It is as if Islam is just facial hair. Even if it’s a crazy fashion statement, the bottom line is always it’s one’s own body. People may be non-propertied, but they are never non-bodied. Considering the fact that private property as a social phenomenon appeared late in our history, owning one’s body is more historical a need than owning a piece of land. That if private property is the concrete expression of man’s ability to create something, then absolute right over his body is of his very existence.
…
“Do you know what Narcissus’ fault was?” asked the Alchemist.
Prufrock caught the question from a lady’s breast, and replied: “That he loved himself.”
The Alchemist mocked at that familiar self-denial: “No, that he could not love anyone else.”
This time, Prufrock heard it in his breast.
Man is born with two tendencies, said a good man to me. First he wants to create and secondly he wants to build relationships. And both stem out from the primary need of expression. What if both the tendencies operate together? The result could be greatest triumphs of the civilization.
One of the greatest and underrated forms of bodily expression is the sexual intercourse. That the greatest knowledge is the resolution between the bodies… It is as much important to accept other’s body as to accept yours. Acceptance can’t be forced therefore rape is not an expression of body. The reason why Ajanta and Ellora continue to live in our imaginations is not because of grand narrative about any God, but that they make us realize (even if it is just for some moments) as to how beautifully are we capable of expressing ourselves.
Greeks used to believe that love (implying erotic love) is man’s quest to achieve beauty. And as I wrote in my second post, a sense of beauty is prerequisite for intellect. Symmetry, synchronization and completeness—few attributes of beauty… Einstein had a great sense of music, an art that is perhaps most sensitive to order. Some days back, I read Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair. He was not even twenty when he published it. It was then that it struck to me that if intimacy can produce such beauty in verses then probably there is some truth in the Greek myths. Ever heard a woman’s breast being compared to white snails? Yes, that was Neruda at his best! I began to think why no writer comes up similarly with sensational metaphors about a man’s body. After Greeks, there’s perhaps no civilization who finds beauty in a man’s body, and I’m definitely hitting below the belt here.
…
“I measure my feet through sands” said the wanderer to his shadow.
The shadow smiled at him with a knowing look, “Body can be known only from a distance.”
The wanderer went to his print and leaned towards it. “But by whom?” asked the shadow.
The wanderer fell silent. He looked again at his print, and measured it by his stretched palm: “But body can be understood only by body.”
Shadow felt released by his wisdom, and enclosed him in his arms.
Moon gave them a kiss of silence and… closed its eyes.
Somehow the greatest writers of the world were those who could fully realise their bodies on paper. Their bodily experiences outlived them for centuries for they were able to inflict them on others. Like if it’s a touch of a careful hand then the reader must be swept with tactile sensations-----so much so that he coys! … May be like that fearless boyhood of Shelley’s West Wind…
Can a body communicate with a body in such a manner? That if it’s longing that I write about, then whosoever and whenever reads it is overcome with acute sense of loneliness and desolation. Something that they say happens when you read Dickinson. A good artist never shies away from his body. His art depends upon his understanding of it. Pain, anguish, distrust… Whatever twitches your hand, whoever trusts your hand and whosoever you trusted your hand with…
Why must the body carry you every time? Why not you carry it for some time?
The body demands an expression. I have too small and too polite a profile to convey the violence of my soul, but like everybody else I am also driven by a primeval need to communicate that havoc in some sense… That’s why I write. I like appreciation but (no offence!) I write primarily for my sanity. I can do away with all applauses save the one that I give to myself. I cannot do without that.
Man has an ontological need to achieve some sense of immortality---that he is not an easily forgettable moment in the geological time. An easy way to achieve this sense of immortality—the most general way is, to produce children. That if I state in the terminology of the context here, is to multiply your body. Those who have a more consuming idea of self tend to create children of mind, not just of body. This is what creative people or philosophers tend to do. Make you think similarly or force you to think differently. In that aspect, at least I want to be very fertile.
