Definitely...Me

Residue

2010-07-21T18:29:00.007+05:30

We become attached to different things at different points in our lives: people, songs, artifacts, books. Like the seasons, our preferences change. While we are at most times in love with the general through the particular—for example, a book by Sartre would serve as our attachment to books, the particular book represents a lot more than the general thing (‘book’) it stands for. Though Ulysses is the name of a book, and the book is what we mean when we say ‘James Joyce’s Ulysses, what it brings to mind is probably a lot more than just the book. It suddenly connects us with Dublin, with a few movies based on the book, lots of things. And yet, for this entire multitude of connections and meaning, our preferences change, and at different times we would prefer different books—not the same.

This might be a preference for variety. This may indicate the presence of a lot many books/things to choose from. This may also indicate the general erosion in values once things/artifacts came to be mass-produced. (We still denote by the term, ‘art’ as those things which are not mass-produced; lately, art has come to be identified largely with ‘installation’ and for good reason.) This may indicate a lot many things, but we still attach some value to heirlooms and personal effects, such as an old mechanical watch handed over from our grandparents (for those lucky few who were affluent enough to possess a watch in the 1930s). Doubtless, these were the first mass-produced things, but these still have some value which we don’t attach to things “money can buy.” Of course, money can’t buy memories.

We hop from experience to experience, from sense to sense, and each day from sleep to sleep. Things pass through our hands, and for a time we enjoy them and find meaning in them. Often we want to linger; we want to glower in the feeling, and we elevate it by inscribing them in words, or taking pictures of it, or by otherwise translating it and consigning it to storage. These symbols, we are assured, ‘stand for the thing.’ But simultaneously, we butcher the moment. No matter what we invent to preserve a moment, no matter how much useful the technique is (a wedding album serves its purpose, especially when the relationship is in the doldrums), the moment is gone, and on most occasions, the person doing the ‘recording’ (‘archival’) misses the instant completely. For him there is no enjoyment, except perhaps professional satisfaction. (I am saddened by the entry of the ubiquitous camera—which can now record almost everything except the smells—into family life. What used to be a healthy way of togetherness has now become a tableau, predominated by concerns of lighting, framing, and how to exclude other people from the frame...and so on.)

The result of all this...is a residue (if at all we go back to those moments, which we hardly will, given that most of these ‘traces’ are immediately written to optical media, or stored on hard disks (—the portable hard-drive exists merely to serve this huge market for storing digital photographs). What really forces us to revisit is the frequency with which filesystem formats change or become obsolete; but CDFS has been around for more than 20 years and likely will stay; the real limit for good optical media would be, as the manufacturers claim, ‘100 years or more if stored in good conditions’—meaning, never. Why touch it if it can still be read?) The residues, for most of us who don’t write or read or visit art galleries all that often, are all electronic, and of very poor quality (it requires considerable mastery of the electronic gadgetry for the translation to be truly free of the observer’s presence), and serves only as a guarantee: I’ve been there, done that. Each new gadget seems to be just that—a way to secure our lives with the premise of storage. Cameras preserve our moments. What it does not preserve is the sanctity of life, our peace of mind. Instead of a nice evening doing nothing or reading a book or just looking around, we grapple with user interfaces, or manual controls, all in an effort to master a device which is supposed to ‘preserve’ our moments. And we have to be behind the lens, behind the contraption, to be preserving it. It is a cruel joke, an affront to our faculties as ‘wise’ men.

Each such step is a step away from life and from living. The collection of residues seem to be one of the principal objectives in our lives, especially as we all seem to be doing...nothing important. And each day, when you stop at the diary entry that summarizes expenses, you realize you’ve done nothing useful, and that you have collected...no meaningful residue.

[813]

Note: There remains some reformatting to be done, especially, moving those large parenthetical remarks to footnotes. This was getting too big for a journal entry, so I thought I might as well post.

To Raphael.

Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du lac (1974)

2010-07-20T04:45:00.012+05:30

This review has especially to do with one glaring omission in Tony Pipolo's incisive and inclusive treatment of Robert Bresson’s film Lancelot du lac in his book, Bresson: A Passion for Film (2010).

The book is excellent; it is perhaps the finest book ever written on a movie director. The attention to detail, even while focussing on the key issues, which have been recapitulated through years of discussion and agreement between such excellent admirers as Tarkovsky, Schrader, Sontag and others, is almost too good to be believed. Pipolo has not left loose ends about; above all, his rigour and excellent coverage impresses one most. Like Lancelot’s ‘delay’ in consummating his illicit affair with Guinevere, Pipolo has spent such a long time preparing this book that it shows—but the result, fortunately, is very beneficial to us readers.

At any event, my appreciation for the book is too much to be expressed in words. It is one of unqualified appreciation, as I feel there are (if at all) very few books which even approach this masterly work in terms of comprehensiveness, concision (yes, both), and focus. Like in Bresson’s works, the commonly occurring themes are identified and studied in detail, the patterns are brought out, and in the end it all goes down well in understanding Bresson the man; which is what the book sets out to achieve in the first place. The book does the job thoroughly well.

I would, however, take this opportunity to point out one glaring omission Pipolo made in his competent analysis of one of Bresson’s least favoured movies, Lancelot du lac, which also happens to be one of my favourite movies. As he winds his way through the existential maze Lancelot has made for himself and for the others, Pipolo seems to lose sight of one of the things he himself stresses in the analysis: the importance of materials and reality in Bresson’s films. Especially so in this movie, which resounds with ‘the overlapping sounds of clanging armour’ (a reference to Philippe Sarde’s masterly background score, the finest in any chivalry movie)—it seems Bresson has taken some pains to remind us that the materiality is what counts. There is no hint of any supernatural god—at least not in a way we would expect from a reading of the background material. The knights are real and their way of life is real. They kill as a matter of course; it is what they do best. The Round Table (it must be said that nowhere in the movie is there any suggestion of a formal association of knights; they present themselves as a ragtag assortment of rather polished villains with a few innocent ones caught in between—like for instance, Gawain) is a brotherhood of knights.

What is really shown in the film is that the knights have returned from an errand, a rather grandiose chase after the grail, and in the quest the purest among them, Galahad and Percival, have disappeared (or chosen not to return). Bresson makes no more demands from the viewer, that much is known to anyone who speaks English or French. He directly cuts into the guts of the story: the best of the knights, the invincible Lancelot, is carrying on a romance with the Queen, Guinevere. He has returned dissatisfied, and, in the absence of any other distractions, he is bent of renewing his earlier attentions. He is torn between his failure to attain the grail (knightly competence seemed inadequate to procure it); his duty to his fellow knights and to his kind, counterpoised with his all-consuming passion for Guinevere. He is not in a position to continue it physically even though he lusts after her; yet this is enough to undo his resolve to resort to a spiritual quest, which he by now realises, must be the true way to the grail.

Several questions open up at this point already, at least a few of which have not been considered by Pipolo. Lancelot may not really be interested in the grail—for he is a true “champion” knight, bloodthirsty, and by all reckoning, invincible in single combat. This alone might lead him to rather exclusive, selfish thoughts. Not much intelligence is needed (he is a very cunning person, for chivalry is a lot about cunning as well as technique) to see that his king is very much dependent on him.

Yet, he had quested for the grail and failed. In retaliation, did he perhaps finish off his compatriots himself? It is not revealed, but that may well have been the case. Whatever, it is quite possible that Lancelot is not very much interested in the grail.

Into middle age, Lancelot’s thoughts must have been slipping in the other direction (Arthur was well past this age and well into the 50s, hence his exhortation to Gawain, to “pray”). His former life, spent in bloodshed, was a failure. He could have naturally drifted on to the very comforting thought that he could do as he chose with Guinevere, who returned his affections. He was also a favourite of Arthur’s. In every way his position was enviable, yet he was most miserable. Deep within, he fought a losing battle with the different aspects of his personality—torn between loyalty, duty, and love. The end result is that he lies to everyone and keeps none of his promises. Yet, every one of his flawed promises (lies) is backed up by a delayed, yet conclusive action, fearsome in its destructiveness. He is the extreme exponent of the art of chivalry, a monster of his trade, and in modern terms, he had “overgrown the system.”

This, in essence, sums up my point. Chivalry, as a system, was the domain of the landowners, the rulers, the knights, the lords. The common public (the ones we used to identify Robin Hood with, in our early years of limited knowledge of complex English social class and structure) were kept away from these entertainments except as spectators. Yet, it was but a small matter for someone to come up with the idea of a bow and arrow, to perfect it, and then raze the entire rotten system to the ground. And that is the denouement of Lancelot du lac.

Armed with the moral righteousness of his position, Mordred raises an army from the common folk. All archers, it turns out—for he has no supporters among the knights, or perhaps, in his prudence, he saves all his remaining chivalrous friends from the stupidity of facing Lancelot. Instead, he deputes his lowly archers and challenges Arthur.

Little did Arthur know that Mordred, who had until then unsuccessfully tried to belong in a world in which he didn't fit in, had found allies to his liking. And chivalrous Arthur, bolstered by Lancelot’s submission and allegiance, marches off to field. He is greeted not by a row of knights but by a hail of arrows. In quick time, what remained of the brotherhood of knights is quickly finished off. In a breathtaking reinvention of the final battle, Bresson brings history and legend in tune with reality: as chivalry dies gasping, a new era, that of feudalism, announces its arrival, marshalled by the able hands of the puny, invisible distant archer, safe at his post, stringing his arrows to hurl at a massive but vulnerable foe from afar. The age of the projectile had arrived.

In the world of the arrow, it makes no difference if the arrowhead meets Lancelot, horse, armour, or tree-bark. It treats everything the same, with the same impassive coldness that would have done Lancelot proud. And with much the same efficacy, the arrow deals it out. An older technology is conclusively beaten by a newer technology: faster, cheaper, more agile, and deadly. What was once regarded as invincible is quickly defeated by a different force, a different medium, a different reality. The old must make way for the new, and in the event, there is no place for Lancelot’s doubts, or Guinevere’s conscious sacrifice, or Gawain’s innocence. Indeed, when history is made in letters of blood, there is no need to speak—or even think.

[1361]

***

Was very late when I started this—close to 04:00 am. Simply had to write this, because this point—which is not so much as referenced in Pipoli's excellent analysis—would have made it more complete. It seemed to me a glaring omission. Bresson is also offering an explanation of why religion went out of people's hearts in the first place. Or, how power corrupts the minds and drives out religion. For, flimsy as it proves in the end, chivalry was preserved purely as a bloodsport by those in power. For, in the end, as the archers prove convincingly, if the object is to kill, then the bow and arrow can kill much more easily, and safely. And when they do, the rules of the game change dramatically. One-to-one becomes 'free-for-all.'

Déjà vu

2010-05-05T03:50:00.032+05:30

—:{ To: Sajit+MMRHS }:—

_And to Raphael, for a reason_

She sensed his discomfort quite readily: he had travelled a bit but he didn’t like to see places. She put him at ease by handing him a little doll she’d made out of a toffee wrapper. The doll was an afterthought—deft fingers, and she rolled it between her fingertips. They exchanged pleasantries. Then again he fell silent.

‘It seems like the storm has broken land. Brrr...it’s cold.’

He smiled, and then he turned, ‘Do you remember Lin?’

‘Vaguely...but he was so oddly named. In fact, the name’s all I recall of him...was fair, though, very girlish, curved eyebrows. Shouldn't you know?— He spoke with an accent. He must’ve been raised thereabouts.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know him at all...spoke to him once or twice, that’s all...you know, when we force it open, it’s those odd things which get stuck that come back at once.’

‘Hmm... like a dreadful jingle. Stays all day and drives you crazy.’

‘Like monkeys we hop from place to place to meet up here. Quite...locally, that is.’

‘Well, I'm not a local—not yet!’

‘Me neither...but the joke’s on, innit?’

‘Come on inside...it’s chilly...Can I offer you something? Coffee perhaps? Well, might as well be best, we're still learning and looking aren't we.’

Her place was nice; there was no hint of someone struggling to make ends meet. I was accustomed to the idea; she had struggled so long for so little. It was bound to stay. Single bedroom apartment. I recalled her telling me there was a spare room bare. For an occasional visitor. Parents, perhaps... ah, the things you grow accustomed to. In my mind's eye...she was still the little woman who made a lot of noise for so little. Unacknowledged favours, unreturned promises.

The balcony opened into a spacious living room—spacious, but sparse, and an antiquated bookshelf that held a couple of hundred books of the driest kind, technical books. Chemistry books.

‘I haven't seen your form lately with the word. May I consign you to a few minutes of crystalline boredom all alone, or in the company of these deafmute creatures (she motioned the library) while I shed the leavings of a hectic workday spent in the company of dandified fossils? Will you—’

‘It's okay, go and change.’

Does it change things, do things ever change...? But anything, anything...to gain time, to really know if nothing has changed.

She vanished without waiting for an answer. A spouting kettle announced an end to waiting.

‘How did you get into all of...this?’

‘Ah, yes, I'm glad you asked. I’m with a team of transcriptionists. Unfortunately it's the best I have on offer. I mean, I'm practically jobless without it. School's on a bizarre rent-a-week sort of economising.’

‘Which means—?'

‘Oh, nothing. I edit textbooks—for want of a better word—which require some homely rephrasing, but mainly it’s about wholesale cutting. Indian students still aren’t game for that sort of detail, not in my subject, they still think it's petrified history. I got a lucky break... Pays some bills anyhow.’

Quite impressive; it wasn't a bad collection by any reckoning. It was astonishing even to find a bookshelf in this place and time, but she had always been a good reader and an exemplary teacher. His eyes rested on a long row of shiny white-covered journals, possibly IEEE publications. It touched a chord...but far removed, far more recent, than her time. At school he didn't even knew these journals existed... There were memories too, bitter ones, but unrelated to her or to school. He turned his gaze and found that she was amused. Her progression seemed to have been linear.

'Lucky break, you say...'

‘Well, it was an acquaintance. I was seeing him for a year or so...and when he left, he set me up as a token. Does that satisfy your pipe dream chutes, Pinocchio?'

‘You are in good shape.’

‘You're a tasty morsel yourself. How come so blessed? Strychnine?’

‘The very idea! Why so retrograde in 2007? Selective amnesia?'

‘Well, something like that. I was counting on my memory being true. Was I so badly off—’

‘No no no... but you trod on me little toe.’

‘Nosey parker...as if you cared!’

‘The heady fragrance. Of romance. You can tell.’

‘Ah...yes. The odour of glossies must still turn you on or what?’

‘...Takes you back a long way...in time. Those wreckages, those magnificent ruins.’

Stung—he suddenly shrouded up, bottled. Her remark was reflective and supremely detached and its point—not to be missed. He had quipped without knowing, but now he stood at the precipice. He had been thinking of her immense effort in the classroom, working up such a pitch that she literally steamed out of every pore and beads lined her upper lips and brows. This was what his ardour found irresistible. And yet, it made her so very homely, natural, and vulnerable. This was precisely what she obliterated, then and there, in that cool Bangalore living room. He was wondering about layers of warpaint, wondering how she’d gotten to this, but she'd taken it off a while before and spared him. But she'd dealt it out, and for a cringing split-second he found it oppressive, that she was dealing out the context and policing his mind. In the soaked roots adolescence stuck fast like a white dress, pale and dark, blotchy but saintly, covering all but revealing, shredding your nerves—

‘Oh, I am so sorry...but you do live nearby, should've given you a bad turn often.’

My! If only she knew, if only she knew how it wrings the life out of poor love!

‘You can be cruel.’

She smiled a broken smile which opened out quickly and just then he became aware of a curious panel hung on the door of what appeared to be her bedroom. Four square white blotches stuck 2x2 in an enormous A2 size frame. He froze. If only—

Once more, she leaves me with no hole to escape. And this time...well, I shall face up to it.

‘If you only knew, if you only knew.’

‘Come, we needn’t draw circles again, need we. I was young and you were tiny. That was all.’

‘Oh, was it? I still used to moon a lot, and I never had the courage to go back there...not until after I had had my degree...and then I guess I fooled around, and, truth be told, you were never there for many days on end, never even in the back of my mind. But last week, I went back.’

‘Oh, so you did manage to break your pretty little heart...after twenty years?’

I turned up and our eyes locked. She was unflinching; there was no emotion in those eyes. My own, glassy, yielding. In those depths I recalled a wild girl, frantic, staring down a pit soggy with the scent of fresh mud and first rain. The sky went out like light, and the clouds announced her tragedy in no uncertain terms: a strong breeze sent spikes of fright, she was cut to the core. She waited and waited, with quivering, tight-shut eyes—but there was no thunder.

She trembled and swayed. She was too afraid even to move. She was not even aware if the place was deserted or whether anybody was listening nearby.

It didn't rain. To this day she has no recollection of what happened that evening, or whether it had turned night after that. She knew nothing, felt nothing. But she was there. She had stayed.

[1400; 20 edits; inching close to final]

I have added the second dedication to one who so really deserves it for having saved it from a (still sticky) premature end in the reader's bit-bucket; for him I have deleted the references to the coffee and altered its ending somewhat, choosing instead to leave it on its head, enigmatic, open to everything, just like the terrified girl we leave on the shore of the sickening ditch.

As I said, I have made changes. To someone who is keeping track of this `Kindling' series, the changes might give a possible alternative setting for the original `Kindling' post. This is perhaps where the boy (now adult) meets girl again?

What I recall of the place is essentially driving these changes, as the person in question is, sadly, not available for comment. If not the corpse, then the ghost.

Dedicated originally to Mr S, as I have the journey to school entirely to thank for this...though he played no other part other than that of a very significant pillion rider, weighing in at a ton of kilos.

I don't know how he refuses to believe the fact that I have the ride to thank for this piece...and nothing else. In fact, this never occurred to me until much later...which somehow also supports his theory that 'I had it all with me.' It's just a way of seeing things differently. But I never had this story in my mind until I sat down to write.

I'm taking a big break, so this 'edit' should suffice for some more days.

[264]

Retour

2010-05-01T04:35:00.012+05:30

—:{ A Zeinab Story }:—

—:{ to Raphæl }:—

It would not serve, dear reader, if I cut straight to the story and told it. You would glance at it, and, perhaps, if you’re interested in such story you will read it through. You might even enjoy it while doing so. Then you would close it up, and get on with your life.

But I choose to say this the conventional way, as a memoir, as it happened to me. I am the only person to whom it matters. It weighed heavily upon me, like a burden borne too long. And it did not come easily; came by degrees, and, fleeting as it was, stayed on like rust, a festering wound, blanching my skin. It is so for those who are earnest—always.

A revelation is said to be god’s gift. It takes you that much closer to life. Indeed, it took me close, very close. But it left me far away, far away not just from life but from myself. Now I dread revelations. When the signs appear, I tremble and grow weak in the knee. Powerless like a leaf before falling. I recognise the signs, and I tremble because I know I am doomed.

...But I have detained you enough.

♫

She was dressed, all in white, and on a pleasanter occasion I would have called it pretty. She was led in, slender hands held by aunts, hair dishevelled, eyelashes frizzled, and tears congealed in speckles. She was silent, as if muted by mortal fear, and I was sure the tears had dried up a while before. She was a pretty little girl, her eyes red and with an aspect that told you in an instant how she clung to life, how she cherished every moment of it. A lively young girl of ten.

Her dress, as I have indicated, seemed quite at odds with her personality. The dress was definitely not of local manufacture; it betrayed an affluence that placed her in the cream of Karachi society. It was white, and she seemed white like a dove. Everything else about her was homely and fresh. Like a dream, only she didn’t glide, but whimpered from time to time, as if stepping on thorns. Ah, cruel me! These thoughts come unbidden, but how we dream at leisure while they endure!

In those long corridors, hemmed in by relatives, who seemed as distant to her as the mountains to the waves, she began searching. She searched the walls, and she searched the endless trail of notices and displays that were lit up in myriad shades. She narrowed her eyes, as if trying to make out and engaged in something; yet every time her gaze darted back, hounded out, still searching for something to rest upon.

She looked at galloping feet, at the flowing white coats which spat out bars of light as they flocked along, once in one direction, and then the another. Everyone busy, with a purpose, the circle of life, the wheels of occupation. And she alone was sedentary, immobile, as if bottled in formaldehyde, watching life go by. In the maze of light and shadow, eyes never resting, she grew tired. She rested her head on the bench and promptly fell asleep.

From the stairwell, long beyond eyeshot, I stood gazing, motionless, arrested, clipped limbless by a swathe of white resting on a steel bench, head cushioned by a folded arm. And as I recalled her face, I felt a chill in my legs—beyond her folded arm was a white towel stained crimson by an enormous blotch of dried blood.

♫

Her sleep lasted more than twenty-four hours, leading to rumours that it had been administered. It might well have been; for she had to cope with a loss which had rendered into stupefaction. She'd coped poorly, for she'd knocked herself senseless on the harsh marble floor. Her father the well-known surgeon was seen pacing the corridor in a frenzy of indecision.

Imtiaz Chishti was too close to the action to give it a miss; he recollected vividly both the girl’s face as well as her deceased mother’s; at once he was stung into pangs of guilt, which quickly silenced him. Suddenly, he was no more a stranger, but one among the lot, the ones who shared and endured silently. It was their common fate to share a turgid silence. Everyone knew, and everyone kept silent. A powerful man, distant, seemed to look down upon and lord it over them—iron hands, invisible, shadow-like—a presence which instilled fear and awe.

Later on, when she would regain consciousness, head in a bandage and her eyelids slowly cracking open, she would recognise him in silence, and, in a flutter, softly rouse him out of his reverie: ‘Mamoo, sar dukhta hai burra burra sa.’ But she was happy. As he slowly came to, the harsh green of the hospital room solidifying in his dissolving eyes, he saw the same impish grin that had once called to him so fondly, many years ago. It all came back to him in an instant, and he realised that his eyes were full again.

[880, 7 minor edits, final]

Three Songs, Reprise I

2010-01-27T04:11:00.008+05:30

Song 1: Ariyathe ariyathe
Raavanaprabhu, 2001
Suresh Peters/Girish Puthencheri/P Jayachandran/KS Chithra

The song is the saving grace of an inane movie featuring a tubby, middle-aged superstar reprising his role in a series which started off admirably with Devaasuram. His love interest is the supergrown, supertubby singer-turned actor Vasundhara Das (heave!). Both are thoroughly unsuitable for the roles, but we leave it at that, we know how 'politically charged' these selections are. The song is a rare gem in an otherwise foundering genre (Malayalam OST, which now requires a polyglot to really tell which language is being used). It is a meticulously crafted song, and easily the best from Suresh Peters. No amount of analysis will give you an idea of utter conformance it demands from the audience which it keeps captive throughout. (While, filling the screen, we have nauseaous machinations and gesticulations from the two ponderous protagonists. We don't notice them, unless 'we' happen to be excessively sick. Or fond of getting sick.)

I should forewarn those who know the language that the lyric (typical Puthencheri) is crap. These are just words which Jayachandran renders a bit acceptable. Chithra only amplifies the comic effect.

Intro features a phenomenal flute ouverture with two performers: one is leading while the other, recurring throughout, is the beautiful 'rhythm' flute. This is stellar in its own right, and sets the tune for the rest of the fare.

Around the half-minute mark,the song is hijacked, as it were, by the excellent muted lead-guitar note, which is the main rhythm track of the song. This is nicely "filled up" by the rich, deep tone of a very well-executed bass line, which remains punchy right through. This complex note serves as its own counterpoint, which suddenly elevates it to another plane. This 'note' sets a strict tempo, and the ambience is rather taut, and the lead vocalist is also similarly tight-lipped. The song unravels with the falling cadence of the mridangam, which simulatenously unwinds the lyrics, spilling over to bawdy, with an open invitation to a public display of affection.

It should also be noted here that Chithra ruins the opening by "hurriyathe" the song, which she corrects in the iteration. The gaping quality of diction of the individual vocalists is a big disappointment of the song. It is the only flaw of a perfect song which no music composer/arranger could ever guard against (bad raw material).

The intro is followed by a relaxing veena-flute passage, and followed up by a hectic exchange of impassioned words between the proagonists.

The interlude ends with a notable grace (a simple triple note) performed with the mridangam. (In a typical performance this is a "hooray" after a long passage, but used here out-of-the-context to good effect, affording considerable musical compression.)

The final section reiterates the first lines, which Chithra's flawed diction and overindulgent rendition make revolting, even as one catches a glimpse of two stuffed, gluttonous fugures lazily reclining on a lavishly appointed velvet bed (memory fails me). The hero tumbles into bed with the quiescent female. Dunlop(s) on Dunlop(?)

The highlights of the song are the excellent solo performances on the flute, the incredible contrapuntal guitar rhythm track, and the perfect musical arrangement. Jayachandran supplements with his perfect diction and nuanced delivery, while Chithra detracts and disappoints.