…
I was thinking: People are not enough! So I looked into the mirror. It felt as if a stranger was looking at me. One hardly sees oneself—at least not enough! It is good to sometime just move a hand over your body, move all over it. Often there is a need to reach yourself----- with your hand. Since I am usually clad in pants or pajamas, I rarely see my legs. So, I decided that I must see my legs for one good time especially without a tap running over my head. Last time when the sight of my legs were a regular feature for me, were way back when I used to wear skirts to school. But that girl used to have broken knees. I rubbed my hand over that raw skin, and liked the sensation.
There is something that Michelangelo’s David and da Vinci’s Mona Lisa say, that even the most ingeniously minted words cannot. One presents a moment of great glory another of desolation… But both need a human face. ‘Heavenly jubilation’ and ‘sorrowful unto death’ lie on either side of the axis called the human body. Sight of a telling face of a man can bring us to those rare moments of our consciousness when we have to owe futility of our tongue. A language-less state! Extreme joys and extreme pains, and even those emotions that haven’t been sufficiently named, all can be felt through an expressive body. That’s why I think that sculpture as an art is the most successful in preserving its context.
Human body is symmetrical. Left is very much like the right. If one look into the mirror, right asserts left with such a success, that lateral inversion never disturbs him. In anywhere else it would disturb us but not on our body. Many have tried to explain our love for order by this natural condition that we are born with. That symphony, harmony and balance are our natural tendencies, and feel depressed when we are denied that. That the way we are made is the way we wish to create.
…
He was dead. In that drain that overflowed with mass of black stingy water, his eyes--- dark with vision, were so captivating. I had to look beyond him, for one could not just stop at him. He was a part, not the whole! He was grey—hairy and grey, and his greyness was so dark that it escaped black by a nick. I knew I was wearing a sweater of his colour underneath my coat. I pulled it a little from the side to establish the analogy. Perhaps a tone lighter, but it was definitely much like his bearing.
Colour of my costume--- colour of his body. Body is colour. Nobody can be colourless. Colourlessness is transparency. Body can’t be transparent.
I was discussing with a good man about democratization of meanings---that people must have a right to challenge myths. Our discussion led us to capitalistic cultures, and he told me how on Delhi metro station he found people looking so similar to one another that he felt like he was in some dystopian world where only copies exist. “I felt people were nothing but copies of copies” said he. He said it seemed like the Man has again been reduced to herds. Some weeks later, I went to a mall. My companion took me to a certain clothing outlet. Years back, I used to be similarly in awe of brands as people of my age were, but that time has really passed. This time I was cajoled to buy some quality clothes. There was this blue top that really looked good. Immediately, I looked at its price tag. Yes, I could afford it. I took it out of the stand with all intention to buy it when I noticed that six similar tops were hanging behind the one I had taken out of the array. An array of blue--- gave me blues… ‘Copies of copies’ echoed in my mind. I could no longer buy it.
‘There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them,’ declared Virginia Woolf in Orlando (1928), adding that ‘we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but [clothes] mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.’ Clothes are more than a physiological or as in the case of our specie, a psychological need. They are costumes through which we can become a part of the act. You must have the right ones and number of them, if you wish to have a role. These costumes carry with them a number of metaphors. Class, race and above all gender! Can there be a life outside costumes?
I read about a Victorian woman who for years dressed as a man with such a success, that it was only after her death that her true sex was discovered. The more I began to think, the more I felt that clothes and clothing fashions are forces to keep the existing social order in place. That we are either uniformed or costumed… That a proper costume must be sexed, and even classed. We have been culturally conditioned to think that a place where norms about sexual costumes are defied would be a dystopia, much like Eliot’s Wasteland. A man must be dressed to the likes of his gender and class to assure people that social order is still in place. A differently dressed person challenges their metaphors and narratives. That’s why transvestites always found it so hard to get accepted in the society. He/She not only owns his/her body but often makes you realize that you don’t own yours.
A bird has made her nest on my terrace and I often visit her with a bowl of water. It is good to see that she is not afraid of me. She keeps me company when I bathe in the rare suns of January. When I see her un-costumed, I feel that the only thing that perhaps make human lives so difficult is that it is more metaphorical than concrete. Her wings are much like my hands, but I cannot spread it far and wide as she does, because I am forced to care more about my breasts than my flight.