Instruments: ~

Flute (x2, one lead and another rhythm—a very curious and novel arrangement, one of the highlights of the song)
Lead guitar and Bass guitar. The bass is where a lot of the action takes place, and is kept alive throughout using the most ingenious of melodies. I have seldom listened to a better bass-line track in Malayalam
Mridangam (x2, yes there are two), giving rise to split-beat-notes where accent is needed
Veena, which supports, and later takes up, the theme from the flute
Muted contrapuntal notes on the lead guitar providing the main beat, which is the highlight of the song, and a stylistic 'first'

Other notables: ~
Jayachandran's immaculate diction, and KS Chitra's second-rate intonation of "vaartthinkal", "kas'thoori", and the initial "harriyathe" disfigure the perfect Malayalam song. Even Jayachandran seems to get tired of Chitra's diction which strays way off the mark, and he finally admonishes: "nee vanavalaakayay padunnu." (Note the finality of his ending. It's almost a chiding. He sounds ironical. He's known to chide co-singers in this fashion while singing; he's a most stoic and professional singer but sometimes even he cannot help noticing what a hash the co-singer is making of the song.) Apart from that, the lyrics itself is particularly cruel on the female: a vana valaaka is probably a wild crane (forgive my scanty knowledge of Kalidasa), a bird whose cry is not sweet by any reckoning. Puthencheri nets an own goal here, as he has done on so many occasions elsewhere.

[850]
____

To Sajit: I'll add the lyrics and the rest of the article and clean this up a bit, just posted this as an 'Interim.'

Since you already made sense, I don't think I have to strain myself with the lyrics.

Celebration

2010-01-18T03:27:00.005+05:30

Recently I saw an interesting TV-ad which presented the current mantra of 'celebration' in a new light. Boy celebrates with friends the demise of his live-in relationship, as fidgety girl waits at an adjacent table, alone, perhaps on a new a boyfriend. Of course, a 30-second advert cannot show all the details, but the suggestion is quite well-done. And it makes one think—especially old timers like yours truly—about some of the things which have changed.

And it also makes me think of a well-known quote from the Upanishad which runs like this: It is not for the wife that the wife is dear... but for one's own sake. Brilliantly conceived and truly spoken, it's an inspiring utterance. (In patches like these, Upanishad lives up to that high reputation Max Müller has guaranteed for it, as "Himalayas of the human soul.")

Which immediately returns me to the problem at hand. At least some of us are haunted by the spectre of dangling loose in a society where we don't belong. The boy is unperturbed by the fact that he has been dumped precisely because he was looking to be dumped; the relationship's gone stale in a few weeks or months or whatever. He also knows that he's at the tip of the tongue of social possibility—girls waiting to be known, worlds waiting to be sampled, more ditches, and more celebrations. The ad is not shown from the girl's viewpoint, so let's not digress to discuss that. But we note that for her, too, there are distinct possibilities, though she might not have gathered a group of friends to celebrate how she'd just "dumped" a boyfriend. And yet, at least some of us might have noted this situation, this 'cause for celebration' as a bit far-fetched. It doesn't sound 'right.'

Why is it so? There are many reasons, there can be many reasons, but for those in the ditch, it all means little, for it hits them hard like a never-ending nightmare, and means just one thing—outright rejection. It is an unqualified, total rejection from everything. First, their minds cast them out. When this has been done, they are totally on the outside, waiting to come... into their own. They cast themselves out of their own home, their temple.

A reason is only for justifying and means nothing for the tormented. And now, let's look for a few in the vain hope that it will be of interest to some convalescent. I've passed through this stage at least thrice in my life, at three different points differing widely in circumstances—so I guess it should be helpful. While I was down, no reasoning of this sort entered my mind. Somehow, it all got patched up. (The best remedy is a call to immediate action. Love, and crushed crushes, are all the monopoly of an idle mind—an 'ideal' mind.) So, in a bulleted format: ~

Love is often a 'scarce' resource. Though potentially every human being of the opposite sex (mostly) is a candidate for your attentions, there never is such a superabundant choice. 'All visual treats do not into a delectable fare translate.' Most often, there are several practical limitations on what we can have, and when we have sorted it out, we do our best to fool ourselves that is is indeed a case of "love at first (sigh)t" or whatever.
Love is often exhausting, especially when you have to contend with a lot of antagonistic factors, such as when you belong to different religious or economic backgrounds, are widely separated in temperament, and so on. These, I'd also note, are the marks of a true love, and not an arranged one, and a situation where the parties, at least one of them if not both, are likely to get involved deeply.
If love is not a romantic interlude between engagement and marriage, in which case it's all stage-managed and the bride's folks gradually tune themselves in to the fact that she'd an expendable bit of expensive trash decking her down to the drains (at their expense, of course), it can be a very expensive moral commitment.
In this case, and in this case only, a lover is what we hope to keep from our occasional brush with a society we despise in every other way. In a way, a lover is "winnings." It is what we keep from the battle. It is the only thing we went into battle for; it is the only thing we kept our appointment with society.
Gradually, brick-by-brick, we make the effort to get to know the other's feelings and way of thinking. This is the first big mistake, a relic from the hippie-age. (More about this later on.) Then, when we have sufficiently "scouted" the surroundings, and convinced ourselves that we have done our bit of the moral commitment, we dig in and try to install our own designs. (Reciprocity, or, "one confidence deserves another.") This is a painstaking process, one which is often lavishly embellished by fringe benefits of an eager and obvious kind.
If it does not go away in a few months (most likely it would not), then you already pass into the 'mature' stage of a man-woman relationship without ever having lived together. The ride is downhill from then; at least, 'the honeymoon is over.'
Hopes and longings, and sunny wishes for a life together, are coldly replaced by platitudes—completely phony, but very real and alarmingly threatening for the parties concerned. They are almost fooled into believing in scruples, almost as if they have been married or committed for ages.
They begin to blindly look towards marriage as a solution for their problems. Marriage is the end of youth and the beginning of maturity; but in the case of our overs, this stage is only a heightened stupidity. They start to believe in something which they had silently denounced at the beginning of their 'friendship.' This is where the trap closes.
The boy, if he can, will wait for as long as he could...but practically, the boy cannot wait forever. Economical considerations far outweigh any other in this stage. If both are financially independent and employed, they will most likely marry, for they know there are no more possibilities, no more exciting possibilities, left for them. But if not independent, the girl's folks busy themselves and find her a husband. (This is the classical situation, at least in our state.)
Very rudely, the lovers are shaken out of their dream lives and threshed on the hard floor of reality. Words fly, there are blames, but finally, it all amounts to one thing: the girl on a pedestal watched by a thousand, and the boy in a sanatorium or on valium.

All I have to say at this point, is that it is all too much bother for so little. It doesn't really matter as long as you choose (not) to marry; it is not the person but the process. I wouldn't think you'd choose someone whom you'd regret, of course; but as long as you are aware of what you're doing, then the rest of your world shouldn't collapse.

A home, it seems, isn't built in a day.

_____
[1245]

Same/Old

2009-12-25T00:53:00.005+05:30

A day's dose of misfortunes and rebuffs take you very close to reality. And then, when you have come around to the fact that you're an ordinary person just like anybody else, you step on that piece of glass as if by mistake: you open that multimedia file casually, and are immediately drawn into an other world. You lose your identity, you assume a new one; you lose your bearings, and the day's good work is undone—the lesson you should not forget, and the lesson you invariably come around every other day, just as painfully. This, my dear friends, is the sharp-edged sword called modern life.

Modern life is fraught with the danger of communication. There were avenues of communication earlier on, too—but the difference is that, with the ubiquity of communication, it makes no difference to the outside world. But it changes us, the communicators, radically. Often, we are the only ones who are changed.

This is a very difficult sword to wield, a burden, and a throwback to the earlier heydays of the printed book. Somehow, those who know how to write, or write in the hope that they do, are most infected with this sickness; understandably so. Those who write, consciously, are somehow under the impression that they are indeed changing the state of things, 'in their own way.' But they would do well to shake off that false pretension.

Each act of transcendent communication—by which I mean those communications which cannot be refuted directly, those which are not addressed directly to a participating listener—is an apology for communication. All such communications are monologues, and under certain conditions, closely rival the claims of mad ravings in its social relevance. Almost every writer falls prey to the attractions of transcendental writing, the most common form of which is philosophizing.

BDSM
(Or, the Cruel Joke of It)

And, at this point, I take my hat off to that dear friend of mine who has, to this day, held a clean sheet in this regard. He has written little, so he is almost immediately absolved of any complicity in that heinous crime called transcendental writing or philosophizing. Rather, he's been one of those poor souls who has found himself, time and again, under the spell of literary and philosophical sophistry. Heidegger, Derrida, myself, we all have played a significant part in his moral confusion. At this late stage, let me ask forgiveness for my part of the crime.

I would not risk this apology at a different time. Perhaps I'd never even have thought of writing this, had it not been for the fact that he's singularly angry with the world, which is to say, with himself. I'd not have written this, choosing instead to dwell on those green pastures of wishful thinking populated so often by philosophy, by great writers, and by great filmmakers. We always chose that false world. I would not have written this...but for an almost insane feeling of dearth—helplessness, lack of understanding, lack of feeling, a sense that somehow I have betrayed him, left him to the elements. This is a most sickening feeling, I live through it every day until finally sleep snatches me away under some pretext or the other.

He has fallen upon hard times, when he seems to be asking for harsh truths, the harsher the better. Usually he's of a very mellow disposition, keeping his contradictions strictly to himself, never voicing his misgivings, always assuming (and nearly always wrongly so) that the world is all right, everything is wrong is due to some fault of his. While this position can be justified, very few people in this age do so, preferring, rather, the very easy belief that there's nothing wrong either with the world or with them. To them, I ask, just like he would, 'Why then this poverty, why is there so much suffering, and why so many wants and longings?'

We are all at fault at one time or the other, but we always manage to move on. We are 'practical.' He, however, lacks the artfulness necessary to switch between these two modalities of 'practice' and 'theory.' My friend refuses the easy pill on most of the occasions which present an easy way out. He, instead, taxes himself, forces open his side of the matter, searching for ways to implicate himself, to incriminate himself. Often, fully knowing it is a fallacy, he assumes, by habit, that he is somehow responsible for a bad state of affairs. He takes it on, all the grief and all the despair, slowly drowning himself in his sorrow, by degrees, until somehow the world, the call to duty, can magically jolt him out of his stupor. This is the personal gift he always asks of the cruel, indifferent world: whilst he is sinking, provide that real jolt so that he can yank himself out of the mess.

This form of worship, benign to the caustic society which drives him to it, is a malignant tumour which has gotten hold of him. To each, his own. To each, his own peculiar brand of melancholy. But he derives nothing out of it, but still more despair for no fault of his. A first-rate poet and a very unassuming painter (I think he's hung up his palette some place where even he can't find it), he's trying to make the transition to the world ('making the switch'). All he asks, in return, is a little space for him to live, and a little peace of mind.

The smart person could retort that you don't need either to live in this world, and, true enough, most of us have neither yet do very well. We do get little islands of peace, very rarely, but most of the time, we, the felons, are talking to ourselves as if we were talking to a thousand and getting their approval—this, then, is the danger of transcendental communication. We invoke the worlds for us to communicate with, and believe—yes, we really believe—that such a world, such an audience, is real. And we are kings in that world, and we are thus authorized to run slipshod over those who are really sensitive and see the skewed nature of things. Naturally, there are those like him who are trampled underfoot. Nobody ever asked a flower how it felt when plucked.

Degenerating—as always

We all take a lot from the world, we rob it, we deface it irretrievably. We have no shame, because nobody else, it seems, has a right to ask, as they too face the same ultimate consequences as we do. When we leave it, fortunately, everything is valued in terms of money. We will be remembered fondly or harshly for a period of time, according to what we gave back in terms of money, or how much debt we left behind for our near ones to repay. This is a great comforting thought; but nearly all men who die, die grumbling.

The logical man needs no god; yet he needs woman. Why is that? The logical man, it would seem, is at times an animal, and needs to satisfy his biological needs. Then what prevents him from being spiritual at times?

The great tragedy of a godless world is not the death of god but the death of morality and responsibility. Without a god, a very good reason as to why we used exercise moderation in some things is lost completely; we no longer need to keep track of anything. But man answers poorly to other men (Jesus!); history records two World Wars, and God died a little more on each occasion. Gods, it would seem, thrive best during peace time. Death reigns supreme during war. To each, his own.

Shame is not when we are caught in an unnatural pose; shame is when we refuse to believe that we are sorry for something gross we did. The trick, then, is to assume an air of impassive importance, of disinterest, so that, with the passage of time, these stoical images would define you and ultimately release you of all charges. Hitler is becoming fashionable among a generation which knows nothing of the Holocaust. As they say, fashions change.

Germans are not known for their theatricality. But just recall all those images of Herr Hitler with his squirrel-like propensity in front of an audience, and one begins to wonder—

Ego Thrash

'Sir, it is three rupees short—'

He looked at the bill carefully, yes, it was 253, and not 235 as he'd made out. He had looked at the bill placed in the folder head downwards, and simply placed the three banknotes—two hundreds and a fifty—and left, to save the time. He had even left a Rs. 15 tip. But now—

He blurted out his excuse, and gave the young waiter two more bills, of ten rupee each. It was the first time and he used to leave good tips always, yet—

Signs of bad times visiting, like black death returning. And it's been almost a year since they had been regularly visiting this restaurant, spending as much as Rs 1500 every month on an average. Only a while ago he'd overheard an irate customer ask rather brusquely whether their rules were so strict as not to diverge from the prescribed menu for those who were staying. The waiter had said yes in a most forceful manner. And a lot of other things came to his mind, such as the dimly lit room, and a hundred other irrelevant points, half-formed and malformed, all ruses to cover up his shame.

He quickly put the car into gear and slowly reversed into the road, like the injured animal he was. He tarried to tip the guard, but the windows were drawn, so he did not. Understandably, in retrospect, it was not to be a very pleasant evening, dining out.

Jaunty notes

At NH, The Wit's Back

At home, M is again showing some symptoms of a cold (slightly congested nose, and she's horribly inward-drawn), and took some time to drop off, but she did. Is on the penultimate of the two little pills.

[1737; 90']

Cut Glass

2009-12-15T03:50:00.007+05:30

(And Some Fishiness)

Ouverture
One thing I'd like to remind folks hesitating to dip their feet in the water: if you choose not to, then you’d be sorry, and if you choose to, then also you’d be sorry.

You moved mountains to get to the ocean; now’s not the time to have second thoughts and think about the waysides.

The point is to move on with every passing moment, to go with the moment.

But before all that: we all have our crises, we all hit patches, and we all stay low for a long while. While we do, everything passes over our heads, and we are the wretched of the planet. Nothing sinks in. Nothing we do or eat is tasteful, we’re vegetables; worse, we’re vermin. But we have recollection of once being men.

I call to that hoary past and tell you: the time will pass, it will all come back. Like we need memories for commemoration (we never really felt anything when we lived like men in that hoary past, did we), we need this low life, this low fling, because we need to be reminded of our bellies and our lower parts which stick so low.

Reprise

The point, as I’ve said before, is to move on. This is not very difficult. It just means you act, and not think about what you’ve only just done. You have to follow action with action, not with a covering thought or an afterthought. You follow action with another action and keep at it.

Of course, you will achieve nothing except a well-deserved rest for your overworked brain. Perhaps, as a side-effect, you will chance upon that rhythm, that rhythm of heart and soul.

You made certain unworthy surmises about your future as a writer. First of all I’d like to ask you what you think about a writer like Mr G, or a writer like Heidegger. (The choice is deliberate.) Writing is just another profession. I want to know if you want to write for business (more like my style) or as a professional.

Prose contra Poesie

If you choose the latter path, then obviously you’d be a poet. My knowledge of poetry is rather scant. But my idea goes something like this right now: what we get on the paper is a transcription made under duress. It is done for the publisher, with an immediate intention of some remuneration (a needy family, perhaps) or fame, and obviously it will have to be either totally new as a genre or fall neatly into a niche (in which case you’d have to have published something earlier). And so on. Of course, it will have a subject or many subjects and it will be personal. Since we sit on top of an every-rising mountain of shit (composed of the decomposing excrement of previous generations as well as that of those in office), our nostrils have to be suitably electroplated, with increasing thickness of noble metal, to provide a suitable environment to thrive. But our brains can be no heavier than 1.5 kg, and it has remained so for the past 10,000 years with no respite in sight. As a poet, your contribution to this shit-mountain would be negligible and you can rest easy. (I would like to bring to your attention two novels, situated oppositely in terms of quality but co-sited in terms of length: Avakaasikal and Jean Christophe, each of which would be around 4500 printed pages). Your sin would be slight. (But there is a possibility of a few lines doing lasting damage, like ‘Thou shalt not steal...’ than whole tomes like those of the aforesaid Christophe which remain secure, unread.)

Health Mix

You and I represent two specific issues facing the writer. I write fantastic things and groan about having nothing to write about (really, I haven’t anything to write about, as I have to manufacture literally every miserable particle of my shitload). The whole thing is conjecture with nothing to connect it to real incidents or reality. It’s truly fantastic in which I place my current dilemmas. You read it and make the connection (perhaps others would, too). Nobody reads me like you do and gets such a wonderful thrill out of it. My writing is so closely tuned to your antennae, and your reading sensibility always reveals possibilities of which I’d never thought of. To tell you the truth, you find “depth” precisely in those ‘natural’ passages, passages where I let myself go, those flowing passages which I write in spite of me. These come to me while I am writing; these are not the passages which I set out to write. They just happen. In those sequences I’ve run away completely from my existence, from my real life, and am just spending time with those characters, as those characters. I act out both and all the parts. It is a complete displacement—spatial and temporal. This happens seldom, but it does happen. This is the crux of storytelling. Sometimes I get it; but since I don’t have a grand design for a big novel or story, since I have no agenda, my stories seldom tell stories. I am quite happy with the little patches that stand out. And sometimes, if I’m sufficiently deep in the water, I go ahead and stretch the episode (‘Bangalore’). This pattern you are familiar with, and this has become my style. I’m not entirely responsible for this style; it evolved constantly with a lot of factors, of which one significant was you, the reader.

I think this has come by degrees. You read me first at least twelve years ago. You picked it up fast, because, somehow, my style attracted you and actually got you interested in reading (I’d like to think I was one of those factors which got you really interested in reading—not that I was up to much, but rather the good vibes for a fellow sufferer who found the words). But what you saw in 1997 was the tip of an accidental monument I've been carving since 1986. I'm an old man, been a writer these 21 years.

Calling

When I first saw you, you were a painter. I think C had a few commissions for you, painting stuff on T-shirts and flags and so on. My recollections of you, for a long time, were those of a painter. I think you’re a first-class painter (I really don’t care about technique), you really did have a fine balance of technique and imagery (N was 90% technique and 10% imagery). I also noted your deep, serene, brown eyes (your eyes are a very mellow tea-brown, my eyes look like trash). I also noted your serene eyebrows, the repository of your great calm.

Les procès

If you ask me, everything else—music, poetry, literature—is an acquired taste, in your case. I think, from my first impression, you are closer to a painter in sensibility. (I never saw myself as writer; I was always a philosopher and will be. I will also make the claim that I am a first-class philosopher in any company, a claim that I can substantiate anywhere as long as I understand the language being used.) We all relate to things in that basic frame of mind. That ‘basic’ frame is actually not a simple. It depends on all our propensities. For me it is philosophical, logical, linguistic, scientific, rational, political, and a lot many other things suggested by the ‘trace’ of the thing in question. My comprehension of that ‘word’ (allow me) would be based on these, and other, more practical, considerations which are in turn tempered by my awareness. It’s a gut feeling; only, when we express it in words, it becomes such a monstrous complex. ‘Comprehension’ happens in a jiffy, and is connected with all these aromas.

Copy-write

So much for the ‘sensing’. It’s when we describe (transcribe) that we run into problems. This is where we have to explicitly make a choice as to how we want it to look. I choose prose because it’s best suited for showing-off my multifaceted brilliance (heh!); also you can easily drop off a lot of shit (‘it’s only prose’) at a later date without breaking into a sweat. And, more importantly, it’s the easiest thing, and easily what most literate people find easy to assimilate. I was lucky in that I built my expertise in a thing which was both easy and popular. (And remember those 21 years.) I read prose exclusively, and wrote; one thing added to another and the other was crowned by the glory of vanity and ego.

I guess, with poetry, exactly the opposite applies. You think up a lot of things or you register a lot of things on a field trip or out on a walk; you somehow “shorthand it” or mentally-type-it. Somehow you retain a trace of it. At your leisure you transcribe it, voluminous, trying to recall. And then, you reduce, condense, clarify. You go through several iterations of this, and explore uncharted territory because in the harmony of sound, idea and feeling, your individual production will give rise to poetic insight and poetic opportunity that are never present in a real, tactile reality.

The Cut and the Draw

The stage between ‘registering’ and transcribing—that big yawn—is what determines the final form of the poem—symbolist, surreal, experimental, typographic. Every poet is an individual. The different nooks and corners he has explored will always matter. As he seldom has the luxury of ‘other voices,’ poetry is seldom secular or neutral. You will have to take a stance. Every poem aligns you with something or somebody, you cannot hide behind different identities because modern poetry is essentially a monologue—no more illusions. By necessity a poet has to be honest to his self and true. By definition, this excludes me because I change so often. To me, the most expendable thing is the opinion I hold. And I have nothing but opinions; nothing is really hard and fast with me unless I have paid for it.

And this, by definition, includes you—you are true and you never really change. You always come back to the same ‘fundamental truths.’

For me, the truth does not exist. If anything, this fact simplifies things. Without truth, there is nothing permanent, and all we have are conveniences which can—and will—change.

And we are both right—unfortunately.

General Mongering, As Usual

I see truth as external; our ‘internal truths’ do not matter, as we communicate to the world exclusively through our actions (as anyone knows, this itself is an assumption, which hinges upon our definition of ‘action’). So it is the external truth that I always speak about (whatever ‘external truth’ means—maybe, truth or ‘human nature’ for other people, or absolute scientific truth, which is another absurdity). It is a fictitious constant, and so, by definition, illusory. It is the infinity in my logical firmament.

You see truth as internal, as representing your own contradictions and moral confusion. This is an inclusive view of truth: you are defined by your honesty, your truth, and the ‘you’ is enclosed completely. To survive meaningfully, ‘you’ have to define and substantiate, and constantly corroborate, the ‘truth.’ It is an absolute, all-encompassing, godlike truth.

In other words: truth does not matter to me, whereas it is all that matters to you. For me, it will always be an ideal, and I wouldn't insist upon it. For you, it's a living presence, and it should pervade your being otherwise you'll be miserable.

It’s often a question of which mask suits you best at any one time. But for some, it’s not a question of changing masks; for you, it’s not a mask at all. Which is why you paint, and I draw (—there's always the eraser).

[2100]

Leavings

2009-10-14T12:53:00.007+05:30

A baby cried in the dead of night. Insistent, in waves, as if repeatedly waking from nightmares. His thoughts turned to the poor lot of the dwellers of the houses right below his. Thatched houses covered with tin and iron sheets, almost every labourer’s house in the neighbourhood similarly shielded from the elements. Canopy of brotherhood, mark of decrepitude. Progress. Progress, and television. It had started a long while back; maybe fifteen years back, when he’d started not to notice these things. But then he noticed that the sound came from the side, and not from the back of his house. This was probably the same baby who’d cried two hours before, only now it was more desperate, and it did not stop for the next fifteen minutes. Perhaps the baby was ill.

He’d been reading for a while and it was the second time he’d been relieving himself. He felt good afterward, and he wondered what he’d eaten to deserve such a wonderful release. He could only recall the hot spicy food he had almost close to midnight. And then it jolted him to reality; his arse was hurting, it was now the turn of the hotness to find painful release. Yet he was happy.

And then he recalled the equanimity with which she went about her daily rounds. She was among the locals, but she was not a local. She’d come here a while back, five years back, and she was very young then. Young, and highly qualified, with possibly more qualifications than anyone would care to even remember—and she’d grown old among them, living a solitary life. And, after a while, no one even bothered to inquire about what she was doing. She went about the business quietly, and all was well.

But he knew at least some of the reasons. It didn’t change anything, no. The same things he had spelt out in his long corpus of literary leavings, she had silently acted out, not to the letter but certainly true to the spirit. And it was this: this here is the world, and the best we can do in it is to live—live consciously. She was doing exactly that. He knew that she loved her work but not to distraction, it was not an absolute, she could keep away from it for long stretches. But she never gave cause for alarm, when her juniors needed her most she was always there. He knew also that this sort of attachment—at times amounting to brinkmanship—came from an immense sense of detachment. It was as if she was listening to the background noise for the telltale cry of a baby.

She had her share of everything, and she had lovers. But the joke wears thin in a few years, and as long as one kept it out of the news and gossip, it was not going to hurt. She knew. It was easy for her because the little town needed a healer, and minded its business otherwise. To make things a little easier, she had no interests in that town at all. From eight to six, she was there, body and soul. She needed a little rest, and she slept only five hours. She occasionally watched a film, but liked to spend her time with interesting people. And she loved driving—and often went out for no particular reason.

Nothing was really missing from this picture if you followed her around daily. From eight to six she was at the Sanatorium; in between her work and rounds and refreshments, she also read for a few hours, researched a bit, and talked a bit with her colleagues. She lived ten miles away, a safe distance from the town. And then she met up with her friend, with whom she’d put up for the night, and often spend a long night just talking or watching a movie or listening to music. She never gave much thought to cooking, which wasn’t a problem because she was single.

‘And I’m just living. I could be pompous and assume that I am reinventing it all, the first man to do so. But I could also be humble and recognise that billions have felt the same way before, and probably billions will, in future. Whatever work I leave behind, will be subjected to scrutiny, and will merely become (if they are worth enough to be well-known in my day or become fashionable enough some time in the future) the tools for criticism. These will become fodder for new industries or solo efforts meant to embellish an otherwise dull career. But the fact remains—once dead, I will either be forgotten (which doesn’t terrify me) or severely used. I’ll more likely be forgotten or be used rather than otherwise. But all of these possibilities mean nothing to me, as it does not change the way I live each of my days. These are the merely theoretical, theological, textual considerations which a common man doesn’t get himself entangled in. In short—these are ideas which are better termed luxurious.

‘The alternative, of course, is to simply realise that you’re living. It’s like the obsession to take photographs. You do it for some purpose. You can do it for personal ends, and mostly it is for personal ends. But if you really love the subject of your photograph, you wouldn’t care much about turning him or her or it or that into a fossil. You’d watch it thrive, watch her smile, watch the life, and watch it flowing, unbroken, unspoilt.

‘I loved to take photographs. Or rather, I thought I did. But I didn’t have very good equipment. I made up for it by taking a lot many, most of them irrelevant, some even irreverent. And then, I got this wonderful gift, which really made all my excuses look shameful. And I started taking beautiful photographs for a while. As my technique improved, as it inevitably must, I started realising an immense emptiness within the body of my work, growing like a silent tumour, unseen, hollow, as if burrowing from within, bloating it. Interestingly, I started getting better and better responses for my ‘work,’ most of which used to cause me much shame.

‘I knew the reason very well. Only a few of my patrons were regulars; the others were merely being introduced to my style and they liked it. But at every new place there were so many! It was designed to be impressive, to have the maximum impact. It was much like the logic of the one-off bestseller. I knew it well but I also knew well not to recall it often to my detriment. I thus became an established name. With all my limitations, knowing my limitations, perpetrating a heinous crime on humanity and human dignity, I sold myself out. In other words, even within the locus I had set myself, it was possible for me to be lavish about myself, be arrogant, and browbeat people.

‘Yet, it inevitably comes to this. I knew. And the instant she looked at me I knew that she knew. Our masks were torn in an instant, yet she smiled an innocent smile. We had each our independent ways. I wondered then how it was possible. Her attire, her bearing, and that halting smile which suddenly broke out like moonshine. And when she first talked to me, her voice was cracked, and she cleared a lump in her throat. But it was to no avail; he eyes occasionally shone and her cover was blown.

‘Yet I knew how she’d done it; it was so easy. Like a face-meter, spotting a face and prompting for recognition, her eyes flitted here and there for an instant before gauging the depth of my pepper-coloured hair which revealed both my ancestry as well as my main bad habit. But how did I recognise her? To this day it is a mystery to me and I have not forced it. By an invisible submission, she seemed to agree to my conclusion that we were similarly placed on the boat of sinners.

‘And, like stones dropped in the mud, we both sank forthwith, to the bottom.’

Perhaps it was not by chance that I came across his note. I knew him to be a collector of all sorts of things—books, magazines, CDs, everything. His dwelling was like a big portmanteau—and he had a huge collection of different suitcases and bags. But that was perhaps what I really liked; it was all so different, and he was trapped like a fish in its bowl. And then, like an eighth wonder, I chanced upon this book placed under a lot many others in a house full of books.

From the tone of it, a personal note, perhaps to commemorate what had been a rather pleasant acquaintance. Of course, it was about me. He was easy to maintain, I guess, but so am I. The first evening was like an immense teenage visual rubdown in a decrepit coffee house over nothing but a pot of coffee. But what coffee! I felt, stuck in an immensely dreary interlude, that he’d sprinkled schnapps into it. He had relapsed into one of those moods so essential after mush idealism. (—Men!) But somehow he’d got wind of what was coming, so he fixed up the coffee real strong. It stung at that precise moment I felt almost detached from the company of his words. And it saved the day.

And now, to answer the enigma: what was it that made him realise I was a fellow-sinner. He speaks of having noted the glint in my eye as a mark of my tacit approval of his identification of our position. And he is right about what I noted him from the first which gave him away. But I am betting my last penny on my getup as the giveaway. (He must also have noted the impeccable shade of my hair. He must also have noticed, I’m sure, that I was out of the sanatorium and in my ‘free time.’ So he must have immediately placed my black-and-white ethnic chic with a smattering of tribal jewellery—crappy silverware if worn otherwise—as due to a rather ancient expertise in the profession.

To his credit, it must be said that his survey—which I’m forced, noting the enormity of the accusations he levels against people and their motives as also against himself—his survey must have been pretty thorough, and immensely swift. Whatever the reason, whatever it was that ‘gave me away’ (I for one don’t consider it as a gift of anything), he came to that conclusion pretty soon and was knocking with his back turned to the clock. It had never happened that way in my life. Most of the time I met up with folks that wanted to flog their stuff or peddle their stories and they were interesting in a way. But this time around, it was a felon, same as me, and he came with nothing, and declared nothing except a blind and mad profession of the depths to which he had sunk. For once, it felt happy to be down there in the depths with him—especially as he did almost all the talking, and we did all the eating and drinking from casseroles and carafes.

As he’s a stickler for details, I’m afraid I must excuse myself from furthering my little explanation (which will hopefully go unread). This is only a provisional explanation that should serve its purpose, and also mark the fact that his accidental personal note, perhaps meant never to be read by anyone else, was read, digested, and carefully forgotten with this similarly accidental reply note which should similarly go unread.

[To Raphael, the story; & to Edmund Leach, the themes]

[1952; 77’, three sittings]

[Written 0158 – 0315, Oct 14, 2009, after a telephonic conversation. This is merely a fictionalized transcript of what we talked, leaving out the details. I hope you can recognise the threads, but of course it’s all there in order in my head, and perhaps only in my head, which is why you’d probably find this not too boring.]

[2046]

Ashes of Time (Wong Kar-Wai, 1994)

2009-08-04T03:05:00.007+05:30

This bizarre wuxia movie brings to your mind some clichés. This is inevitable; because you find yourself blank by the time you finish the movie. You are at a loss for words, for memory, even ideas. You don’t take sides; like all good movies, it presents life with stunning fidelity. The plot confuses you, but it really is a direct story, only the story loops around at the end, so you’re left with the searing realisation that you’ve actually started much farther into the future than is convenient for you. Everything is mixed up, and time, understandably, is distorted by memory, in memory.

In passing, I would like to point out that Yimou’s Hero was made in 2002, and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in 2000, and Yimou’s own Shanghai Triad and House of Flying Daggers (the first one is a gangster movie and the second one wuxia) were made in 1995 and 2004 respectively. Though wuxia is ever in vogue in Hong Kong, this was a trailblazer of sorts; it is easily the pick of the lot.

Visually, there have been more striking films; of course, Yimou is a master at locating the subject at its grandest (some shots from Hero are unforgettable; quite understandably, Hero has done more business in the international market than any other Chinese movie to date). In contrast, Ashes of Time is a low-budget movie (at least as far as special effects are concerned), employed rising stars (who would become Wong’s regulars and superstars). Creditable attempts have been made in providing thrills, but the main attraction is, and will remain, Wong’s inimitable existential storyline and incredible screenplay. He taps into everything oriental—cyclical time, reversal of time, the ‘tunnel-vision’ provided by time; there’s also the seething undercurrent of loneliness, as virtually everyone realizes that man’s greatest gift as well as burden is his memory. Deep in the wake of a self-inflicted separation, a woman comes to the grinding realisation that without love, which she easily chucked on a fancy a few years back, she is nothing; even her son does not count. The protagonists are nearly all similar in that everyone needs to forget his or her past or reclaim it and relive it; their helplessness leads them into individual ways of pursuing ways to hurt others. In the process, they realise the futility of their own lives, the futility of war, the senselessness of personal glory and fame.

Ouyang Feng, the hero of the story, is a good storyteller. He often lends his place (as storyteller) to the others, if only to insulate him or to make the others express their stories better. The movie as a whole is a journal, with the entries filled in occasionally by the guests. Ouyang Feng astonishes us with his omniscience; he reveals little of the story, little of himself, and only as much of the other players as is absolutely necessary. So, in time, he leaves us with a stunning montage of what could be called a truly postmodern narrative wherein the men and women, heroes and heroines all, are all self-obsessed, selfish, vainglorious, and ultimately tragic. The lives of these are contrasted favourably with those who grabbed at the chance of leading a natural, risky life and perished. The story...is that of the winners, the bookish calculators who nevertheless lose out in the end to their own wiles. Ouyang Feng, the most calculating, the wiliest, and also the most detached, must be crowned king in the end but it matters so little. He has outlasted them all because he alone kept himself detached, never indulging his weakness, never giving in to his passion, always his own master, always sure of himself, always the egoist. It is a hollow victory, and even he seems remorseful when he reminds us, in his own words, that he will outlast them all.

True to tradition (well, this must have been the making of that tradition), Wong’s men are brooding, active, heavy-drinking, and very decisive (they either kill or get killed, the exception being Feng who is always in control of the strings). Women are their undoing: they are led by their passion, and their passion is their downfall (Feng being an exception, of course). Women are needy because the language spoken by the world is essentially one of the swords, not of the heart. They manipulate men, and emerge victorious; but it is a hollow victory because they simply see their men killing each other and getting killed. In a monumental passage, Maggie Cheung, as ‘Peach Blossoms,’ tells Huang Yaoshi, Feng’s friend, of her loneliness and her fateful decision to spite Feng by rejecting him out of whim. The ashes of time has laid her waste as well, and she regrets her failed life, one in which she failed to be the one she loved the most during her best years. Ruefully, she notes Yaoshi’s extreme ‘honesty’ to Feng in not telling him she’s still waiting. It is a staggering monument to acting employing kabuki, wrenching sentimentality, and immensely tricky screenplay.

Ashes of Time is also a love triangle (quadrilateral? pentagon?) which is never resolved. Lives bleed into one another and are finally resolved by death or decay. Each one loves, fails, decays, and suffers a death in due time, their life (and love) spent, wasted. Sexual identity is meaningless; man becomes woman becomes both, and at times, men and women seem merely conveniences imposed by visual reality. What they see in their half-dazed, sun-stroked desert mornings and afternoons, are but visions, and in those visions they hear voices, colours, but not real men or women. The hit-men dream about new contracts, spiteful lovers dream about revenge, and these dreams and hopes bulge out and bend reality; only the heat and the hunger are real. In the end, the swords speak, there is clangour and the spurt of blood, and men are scattered dead. In their dying breaths, men see a new wisdom, and they die happy. The women are left to rue their men, and they mourn themselves dead.

Feng is unique among the characters as he alone desires not to forget. He is an orphan, and has learnt to protect himself by not allowing others in. He knows that only the dear ones can hurt; so he rejects everybody. In so doing, consciously registering those moments which he could grasp to return to a normal life, he knows that he is a slave of the rules and the rulebooks (his favourite is an almanac, from which he quotes time and again to prove to us the sagacity of his travelling choices). In the end, he succeeds, reclaiming his home and hearth and clan, defeating his friend Yaoshi. And in the process, he leaves a bloody trail of mangled lives, smouldering in the ashes of time.

————————————————————————————————————————
[1140 words in 55 min]

Гамлет (1964) ~ A Quick Look

2009-07-28T02:29:00.009+05:30

This essay is the outcome of a recent viewing of the celebrated adaptation Gamlet (`Hamlet', 1964, directed by Grigori Kozintsev).

This movie deserves a special mention purely for personal reasons; after a gap of nearly six months I have watched a film in its entirety.

A racy, gripping, pared-down Hamlet, not the bumbling three-hour act that we habitually see, coming from reverent classicists like Olivier (who has the dubious distinction of putting out the worst of the celebrated Hamlet portrayals), Branagh (who perhaps took a cue from Kozintsev by setting his version in Victorian England), and the rest of them (Kurosawa's version does justice to Hamlet, but he has considerably altered it), where we are left wondering how a procrastinator and philosopher like Hamlet would ever find the resourcefulness or the energy to match the revenge-crazed Laertes in a swordfight. In my opinion, this is perhaps how Shakespeare would have directed a Hamlet film. Of course, it is unquestionably Romantic (even though the costumes would place the action somewhat earlier to that). It is surprisingly contemporary, and the hero, as well as everyone else, is remarkably modern. As someone has already remarked, this is the only version which looks like a film. The castle, about which everything revolves, is a real Estonian castle. So is everything else–real and cold–and the attention to detail is breathtaking. In a close-up of a tapestry (lasting about five seconds), the director successfully conveys the "reality" of the production–we're sue that that wall curtain can only belong to a castle; it is not a piece of textile that you can buy. It is a reminder of the immense pains which must have gone in to the production of such a smooth, cavalier film. But there are other reminders as well. Ophelia is shown under clear water, and not floating; Hamlet takes light steps on a steep flight of steps (indicating how well familiar he is with those forbidding steps—‘my backyard’), and the gravedigger converses and sups as if it was a matter of course. There are heightened moments (you cannot avoid the fanfare and the drama in Hamlet), but Shostakovich's regal music score raises it out of the earthly plane. The horses are shown in full gallop, and we are aware of the painful absence of any report of hooves. Suddenly there is the rap of hooves over the drawbridge, and suddenly we become aware of being in the presence of a supremely talented director who has done all the homework for our benefit.

The movie has been shot in wide-angle (aspect ratio 2.5), with a sepia-tone to it. Sets and costumes are superb, and the castle plays a tremendous role as the only prop. Everything of importance is tied intimately to the castle and its inescapable confines; the castle is never shown in its 'form.' There are a few times when Hamlet breaks free (only Hamlet is able to do so; but so can the gravedigger and the commoners), and at such times (which includes the famous soliloquy where Hamlet mostly has his back towards the viewer), his thoughts are free, and borders on the resolute decisions that he comes close to making. In true Hamlet fashion, however, reality has its own way of presenting things but Hamlet is ready for any eventuality. He is supremely talented as a swordsman, articulate as a conscientious son and a citizen and a Dane (for all purposes he is a dashing Soviet, but do let's keep up appearances). By the time we get acquainted with him we fall in love with him but he is already a distracted lover who is irked rather than amused by the innocent purity of his sweetheart (and in true Shakespearean vein, the adaptation does not speak anything about Hamlet's romantic past or anything else).

The meeting with the ghost (the first of the many breathtaking shots in the movie) gives Hamlet's life a definitive turn. He might have been a brooding swordsman or an intellectual or both rolled into one, but the ghost propels his son headlong into a flurry of difficult choices. To make things easy for him, the ghost, who has the advantage of knowing nearly everything related to the murder, offers Hamlet the easy way of sparing his mother, which must have been his most vexing problem. But this Hamlet is surely not tied down to his mother's skirt-strings. Prince Hamlet is heroic, accomplished, and in every way the true heir to the throne. The death of King Hamlet and the subsequent coronation of Claudius, followed by the new king's marriage to the deceased king's queen, all managed quite admirably, has somehow appeased the citizens and they seem reconciled to the realities. They (as well as Hamlet) are not aware of what happened, nor do they seem to care. The castle and the insinuations that go inside are as far away from the common man and his homestead as the stars from the earth. Much like how it was really like in those days (the adapters have taken the liberty of placing the story in the 16-th century rather than in the Dark Ages), the common man, or the king's subjects, is hardly more than an occasional speck on the screen. It is palace intrigue at its dramatic best, and all the reins seem to be safe in the hands of Claudius until a few things conspire against the usurper. In the absence of any real talent (his only claim to the throne being his cunning—Claudius is perhaps the most cunning of all those in a palace which was perhaps teeming with scheming ministers and soldiers), Claudius has to constantly forge and foster uneasy relations with very dangerous men each of whom could dispatch him. And in the end, his worst dreams come to torment him and he is disgusted with the reflection of his own face in the mirror.

Among the highlights of the film, the ones I thought truly outstanding include the scene where Hamlet is summoned by his mother after the play. In a brilliant sweep, he razes his mother to the ground and finally stops short with an empty share into the distance, at which his mother finally breaks and gives in. Few cinematic occasions equal, let alone surpass, this sequence in its originality and sheer madness. Hamlet trips with a light step, playing dangerously close to the borderline, yet everyone has to listen to him and keep their distance because he fires off idea after unnerving idea in the fashion of a raving lunatic. Yet everyone is aware that this is the man who alone has been hurt by the death (murder) of his father. Little by little, as he performs alone to deliver the shocks that would finally implode the royal family in the catastrophic finale, rehearsing his lines and improvising his reactions, Hamlet pulls everyone into his private gloom. Closest to him in her innocence, truly unable to fathom the depths a kind-hearted soul could suddenly reveal, Ophelia breaks first and dies in a gully. Ophelia is meant to be a prop, for this is a serious man-to-man affair. It is the tragic story where a brave and worthy man has to sacrifice his family and all that he loved—in addition to himself—to destroy a coward. And how this unfolds over two-and-a-half hours of unsurpassed cinematic compression, while retaining poise in the occasional long-take, is an immense exhibition of supremely gifted adaptation (Kozintsev and Pasternak) of what has been called, along with Oedipus Rex, a perfect dramatic plot. There can be nothing, better than this.

02:21 22-Jul-09

[1270 words in 50 min]

Keeping It In, or a word about publishing

2009-07-09T02:04:00.019+05:30

1. There are dichotomies in this world which serve our appetites for learning and classifying.

1.1 On the outside, dichotomies (dualities) serve merely and exclusively the purposes of classifying and learning.

1.2 Formerly (and that’s a good while into the past), we used to speak of duality, as if there was just one. We understand the earlier use of 'duality' as a convenience term, a keyword, a remnant of that old obsession with absolutes. And in those days, opinions used to be iron bricks. (In retrospect, it must be conceded that our predecessors—Kant or Joyce, for instance—did not have as many opportunities as we have for expressing—publishing—change. They simply had no means to connect with the public in real-time: no hypertext. But now, in this age of 'harmless, formless, limitless, publishing'—we seek out the public with our 'changes.')

2. The major contribution of the modern world—postmodern or post-contemporary world, to be precise—is the growing realisation that knowledge is not absolute.

2.1 The general tendency is to freely concede that there are no absolutes whatever, and on that premise build its bulwark of cast-iron theory to support livelihoods. (This we see most commonly in the academia. Remember Derrida and deconstruction, Said and ‘orientalism.’)

3. This has in turn given rise to ‘industries’ in every walk of life. (Mention of some occupations, such as web logging, as industry can have quite amusing consequences.) Industry may be construed as any content packaged as a commodity and mass-produced, with the ‘mould’ being kept for future use (as if it were really necessary; as if it had intrinsic value).

3.1 Mass-produced things have only utility or use-value, and as such, people desire individual value.

3.1.1 So we have books with different covers (front jacket illustrations) and the same content (a special print-run of OV Vijayan’s final novel featured a thousand copies with different paintings on the cover); and thirteen different versions of Sunflowers by van Gogh (of course, he died a pauper), and so on. (So the idea could hardly have been postmodern.)

3.2 Those blatant successes of mass-appeal—like mainstream cinema—are not just about the content, but as much about the presentation, where it is presented, and to whom. Cinema, for example, provides an immense ambience that can in turn be private, communal, cathartic, and comical. A similar expression of communal catharsis, though with only a few options and often performed under duress, would be a public protest march or a solidarity march. (DYFI’s famous ‘human chain’ of 1987 comes to mind. They had much limited success with their later 'human chain', thus underlining the novelty appeal of public displays of solidarity. And by then, materialism had congealed.)

3.2.1 Each success of mass-subscription—such as a bestselling book, a blockbuster movie, or even a successful political rally—portends a change. Some become revolutions, others become trendsetters. But each promises a change, a change that would insure its continued survival, evolution, and final ensconcing.

3.3 When a book—a work—is read by another, it can lay a claim to having been published. Fitzgerald's translation of Rubaiyat sold less than ten copies in his lifetime.

4. It takes so little to publish.

4.1 ‘If you are famous we can publish. If you haven’t, we can publish if it’s new. Preferably, if you have coined the term yourself.’

4.2 Historically, those that have sold the most and forgotten quickly are those that pandered to crass public taste.

4.3 Bestselling books deal in generalities. The cruder and animal-like it gets, the better its chances of big-time success. (‘Gone With the Wind’.)

4.3.1 No wonder then, that no medical guide or engineering manual (even those that saves lives or moves mountains) ever sold by the millions.

4.4 What people need is money, but what they like is mush and fantasy. This they need in bucketfuls.

4.5 The public loves spin doctors, though we might revile them when they appear on TV. We love being pampered, and we love the lies when it’s about us. Moreover, they are ‘a part of us.’

5. There are those who choose to brave the wind and go it alone. They lead a disturbed life because they can see through the lies. Worse still, they teach others to see through the lies.

5.1 They, too, run the risk of being branded. Branding is the ultimate containment mechanism of capitalism. (Recall those ‘Che’ T-shirts and bandannas.)

5.2 They define their lives through their rebellious lives. They might subscribe to the general on many issues, but there are private stings and worries which they will never compromise on. They will resolutely identify and contend with a few or a host of issues. They become advocates of a ‘cause.’ This too, the alert reader would be quick to point out, is a form of branding.

6. Branding is a very ingenious way of saying, ‘we know you’re different and famous, but we don’t want to be like you.’ Branding is a way of exclusion, where we mark up things ('the other') for consumption.

6.1 Branding may or may not be attended by envy. Every woman envies Rebecca Romijn, but not Naomi Klein. (The reasons are obvious: our eyes and our hearts and something...need I say more? Well, at least some would say, ‘What’s she got that I haven’t?’)

6.2 Branding is convenient.

6.3 Brands engender devotion. We attribute godlike qualities to brands, fully knowing that money will buy most (the parallel with god is exact: money in place of faith).

6.4 A brand is what we aspire to be. When we get hooked on a brand (even a celebrity) it is like saying, ‘Brand, I will have you one day.’ That is, ‘some day I’ll strip you of all your novelty and consume your value.’

6.5 Much as we are attracted to the man or woman who shows the least interest in us (but we’re interested in), we prefer expensive, ‘exclusive’ brands. These brands, obviously, play hard-to-get. (Gauloises, for instance—though very few actually like the coarse puffs.)

6.6 The general idea, then, is to become a brand. Because a brand is impersonal, godlike, larger-than-life, everlasting. (At least, that’s the promise. Marilyn Monroe scores a perfect ten.)

7. And then, there are those who keep it in.

7.1 In private circles they shoot out their tentacles, touching some and thrilling some but always adding spice to things, keeping busy most of the time.

7.2 They are the small-time builders who respect the short-order of things. They make some edifices but are quick to see that it’s probably not worth raising them all to the heavens.

7.3 What they express, what they do, have generality, but it does not engage the public as much as the great big successes do.

7.3.1 They speak about specific things, taking care not to trivialize the particular, or generalize the trivial. And they know the 'urn' to be a false one.

7.3.2 They are aware of the contextual nature of facts.

7.4 They write well. They write to an audience, of whom they demand a certain technical proficiency and finesse. You don't need to be technical, or course. But you have to be uncompromising and thoroughgoing. That is, if you’re a very astute observer of life, or someone immersed in life as to enjoy the intricacies rather than waste your time in anticipation of the ‘big intellectual Mardi Gras’, then they expect you to be true to your promise.

7.5 They don’t deal in half-measures. They do not compromise.

7.6 They are not idealists because they know what is possible and what is not possible. They are aware that they represent the locus of the possible.

7.7 They generally don’t publish; even if they do, they publish but a fraction of their thoughts. Even then they are read by a few who notice the nuances, and that the rules have not been flayed.