…
She was running all over the place with little care about her clothes that had become undone. She smiled, she laughed and threw kisses into air, but people were more concern with her navel. How many times in a day do you see people smile purely out of delight? Looking at her I thought that one would pay through his soul to see a delightful face .
After I reached puberty, I came to an understanding how public spaces are divided. Men would sometime shy away from looking at me, making me think often that there is some of invisible code that is asking me to rush inside. That before an individual, I am a Sex—and other sex. Why is there so much tension about body? Why don’t we grow up accepting and respecting one another’s bodies? Osho was of belief that children must be allowed to bathe together so that they do not get disturbed by their natural bodies. That knowledge of nakedness becomes neither an hour of guilty pleasure nor a sin.
Only children or lunatics can overcome diktats about clothing. They aren’t costumed so are not playing any part. They are ignorant about their natural state. And so is the well-dressed man who scorns at petty clothes of his poorer relations. The former is innocently ignorant but the latter is cunningly. Then who is wise? Perhaps the picture of a laughing Marilyn Monroe with her skirts flying away in all directions can give some answer... If ignorance is costumed then knowledge must be naked.
The thing about human body is that it is natural, and this is the crux of the matter. People are so ashamed of their bodies, that I think that given a chance to exist outside it they might gladly do it. Since throughout the ages women have been sexually objectified, therefore it wasn’t surprising to note that women are more ashamed of their bodies than men are. Therefore we see that women find it impossible to talk about something as natural as menstruation. In a lively conversation with some women, I came to know that few find it embarrassing to see a pregnant woman in public spaces. I did not know how to react to it. What can be embarrassing about pregnancy? I came to this world through one such pregnancy, and there’s no part of my being that I can be embarrassed about. What nonsense was this!
Once at school, our physical training instructor passed a womanly advice to our team. She said that girls must always carry a little stoop. The reason for it is not hard to guess i.e., to hide the woman’s breasts. The next morning when my best friend came towards me, I noticed his gait. Apart from the fact that he walked ruler straight, I also noticed the pelvic thrust in his posture. For several days after that I looked out for boys, only to see how they walked. Even the boys who had waist lengths of not more than six inches, walked with pelvic thrust. Before I could pile this observation as another example of male hegemony, I was arrested by another waist. This one wasn’t walking with pelvic thrust for he was too thin to support his tall frame with such a disregard to physics. But here was something else that was more telling about body politics than my notes about pelvic thrusts. This boy, in complete disregard to all fashion sense and under extreme pressure to assert his masculinity, was wearing low waist pants. I wrote that while women are sorry for their bodies, men are in constant pressure to have enough of it.
…
“Why did the Phantom of Opera hide behind a mask?” asked the Beauty while drawing circles in water.
The Beast went dry hearing this.
“Because he was ugly” moaned he and created a ripple.
“No! Because he thought he was ugly” said she running her hand over the surface of water.
And he was drenched.
It is impossible to achieve peace of mind without achieving some degree of understanding about your body. Plus there is a touch of independence and even assertiveness, when you owe your body in disregard to pressures of every other body. If beauty isn’t commanding then it isn’t beauty. Two years back I met a Buddhist lady. She was trying to find her way in the University and happened to ask me for directions. Since nuns wear pretty loose clothes, I cannot tell you exactly how her frame was, but she was pretty thin with small and easy shoulders. I liked the way she walked. I liked the way she disregarded those who were staring at her as if she was a piece from a museum. I dare say, if any of those staring gentlemen and ladies had approached her, she would have unsettled every nerve of theirs by her calm demeanour. That’s the peace with my body that I want to achieve (I haven’t yet!). That you must own your body and even if generations claim for it, you can stand on your toes and say “Go away! My Territory!”