7.8 What they publish is one great confluence of many divergent streams in an intellectual floodtide of consonant thoughts.

7.8.1 These thoughts are but a result of clever synthesis; reality as such has no such order, nor any need of thoughts.

7.9 Thoughts reflect reality; reality they do not make.

8. You cannot publish thoughts. Thoughts are what you keep in all the time.

[1385/160']

A Christmas Gift

2009-07-03T03:14:00.003+05:30

(Written Jan 2009, in a loose journal form)

2020 Baby is all right, her granma is just showing her around, but there's a feeling it is just too early for all that.

2021 Call from home. Report that things are turning out rather well, that she's making friends...and I paint a rosy picture for them as well as for myself.

2023 'X' joins me. I indicate something about the call. As I slowly walk back, along the side of the coach from where I'd alighted, she silently guides me away, so that baby wouldn't catch sight of me. I keep on talking on the phone as I accompany her.

2025 We watch her from a distance. A crowd has collected, probably just see off their dear ones. We say generally pleasant things, things like how things could possibly work out as planned. We feel like master orchestrators to whom success has become second nature.

2026 We can no longer just wish it away. It's definitely she.

2028 Now her pitch is at a crescendo. She's calling it quits, and it will not be easy getting her all the way up to CTT.

2029 We take a few steps closer, now we are only a few metres from the entrance, and we can see Granma trying her best to manage things. Her wails are intermittent, her voice is cut off when she wants to inhale, it's heart-rending. When she's got a gulpful, she starts crying herself hoarse.

2030 'X' steps in. When she returns a minute later, she tells me it's best to keep away.

2035 We've made some decisions. Now it all hits us: the plans were shoddy, though the superficial things were very well planned. We had made big mistakes.

2040 We've taken her out and her luggage out. Last minute adjustments in re-deploying some luggage either side.

2045 It's past the departure time now; 'Y' is so light-hearted (for obvious reasons) that he manages to tell Granma (his mother-in-law) that there might be some dignitaries in the train for whom it was being delayed.

2050 The train is off. now she wants to go, but it hardly matters.

2056 We slowly make the trip back after making the phone calls informing the grand parents in both directions.

2105 At the top of the foot over bridge, I have to make that remark on how optimistically it had all been planned. Things had turned out in the only possible way they could. Her father had told me just this (indicating it was probably not a good idea to let her leave). 'X' gets that chance to pour it all out and turn the rabbit on its head. Starting with a carefully modulated swear word (which was intoned very slowly, as if in a chant, but which I never really noticed—I was already kicking myself for falling into the trap), she continues. Who shall I turn to, whom will I tell all this, when will my suffering end. I was very clearly outmanoeuvred, and she could completely transfer all her guilt or shame (if at all she felt any, which I doubt) to me, because I am expendable and I am always there. Of course, not to take off the sheen from anything; she's endured physical and mental strain to attend the classes—and here's where she's taken it in the other sense—and if she's unable to complete all the papers successfully then she has this particular uttering of this superbly pessimistic bastard to apply for. (But who cares? I think she will pass all the papers she appears for; whether she appears in all is highly doubtful—which was what I was hinting at.) The big issue was not the exams. She just supposed that the big issue was passing the exams. She just took for granted the big premise to that success—which was to be completely free for the twenty or so days during which there would be exams. By not going there a few days before and settling her in—which still would have been difficult if not outright impossible—she'd made it that bit harder for herself. In the end, as she said rightly, she might have to make a few more trips daily. Would that be enough...would anything ever be enough. I guess she'd be really stressed out in the end, and I further suppose that it will be like this throughout our lives. She's a typical; white-hat thinker, and her life would be permanently marred by my red- and black-hat thinking. But she can always complain, because unfortunately the pessimist always wins. What she does not realise is that there are a few things which will not happen otherwise, and some people see it very easily. Which is why there are very few surprises in my life, and which is why my life is miserable though I always appear to be free.

2109 Car. Inside. In her misery, 'X' bangs the Baby's leg against the dashboard, soft leg buckling under the impact. Baby starts wailing like a rocket going off. I'm almost speechless; at the depths self consternation. Somehow I have the presence of mind to start the car (the other possibility would be an eye for an eye). Baby was sobbing silently, and soon she fell silent as 'X' continued mumbling. 'Y' is almost mad with a sense of shame; but somehow it keeps his mind perfectly clear and balanced, apart from the shattering sense of private loss. Things are so clear in his mind, it's almost like the calm after the bombing.

And the mumbling assumes the spitting cobra stance: the new premise is that it's only due to me that she'd pulled the baby out. The implication being, she would have stopped crying somehow, her granma would have managed somehow. With the opportunity, she now has a licence (her tongue is much much nimbler than mine) to bend facts, reason, and intentions to her liking. You're cooked, my dear fellow. for the next three weeks, you self-ignite and douse the fuse time and again.

2125 Almost home. As I parked the car in the garage, I could hear a new bout of wailing. As I move up the stairwell and reach the door, she tearfully blurts out, 'Acchaa...enne thalli.' I took her in my arms, and she was soon silent. I took her to bed. 'X' was already in bed, turned to the other side.

It exposed my biggest failings as a person. When she hinted at the gravity of my pessimism—and she's right in the essentials—that I'd already acquired the CCNA, CCNP and Oracle certifications a few times over—and that I was only trying to hamper her journey to professional sainthood by passing these departmental tests, she had a point. It is true that I don't take an exam unless it's absolutely essential; and when I take an exam, I make absolutely sure that I will not be disappointed with myself when the result comes. But that's the sunnier side of it; the bleak side is that most often the exams aren't mandatory, and I will not take that exams. The result: I get left behind. And if I get left behind, then it's a vicious circle. (I have my reasons; most of the days I waste something like four hours; but I also spend a lot of time with Baby.)

And what was I thinking before all this, I, unfailing diviner of the bleak future, foreteller of catastrophes, the one with evil foreboding, Œdipus Panathanaikos, one with the poison tongue? ('One who bends his tongue only to strike down.' But why, why notice? Why get affected so? And why, when there's even less than a hint, draw out the posion togu and forge a calamitous destiny? Why choose the curse when the words haven't yet been conceived? Why at all talk? Wh—)

I was thinking of at least a week of play.
I'd already celebrated by buying two books to read in the coming ('free') days, ad promising a dear friend that I'd write no matter how.
I was thinking of reorienting my life (whatever that meant).
Also, thinking of reading things and writing.
Thinking other petty thoughts, all in tasty anticipation.
And as I started the car to the railway terminus, I was thinking about all the nice thoughts because the outcome would supposedly be very positive.
As we made the preliminary arrangements inside the coach (part of those described earlier as a superficial planning success), such as securing the luggage, it suddenly strikes me that the berths are the ones right next to the exit, and she'd be sleeping with her granma on the bottom berth. If she gets up at night and tries to go out... and it was the start of the misery. I found myself rather helpless because some things had already been done, irrevocably: 'X' was not going, I was not going along either, and so it was all an open, vulnerable environment. Anything could happen in the space of a few seconds; it was an ordinary sleeper coach, and either one of the two doors would not be secured. These were, if I were given the benefit of hindsight or afterthought, a figment of the pseudo mystic bourgeois imagination.

And how did Baby clatter all my pots on to the floor?

Now my hopes took a nosedive; I fear I might have to reorient my life to suit Baby's.
To put an end to all spurious activities, to "live in the present and the now" (hackneyed phrase, have to use it because I really don't know what it means, sounds like a Wrigleys punchline to me).

Which essentially means: none of the above hopes will materialize (hopes never do; a pessimist should know at least that). No reading, even less writing, more housework, more stress, more yelling at the child, less hours at office, more marital discord (like a kilogram a day compounding to two or three kilograms henceforth). In a word: it would be totally disagreeable (a pessimist knows and does not even hope otherwise) three weeks. In the course of these three weeks, anything could happen, and family could totally disappear from the face of this painful earth. (And, true to her own dark depths, 'X' was quick enough to point out, while we started the return trip, that it would have been just as easy to band her head in the rails, which would have stopped her crying altogether—she has a way of thinking everything in such grandiose terms; if it is a personal misfortune and a protracted drudgery, it's all the more useful to paint it an absolute catastrophe. Somehow it lets her cope better; it's just one of her ways of dealing with my pessimism which she deems unforgiving and insurmountably prophetic.)

And Baby, blissfully unaware of the myriad thoughts that literally shredded 'X' and 'Y', simply announced, with the required force, that it wasn't to her liking. And when she was interrogated by a loving mother on the side bench she said just as sweetly, victory already ensured, that it had made her sad that the train was going. We'd made that big mistake that she was of an age when she could understand everything, but could still call it quits any time she wanted, and appeal successfully to having her considered as a yearling or even an infant. In a single, genuine, undifferentiated act, she's brought us face to face with the raw reality—she's made us face the real. She's just reminded us—again—that it's something about her, and not about something else and she's getting in the way.

...and she was ready to roll out the tricks, if need be; only, things will never ever be the same between 'X' and 'Y', at least not until a further catastrophe submerges this in its trail. And until then and ever after, life continues to burst in ugly bubbles regardless of how you found yourself in it: inside or outside or nowhere at all. When a bubble breaks, you all fall hard. And when you've picked yourself up and powdered your face, there's another.

At the end of the day, the three of us are still together, thrown like three forgotten pebbles on a beach washed by time. The sands shift, the pebbles weather, but they remain three until they wither. And thus ordained for life, ye men and women: life, single, always.

But this, my wholehearted wish to 'X', wishing her all success in the coming examinations. But really, the exams aren't what it's really about. What it 's really about is managing Baby and still getting to the exam hall that early, finish the paper well, and being back in time. Well, you tried. You sorted out some problems. Can't help feeling bad about it: defeat is always black and losers blame themselves. Losers don't get the proverbial straws. But this—my wish, wretched as it is. (But what more from a pessimist—

[2350; 120'; proofread but uncorrected; but what is there to correct in life? You write these things merely to help your mind from wandering and committing fouler, darker crimes. Crimes of stupidity: if only I'd shut my trap. At least she'll sleep well today, guess she's already put two hours of decent, deep sleep behind her by now. If only—but it's a little too much to ask isn't it—to ask something of oneself. Living from fall to fall, we learn nothing better than to fall deeper the next time.

In passing, I might add that X passed all her examinations and was in fact the only one among those in her office who attempted the exams to come through with flying colours.]

[2393]

Silence is Preserving a Voice

2009-07-03T03:02:00.004+05:30

your rails. you're thin.
your thin paper wings.
in the wind. dangling.
your sun. fly high.
your window shattering.
your rails. you're thin.
your thin paper wings.
sugar box. sugar boy.
riding in. riding in.
sugar box. sugar boy.
handheld candle. sugar boy.
your rails. you're thin.
your thin paper wings.
in the wind. dangling.
your sun. fly high.
your window shattered in the wind.
your coca cola sign rattling. rattling.
resonator. resonator.
homeless trees. gathering.
outside your window bootleg babies call to you
and lie among the mosquitoes.
that summers fever coming.
cats are gathering outside your window.
homeless trees.
bootleg babies calling to you.
lie among. lie among the mosquitoes.
your rails. you’re thin.
your thin paper wings.
get up in your sun. fly high.
dangling. dangling.
your window shattered in the wind.
the sun on your coca cola sign.
your rails. your thin paper wings.
paper wings.
resonator.
***
there is a sound on the other side of this wall.
a bird is singing on the other side of this glass.
footsteps. concealed.
silence is preserving a voice.
walking in the wind at the waters edge
comes close to covering my rubber feet.
listening to the barbed wire hanging.
there is a sound on the other side of this wall.
a bird is singing on the other side of this glass.
footsteps. concealed.
silence is preserving a voice.
silver chain.
thrown away.
broken wing.

If you think it's these alien sounds that attract, well, maybe you're right but only after a fashion; all attractive songs have a need to be attractive. Electronic music, especially, has an unapologetic claim to glamour because it packages sound—not voice—to sell itself (and transmutes voices to make it sound more appropriate). If you ask me: what attracts me to an Underworld song has to do almost as much with the lyrics and the singing, as with the sounds. If it had been just an issue of the songs, then I only need to listen to Fat Boy Slim, which I don't do much. (And, by the way, Fat Boy has made a very famous copy of the first part of this composite, `Drop the Hate'.)

This Goliath of a song stretches the limit to what you can package in one session of song—or whatever you choose to call it. There are many independent strands to this song, which is when the song becomes almost imperceptibly smooth and you're aware only of your thoughts gliding among the clouds; but then there are those excruciating transitions, which in this case are really drastic, and you almost feel like you're in a club watching a DJ decanting one after another of those stuffed up stock songs...and the singing gives way to whispers and looped chants and ghost noises...which is when we realize the point about Underworld's song writing. When they have a nice song (screenplay? poetry?) going, their songs are smooth like whiskey, you don't notice that you're (just) listening to a song. And when that lyric gets blocked, when it makes way to those inane chants (even if it is to make a musical point or in support of a theme) it gets a bit hard to sit through.

And in this particular case, I have been typing non-stop from 06:10 into the song. (It's that point when the reverie is broken by some really jarring transition music.) Well, I just had to. And now Hyde's voice is back (around 12:00; in the meantime they really took us through the paces, and unloaded all those loops they habitually put into their live shows, succeeding, for the most part, in eliciting an urge to go out and join a protest march because it is so rousing), if only to mouth the elegiac finale:

silver chain.
thrown away.
broken wing.

You never can hope for a more fitting service to a broken kite. (And the child's babble, looped electronic gizmos of course, assure us that the kite is of the paper-and-tube variety rather than the Ken Loach type.)

Rest in peace, Kite.

**
This song, more than any I have recently listened to, opens up the great failing of literature. To really know how a kite feels like (the question itself is fallacious in literature), to really know how it feels to flutter in the wind and crash against windows and finally, twisted and stretched beyond reason or logic, how it feels when the thread snaps and you are borne lifeless to the ground, when you see the homeless trees gathering round you, and the cats come for a party. The images thrown together finally converge: the kite, the wind, and (love's? But I don’t seriously think that) death.

For those who stay away from Underworld for the sleaziness: this is perhaps one of their cleanest, some awful loops notwithstanding. There is a total lack of innuendo at least in the lyric, which is surprising for an Underworld song (and thus it must somehow be deficient in depicting reality, you might say). But no, this is a wonderful biography of a dying kite. And everything, right from the halting, spiralling, muted drum loops blooming into the bubble-boom drums to be siphoned off into the gospel chant…everything is perfect and trance-like. To be sure, this is Underworld's longest song to date; it's more of an anthology, weaving together (or is it rails crossing?) three different strands, one laying on top of the other...and leaves us…dangling. The finale is catastrophic, it really gives a tremendous slap in your face and leaves us essentially cataleptic.

**

Now all it remains is for you to listen to this song somehow. If you don't have it, you know where to search. (Those who know about this song probably don’t need to read this any way; so I can tell you now that it’s about the song Juanita: Kiteless: To Dream of Love). Google it, smuggle it, steal it or rent it…but listen to it. Otherwise, it’s just lame—what I’ve just written. And when you’ve listened to it, you can throw this away and forget that you’ve even read this.

Because, when you’ve got the real thing, it just proves how little is achieved by writing about an artefact. If I’ve convinced and made you listen to the song (available, among many other albums, in the original cut of Second Toughest in the Infants), I consider my job done. Until then, let this silence preserve a voice.

[1116/130']

How It Was

2009-07-03T02:08:00.010+05:30

Old Times
...there was a time when the world – imagined reality – would implode me. I was quite used to being an observer; in fact, I felt so much at-home in that relaxing role that I was convinced I was like that at all times. I even had a firsthand knowledge of what that role entailed; but since then I have grown impervious to it, and now I do not recollect how I felt in those days. To be sure, I was free; I used to write fantastic things which at least some of my close friends might remember. I used to dream.

My role-playing – as a steadfast companion – was widely acknowledged, and taken for granted, among the select group in which I circulated. I was so engrossed and so sure about it all, not even registering that it was just a modality, a show of equanimity. It was not real, it wasn't me. But I chose my audience carefully, and there were no unfamiliar faces. I could always carry on from where I had left off. I fact, things were all at the same point, always, and I, likewise, remained: the same bewildering and often frustrating impassivity, a face that betrayed no emotions, zombielike. My eyes were particularly pallid in those days, with something of a fishy quality about them; all the more reason why my silence – which was merely necessitated by a physiological contingency – took on a formidable, even forbidding, aspect. It must have been during this rather unproductive vegetative period that I was formally acknowledged to be ‘different.’

But there is no running away from reality; it is always there with you, it lives with you, it breathes and sweats with you. It was just a matter of time before it caught up with your wickedness, before it impetuously rent to shreds your prepared responses. It was just a matter of time.

...It didn’t take long. Like a speck of coloured glass rotated in a kaleidoscope, trapped in novel configurations of contrived colour-spray, he fell from branch to branch and then upside down – again.

There was such a time; a time for falling.

Reading Lights

‘Light... is that which can itself not be seen, but that which helps us to see.’

Ambience plays an important part in interpretation. If you suppose that ambience plays no part at all in the sense you make out of a text (literary or otherwise) then you’re probably theorizing too much. Light is colour, and as such, ambience colours the interpretation.
There are quite a few possibilities, of which I indicate a few.

Daylight – natural light – sunlight
Incandescent light, which might be from a filament bulb or candlelight
Fluorescent light
‘Passing light,’ which the term I use for streaks of light that come in packets, for a specified duration, and which have a temporal and spatial quality. Practically, this is the light you have when you read comfortably in a fast-moving train or a bus.

Daylight has no nostalgic value; at least it has none for me because I feel this is how I read naturally. The light itself can have many variations, and I usually denote even the fading light of dusk by this term. It is ‘light from the sun or derived from sunlight.’

Incandescent light is fraught – perhaps more so than the other types. Just like you recall a rainy day from your growing years, things you read in incandescent light are focussed as in a vignette. It is invariably nostalgic. This common perception is made use of in films (sepia tone) as well.

Fluorescent light (artificial lighting) is also remarkably neutral, and by a curious quirk of design most of us read most of what we read under artificial lighting. Reading and other close work are one of the most important criteria in designing acceptable artificial lighting. The main problem with artificial lighting is that, unless you are using a reading lamp, all sorts of clutter get illuminated. Artificial lighting thus inhibits ‘accidental reading.’

Passing light makes us constantly aware of speed. This light is determined by the mode of transport as much as just the light. You are also drawn, time and again, to the tempting television show outside. It is a show of the real, the actual, yet somehow you feel insulated in your cabin, in your coach, and you are reassured that you are insulated from a reality in which you have no part, an actuality where you don’t belong. But, as the scenario changes, it is still an unsatisfactory way of reading.

Midnight Snack
He had been voraciously tucking into stripped tapioca chips fried in oil. As he finished, he felt enormously thirsty. A bottle of water stood upright, entirely transparent, tempting. He gulped down in mouthfuls, and simultaneously brought up a burp. The pungent bubble strained against rising contentment, fizzing and burning before finally dissipating in angry smithereens that seared down his gullet. He swallowed painfully as he caught his breath and concentrated, to let it pass.

[838; 85']

The Remains of a Summer Day

2009-05-08T02:52:00.008+05:30

SUMMER

...A slow killing. Arcing like a spiked swordfish, she gulped down half a bottle of water; water fused gullet and plastic into a pipe. Like a fuming piece of pumice, she trembled helplessly and spent her fury. Late in March but ahead of her lay ten more weeks, fanning open an unwelcome hold. It begins...now.

With moist fingers she gripped the doorframe and was quickly repulsed—the very thought sickening like mud at the base of her throat. Stomach was parched and empty like a tank, she still felt queasy. Head bobbing emptily, on a dry afternoon she dangled endlessly. She imagined walking on warm sands on a hollow, ivory-cool night under a star-studded dark crystal-blue sky. She promenaded in white, but not in gauze or chintz: something flimsier, whiter, and infinitely sheerer. She calmly walked the edge of a bulwark, barefoot, her plumes flapping noiselessly as the sea occasionally raged and sprayed immense soothing salty wetness. O—for a drink that wet the throat and seared down in a thick melt of caramel.

The heat spread its dry suckers on a tyrranical summer day. But on this summer afternoon: alone.

COLD SHOWER

She was peering out of the corners of her eyes because it smarted when she stared out at the world straight. She had enough sense to somehow shuck her overalls, which weren't substantial now that she had been alone for a few minutes, and find her place to the shower. In her misery, which approximated the anguish a carved man would feel as he came to grips with his new blindness, she made her way and found herself turning the knob to eternity—turning her into a world that would free her. At that instant, she was connected to painful reality by the very simple promise of a cold shower. Her mind was aflame in anticipation of soft, cold shiny spheres of congealed wetness. She wanted to be sucked and fused into it whole.

Her face visibly brightened as the first drops littered her shoulder blades and hit the tiled walls and broke into spray. Acceptably cool, but not as her gargantuan hopes had anticipated: but it is just as hard to slake a dying man's thirst. Her breasts and shoulders and thighs waited, flowering in anticipation, when reality dealt a stunning blow: the water turned slightly and then lukewarm, and in a few dreadful seconds she was drenching herself in what seemed boiling hot water. And then she noticed the metal pipes.

She jumped back from the spray like a singed cat and turned on the shower a bit more. But she was somewhat pleased at the contact: it was just water after all. It was a simple mechanism, and there were no fangled climate-control features of a modern faucet. But a faucet is the last thing o your mind when you're hot and take a shower: you just expect the water to come out in nice clean droplets of bottled springwater. She tried the mental math and calculated that there was about ten metres of exposed piping, and it was 3:00 in the afternoon. Pretty bad choice for her shower, of course, but she'd been stuck in her clothes for almost too long. She ruefully recollected that she was a doctor and not an engineer. Reality always made her count her scholarly degrees on occasions like these.

Her 'ten metres of piping' translated to roughly 45 seconds of waiting away from the falling hot shower. And then the droplets turned first hospitably cool, and then really cool, and the smile never vanished from her lips.

SIESTA

She'd acted all day long: she'd risen, done her toilette, breakfasted, met the patients, and then come back at 2:00 and showered: as if on cue, as if programmed. Each action seemed to point to the next, which also seemed to derive from the previous but really it was just running. At some times she was running away from the octopus heat, at other times propelled by mere inertia, and at those rare moments when she regained a sane mind and a balance, she merely ran away from it all. Her actions made sense only if she connected them with this catchall word—'running.' In the grips of an act, and she was perpetuating it in her confusion. She seemed incapable of thought or authentic action: she was preyed upon and led by the elements.

However, she emerged from the shower suitably rejuvenated, and she'd emptied her bowels as well. She felt whistle clean and by a sheer coincidence, the first set of dress she encountered was the white one she'd recently got back from the cleaners'. It was quite a while that she'd worn that dress, and it reminded her of butterflies (lily-white butterflies? Perish the thought!) and she decided in favour of it. She placed it in front of her, hair still wet and undone, a smile playing on her lips, lavishing utmost care even to the details, and felt herself swell right before the mirror: a day lay waiting to be salvaged, only she had to piece together a perfect night following an agreeable evening. Only, she shouldn't blow it all by rushing it.

One step at a time. She now found her breast surging with hope and with carefully laid out plans extending their branches and sprouting leaves and blossoms: foreboding checked her progress and she killed the thought by glancing at her wristwatch. It was half past three, and the evening didn't start until 6:00. She reached out her arms and drew the blinds. As the air-conditioner whirred to life emitting familiar beep-click sounds, she was peering out of one eye at the piercing image of a cruel sun slitting through shaded glasspane. As the first waves of cooled air struck her face and sent her long hair dreaming, she felt heaviness on her eyelids. Surely enough, her final recollections were of eyebrows shutting tight in clumps of wetness drying in the cold air.

She slept soundly till 6:00.

NIGHTRIDE::prelude

At 6:00 sharp she was woken by a bell. It was her phone ringing; she sat bolt upright, it was almost as if she'd planned to get up at 6:00 as well. A familiar voice at the other end sounded bored but desperate enough: the heat was affecting everyone the same, and the nights of Tangier were refreshingly even frighteningly cool. She never drank nor did she give company, but she thought she'd suffer a sudden out-of-bed cardiac arrest when she had the following stanza intoned in her ear:

Dreamt a lot about sci-fi cartoons...Flash was in it. Can you imagine!
Hmm... you're not suggesting a drink of coffee, are you? It's not entirely—
The same! But I'm also proposing a bit of a caper.
But I guess I'm not in my element today, might disappoint as Arden. And I suppose you'd have a starring role as the Gordon?

And imagine how, in a trice, almost in a dream, how the rest of the conversation went and she set her coffee and heard the kettle spout; she turned around and examined her coiffure to be satisfactory, and took the white dress which she'd placed beside the bed just as she'd dropped off asleep. And imagine, again, her wonder at his calling her My Julah! Golon! as he strode up to an open door and a pair of riding boots waiting to crack down the stairs.

To Raphael, and ever to our friendship which now seeks meaning in humdrum existence in the city, the urban setting of animal-like coexistence where we scarcely even notice...who we're with.

Of course there are no notes, the only difficult points being quite simply resolvable to every one of those who has read Flash Gordon. The Golon is an unforgettable character far exceeding the ritual demands of a sacrificial scapegoat. I was in love with Julah, so it all fits in that conventionally corny pigeonhole.

[1283/87::1370]

Kindling

2009-02-14T19:53:00.018+05:30

1997

~:To Blu:~

Amor Vincit Omnia, but in Dust We Trust

(And) My birthday wishes...for Feb 20

[traffic in Bangalore]

[...and my thoughts bounce back to find me: alone]

What is so special about sitting in a cab and going to my friends'? I could have troubled him, because he'd volunteered to do it all by himself, like a gentleman; but I kept that as an option. I wanted to give him the advantage he was entitled to; and I guess he was sort of relieved when he asked me over. At least for an instant he must have surveyed his vast playing field; I was relieved, because I'd been bored stiff⁽¹⁾. Only, he wasn't long here in this city so he hadn't the free time that he could know.

His place was some ten kilometres from where I was staying; ten kilometres in a taxi or an automobile, that is. Something struck me as odd. It was plain that he was not playing his full hand; his place felt familiar; likewise, his demeanour—what little of it he spilled in the few seconds it took me to tiptoe to the settee—was composed, but suddenly jittery now that the hour was upon him.

The drawing room had a studied laxness to it, most of which effect was due to the stifling multiplicity of books. Books of every kind, but, as I said, somewhat too easy in their lack of order. I wouldn't have cared but for the fact that there were a number of trade paperbacks—ones you rarely saw even in the television channels. You really couldn't get them from even the big stores. I'll fix you down yet, my brawns and noble man! First discordant note; but I wasn't going to make an issue out of it. I could just as well have walked into a room stuffed with cannabis or grass or mush; this was a lot better though it was quite out of the ordinary. Of course, being the egomaniac that I was, it only inflamed me; like I'd somehow missed an important clue. But I had never even noticed this comic-strip side of his personality. Could it be—but that alarming thought never struck me then.

The room was lit in packets of incandescence: there were at least half a dozen lamps, all carefully calibrated and focused, to highlight artifacts, so that the room looked queerly like a cave. He was a collector, and that would be one of the starting premises for the amateur of crime. He split the line dividing art and technique; but often, an artist needs to be technical. I noticed a luxuriant quilt, Farsi in its rich detailing, carelessly slapped on a sloping divan. It was so tempting that I suddenly allowed myself to be Pauline⁽²⁾ resting on it. For a few moments I felt like winner. And then, I noticed him, looking at me intently but still with that dissipated, studentlike quivering. But I'd still not played my hand.

He seemed quite all right but for his heavy, sleepy eyes. It was obvious he'd not slept well or much. And it was then I noticed in a lowly lit corner of the room an easel covered with gauze. O, dear me! Another blow! He was taking me down really quickly.

Luckily, I'd taken that devastating sidelong glance whilst clutching at one of the spokes of a rather Danish looking steeply chair. And I vaguely recollect swirling down and slowly bottoming in its reassuring felt upholstery. Felt? Velveteen? I fairly bounced myself from the bottom of pitiless despair, as though to make sure it had sunken in.

I braced myself for a light-and-sound show. It was just a question of bedazzling each other, I thought. I cursed the day I took it upon myself to descend upon his senses in all my intellectual fluorescence. My bulbs were faintly blinking, right now. But no; the lights did not glimmer or fade, I'd just been buttered up for something else. He twisted it in even further, delightful wretch! He offered me coffee, and toast seasoned with mayonnaise, jam, and a little chocolate. Even as I sunk my teeth into a third helping, I wondered if it was a mistake or culinary virtuosity. Delicious either way—so it mattered little.

Naturally, I was thirsty after my swept-off gastronomic abandon. His carefully chosen menu ensured that: It was almost 75 percent fat. After a while I sensed it was not me munching munchies but it was a huge succulent black forest chewing on me, gulping me down, as I wound down a circuitous and treachery country-lane in Schwarzenwald on my 911⁽³⁾.

♫

We both sensed the instant when we were both alone, intent, heads on the anvil—the moment of decision. Like bees buzzing, our minds full and our thoughts reeling in all directions, extending its spread and licking in the little flies and prey. But we both knew that every bee would tire in its time, and so also did ours; we were waiting merely for the eyes to lock up. It would come any moment because we were no longer shy, having gauged each others egotism and selfishness and found all in working order. And, in a sublime moment, almost idiotic in its ardency, the lock was acquired, and we were alone and isolated and we felt rather lost but resolute. No one, indeed nothing else, existed, pure consciousness, awareness of each other, awareness of another body, heaving, measuring, calculating, quivering, on the balance. Not simply awareness, it was as though something had been clasped into yours; it was not a decision to be made but inevitability. We felt clapped together, and it was only our selfishness that delayed the obvious. It was delicious because we both lazed under the impression that the other was forcing it whereas we were going at the same things and with the same ardency or lack. In lust, the inevitable is merely prolonged for obvious reasons. And it often is merely a habit, not a decision; supremely fit specimens could do without tarrying.

We fell. But afterwards, we talked. Which is to say, it was quite a pleasurable evening. And then it dawned on us that we'd been right in deciding not to talk, right in pursuing the course of events as they unfolded. In short—we were quite happy for each other.

♫

We talked quite a bit afterward. We were not tired, not unduly, that is to say. And we just chatted...chattered. About the weather, about the books, about art, about chemistry...and about each other and about our prospects. He was a hard man, and it almost surprised me how he could forget his hardness. That is to say, he was speaking his harsh views of things with such a mellow tone that for a few moments you forgot he was actually tearing things down. I was amazed at how clinically precise his casual observations were, how cutting, and how devastating it would be to be at the end of his stick. But he talked only when prodded. Or he would have been lynched long ago, he had a knack of hitting you where it hurt worst. If he chose to talk, the other ones would have no option but to kill him outright. It was not his logic, it was not his eloquence; it was the firm conviction with which he shone forth, so you could say it was a combination of everything lethal the spoken word could offer. And he was—if you were careless enough to let him be—quite insufferable, because his words always pointed a finger at you no matter who or what he was talking about. He swallowed everything, himself included, and he spat it out like putrid flesh. And he shadowed you like a con man.

I don't recall how the conversation turned and I started my bit. And then I guess let myself go. I fell for that trick. In hindsight, I could perhaps console myself that he was soliloquising. But my repartee was the opening of floodgate. Traditional, bitchy, I felt like a cow afterward but I recall that I loved it while I poured it out. What was I thinking? Maybe it went like this. One confidence deserved another...or, rather, one ear deserved another. We couldn't either of us assume the Odysseus-Penelope roleplaying. He wasn't Odysseus because he was suitably stacked; he didn't want my riches. And I wasn't exactly Penelope, because I was not exactly ugly though I wasn't rich by any yardstick. I was independent but not a vampire; I just moved on when it became too hot to handle, and I similarly appreciated it when the guy thought likewise and slipped from my grasp.

...But my headhunting days were over.

♫

⁽¹⁾ He was convinced I would buy his version of whatever he was selling because my position, too, was plain to see.

⁽²⁾ The sculpture by Canova.

⁽³⁾ Try it on NFS Porsche Unlimited, just like I did...!

Note
This... is where we actually rejoin the protagonist of Distances. Five years have passed. And I myself have taken quite a while, sufficiently long to again grow distant from my characters. But...I'm digressing. No more spoilers. Let's just say that in the meantime I've suffered quite a bit, endured an ordeal of sorts, and am now in the right frame of mind and cushioned by the right sort of reassurance (cushion is always psychosomatic but the conditions for replicating it are not well defined) to continue writing. In contrast to what other writers may say, the only drug I need to write is peace of mind. And when I'm not even thinking about writing it, the events unfold and I just go there with an umbrella to shade me from the sun.

I had drafted about 300 words and then left to watch over Baby. The power failed (and it was not yet time for the daily half-an hour of load shedding), and the PC went out like the light. (I haven't replaced the battery set on my four-year-old UPS.) This is drafted in Composer, and since I was just starting out, I hadn't yet saved it. Poof! went the first version of the file. It was, arguably, a better, crisper version—ever more so because I am now burdened by a sense of loss, and am vainly trying to figure out the mood in which I had composed those fifteen odd lines.

To offset the loss, and to absolve myself of any continuing affectation, I am leaving out those four paragraphs which might have set the story properly. What we now have is a more dramatic cutting-in; but I guess this one's going to take a while coming, so I'd better put it all down immediately before it leaves me or before the power fails.

[1549/321::1861. Minor edits and proofing. x15]

♫

And this specially for Raphæl: I had to make a start somewhere. This is just that, and you may yet get your serial. In time, in time. But I do have to say: the best things in life are episodic, those moments don't drag on. So too, those chance meetings pictured in Eleonora and in Distances. The great attraction of these meetings was their one-offness. From the moment those meetings became possible, the moment he and she became aware, they were aware of the uniqueness rather than awkwardness. Those moments would never ever come again. When the world was sleeping, when the rest were not looking, they were thrown together to confide in each other a little. That was the magic. I could not forget that I have carried meandering thoughts of this sort in my head for kilometres as the school bus spun around the same roads every day and i kept awake in a delirium. It was intoxication in anticipation of this tête-à-tête that never came. It never was love; there never was any contact, so it never escalated to that. My friend Mr S had a rather squarely-dismissive term for it—a pipe dream⁽⁴⁾. Love or attraction or whatever else had little to do with that magic. It was just the gravity of the moment.

And, much as I'd like to reinvent a story of true-blue love in Bangalore in 1997, I realise it's a near-impossible task if I'm to steer clear of all the cliché combinations of man-woman love. That is, I can't keep it sanitary and interesting at the same time. Perhaps I could do it short-term; all I ever try to do is short-term, and this will be no different.

⁽⁴⁾He'd consumed his bit of Kubla Khan I presume. I was aware of his reading of Coleridge even then; he made no secret of it. He'd sent me a poem in which this motif figured prominently (It was an invective against the very teenage-boy habit of daydreaming, if I remember correctly.) (And sorry for this footnote to an endnote with parenthetical apologies. It's becoming a disease.)

[373, this special for Raphæl]
[1549|321|373::2243]

A Gift and Acrobat® Kludges

2009-01-16T10:55:00.007+05:30

Tracing an Article

(The publication of this article in a blog would cause difficulties to the dear friend referenced herein.)

The Trace of an Electronic Document

Chennai: Sun Oct 14 15:35:36 2007
[Origin]: Sun Oct 14 05:05:34 2007

Dramatis Personæ__________________________________________________

Interlocutor
Respondent
Friend/Benefactor
Recipient/Renamer

[Towards the end, it is revealed that personæ 1, 2, and 4 are the same person. But this advance revelation isn't much of a revelation, it is a retrospective postface, because you, the reader, don't know anything until you’ve actually read it.]

Context_________________________________________________________

We talk about two persons, using first, second, and third person narrative interchangeably.

Recipient has received an electronic gift from the friend (who is thus his benefactor). Out of love and out of boredom, Recipient answers some questions about the gift.

Argument________________________________________________________

I: Ahem... it is said you came by a lot of stuff recently.

R: Oh, quite. It was in yesterday's paper, I got it today.

I: Stuff, you say?

R: (Disinterested, as if what he is saying is too technical for the interlocutor to comprehend.) Articles by famous philosophers. It was a sweet surprise. but there's a story behind it...

[We break off and resume quite abruptly where the respondent is answering questions about the sudden acquisition.]

(This is possibly uttered by Respondent.)...The article is named, simply, a2.pdf. This would mean

The article is really called "a2.pdf".

The creator of the article had named it so, this being one in a series, the series starting a1.pdf, and continuing with the current file, in a3.pdf, a4.pdf and so on.

If this is indeed the case, then the author was in a hurry to finish it.

That being so, there would be a number of such articles to be separately named
and saved to disk.

The motive of such an operation is obviously deep friendship, love, and the sense of giving.

The nature of such an operation seems to be covert.

(This indeed seems to be the case.)

I: From the resplendent simplicity of the naming convention, what can be inferred about the friend in question?

R: The friend, as you may observe, has used a simple naming convention: the alphabet is the first letter of the Christian name of the author—or any such identifying name that would qualify. The number represents, as we have seen, the order in which he has saved these documents. The naming method, though simple, is utilitarian, and in addition possesses the qualities of being logical, straightforward, and easily extensible. It can be scaled up to a hundred or more files, with the added advantage of speed. It concentrates the process, it expedites it, and above all it focuses the attention of Recipient to the content of the file, not the form of the file (which is bland enough and uniform for all the files). It asks to be cut open and read. No matter how long Recipient stays away from it, no matter how urgent and legitimate his excuse for being negligent, the day he comes back to it he must open it, and when he opens it the content bursts upon him, shakes awake his familiarity, and he drops down in a chair, exclaiming simply, 'Ah! This was just what I was looking for!'

I: How true is the final interjection? —I mean, did he really ejaculate on all 40 occasions?
(The interlocutor seems remarkably prescient, don't I?)

R: Yes, nearly so. His surprise gradually gave way to the physical expression of wonder, as evidenced by a visible dropping of the jaw, at which unnatural position he contemplated the possibility, immanent, of his investment in a print copy of the Culture Industry being made a mockery of, by the serial exposition of the articles contained therein, such as in the two essays that immediately caught his attention as he himself set upon renaming the files in a fashion more appropriate and conducive to archiving and quick perusal.

I: Renaming the files? Wherefore?

R: Because, otherwise, in the cryptic beauty of the received files and the perceived identity afforded by filesize were hidden the titles of the articles. As such it was but a trivial exercise (unskilled labour).

I: How come?

R: It was done as follows: —

Open file

Observe title (to quench curiosity, and before it kills you:)

Copy title (Ctrl-C)

Press F2 (the file being already highlighted if you'd just closed the Acrobat window using Ctrl-W)

Rename (Ctrl-V)

Press enter to effect the change

I: Bamf! So it was unskilled labour, as we can see. Were the possibility of error discounted, or were they...?

R: …Were accounted for, you see. In case of error,

On renaming and you needed to retain the original cipher, you just pressed Ctrl-Z

Of course, that being the only valid possibility for error (all other possibilities for error being benign with the file not getting renamed), we could conclude that the method was foolproof. Since the possibility for error had been accounted for, we could say a fail-safe was in place.

I: To what end...?

R: Renaming, consequent to the 40 cases of gleeful discovery accompanied by two-score tip-to-toe thrills, led to an even richer sense of wealth. Subsequently, to suitably deploy his treasures, he created the following folders:

Derrida

Wittgenstein

Foucault

Adorno

Reichenbach

Though it must be noted in passing that he made these files as he opened and renamed the files. It may also be noted that the sense of order was already present in the friend's gifts: these were simply a 'trace' from the originary communication (the zipped files). The friend had enforced order so:

1. The Reichenbach files were to be found in a zipped file Recipient had downloaded to his disk as simply, '[the name of the friend].zip'

2. The second and third groups of files were all downloaded "as a single file" into two other, similarly named zip files.

Thus had order been established and maintained across the electronic communication, which is really subversion at the speed of light. (Forgive the well-known and slight error in the appropriation of the speed.)

I: And what did Recipient do?

R: Nothing. He did nothing, instead, he was done upon. He received a long distance phone call from Chennai on his mobile phone, from the said friend who, only a few hours ago, had been engaged in sending these files electronically (using simple mail transfer protocol) with the aid of a Web browser. Then he noted the number before answering, when his friend's name had shown up. His face brightened, there was a tension of facial musculature, a sort of expectancy—there is always the element of the unknown in a much desired phone call.

A few short sentences were intoned, to the effect that the friend had sent mail with and quite a few attachments. Which immediately sets Recipient excited, but mail has to wait until eleven at night, when everything is quiet and the line (as in telephone line) clear. He connected using dialup, but connection to the mail server is mysteriously refused. He takes heart in the fact that it is probably very busy for the network (daily dump time). He tries again after ten minutes avoiding the proxy. Same mysterious misbehaviour.

Full two hours later, he tries again and connects and downloads from one of his mail accounts a 1 MB zipped file containing the writings of Hans Reichenbach. He does not unpack it. It is saved to a folder in his desktop which bears the name of the friend, his benefactor (and who would later be described as his wonderwall, out of gratitude).

He replies to the mail, and says something about the friend's comments about his latest writings. The mail is moderately long.

___________________________[INTERLUDE]_________________________

(In the third person) As we have seen, Recipient opened one of his mail accounts, found a few attachments, and concluded—with no hope for retrospective anticipation—that this was to be all. Of course, knowing no other alternative, he was unaware that this was not to be the end of it. (As I am trying to say again and again, this possibility does not exist for Recipient, happy at the time of having laid hands on his first Reichenbach. At that point of time he is simple gleeful as a child with a new toy. And, as I always say in my formal philosopher vein: The possibility... does not exist.)

So yesterday—that is, on Oct 20, Recipient is awakened to the notification of new mail in his regular mailbox. He opens the mailbox and is delighted to find the second and third parts. (The third part, he must add, had been sent thrice by the friend just to make sure it got across—though for what particular reason escaped him at that moment). This communication had the following salient features.

1. The first mail had 13 attachments. Utter delight, coupled with admiration (well, he made full use of all the allowed number of attachments, didn't he).

2. The second mail had—hold your breath—23 attachments. Recipient is stupefied, and glee is discoloured by doubt—how come so many? Perhaps Google did allow so many attachments provided the size did not exceed the limit. He looked at the size—yeah, the single zipped download was around 6 Mbytes. Fair enough. Yea, maybe that was the explanation.

And then began the renaming and arrangement.

And thus finally he obtained the following grand deployment: ~

Fig 1 The Grand Scheme of Things________________________________________

[Figure cut for brevity]

(Conversation continues, in dubious person)

I: His subsequent actions, after being obsequious to the benefactor?

R: ...Were those of studied observation of the acquired treasures, followed by cold, calculated perusal and beautification.

I: Beautification?

R: (Somewhere during this conversation, the narrative jumps into the first person) Some of the pages, being all of them carefully scanned and OCRed from master documents and rare books (manuscripts), were slightly tilted out of the plumb, resulting in a 2 or 3˚ tilt of the page. The tilt—

I: How in blazes is that important—

R: —Allow me to continue! Allow me to ingratiate you with an ample dose of explanation! The tilt… is significant. If you take the printout of a tilted page, with the black scanner background showing, it immediately gives the game away.

I: How so?

R: Well, since there are a lot many pages to print, you economise, and naturally you go for legal size paper, with two pages to a side, four pages to the sheet, and thus end up with the full Monty for much less than a third the cost. That being so, you also take the printout in booklet form (Acrobat Reader 8 gives you that provision, though it hasn't got anything else to recommend it). You end up with tell-tale rectangles framing in the felon pages, which would not be there if the pages were proper.

I: So—?

R: So, Recipient opened the suspect PDF in Acrobat Professional and did the following: ~

1. Removed the first page after transferring essential data (Title, Author, Keywords) into metadata, as well as adding the value for Subject (how own values) and also some custom values (such as Base URL and Created (time)). The first page was removed because it was letter-size, and would not fit in with the rest of the document (which was book-size).

2. Opened the Pages view in Acrobat Professional.

3. Selected each page one by one to see if the page was skewed. If skewed, the following steps were executed.

3.1 Alt-O to enter the value for top crop margin (usually in the range 0.02 to 0.04")

3.2 Tab to enter the value for bottom crop margin (usually in the range 0.02 to 0.05")

3.3 Tab to enter the value for left crop margin (usually in the range 0.02 to 0.05")

3.4 Tab to enter the value for right crop margin (usually in the range 0.03 to 0.07")

3.5 Tab again to see the crop mark on the right margin (just to ensure. The crop marks signify that the page has been placed under erasure.)

4. To correctly view if the cropping was adequate to remove the black edges, Recipient would move the options dialog box to slightly to the bottom right position.

5. After ensuring that an adequate crop box had been provided for, the cropping operation was effected by pressing Enter. Errors were corrected in the manner described above and also by editing the values of the crop margins.

(It is notable that though the offending borders are removed, the text will remain tilted at 2 or 3˚, thus preserving the arche-trace, or a trace of the arche-trace.)

I: Seems to have been a smooth operation. The unskilled labour, I mean.

R: Twice or thrice Recipient, after doing all the dirty work, nearly ruined things by optimizing the pdf. It resulted in the filesize shooting up to over five times the original. However, being conversant with such disasters, Recipient always had his fingers on the ready with the Ctrl-Z keys, and when this was not possible, he made sure to make a copy of the file being modified (using right-click + drag of the file's icon on the folder window, of course). This resulted in the almost hassle-free possibility of just deleting the optimized file and renaming the copy.

I: It must have been exhausting for Recipient. So much unskilled labour to speak of. His neck must be longing for detachment.

R: Oh but surely! His back is aching like a sore bag. But, in between, I had done the following

1. Consumed 1½ plates of mutton omelette (that is: three eggs and minced mutton garnished with pepper powder and some salt, consumed raw, with no fluid intake)

2. Made a dash to the microwave oven, where, after a long stint which is superfluous and much painful to describe in any detail, he emerged beaten and foiled with a flask half-full of instant coffee (Nescafé Sunrise), which he held aloft in his hands towards the ceiling (where the electric fan was furiously circumvolving) only to impatiently retract a minute later to draw the cup towards his lift, take a gulp or two, and immediately feel flat by its taste which fell way below his expectations. (He would, later on, fall tolerably in love with it, as would cause him to go out and fetch two dozen Britannia biscuit-buttons which went well with good coffee.)

3. Consumed the said coffee and biscuits.

All this hard work took their toll on his poor back.

I: But the total feeling has been one of success...?

R: The same. Pure triumph. When he keeled over for the day (night?) he felt like an emperor hemmed in by kludge. He felt kingly, to be sure, with all the aches and hurts of a torpedo.

I: But we haven't broached the subject. The trace, I mean.

R: Oh yes, the arche-trace, or a trace of time-zones. Or, a trace of how McLuhan's prophecy is disseminated through the Web. The promise...

I: Come now. How did the trace originate.

R: It was quite accidental. Recipient was merely copying out the characteristics into the metadata and custom document tags when he noticed that the file creation date as proclaimed in the auto-generated title page was different from the file creation date as reported by an invocation of Ctrl-D (Document Properties). This fact went uncorrelated for some time, but then it hit Recipient that he was banging his head against...

I: Banged your head against what? You torture me!

R: …Against time-zones. Vremya-zona. Or something like what the Russians used to say. It suddenly dawned on Recipient. Everything came in a flash: the file repository tucked away several time zones away, while, a few seconds later, a few time zones and fifteen thousand kilometers away, our magnanimous friend receives his communication which he stores in his disk for five days and then passes on electronically, before invoking his friend's attention with another electronic contrivance, the mobile phone.

I: But the trace—

R: All right. Here it is:

[Origin]: Sun Oct 14 05:05:34 2007
Chennai: Sun Oct 14 15:35:36 2007

(It goes without saying that this is the trace for a particular file; all files having similar trace.)

I observe that you are not quite amused. did you expect something more? Anything different? Did you expect a pack of cigarettes? A matchbox of RDX perhaps? A trace is a trace. Or do you by any chance (sweet sound of birds twittering in the background) fail to see it?

I: Well, it seems pretty dubious to me. Pretty ordinary. Well, those are two times for the same day.

R: My oh my! 'Two times for the same day!' Strike me dead, Injun. Can't you see the trace?

I: Well—

R: The difference. The time difference, you dolt. It is exactly two seconds.

I: What? There's a difference of over ten hours, whichever way you look at it.

R: Ten hours, my foot! Separated by 10.5 time zones, which happens because India uses a non-standard time for its time-zone. It is exactly the same time! (Of course, if I tell you that the "origin" is a core router in Denver, Colorado, separated from us by more than 15 Internet hops, you would be writing me off as a charlatan. But that indeed seems to be the case.)

I: So—?

R: This is the trace. Electronic file generated upon the friend's request in Denver, in less than two seconds the friend receives it over a fast connection (hence the two seconds), so your friend has the creation date inscribed as "Oct 14 15:35:36 2007". If your friend were God, receiving the communication simultaneously with another God situated in Denver, he would have had the Creation date inscribed "Oct 14 15:35:34 2007". The trace also makes it clear that the two computer systems are synchronized by possibly the very same cæsium atomic clock maintained by NIST. In any case, the two machines are very accurately synchronized and in tune with Web time, which is the most accurate propagation of time you get to live with (if you cannot allow yourself the luxury of being God). As we always say, God is dead but not Internet Time...