I had a friend in school that used to make all sort of tattoos on her hands and give our physical trainer nightmares. I was in council then, but I never had the heart to check her for this. A friend of mine defiantly maintains a beard though many communal sections of his extended family taunt him of becoming a Muslim. It is as if Islam is just facial hair. Even if it’s a crazy fashion statement, the bottom line is always it’s one’s own body. People may be non-propertied, but they are never non-bodied. Considering the fact that private property as a social phenomenon appeared late in our history, owning one’s body is more historical a need than owning a piece of land. That if private property is the concrete expression of man’s ability to create something, then absolute right over his body is of his very existence.
…
“Do you know what Narcissus’ fault was?” asked the Alchemist.
Prufrock caught the question from a lady’s breast, and replied: “That he loved himself.”
The Alchemist mocked at that familiar self-denial: “No, that he could not love anyone else.”
This time, Prufrock heard it in his breast.
Man is born with two tendencies, said a good man to me. First he wants to create and secondly he wants to build relationships. And both stem out from the primary need of expression. What if both the tendencies operate together? The result could be greatest triumphs of the civilization.
One of the greatest and underrated forms of bodily expression is the sexual intercourse. That the greatest knowledge is the resolution between the bodies… It is as much important to accept other’s body as to accept yours. Acceptance can’t be forced therefore rape is not an expression of body. The reason why Ajanta and Ellora continue to live in our imaginations is not because of grand narrative about any God, but that they make us realize (even if it is just for some moments) as to how beautifully are we capable of expressing ourselves.
Greeks used to believe that love (implying erotic love) is man’s quest to achieve beauty. And as I wrote in my second post, a sense of beauty is prerequisite for intellect. Symmetry, synchronization and completeness—few attributes of beauty… Einstein had a great sense of music, an art that is perhaps most sensitive to order. Some days back, I read Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair. He was not even twenty when he published it. It was then that it struck to me that if intimacy can produce such beauty in verses then probably there is some truth in the Greek myths. Ever heard a woman’s breast being compared to white snails? Yes, that was Neruda at his best! I began to think why no writer comes up similarly with sensational metaphors about a man’s body. After Greeks, there’s perhaps no civilization who finds beauty in a man’s body, and I’m definitely hitting below the belt here.
…
“I measure my feet through sands” said the wanderer to his shadow.
The shadow smiled at him with a knowing look, “Body can be known only from a distance.”
The wanderer went to his print and leaned towards it. “But by whom?” asked the shadow.
The wanderer fell silent. He looked again at his print, and measured it by his stretched palm: “But body can be understood only by body.”
Shadow felt released by his wisdom, and enclosed him in his arms.
Moon gave them a kiss of silence and… closed its eyes.
Somehow the greatest writers of the world were those who could fully realise their bodies on paper. Their bodily experiences outlived them for centuries for they were able to inflict them on others. Like if it’s a touch of a careful hand then the reader must be swept with tactile sensations-----so much so that he coys! … May be like that fearless boyhood of Shelley’s West Wind…
Can a body communicate with a body in such a manner? That if it’s longing that I write about, then whosoever and whenever reads it is overcome with acute sense of loneliness and desolation. Something that they say happens when you read Dickinson. A good artist never shies away from his body. His art depends upon his understanding of it. Pain, anguish, distrust… Whatever twitches your hand, whoever trusts your hand and whosoever you trusted your hand with…
Why must the body carry you every time? Why not you carry it for some time?
The body demands an expression. I have too small and too polite a profile to convey the violence of my soul, but like everybody else I am also driven by a primeval need to communicate that havoc in some sense… That’s why I write. I like appreciation but (no offence!) I write primarily for my sanity. I can do away with all applauses save the one that I give to myself. I cannot do without that.
Man has an ontological need to achieve some sense of immortality---that he is not an easily forgettable moment in the geological time. An easy way to achieve this sense of immortality—the most general way is, to produce children. That if I state in the terminology of the context here, is to multiply your body. Those who have a more consuming idea of self tend to create children of mind, not just of body. This is what creative people or philosophers tend to do. Make you think similarly or force you to think differently. In that aspect, at least I want to be very fertile.
…