Post-face

Dear Raphael, this I dedicate to you. Especially, your gifts. You gift has been magnificent. Hoping that I could hope for repeat performances.

I got the idea for this... thing in about five seconds. As I have said in it, it was quite sudden, the trace revealed itself to me quite suddenly. I suddenly felt like I had prised the wisdom of the electronic communication. (What comes in the communication—the message—is quite secondary, and it may not entirely establish its content even after repeated readings, musing, and subsequent alterations.) So we can quite simply replace the communication with its form. This is the de(con)struction of the form. I could perhaps go on a bit, but this is basically it.

Derrida's technique (whatever he chooses to call it), in a sentence: To discover (uncover) how the writer has written the article (text). This means uncovering each trace, each construction line. (You are doubtless familiar with my idea that a work of art must hide its construction lines no matter what. This is because the artistic creation is not an advertisement; not a business proposition per se.) I had anticipated the very technique independently of him. What he says is different of course, but what I understand of him I understand perfectly. The details he delves in are excruciating but it's nothing to write a lot about, actually. You may be right in saying that the things I write sometimes have that 'Derridean' touch. It's unintentional, it's just me, and I haven't read him much (he is exasperating, much like most continental philosophers).

In retrospect, I also humbly realize that this is my first critique of Derrida, without ever having read even a chapter written by him in full, which is a very shameful thing indeed. But I am against naming of all sorts, so this stands justified.

Essentially a single sitting.

Postscript v2

I’d written this way back in 2007 October, a fact which is attested to by the numerous dates scattered throughout. The article stems from a genuine sense of wonderment which comes only occasionally (perhaps a dozen times in ones life) to habitual users of the computer. It was indeed thrilling (the exact sequence being now quite inaccessible; irretrievably lost) to note that the trace was only two seconds in the making. Occasionally, only occasionally, do I feel surprised by technology. And when it does surprise you, it doesn’t require a CLK or a Sukhoi Flanker to do that; a simple PDF will do.

The original postscript applied only to my friend to whom this was originally addressed. This was not meant for public consumption. I have however posted this taking into consideration the very considerable fact that my readership is rather limited (I should rather say readerboat) in number, so I’m not unduly worried that my friend (who else but—) would come breathing down my back. The dedication (to Deleuze and Derrida) are afterthoughts, because this article was inspired by them.

I’m not so sure about how this post would be taken but I rather enjoy it as a writerly reader. I enjoyed immensely as I wrote it; I hope you appreciate it as a rather technical piece. There are some subtle (if forceful) kludges I’ve described in some detail which would make rather interesting reading, if not complete sense, to those who are acquainted with Acrobat merely as the software used to read PDF. In my opinion, Acrobat is an incredible of software which produces print-ready output (something which UNIX packages like roff still do admirably). I single it out as the software which made the online dissemination of books possible and attractive; hypertext has its place but I don’t think people would prefer to read online. And to me at least, the ultimate electronic gift is a good PDF.

[3041/313/324::3682]

On Theory and Practice::

2008-11-23T02:24:00.004+05:30

Spectres of Marx

A spectre is a ghost; a spook. Marx is dead, so the title is apt in the primary sense[i].

This raises the question, or, rather, it invites our attention to the times when Marx was not a spectre, or Marxian principles ruled society[ii], or were moving forces of import. (We are past the age of revolutions, and, even, rebellions[iii]. A rebellion exists only in those un-policed territories where the rebels themselves are the police: in this sense, a terrorist outfit may be seen as a rebellious group. But we’re digressing.) The point is that, there is a distinct dislocation—a definite dissociation of the two spheres of thinking and acting. Life—as dictated by actions—seemingly is not influenced by thought. In other words: thought has been packaged and commoditised by, as my friend rightly calls it, the academic mafia. Thinking (with the associated by-product of writing—in the archaic sense, of course, and you’re encouraged to bring to your mind the spectre of a pen and a bottle of ink, and even a piece of blotting paper, if you can manage)—thinking, is what they (the academics) do. Normal people like you and me don’t think, we merely watch TV and act and eat and doze. But thinking—goodness me, no!

If exploitation is the chief weapon employed by the hegemonic capitalist[iv], then thinking, thoughts, and philosophy have been the chief tinker-toys of the indolent socialist. I categorically say socialist because for the dedicated Marxist, philosophical domination is not even a prerequisite for success[v]. It is at least a whistle if not a bell, but in any case not much more than that. The time is a bit odd to have to talk about revolutions[vi], so we can just concentrate on the issue at hand (permit me, kindly): the approved Marxist way (historically speaking, and otherwise) is to act first and justify later. Why? Because the ends must justify the means. The other way around, the end will never come. (I invite you to pause a bit on this, you’ll get it, I’m sure.)

But what a way to gloriously signal the end of an era and to simultaneously usher in a new one! What hope, what sunshine, unmitigated joy! In one masterful sweep of passion, everything is legitimised, even massacre, even martyrdom, even the most obscene horror which in an other context would just be an obscene and horrifying act of vanity. Why? Why is this possible[vii]? Why does a revolution legitimise even extreme bloodletting?

I guess I’m not that good a theoretician to use the tentacles of theory (literary or otherwise) to pull me out. But I don’t think we need to use a any theory. Even if I were, I daren’t use any theory, because the very mention of it would invite a polarisation that would limit the readership to perhaps one in ten-thousand (I’m not forgetting self-indulgently the fact that what I write may indeed be read by less than a dozen. But so also will be the case of Deleuze and Derrida, a few years from now). People hate theory, even theoreticians[viii]. A theory is a photograph over which we gloat—but always from a distance, always at a later date. Or, quite simply, a theory is a book which we can satisfactorily peruse at out leisure a few years from now. When that theory actually lives—I am directly using the analogy of Marxism—people don’t usually see it as a theory, it is a living force, and is thus undifferentiated from a living organism[ix]. Perhaps, more than a living organism: it is articulate, and it radiates its limbs and touches all people. It connects in more ways that one, and it connects more than one. It is a magical, even mystical, call to action which finds its champion—often one too many—who serves to distil its message (often a messianic personal interpretation of a praxis which is as yet nonexistent) and thus found a new movement.

Yet in all these respects, Marxism is singular. It often happens that the movement is often identified with its champions—and though Marx has given perhaps the solidest foundation imaginable to an ideology that has since his time pervaded everything from space science to sports culture—his most visible contribution has been that alluring and strangely haunting (spooky) name, ‘Marxism.’ From any assemblage of ideologies, this particular ‘ism’ is marked from the beginning, from the very first intonation of the word. The utterance marks its difference[x]. Marx’s name is, so to say, the birthmark of the most successful political ideology.

Which brings us back to the point, from the early 20^th century and revolutions and all those films: to these ugly efforts at romanticising an imagined past of revolutions, and lamely trying to adapt those gross effects, those atrocities—which we have since then retrospectively branded as heroic and barbaric in turn—our depraved attempts at imagining heroism, which we have since then forgotten how even to define. In spite of all that has happened, we still forget that history is cyclical: there are excesses followed by benign periods of tongue-lashing and mass-hysteria, all directed at the idiotic enterprise of branding the current ‘age’ as the truly enlightened one, one of sunshine humanism. We have forgotten[xi], above all else, to even think that we have a history[xii], and that history is always human history, and which has meaning only when we think about history in the first place. Think, talk, write about history: at all other times and occasions, history lies dead in the textbooks, it is always dead history. When we participate in history, when we responsibly measure ourselves up to it, and include ourselves in it, when we choose to view ourselves as a part of it: that is when history comes alive, and that is when social life assumes a meaning separate from the contrivances that science has devised for us as dangerous drugs, the handmaidens of hegemonic capitalism. That is when we—lay persons, informed outsiders—stop dreaming…and get a life.

And we connect with reality.

[Notes]

[i] And, much as I’d hate to disappoint you, this essay has nothing to do with Derrida’s book whose title, if I remember correctly, has American spelling.

[ii] Let us not, at this time, waylay our enquiry by investigating what actually made Marxism so successful: this is a perversion peculiar to post-structuralism wherein we attempt to ‘explain’ the birth in terms of the death. Or, translating Shakespeare to modern English (current as on 22.11.2008 as spoken in London around Trafalgar Square). Perhaps there was no alternative, perhaps it was forced on the mob…but that is not important here; what is always important is the main fact which changed history. History is not a chronicle of what might have been. And, truly enough, history is never written, only accounts of history can be written.

[iii] Post-structuralism has a very effective means of philosophically disintegrating all forms of intellectual resistance, or intellectual justification of resistance: you simply contextualize the rebellion, and just make them feel powerless in the relative obscurity of the act, so that even the act of rebellion is nullified—the very practice of rebellion explodes and implodes at the atomistic level. While it’s a joy to speak about dying fighting in a group, dying is always in the singular: and it certainly ain’t no fun dying. This is a trend: individual acts of rebellion are increasingly viewed as aberrations, and not as a symptomatic of a diseased society. (We can always build nice sanatoriums for the mentally deranged, it’s easier that way and looks a lot cleaner, too.)

[iv] An oxymoron, because the nation in question, along with its ebullient citizens have of late, found themselves, curiously, without money—cash (archaic)—to be exact. (No paper, no print, no bang-bang?)

[v] Generally, no other form of domination is required in Marxism other than total proletarian domination. ‘Workers in power’, so to say. When you have the power, no other form of domination is required, and none indeed are even present. It’s the last word in domination.

[vi] And in any case all my ideas of revolutions stem from the brilliantly edited montages of those Soviet films which are superfluous to name—a derived notion, really—so there’s no immediacy in my urge in any case, any more than the thrill I used to get as a kid watching Rambo level the huts from telescopic range with those incredible explosive-tipped arrows flung from that iconic refashioned competition bow (Ram-bow?)

[vii] I’m not hinting that it should be possible again; as we’ve seen, we’re safely past that stage of youthfulness when the world was still expanding; we’re now in the process of shopping around to see if there are any serviceable parts left, to see if there’s any more juice in the squeezed pith.

[viii] An individual can only work with so much quantity of air, you know—not much more than a lungful.

[ix] Like all things invented or envisioned by human beings, a theory has a life cycle. More importantly, a theory has a life before it becomes a theory; in that life it proves itself as a worthy organism. It goes around recruiting people. Nowadays, theories sell themselves, and spend their time looking for buyers, or spend idle on the bookshelves, gathering dust (cosmic).

[x] Of course, my use of the term difference is the lay use, not the high-winded one.

[xi] Permit me to lament, without falling into the trap of romanticizing a past that I can only imagine: I haven’t experienced a war, but I don’t think that could have helped, any way. War forges individual destinies and frames it in collective atrocities. War gives a fitting memorial to Lilliputian social achievements by turning a community into a mass grave.

[xii] A fact noted by most contemporary Marxist thinkers, notably Fredric Jameson. I suspect that television— the advent of which effectively cleaves the 20^th century into ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’—has a more than casual say in this. Television, by bringing us images and sounds of happenings from around the world in seeming real-time, has conclusively truncated any real sense of space and time. It brings fantastic things right to your living room (or bathroom) and forces you to participate in an unreal world—and worse, makes you believe it.

[1733/110’]

Distances.

2008-09-15T00:27:00.043+05:30

She had a hard time convincing him she didn’t need the book for keeps; it was almost a blow to him. What was she thinking? But for her, the choice was clear, there being none; she knew she hadn’t the luxury to immerse in that big blue book and read. She coaxed him into supplying her with xeroxed copies of four random pages; the numbers she recited to him. He ran up the nearest shop and returned with an envelope. It was ornamented with an elaborate Beardsley at the centre of which a lily bearing her name rose like St John's severed head. Then they parted, and they were almost sad.

She rang him that night to fix up the meeting. She playfully hinted that he, being the gentleman that he was, should arrange everything and not let the lady know any of it; they could meet at her house, but that would turn three others (her parents and her younger sister) into lampposts or ninepins, which was not what they wanted. She had things to say and things to hear; meeting suddenly seemed an insurmountable obstacle, no place for rendezvous. They merely agreed to meet up at a bus stop (though not the one where they had parted a while ago, that would be too obvious) and left it hanging at that. As he was about to hang up, she asked about a few lessons she thought he had merely ‘covered’—he was not like that usually, he never gave any room for a suggestion for improvement. Apart from his an overdose of carelessness—putting him in her hands in each of the examinations—he was perfect and thorough. If he had the good humour, he would have told her that ketones and esters were the last thing on his mind. She suddenly fell silent, and her mien evaporated. The truth hit her like a sledgehammer: he had held up strong until now, it was obviously tough for him. Else he wouldn’t be opening up like this. ‘Be sure to bring me a gift,’ was all she could think. Suddenly he seemed to remember, and collected himself to wish her good night; she hung up feeling distressed.

She returned home to her evening lessons. Five of the worst and unruly boys were waiting on her, talking noisily amongst themselves; she was usually punctual and did not like keeping them an instant more than needed. She was already half an hour late. She had a good mind to excuse herself, but decided otherwise. She found herself doing the imaginary math and come up with a couple of wasted man-hours. Oh dear! She turned the doorknob and entered the bath. Turning on the light, she noticed her haggard face: it looked like she’d been crying, or as if she were stung by bees. Her face was terrible, and her hair was ruffled. Worst of all, she'd just had a bout of acne. It was horrid. She collected water in a pail and splashed it cruelly on her face. She did this over and again, until she was drenched right down to the shoulder and her blouse stuck to her body and the welts showed through. Turning sharply, she took hold of a towel and felt the cold licking of air. It would not be difficult to just go through the lessons and revise, she thought to herself as she emerged from the bath.

Much to the amusement of ‘class’, she apologised profusely for being late. Then she asked them to hand over the workbooks. She followed the same routine as in her school lectures: but she took good care that her wards completed the lessons individually. Needless to say, it paid richly, and she now had close to fifty students on different days; and almost all of them boys. She realized that it was only necessary to get them to work, and they worked willingly when she asked them to. If they worked, they were at least equal to the girls, who were always the more industrious of the two. No sticks here; and the work was rewarding, but an immense and bad reputation it had given her. The nightdresses she sometimes wore before the boys, the state of her skirt…it was probably a bit too much if you paid attention to that sort of thing but she knew she was spat like the proverbial cat. What did it matter, she wasn’t arranging something.

‘What is this Lino? What is this you’ve written for 6-marks? And you call this an essay?’

`Lino’ skulked away, as if he had half-expected the drubbing. She never let up even once, and they always bungled and spilled it in her plate. Perhaps he didn’t get the time, perhaps he’d missed her instructions—

‘For the hundredth time! Essays on a separate sheet, pin them on, essays on a separate sheet, pin. Ah, what's the use! and Mr Lino has decanted three priceless sentences for a page-length essay! Moron!’

Lino was already wavering; the sight of her in a rage was something that made them shrink back in their seats. They usually got on well, and she went to great lengths to simplify the reactions, and almost every other day she found herself repeating the first chemistry lesson in high-school—the balancing of chemical reactions. The boys too knew that they weren’t prime stuff for chemistry, and appreciated the pains she took. It cut both ways.

He opened his mouth to say that he was away with his family to attend a wedding reception…but he stopped short, it really didn’t matter, and even if she struck him with the cane it was all right, it would even out one way or the other. They all loved her like in one voice, they would die for her. She was tiny, she was fragile and had a notorious temper; when she raised her pitch the veins on her big forehead stuck out, and her tightly gathered hair gave her the look of a blazing preacher.

The class soon got underway along more familiar lines. She took a good class, couldn’t be otherwise. She cleared their doubts, which was really about starting from square one; and when she would up class, it was half an hour late. It was ten minutes to ten. She closed her big textbook (she did not teach from the school textbook, she used advanced textbooks) in a resounding thump and yawned.

She watched the boys walking slowly away. They were dropping with fatigue, and dragging their legs. She had kept them waiting far too long. They usually came straight to her house after the evening tea; strapping fellows, and this was the one thing where they admitted defeat and submitted willingly. Something was lacking in the intellectual department that made them attentive to all but the difficult things. But they were easy to get along; exactly the rationale behind private lessons.

***

She tried putting off what would happen the next day. If she were younger, a girl of sixteen or eighteen, she would have rejoiced in a clandestine way only stargazing girls are entitled to. But she was not sixteen anymore, and at sixteen she had found it hard to swallow the bitter pill. How rubbed out she felt! Nothing, nothing at all—came in to announce there was a hope in all this, that she could somehow reinvent her life, or make a new beginning. These were all daft ideas peddled in those potboilers she still found time to read. She knew the difference, yet it no longer stung.

In the space of five minutes she was asleep. Ah, just as well.

***

She woke up with a hangover. Se could barely walk straight, it was like the kick from a swing. Things of yesterday slowly crept into her, instant-by-instant, until when she’d done with her toilet, when she could remember everything that happened yesterday evening with a photographic accuracy. This filled her with a new drive and a new thought that had previously not come to her: she had to get a third party involved, if only as a sanity check, if only to share this with somebody. It was not that this would be so wonderful; on the contrary, she knew it couldn’t last, so she had to preserve it. She was already coping with the withdrawal symptoms.

She thought about what she’d said the day before. She’d said little, but he had said even less and yet sounded so much more meaningful, so big. He was just fourteen or fifteen. That was what made this all so crushing: not that he was younger, but it was exactly that which gave it a context. A man or a boy wouldn’t make such a difference, because it all went through the same process here; but it was inconceivable that such a boy, someone with perhaps no experience, should present it in such devastating fashion. It was all…so gross, and it wasn’t really required. She didn’t carry that much weight, yet her arms had been properly twisted. It was so gross that she knew the immense devotion that went into the making of that catalogue was simply lost.

The catalogue was no longer an artefact, it was more like a businesslike ledger that overwhelmed you with its immense content. She simply could not rub this off, it was too important even if it was but a gesture…but those pages...so many! It was too serious to be a joke. He had even filled it with rough sketches, coloured ones and silver point ones done in art paper, to preserve her memory. And then he’d presented it to her. Was it an undoing or was it just the foundation? She was not one to judge. As far as she could see, he was flotsam.

She slept soundly till 7:00. She usually got up at 5:00 to begin her daily rounds, starting with the tuitions at the centre nearby. In all she was making close to what a state school lecturer was making. Back-breaking work but at least she made it count with the nickel. Popular music from a careworn Walkman in her seedy room stuffed with books and clothes; she’d forgotten how it felt to live like a human being. Life for her alternated between book, class, students, blackboard, the cane and the endless trousseau of cotton saris; she’d inherited quite a few from her sister; they had been quite close. Indeed, she was the only one who really understood why she’d run away; in her place she’d have done the same. (And it was not as bad as all that: it was merely a statistic that she'd eloped with a driver—but he'd been in the military with her father. Gossipy summaries often make the most convenient elusions.) Her sister was pretty and well-mannered; it was not a wonder that such an opportunity came her way. She didn’t grudge her a better life. Saris were her only weakness; she made it a point to choose the most colourful and remarkable designs of cotton sari, and she flaunted her saris with pride.

But today she felt drowsy and her mind was not in anything. Her mother noticed this over breakfast and asked what was on her mind. The four of them sat silently (her mother and sister usually cooked, but she used to cook when she had free time), eating slowly looking at the plates… ‘It's nothing,’ she said and quickly left them bewildered.

She had a good mind to tell them what the matter was…but that would unnecessarily tax the boy, she was almost sure that this would pass, no matter how strongly bitten he was right now. If there was a word she would use to describe his condition, it would surely be love; but love was not a brick, it would pass when it went unrequited. Though only 24, she was his teacher and felt a bit too cold for that. It was not the years; it was the work and the misery that had broken her teen spirit. Two years ago she had been in the thick of it, and wore a pair of jeans to the college day and then to class every day. But that was two years ago—

It was clear that he was in love with her as purely as love could mean to a boy his age; he did not know, and indeed did not care, that she could have her mood swings and be horrid. He even did not know her from up close, her tuition-boys knew better, in a way. A disconcerting thought came to her, and she quickened her pace.

From the distance she spotted him waiting at the bus stop. He wore a chequered shirt and baggy trousers. He was attired casually, something she’d not ever seen her in the past two years; he could only be seen in uniforms even on the last working day of the month, when the students were allowed coloured dresses. It gave him a drab, studious image but she knew him a lot better than that. He simply had no other persona. But today he was attired brilliantly, and any girl would give him a second look. Military greens and a matching, variegated shirt. He had fine taste and a considerable pocket to keep it in; a matching bag was hung loosely on his left shoulder: she was impressed.

He was surprised to see her…not in a sari. She wore a white salwar with seamless pleated pants, she looked wonderfully different. Light makeup did her justice, and he bowed graciously as she came up: ‘You look amazing.’

She jerked her head sideways and his heart skipped one. ‘Thank you very much…and it was as well, seeing that you're yourself armed to the teeth.’ ‘Oh, it’s that bad is it?’ ‘Ha ha ha! I was thinking of asking you home if you were in uniform, bookworm!’ ‘Just about managed to save my skin, then.’

The greeting dissolved into a blossoming of light laughter. They looked at each other in a way far different from how they had used to: it was indeed a different beast the the other was seeing, and it wasn't just the dressing. He wasn't having her on; she looked magnetic in the white dress and would have passed for his girlfriend. Young and sprightly, seamless furls disappearing in tapering cones about her slender legs—it was not fashionable right then, it was outdated by a year or two, but it looked just fine on her. She'd worn a new pair of shoes to complete the coordinate look. He was dressed wonderfully hip, and walked upright. In school he would wear a pair of beach slippers for all he cared. He fairly pulled the rug from under her, and she took his breath away. The sting was mutual. Like a couple, they walked away arms entwined, feet tripping, mind rejoicing.

Strangely, they ended up in an ice-cream parlour a kilometre from her house. She used to go there to while away the time, so she was somewhat well-known there. She didn't tell it him; it would be too much of an effort for nothing. She ordered while he went to the washroom. In time, they came clean about everything: if nothing else came out of it, they wanted things to stay, at least the more permanent things. She felt bolstered every minute; she hadn’t been wrong about him or about her own feelings. He was not after that fling, and he still had not hinted at any idiotic frozen-in-time idealism. He knew exactly what he was talking about and so did she and he knew it as well. They had some work cut out between them.

After a while they were talking like they had known each other a long time. The perfume had worn off, and she was slightly sweating above her lip, and moisture sprayed beads which she kept thwarting with one of her innumerable flimsy nose rags. They were both after the same kind of succour—the consolation of words. It couldn’t have been otherwise; both were smart enough to realise how they stood, and how little it would matter had they taken the plunge, both willing and primed, to the unknown. She knew it personally, her sister had gone from one hell to another. He seemed wise enough and in control of himself. She seemed to hesitate a bit before committing, ‘This your first big...work?’

He seemed to hesitate an interminable pause. Nothing else was forthcoming, she was just waiting for it to sink in herself. It was not a snide remark, nor was it a slip. He had to recycle the spurious insight that she wanted to see it that way—

‘I been writing since ’86. Of course, I don't write so for a hobby, no. If that's what you meant.’ ‘To any other I would say “wow!” but to you—I wouldn't make bold as to slight you so—

‘No really, it’s not the words—I suppose you can find the words in your sleep, you realise that much in a single paragraph—but the devotion, the unflinching faith to keep it going…well, you can be quite candid, you know, I know I’m not exactly a cow but I’m no siren either. You need to be really in love with something to do this, be in love as a principle. For the time being, I’m setting away that disconcerting thought that this is about me.’

The spell was indeed broken. They were again businesslike, hovering about the bounds of what was permissible. The unseen forces suddenly cast about their nets and they were trapped like butterflies: conversation flagged, and they began groping in the dark. Marooned in a sea of silence: and they both realised that for the past hour or so, they had lived like two lovers, in perfect unison, looking to see. They had seen the best each had to offer and they were content.

‘It matters aught…what you think, or how you take it. I myself don’t force the thought; it never works that way. You must have noticed that I’ve never worn the ‘Best Student’ badge. I’ve won it probably more times than anyone else…but in my view, that badge should be won by someone who knows its true worth and suppressed…which is what I’m doing. And I like it when you’re occasionally temperamental, flying away when we blurt out a blunder…you can be such a tease. But I must tell you—this is about you, I would do it only for you. You can invent a world of excuses, and as we have both of us rightly observed, a sea here separates us, but that will never blot out the truth, which is that I love you and you mean so much to me. This meeting and these words I take as a supreme gift. I guess I have earned it, and this book is my passport. Yet you returned it without even looking.’

He’d played into her hands again, he was sounding a schoolboy. She was utterly confused now. He gave the impression of being impervious to her words yet deeply hurt by her words—which was it? She was talking freely to him, in a way she’d never done in her life, she was saying things she was amazed she could. She was sprucing up a world she knew was make-believe, just because of him. For an instant she lost the baton, she did not know if she still controlled the things she said.

‘Oh, you cruel man...twist it in, should you! You mean that it means nothing to me? That I’ve been…I clench my heart when I make myself say those things I must. If you were older we wouldn’t need this talk, we wouldn’t need to talk…you are not free. You are not free in much the same way I am bound myself. You're probably too young but you have to deliver, and I get you fouled up—forget what they would do with me—I wouldn’t forgive myself. O no! Yes, I do care about you, and I’ve seen how you see me. I can’t promise you anything…even if it is so simple. I’m worthless and insignificant, but I can’t promise you. It is not mine to give— When will this end! Oh! Don't make me beg! Oh—!’

He slowly reached out both his bands and took her folded hands in his. Moist. And as she turned up her sobbing eyes he said solemnly:

‘This here is a sea separates us; you are right about that and I admit it. Like from a lighthouse your kindness touches me, and I cross the sea to you. This is all I need, this trust and this inclusion, I ask for nothing more. I treasure feelings and experiences and if you know what I say, you will know what to do. Life…is important. With a light heart, I leave.’

Eyes kindly and without malice: she smiled through her tears. She was perspiring and heaving in gulps of air. Nothing remained to be said, their minds were calm. She did not understand much of what he said just then but she would recollect it; it was etched in her memory. She knew hardly anything about him; it was an exercise in finding out how she stood in relation to this new development. Like a girl under the influence, she took his hand and staggered across to the street and into the sun.

[3787; 33 edits; 330 min (180 min for base 3340);
done over five days in three sittings; one of my longest posts by far]

This is freeform—almost dust. The persons remain the same, with status quo unchanged.

Gratis:

{♫
Metallica—Hero of the Day, Bleeding Me, and Outlaw Torn;
Leftfield—Rhythm and Stealth, especially Swords, 6/8 War, Double Flash and Rino's Prayer;
Jean Sibelius—Kullervo, especially Grave and Sister;
Transglobal Underground—Taal Zaman, I, Voyager, Templehead and Monter Au Ciel
♫}
[Raphael]
I hope the special persons in this special story all approve of my noble intentions (amor vincit), and do not pull out at an inopportune moment. This, though is inevitable, it can only be forestalled by such and such a duration and not indefinitely. (Alas! Life is such.)
Best viewed in Netscape Navigator 9.0.0.5/6, on which this was done. Netscape is dead, Long live Netscape!
Or try Safari. It's from Apple and all the rest—but seriously, if you're doing some reading on a browser, Safari renders things best.

Eleonora Amore

2008-09-12T00:01:00.011+05:30

'I’d no idea it would be like this…knew you were strong, clever…not that you’d be living in a hell, like this, by your own choice! But why…why?'

The pages blinked at her in motley floral hues. There was an entry for each day of school he’d attended that year: and special entries for each of those days she’d engaged classes for X A. But that came to just two days a week, plus those days for any extra hours engaged. In all, it came to seventy one special entries, each of which took up more than two pages, and the other ordinary days. He’d filled up the specials in a scarlet ink. Then there were long passages which were written in green and crossed out in black; some were still visible, and at times it gave you the impression that he’d done it after a lot of thought.

It was evident that this had been his major preoccupation for the whole year. But she recalled with horror that she’d been his teacher for the previous year also, and he’d probably first seen her a year before that. It was not just a crush, it was an obsession growing strong by the minute, engaging and disengaging like the tentacles of an octopus: but he was holding up well, his grades were still the very best, and he was hard to beat in anything he’d set his sights on. He was still the role model for the entire 2500-strong student-force of the school; there had never been anyone like him before.

She found herself in a bizarre situation: it was not her choice, it was not his either, they were thrown together not by the crush or by the rush of feelings; no, there had never been any chance for that sort of thing, and there certainly had been no dalliance. She set exemplary standards in teaching and he in learning, and this came at a price. They both paid with their time; it was well-known that they had little or no free time, and it was also well known that they were not teaching or preparing or studying all the time. He still took no private lessons, though it had been rumoured for a time that he might find her tutelage useful, maybe just to lessen his load. She knew all along that he was built for far more difficult tasks, this was a side-business to him. So she never harboured any notion of his coming to take private lessons from her.

And side-business it was, too. When she tested him three months into the year, she found that he’d carefully compressed everything into neat little pills to be reproduced later: unravelling like paper flowers, he was only concerned with the most efficient arrangement—a hierarchy—of the knowledge structure he built. In the end, she realised with considerable wonderment and admiration, it all reduced to several bullets of hyphenated analytical headings that told the story—but just to him and to those similar.

The school bus was gone now. In three weeks he would be finishing his business at the school. She was already thinking of that. Sure as a dumbbell he would top the state examinations; and sure as anything, the school would never be the same again, the disturbance would be immense. It would never recover from the huge shadow he would cast over it. It was nothing to do with the school at all: he had his own methods, and he would follow a course almost in opposition to the accepted curricular ones. It was a source of relief to her that she was the chemistry mistress and not the history or any other humanities mistress; the way he wrote in the examinations was an exercise in kindness. He would write answers in keeping with the invigilator, and he knew everyone and their level pretty well. But she was proud to be his chemistry miss: she was really good and she prepared well, and before she came to meet him she had a sort of arrogant self-assurance that bordered on the despotic.

In one day that had changed when in the course of a lesson she pronounced 'Raul' for Raoult, in whose name there is a famous chemical law ('the vapour pressure of an ideal solution...'). He casually remarked that it was “Ray-o”. It was a surprise but she had it coming: his reputation was such that every schoolmistress knew that the boy was special, and the first lesson everyone learnt was to realise that this was no ordinary boy. It was quite well known that the Principal used to instruct all teachers before engaging Std X A; the reason was this boy. And with the utterance of that single word, the equation between the two changed; it imperceptibly coloured her evenings and changed him.

In that first class, when she spoke out her taskmaster rules—which included the admonition that they should all take down lecture notes—she was transferring what she’d herself learnt at college a few years ago and found useful—when she spelt them out, waving the cane like a baton, he realised that his life would never be the same again. They were only doing the ninth standard and here she was, already launching them into young adulthood, on the path to true scholarship. He became immensely respectful towards her. And to everyone else it was not just respect of any sort: it was respect towards her superior technique and great battle-readiness. Though everyone grudged her these qualities, none wanted to be in her shoes. She came every day to school prepared to face the music; her preparations for class were legendary.

Short and diminutive; at 155 cm perhaps not everyone would call her short, but at 95 lbs she was surely petite. She walked very upright and briskly. She was very adept at draping the sari; she would habitually use ironed cotton saris that would keep their impeccable falls intact at the end of the day and even through the night if need be; she was very careful about dressing and being clean. But dusky complexion and acne played sore bed mate to her grooming, making her look like a prude and a tart. In the eyes of the boys, she was either remarkably depraved (which was a reflection of their own veiled sexual longing) or incredibly unfortunate. (It was a fact that her father had retired penniless from the army; she had an elder sister who has run away with a bus driver, and a younger sister who had tried along similar lines to the disgrace of the family, which was why they were changing houses every now and then.)

'Come…it’s getting dark.'

They walked peacefully beneath the lindens. It was the last week of February but the summer heat was already upon them; the trees were abloom. He had chosen a most delicate moment to hand her his most trusted secret…a huge, 500-page book, so carefully written and indexed that it did not take much effort on her part to understand that it was a boy’s life.

She was a much-misunderstood, much-exploited woman herself. She’d struggled to get her master’s, worked odd jobs until she’d found employment in this school, which still paid her a pittance. She took private tuitions and also engaged classes during the morning (pre-school) hours at a nearby tuition centre. It all added up to something more significant than her salary. She was unmarried, and her folks needed her badly just for the money. So they left her alone…to work, to toil, and make ends meet which were not hers to twine and knot. And…in the long run, her private tuitions—combined with her dressing, which was always decent but a bit too perfect for mere mortals to duplicate—gave her a bad name. In this little conservative place where an English song would be front-page news, an unmarried woman of 24 living hand to mouth had very limited options. It was said that she was a very frustrated creature. He never knew for real, nor did he ever try to find out.

So many distant doors had opened and all of them had closed…and she’d not even tried a few of them, she never got that far in her hurried life. But of one thing she was sure: when she was in the class, in front of the blackboard, her heart was stone and she poured it forth in a carefully modulated stream which was both effective and captivating. Her accent was superb, her method uncompromising. She summoned all her heart and all her life-force to beat the life out of those outstretched felon hands. She would cry horribly in the staffroom, and during those times she cut quite a sorry figure, and even the `felons' would often come in droves to console her. But she never stopped crying.

They’d walked the kilometre to the highway. It was now completely dark, and they had been talking all the while. He had written wonderfully, and it slowly bit into her to realise that she had been closely observed, her every word appreciated and noted by this maverick of a schoolboy who had been, by his own admission, just ‘looking to see.’ Ah, how he said it! He was looking to find her faults! The classic formula for falling…rising in love. But his words were kind; even her mother hadn't spoken so tenderly to her in years.

She enjoyed the strictly programmatic beginning of each entry. It merely described her getup, her hairdo (which was wont to be the same everyday, a ponytail—so he took his chances at the colour of the hair band, and noting if a few curls of hair actually evaded the clasp of the girdle), her first words (mostly the greeting, so he would note the exact phrasing and the look she wore when she said it), and of course, which of the legs she crooked underneath when she sat down to take the toll.

She was not hurt by this immense invasion of privacy: her every atom reverberated not with the sense of being violated, but with an almost helpless urge to cry out, ‘Why, why me?’ But it could only be she; and she knew it. They were alike in a lot many respects, and they knew it all along; the only thing that was missing in her was the realisation that he was in fact, filing her away in this big blue book whilst she toiled in the tuition home and in her little room up the stairs. An uncontrollable rage welled within her, and she glared at him: but there was no malice in his eyes, and she knew instantly that he too was living in hell. Each to one's own: they were so close, yet so far away.

She turned the pages once more under the sodium lights: she laughed at the monthly summaries he had written, which were mostly summaries of the saris she had worn, how she’d been during class…she broke out in a fit as she read his snide remark that he suspected her mother of running a laundry service. But it was not a totally naïve record either, he had noted additional details that spiced up an otherwise clinical report that startled one with the regularity of a striking clock. O! The things people cook in their pots! She was stuck for words so she merely asked him, ‘How did you manage to find the time for this?’

‘No no, the miracle was that I found the time to live,’ he smiled and said nonchalantly, ‘you are my life.’

At that moment, a long truck passed them on the road, cutting off the light for more than a few seconds. In darkness, she saw his silhouette bristling with an aura of orange backlight. This was a not a boy who would just look and look; he had transfixed her, and he himself has secured it all by transferring all his energies into this one concept he had drilled out and christened as his life’s motive. Of course he was playing, of course he was just making it all sound worthwhile. But she was at the end of it—she was the quarry, she was the object of his gaze, and she had been invaded—and she felt tiny, in a way she had never felt even beside her huge uncle. Silent and benign, he was just a shadow, a disconcerting fond gaze at the other side of the void: but he was there, and his faint offer (was it love? But he never said it, perhaps it was not required) only made her tremble every now and then when the realisation dawned upon her.

He was fifteen and she was 24. But how did it matter! It was not as if they were arranging something. But for the first time in her life, she felt respect for a man. She felt respect for a boy who appeared infinitely thoughtful, caring, and even chivalrous: he had written all of this magnificent book only for her, just to show her. For two years he had toiled for this; and he had completed all but the last dozen or so pages in a most regular pattern. She respected the man he already was, but felt like squealing a cry because there was nothing she could offer him to eradicate that huge chasm separated them.

‘No, wait…wait…’ She buried her eyes in her face, and slumped down on the rather wide road marker just beside. Sighing audibly, she dissolved in silent peals of gentle sobbing. He could hear the wavelike regression of her breath. He wanted to comfort her, to be the fragrant petal, tears meant something to him, and it scared him when a woman cried.

‘I am sorry…?’ She fished about and emerged in a strong rally, putting away her handkerchief. ‘You’ve dropped this on me…no, really. I’d like to talk about it…just talk, I’m not…I cannot…you know that, don’t you. You’re a wonderful person…but I have to live out my life just the way it is…but I’d like to tell you a few things. I don’t want…I want to know a few things, too. Tomorrow—’

By all means, yes, he was ready to hear her story. ‘Tomorrow’ would be a Saturday and it suited him fine. But his eyes betrayed him; and she assured him that she knew it was not for the tête-à-tête that he’d given up his secret to her. ‘Tomorrow’ would be a big day for either of them.

'Til tomorrow, then. What she'd not asked was his permission—she was already trapped anyhow—the permission to really be miserable, to feel disconnected and awful in a way her listless life had never afforded her to. But...'til tomorrow, it was a promise, and they both hung on it.

[2600, 12 edits, 100 min for basic text (2347), 90 min for edits]
[This had come to me today in a dream, but I'd probably lived this dream about 15 years ago, and hundreds of times. Coloured by selective memory and a fondness that grows with distance and irreparable loss; This to a very special person who remains...special.]

The Four Walls.

2008-08-12T00:04:00.015+05:30

There is an idea that connects sculpture and architecture. This idea, which was ever present since the time of the Assyrians, and then the Babylonians, who charged their beloved heroes with felling giant cedar trees in spite of terrible personal misfortune, was one of creating a lasting monument for posterity. Babylonians (famed for ziggurats, one of which has become rightly famous as a possible etymology for their collective name) built these temples ordinarily, that is, with mud and straw and wood, all beat into a rather accommodating pulp or paste, and got the thing over with; understandably, these were neither lasting nor very pleasing to the eye. But they were colossal by the standards of the day; and that indeed served the purpose of the strongmen who would become king.

And there comes a time when you have to face facts: but unfortunately, with the passage of time (the expression was coined probably centuries ago), 'facts' have come to mean a hydra, and facing a fact would mean turning your back to the other three.

At least so late into the essay let me acknowledge the idea: `the four walls'. It is from Forster. I wrote the ziggurat paragraph in the second week of August, left it dangling, and yesterday (the 30th) read the third part of A Passage to India. Of course, a generation of Indian expatriates studying (and teaching) in London and Manchester have made a career out of bashing the British (the jewel in their crown being that disjointed stillbirth known as `postcolonial theory') and crying, Identity! Identity!

...But it remains a wasted effort: whatever literary school or critical group, regardless of `ism' always detracts from the main course: which is the content, the novel, the particular work of literature. No wonder, no critical work has ever been as popular as a novel, because, by its very nature, the vocation of critic is inauthentic, and the critical work elitist. Beyond the first few pages where the critic usually spends her time digging wet ground, she makes sense only to a few of her colleague chimpanzees. (I have retained the `she' in mute deference to the generally accepted `gender troublelessness' formula of making the reader or the author an original of the species.)

Being myself quite a blind bat, I asked my literate friend what he thought was the fate awaits fiction. He replied me that he thought fiction would have to appeal to the baser elements; ultimately the fate of the book depended on how well they dressed up the bookshop (meaning, bookshops would have to become places for hanging out or for picking up) rather than anything with the book. It is simple, and for the new young salaried class, a book's cost is merely an aperitif: in dollar terms, about $10 for the aperitif, and $100 for the stuff, or the stuff you can have free of cost if you plant your aperitif right. The mathematics is straightforward and the logic clear: all set up for a crazy wild night. It's not about the book, but about the lace where you hang about. And a bookshop is a nice place for letting wonderful things happen to you.

(Unfinished.)

Honest Injun.

2008-07-25T00:20:00.005+05:30

This has something to do with a process people call, 'writing.' Like all processes, and like all human habits which have a long and chequered history, writing has a history, itself long and complicated, and fairly muddied. But when a person takes a pen and sits down to write (a very unlikely prospect, which should not occur more than a few dozen times in an adult's life once he is past the age of university examinations), this historical aspect is forgotten. Or, to be precise, this historical aspect does not come into the picture at all, just like so many other aspects ascribed to writing by the academia.

Writing, on its own, is a simple mechanical act which leaves its trace (forgive my ragged jargon, but I'm only trying; I'm not trying to deride the obvious) in more places than just the paper. For instance, it imprints itself in the memory (short-term); it might leave residues for the future. It may leave a score on the piece of wood on which you placed the sheet (a peculiar property, attributable both to the force of your hand and to the point of your stylus, and also to the obvious fact that not always would you use cellophane or nitrocellulose as a backing sheet). Whatever aspect we turn to, we find the activity to be thoroughly engaging. It demands something from us, but it leaves us free. Writing is always...writing per se.

Which brings me to the point, all too soon: we write, but not our thoughts. Just as a novelist is not describing or writing about life (he is but writing his story, he is, simply stated, writing), we simply write. Serious writing—by which I mean the sort that wishes to keep itself floating—is not parametric, nor is it programmatic. It does not have an agenda. It doesn't work all too well that way.

In fact, it doesn't work at all that way; we have been fed these misconceptions ever since they began to teach us on the basis of difference: you and I are different because your daddy is different from my daddy, and so on. We suppose that writing has a purpose, and that the purpose is none other than reflect our thoughts. And here, we make a mistake when we consciously attempt to produce great prose and poetry by recreating a thought or a feeling or a groove which left us on a high.

As I have said elsewhere, writing is not a trip; nor is it a drug. Then what is it? It still takes a human being to write; we need to make some motions, some effort, some sort of action, to write. The idea remains the same throughout: you put your thoughts on paper, you put your ideas on celluloid, and so on. It is the basic pattern for all creative work. You translate what's on your mind, or, since that is not possible to do it with any conviction, you translate your recollections of what you tried to do. Duh.

At least some of the pen-pushing, tongue-wagging scandalmongers must have realised in their long careers (may they †rust† in one piece) the latent danger, the hollowness, of this position. But, like almost all human professions where three's not a crowd nor three million, no one is required to do anything about it. But some (like me, perhaps?) adopt the hangdog air, at least occasionally, when they look back upon the crimes they have committed (yes, I'm speaking of the men of letters). And yes, it all amounts to the same: knife and paper can both cut.

Good writing...is an enigma that unfolds like the resplendent delicateness of a butterfly opening its wings for the first time. Nebulous, flaky underside cuts open like the leaves of a book to reveal impeccably finished filigree of the greatest clarity. The purity disarms us, and brings us to face life, still and unborn, quiet, but filled with meaning, beauty, and our presence. Yet that moment is marked out for our absence: we were there, yet we were beside ourselves, we were not aware of being there. We remember it, the recollection blissful, staying on like the dash of pollen from where the butterfly kissed our arm.

At the crossroads, accessible neither by joy nor by sorrow, yet alone and filled with life: reflecting, feeling, not remorseful, not happy, but full, contented, warm: this is how good writing should be, and this is how we feel when we read a good piece of writing. The writer may repeat, the writer may make mistakes, but he manages to let you loose in a private place, alone, where you can find things out on your own, turn things over, and make that life your own. A writer gives you a space to roam, a good writer doesn't force you to eat his grub.

And this is as it should be, today, the day I complete my twenty-second year as a hobby writer. And I hope, one day, to be able to rightfully describe my vocation by simply stating (should someone still understand what that means), 'I write.'

[878; direct onto blogger; recollection of July 21]

Memories.

2008-07-05T12:40:00.006+05:30

Writing, Heavy-Handedness, and The Buddha

[Raphæl's Home]
My friend R, recently home visiting, had offloaded the majority of his e-book collection. Now, my friend here is quite remarkable: his collection of (print) titles number more than a thousand of the finest, books that take weeks or months to read (one of the simplest being, by his own admission, Alasdair Gray's Lanark—a copy of which he has gifted me since). He is quite a remarkable fellow. (Now, as he reads these lines, true to form, he would frown; his broad forehead literally crumpling with...indignation. He must feel sufficiently betrayed. He's modest to the point of humility. And this...exposé would be a a ninja-bolt to him. And I don't blame him, it's just the way he is.) Which brings me to the recollection of my first (and so far the only) visit to his home.

And to think of the way he tarried and bit his nails before he plucked the guts to actually invite me home to his new place: Guinevere comes to mind. So, like Lancelot, I trolled about the big double-bed girded by two bookshelves: one a David, the other a Goliath. They stood askance, one admiring, the other buckling under its own. And all the while, for the better part of 36 hours, his wonderfully adept Mom kept filling us with juice and marmalade (and stuffing us with poultry, fish, cereal, kindly words, and love).

And I? Poor me! Dumbstruck is too simple a word. After all, a word can't describe the totally undone feeling I experienced over two or three hours; I had to literally pick myself up from the bits. I was shattered like a crystal dropped from a height. I was like a tree rooted to the spot struck by lightning turning in a trice into a chalcedonic lump of dead thought. No; no flowery simile could ever express the genuine shock I felt then. After all, I had seen some books in my time and read quite a few; I was utterly conviced that no assembly of books would ever surprise me in any way. But I was blasted out of my sense of security: looking at me was an immense stonehenge of concentrated thought, glued together by countless hours of rummaging through second-hand bookshops, streets, and pavements. It was ranged like in a museum, the fitting mausoleum hardly betraying the pain and grit that went into its assembly. It was an incredible thing to do: collecting each book painstakingly after hours of walk and toil and turmoil—that was the superhuman thing. Only a supremely gifted talent blessed with an abundance of wretchedness could do it. At that instant of revelation, I felt as if he had rendered the whole of his life meaningful. It was a big thing to feel, because I don't consider words or literature to be in any way special or privileged or godly. (He does, of course.) I did not see thousand or so books. I saw months, years of solitary walks, missing lunch and taking more walks, all to save up for that...prized book. And one prized book followed another like an endless train rotoscoped horses.

But I knew: I was there when he pulled the hair from his head (yes, there was a time when he could do that). But did I know what he was packing? Frankly, no. I knew he was collecting books. But I never realized then (it was 12 years ago) what it would all shape up to. To confront more than a thousand (1200 in my estimation, though he swears it is less than a thousand) of the best books is intimidating. It is like forests of thought looking upon you and saying: 'Well, now that you've got me here, what are you going to do about it?' Indeed, neither he nor I would read it all in our lifetimes; reading is always more than the act.

To each, his private madness. A provate madness is a senseless pursuit that somehow keeps us from getting mad: it keeps us drugged, it is the carrot we donkeys choose to dangle up before us. Before we start on it, and occasionally when we sit down and take a rest after following the carrot we've fixed to our own foreheads, we are fully aware that we're pursuing a phantom. It is not even a dream, because we're living it and are fully absorbed in practising it. The friend in question would elucidate this with clear, academic terminology—he said something about projective representation today, which bested a hollow in my head and completely vanished out of it—so I'd rather not speak about something which he does better. It's an insane drive to keep ourselves occupied: lecturers and professors do the same thing, so do the helmsmen of our government, and so too does anybody who is absorbed in work and 'work satisfaction.' All of it is merely an attempt to catch a glimpse of ourselves. But when we practice that other life—the dream—we're absorbed, and we're thus saved from damaging others.

The best prison he could ever have in his life, but alas—he seems destined to spend his time otherwise, not in his library. Little does he realise that the most precious thing in his life is so close to him, yet he is so far from it. Just as he completes his tryst with destiny (which is a group of academics at an esteemed educational institution), he would become a part of that destiny himself, and thus be deprived of a childhood forever. My heartfelt condolences. I'm being sadistic, but it's the least I can do.

[The Buddha]
The prince sat down weary from his rushed disappearance from the castle. He had made up his mind. He had lived in all the imaginable comforts, yet it brought him remorse, despair. His beautiful body, adorned by jewelry, draped in the finest silk, waited upon by the smartest charioteer, escorted and indulged by the prettiest: his beautifuly body would grow frail, freckled, and finally, grow limp. All his teachers had never told him about death. He had never seen death. He never even suspected that one day he too would die. He was terrified: the beloved prince, dear to all the subjects, powerless before death? Powerless before the most hated of all things, powerless, a mere mortal. That was what the charioteer said: death was natural, and Death would come to him one day. He did not know if it was true; it was likely to be true. Nevertheless, he would do something about it.

The prince surveyed the things he had brought: he had switched his clothes for those of his charioteer. He felt the clothes more suited for living in the forest. It was not a deep forest; there were clearings, light was plentiful, lots of open spaces. Yet there were no people, and only the crickets chirped to announce the arrival of night. He did not feel lonely; he was there to find out. If death was certain, it was only proper and logical to prepare for it by shedding one's possessions, one by one. In that way, death would enevr catch you by surprise. Living close to death, in constant anticipation of it, without belongings, living free: thus would you conquer death. Not by huddling together or hoarding or clasping tightly. When death comes and asks for you, you walk away with Death. You don't turn around to put something right. You make no excuses, you simply go, as if your lover had beconed you and said, 'Come!'

Three days of fasting: but it did not help. The mind falters when the body is hungry. No; certainly it's impossible. A hungry ascetic's meditation will hover around the act of abstinence, abstinence from food, from air, and finally from thought itself. How is this of any use to me? I am not trying to close out my thoughts; on the contrary. How can I defeat death by not thinking about it at all? No, definitely that's not what I'm here to do. Death is living inside me, it is making me lose my sleep. Death is that living dread which makes me afraid, which makes me doubt myself and my actions and all that I have ever done. I have to fight Death in this life. It is a thought, it is alive. Death brought me here. In the palace, in the luxury, Death dared not come into my thoughts at all. Or was he simply hiding away, waiting to paralyze me with this morbid fear of nothingness? In my mind I am already dead, or dying. I must resuscitate myself; I must show the others how life should be lived. Death...has brought me here so it could teach me what it means to live in the shadow of death. Death is showing me the meaning of my life. I have to live a life, the remainder of my life, in a meaningful way that will reveal to me if it is worthwhile to live; it must tell me if it is possible to find a salvation in this life.

Is salvation possible? But it is an absurd question; almost like asking if there is a God. There is a God, otherwise I would be staying at the palace, contented, wallowing in filth. There is a God, and there must be a salvation. The teachers taught me that salvation is possible through right thought and right action. Obviously so; but if one is to act rightly, one must think. ut if one should think one must be wise. But should everyone think about these questions? If that were the cae, then each would follow his own path. No, definitely not! There must only be one path to salvation, something everyone could attain. And this path God will reveal to me if I am true and my mind pure. Here, there are no people, no one to talk to. I must constantly talk to myself, and love the trees and the animals that live here with me. I must live like they do, because their lives are pure. I must live right. I must free my mind from all unnatural thoughts. If a salvation is at all possible, it must be possible to all: children, animals, plants, everything, every living thing. Thinking is not require here; here I can live freely, here I can be free. I am free of everything. This freedom from bondage I should aim to reproduce in the life of the harried city-dweller as well. This, then, is my task. I have to find a way to get this feeling into the people.

The seasons wore on and the prince became more and more single-minded in his efforts; the way was becoming clearer to him, as for one who journeys home from his wanderings. Flashes of insight thrilled him at times; but these became frequent, and he realised that it was only nature answering his ardent efforts to belong. He could identify divine grace in the life and the stillness and the simple cruelty around him. There were things he still had not understood, but he was contented; he had all the answers for the men and women he'd left behind, and a way to teach them.

As the day for meeting with the people approached, he grew more and more determined. He felt sure that one day would significantly alter his attitude: he knew that nothing substantially different would happen in his life, but that his whole aspect would change, something would happen and arm him with the strength to meet with any number of people in any imaginable state of mind. He would, by means of his few words and by means of his silence, bring about a change and make those who trusted in him to believe and see what he saw. He would be able to give meaning in the life they lived. He would put the love of God in their hearts. He would make them men and women again, not conquerors or animals.

On an auspicious day, by his own choice, with the realisation that life assumes priority over thinking or anything else, the prince became the Buddha—the enlightened one. He knew the truth and was entrusted with the task of disseminating the knowledge and teaching the right way. He proposed in endearing terms the doctrine of renunciation as a way to conquer death—the only way to conquer the conqueror is to give willingly. (Negation of life as the answer to death.)

He had let fly the arrow of salvation, and his task was done.

2163; 120'; 5 edits)

Two Genii and a Ninny

2008-07-02T01:38:00.015+05:30

When an Imaginary Idol Meets Reality

To Raphæl

...When the idol meets reality, when you first face him in person, or through his trace, it's not that you are disappointed, but it is that he simply nullifies himself. And sinks without a trace. This has happened in the case of an iconic (so they say) filmmaker, Aleksandr Sokurov. (But there's one big thing here: he made me write a bit about Bresson and Tarkovsky; though I'm writing entirely from recollection, it is probably accurate at least in the references and true in its drift.)

(And you, of course, know who is the ninny and who are the genii.)

[Aleksandr Sokurov]
The director of films like Russian Ark (that acclaimed 100-minute single take of the Tretyakov Gallery, spiralling back in time in an elaborate costume drama) and Father and Son (with its not totally undeserved disrepute as a homoerotic movie) surely has some beans in him, surely? At least that's what I thought, what I hoped, and indeed, what I prayed. Impostor! Surely, he is a cut above the likes of Spielberg...but we aren't talking about Spielberg-stuff and feel-good realism. (Spielberg won't ever make it into one of my pages other than when I run out of idiots and assorted Uncle Sams, but that's another thing.) But we are talking about a man—the fact that he has made important films does not matter much here—is trying, and trying hard, to pass himself off as Tarkovsky's natural disciple, or descendant, or whatever. What a vain idiot!

[S, B, T]
I am not comparing Tarkovsky and Sokurov; but I take this opportunity to recollect a few things about Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky was a multi-faceted genius who felt compelled to take up cinema as his medium. In his work, the medium is of secondary importance, though it's another matter he made the best use of it as possible. Indeed, some of the insights he presents through film is impossible by any other means. (And, believe me, when he extols the virtues of Bresson, I've often felt why? Why do it? Why extol the virtue of a man who was, though he was a master craftsman, heavily restricted by his choice of screenplay, and decidedly "wrought" by his screenwriter? Professional solidarity, probably; but a more likely possibility is that Andrei probably felt a bit like what I feel when I watch a Bresson film. Follows:)

[Robert Bresson]
Bresson's fame is legendary, yet his persona seems to radiate far outside cinema—indeed, the place where he becomes legendary is definitely outside cinema. He struggled to make each of his films, perhaps more so than Tarkovsky did. With all respect to Bresson, I've always found his films rigid, they never move you (which is an intended end-result, otherwise he would have employed professional actors). Instead, it leaves you with an insipid feeling, and, most of the time, after much thought, you come around to the view that what happened (as Bresson shows in the movie) 'wasn't so bad after all.' In some cases at least, we immediately realise that there's no room for remorse, or feeling, or pity, and that life is not about feelings or sentiments, even when it's all happening close to us, to people close to us. He brings us to face things: situations that terrify you with their nothingness.

It's always the case that Bresson is presenting us with a foretold drama, something that's been written out, something which would unravel at the last moment with divine (serendipitous?) intervention, or a godlike revelation. This is probably the 'religiosity' Bresson is accused of. (Spiritual? Yes. Religious? No. I've found him amoral, and he's perhaps one of the most impartial storytellers I've come across.) Yet, his choice of actors was whimsical (consider his Jeanne, who, even in her ill-fitting rags made out of sack-cloth, drops you dead with her looks, and doesn't even remotely seem a fervent devotee of God. (Indeed, she was most probably an atheist hippie. Florence Delay went on to become a famous author and collector of folk-stories in her own right.) This could hardly be a 'religious' choice. Bresson brings us face to face with the truth, the ringing truth, of an instant: the fact of the moment. At that instance, when it made clear to us, the moment, the act, unfolds in its terrifying isolation: and we feel what the subject feels at the moment of truth. Often, that fact is a terrifying silence which we fill out with our interior monologue (the constant mumblings and commentary of the protagonist of A Man Escaped). Bresson doesn't waste his energies further; the following shots merely dissipate into nothing, he's presented the truth of a moment and done his job. (Recall the burning of Jeanne at the stake—at best described as 'shoddy.')

It is neither art nor realism that wins the tussle in Bresson; something definitely French, something akin to chance, something akin to fate, something immobile, something unmoving, something heavy, something predestined yet not thought of by anyone in the audience. Yet, it is natural yes, it was one among the possibilities—the one possibility we all overlooked. (Recall the climax of Un condamné à mort s'est échappé - 'A Man Escaped'. We all seem to forget, for the entire length of the movie, until he presents it to us, that it is the only logical conclusion of such a heroic escape attempt (let's again forget the symbolic significance of the event, let's forget France and Nazi Germany). When we see the two men clasping each other silently for joy, and walk away briskly in silence into the night, we are suddenly pushed, face on, to the stark reality. And, just like the men who walk away as a matter of course, hardened by the realisation that the job is but half-done, we feel what they're thinking at that moment. He achieves this with about five or six seconds of insight which is neither cinematic nor artistic. Since I am not a believer, may I call it providential (with the secular connotation, of course).

[Andrei Tarkovsky]
Tarkovsky is probably unique in that his films have a drift all their own; there are intensely personal moments that can only come from Tarkovsky where the director is conspicuous by his absence, when the story is led neither by the actor nor any of the crew nor the props. not even by the story. An example of this would be the floating weeds sequence in Solyaris, or the blinding of the men in Andrei Rublyov (indeed, there are countless such occasions in Andrei). At these moments the viewer is probably propelling himself, there are no suggestions from the film⁽ⁱ⁾.

Tarkovsky is a master of the suspense-shot. This is an improvised shot, which cannot otherwise be captured simply with a camera (which is not a journalistic tool, but more an instrument of poetic vision and apocalyptic proscription). His films mostly end with enigmatic shots which however deliver the vision of the director (poet) conclusively:

Kris Kelvin's home surrounded by the Solyaris ocean;
The poet in his backyard, cradled by the arching immensity of the Italian cathedral (Nostalghia);
Stalker's daughter propelling objects by mere sight, even as the train rattles into our auditory field with a decidedly tactile potency;
Little Man noticing the first blossom on the Japanese tree (a much-acclaimed shot by Sven Nyqvist);
The legendary 'grazing horses' of Andrei Rublyov, signifying rebirth with the adoption of faith in the Trinity⁽ⁱⁱ⁾.
[And, and...? You seem to be wondering about the two missing films. To be quite frank with you, I don't recall the final shot of Mirror, which I have not viewed seriously, nor made any sense of, yet. Ivan is an altogether different film, which doesn't somehow belong in this discussion.]

In contrast to the single-minded synthetic philosopher Bresson, who always tries to locate his subject and pays no attention to what is external to it, Tarkovsky makes use of different techniques, and metaphors, to add resonances of the main theme to the stream. In Solyaris, the car-ride through the highways of Tokyo—starting out in the early-evening light, and ending up in the completely electric-light night traffic, with the cars resembling glowing worms or fireflies, is a strong metaphor of the increasingly telescopic vision of the space-traveller. The car speeds through the fast lanes, with reverberating sounds underlining the claustrophobia of lonely pilots and space travellers far away from home and family. When it ends, the transformation is complete: the earthy, rustic visions of idyllic life changes completely to the dehumanized world of mindless conquest of other worlds, and the mad rush after scientific truth and excellence, even at the ultimate price. Seldom have I seen such a gradual, but breathtaking, change of scene. It is almost like a long take that leaves you dangling over a precipice staring into certain death.

Claustrophobia, loneliness, and existential despair are the lasting themes in Tarkovsky's later work (starting with Solyaris).

A more complete, if ecstatic, treatment of Tarkovsky's Stalker may be found in my Stalker blog of 2006.

[Unfinished. 1670. 90 min.]

⁽ⁱ⁾ At such a moment, we feel like, "Well, it's not the actor leading it, it's not the director, nor anything else, it's just life taking its course..."
⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ The inclusion, or non-inclusion, of this shot is often used to quickly identify between the Ruscico and Criterion editions.

I had this coming a long time now. Never suspected that viewing (part of) a documentary by Sokurov (Moloch was another keen disappointment) would so set me off. It made me positively sick. Sokurov is 1% inspiration and 99% respiration (degassing).

Zooropa (U2, 1995)

2008-06-09T02:48:00.002+05:30

Lyrically, the album as a whole stands out; the lyrics are outlandish (very Zooropa), the similes are perfect (it's about an animal continent at least), and each time you listen to it you get something new out of it. It delivers that essentially postmodernist knockout punch you otherwise get while watching a seedy film; but Zooropa achieves this with a very clean, hyper-tidy surgical tone that's as unruly as the flowers in the forest. Though the album is not 'straight' rock, leaning more towards the experimental (it was produced by Flood, with the technician chipping in heavily to bend the traditional Eno/Lanois flavour in favour of the electronic), I consider it their best 'road rock' effort at least. (Personally this is the album I like listening to most of the time, because it does not make any demands on you at all.) There's a lot of scope for mistakes, bad things, nonsense, and of course, there are a few occasions when man rises triumphant over all else and flies his standard high in the breeze ('She's gonna dream up|The world she wants to live in|She's gonna dream of love').

Zooropa

The song flutters on the wings of glint; the guitar jabs produce the effect of light glittering, light bouncing off the river water, the shimmer of the sea, the shimmer of the lake in silent wind-motion. The song hangs heavily like the wind, like fog resting on water, and then and again the light bounces off, shimmering, throwing bright golden spangles of lustrous, joyous life.

Zooropa (could be the name of the girl or that of her planet) is sprightly and full of life, running from stone to stone and over brook and mountain, like an impossibly nimble-footed mountain goat, a satyr. We also think of her featureless round face singled out by the tiny antennae and the flashy, blissed-out smile. The little girl out to have the shock of her life.

Bono catches her in flight, and he takes the opportunity to pump both life and some worldly wisdom into her; it's like catching a shadow. He peps her up ('you've got the right shoes ...') and praises her spirit...and at this point that the song branches, two-headed, many-headed, and grows on us. Bono gives us the slip, the song launching tangentially in every imaginable direction, going haywire, as the guitar roll builds its high wall. It's like Bono giving us a sly smile as he hints at the possibility of this being a song sung by him at Zooropa (in which case it's the planet), and suddenly we're caught at the very post-modern crossroads with roads all leading nowhere.:

No particular placename, no particular song
I've been hiding...what am I hiding from?

She's gonna dream up the world she wants to live in
She's gonna dream of love...
...Dream of love.

Numb

This song, the video to which became a smash hit on MTV, is a nicely orchestrated tableau spat out between clenched teeth. In drawn breaths, sighs and half-breaths, The Edge spells out the curbs on personal freedom inflicted upon the celebrity by the paparazzi. (You can compare this song, which is perhaps the best in taste on this subject, with a crass song like Michael Jackson's "Scream", which is along similar lines.)

Alternatively, the song could be the baffling array of choices and proscriptions awaiting the newcomer from Zooropa. This is how she finds life on earth:

Don't work
Don't wish
Don't fish
Don't teach
Don't reach

Dirty Day

My favourite: the minimalist guitar wail filled with pathos; the lyric among his very best:

You can't even remember
What I'm trying to forget

Crowned with the damning indictment of postmodern relationships:

Get it right
There's no blood thicker than ink

Followed by this humiliating snicker:

Hear what I say
Nothing's simple as you think

And then Bono says (obviously a personal reference):

From father to son in one life
Has begun a work that's never done

This song has that rare one-off weirdness that makes it sound like a lost man's lament. I've listened to very few songs which distill just such a denouement. It's that hopeless, helpless, detached parting shot, as when you are marooned on the Moon. Yet it is sung with an ardent bigheartedness that does not implicate nor pass judgement.

We feel we're standing at that bizarre crossroads with roads leading nowhere. Bono has achieved a complete collective damning of human life and human endeavour in this wonderfully caustic song which could be between father and son, between siblings, or between spouses. All through, a chapel-like spiralling wail of the organ follows, like a trail, like an invisible ghost just seeping through the cracks, through the half-open door, spreading caustically, like ink blotting, like poison spreading, spewing its fumes wherever there's a chance for the flames to lick fodder. (Traces of Flood?)

Lemon

This song has that endearing appeal that sticks you to it the first time you hear it: it is bright, yellow (don't worry about that monochrome video which they shot in perhaps a couple of hours with as much nonsense and bollocks as they could collectively pack in without bursting at the seams), fun, and very thoroughly edible. It is a breezy song about man's quest for melon (well, you know it don't you.)

In this song Bono connects almost every major discovery man has made in the Freudian vein: the wheel, the motor car, the road, the television, electronics...were all made to look for her and to look at her. The rest of the song suddenly falls wonderfully and snugly into the groove:

A man captures colour
A man likes to stare
He turns his money into light to look for her

Alternatively, it is the story of a man falling in love, only to find that his world has been turned telescopically towards and into her; and his frightful obsession with her. He sees her in everything; everything he looks at he sees just her. He sees lemon. (See-through in the sunlight.)

This was the song which initially hooked me; I have since then become a big, big lover of this record.

I've not done an online review for quite a while, I was sitting by the tube just passing time when I had this brainwave...
[1077, 4 edits]

2008-06-09T01:02:00.004+05:30

Three Days and Three Nights: III

February 29, 2008

Lost up in work, had little time to look up. As a matter of fact, wore the same dress to work. Was busy the whole day (odds n’ ends, but… work). So when I returned there was a surprise.

But first, the course of the day.

Returning from work: Baby.

Baby was sleeping soundly at 1710 when I returned from work. She was sleeping peacefully, arms and legs all placed naturally, and she looked pleased. R asked me if B had suggested anything about the payment. She hadn’t, and I said no. R wanted change, amounting to Rs 50, and when I gave her a banknote she was somewhat displeased. I got it immediately, and I gave her the change. ‘The folks in the bus won’t give us change, you see…’ And she was off.

B returns. S advises B to leave the bonnet open.

B makes porridge for baby.

I leave for ITC. But first, I got to ICH. The entrance on the east side is clocked by a truck which is loading float glass engraved with the IOB logo (the three diamonds, IOB-style). The labourers discuss various stratagems. I worm through a possible opening and find myself in the passage. As I go down the stairs, I notice a young child (female, wearing a blue silk dress) with her Mom in the Idukki Spices store. (On my way back, I would note that the store is in complete darkness.)

At ICH, I have to wait a bit. I exchange my place for a par of young software engineers who look dumb enough and glad enough. Toothache is severe, otherwise I had a mind to consume banana fry. But I can’t; I settle for a coffee first. Coffee is served promptly, when I tell the waiter I also need MCx2. (Now this order would take forever, in which time a lot of things transpire).

A slight altercation: a disgruntled customer, having waited long for service, finally striding up to the manager and giving him a piece of his mind, before walking back and reoccupying his seat. He wore greyish shoes with a pair of khaki trousers and a matching tee. Spectacled and about 35, his hair was greying. He had company, but I didn’t notice them.

I give an order for an MO for B; the parcel doesn’t arrive even after ten minutes. For the time being, I tuck into the cutlets. But first, I have to do it royal-style, so I just walk around and get myself a salt cellar and a pepper sprinkler. I settle down to work.

The cutlets are freshly made, but that’s the problem: the mash is fresh, the potatoes are dry, and broken up drily. Instead of a juicy succulence (which is often accompanied by a slightly burning flavour), what I am left with is an obviously freshly baked cutlet with a very raw taste of potatoes. I try to make the best of it. I succeed for the most part, but occasionally, when I get too absorbed in the food, the burnt taste cuts back.

Since it had arrived earlier, I’d started on the coffee first. The coffee was somewhat watered-down but drinkable. I finish and am relieved: I am well in time. It’s only 18:45. There’s a jolly half-hour to get back home.

Through the circuit, I shop at Spencers and eject myself with a bottle of Pediasure®. ‘Three-eighty.’ I’d taken out 370, and I add another ten-rupee note. ‘Three-eight-seven,’ says the sales clerk, and indicates to the display. I feel like an idiot, because I’ve been buying this for ages and I know how much it costs. But on days like these…nothing really clicks.

At ITC, cleaned up the things. Finalized and consolidated.

Then, at 1910, I remember that I have forgotten something. As I leave, HRC joins me on the way out, and he asks me if I’m going straight home. I tell him no; I have left something at ICH, I have to go back.

I execute a rather tricky demi on the ‘bike and launch myself on the road; I see him walking past on the other side, after crossing the road. Curiously, he has taken the stairs up to the road and is now walking back; he must have procured some veggies from the roadside vendor.

I storm back to ICH. The truck is now gone, the loading must have been over. I am greeted by a quizzical smile. I inform him of my quandary. ‘What was it?’ I tell him. With a blank expression he nods to the small packet which I’d seen on the counter (I knew. Today the packaging was square, meaning the fare was lean on the mutton.)
**

B tucks into the MO. She notices that the package is square and lean (usually it is rolled long and fat).

Baby is out with the grandparents.

Though this be half-baked, I present this, the concluding part of the three nights series. It's merely a sketch and I am now sufficiently far away, ravaged by the time and the injuries and sufferings in between that I have no reason to believe that I would ever finish this with any acceptable degree of polish. This to flecks of dust, which are everywhere.

Drawing a Limit...

2008-06-08T01:36:00.006+05:30

To the Expression of Thoughts.

Here, I try to answer your query about that particular line in the Tractatus preface. (I think you felt your guide was wrong—"wrong somehow"—about the 'impossibility' of the idea—and you are right.)

First of all, before we discuss that 90-year old Preface, let us first see what you and I think is the limit to thought. (We speak with definite [dis]advantages that Wittgenstein had not had—cable TV, movies, the Internet, video...and the sitcom and the reality show.)

Thoughts do have limits. Limits are imposed by the very process of thought—otherwise known as thinking.—So, thought is not an absolute but the result of something. The fact that we cannot think of a limit to thought does not signify that there is no limit to thought. The fact that I do not know of the existence of something does not mean that it does not exist, etc.

Thoughts...are not absolute. Thoughts are merely a reflection of the world. A thought needs a life to support it. Thoughts...stand on crutches, crutches of different make. (Anything goes.)

And even if there is no limit to thought; it makes no difference at all to the way you or I think; it would not have mattered at all to Wittgenstein or Russell either.

I listened to your statement of the problem. For convenience and for clarity and to prove a particular point, I quote straight from the Pears and McGuinness translation:

The aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought, or rather—not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought).
(TLP Preface)

As a literature student, I guess you might have noticed (not from this run-on sentence, but from the whole of the preface) what is curious about this preface. You must have noticed the rather bizarre punctuation, the flurry of periods followed by dashes and so on...

Wittgenstein's preface is composed of so many apologies stuck up like stacks of hay, and each toppling in turn, because Wittgenstein, first-time author, is fumbling over what he has to say. He has striven for clarity in the entire book; indeed the book is often cited as a supreme example of lucid prose. Whereas he is very comfortable, unassailable even, as he takes the help of logic in his arguments ('purification and clarification' exercises, as one might call them), he is clunky when he talks about the book. I feel that no preface is necessary for a book which is so blatantly entitled in the Latin. So.—I feel he has bungled with the very idea of a preface—a lame attempt at a humble overture to the sweeping generalizations that are to follow in the remarkably structured ...thought cathedrals. These chapters are not expositions, they are like the different books of the Bible; what he establishes is not premises supported by proof (logical or otherwise) but basic tenets that will be taken more on faith because the author's technique and his devotion to the task is so selfless and flawless. (In the same way most people find something to emulate in Christ.) It is not the man's words, it is the life that matters. (Most of his apparently iron-clad premises can easily be broken down, or otherwise proved fallacious; Wittgenstein's philosophy will not survive a postmodern appraisal, which does not know the meaning of a war which you can lose. Wittgenstein, it must be remembered, fought on the losing side first and then sat on the fence watching his adopted side win.)

The idea of the Preface was not to bandy about the impregnability of thought—or indeed to say anything at all about thought. What he says is about the expression of thought—in other words, language. The concern is with the formulation of questions in language. The objective is to identify sense and nonsense on the basis of questions which are proper, and those which are not. It is not about 'thoughts as absolutes.'

I think an important point made in the Preface is that there are some things which can be clearly written about, and other things which can only be shown, not written down (writing stands for any means of depiction which separates the experience from the retrieval; it includes also the video and the multimedia; thus it includes all information retrieval systems—text, sound, everything.) But this point is made elsewhere in the text. The one point which is not made elsewhere—essentially something 'about the book itself'—and which gave me a reason to read it over and over again—is that it (the book) "will be understood only by someone who has himself had the thoughts expressed in it—or at least similar thoughts." Indeed, excepting the difficult logic chapters, I had had a lot many of these thoughts before I came across Wittgenstein. So when I first read the line,

What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language.
(TLP 4.121)

Or, the even more trite,

What can be shown, cannot be said.
(TLP 4.1212, my emphases)

I thought, 'Wow, he's the one, he doesn't beat about the bush!' I was coming to grips with the writings of a man who had experienced the limit language placed on his thoughts, yet, heroically, decided to pour forth what he could, in whichever incomplete way, to indicate that limitation. This, I too had been doing for ever since I had been writing (July 1986).

The first line of Wittgenstein I read was in 1991. It was a quotation in a journal called Scientific Worker, (a pretty useful magazine that quickly went out of business), which ran:

We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. (TLP, 6.52)

The quotation omitted the latter part ('Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer'), because the authors were using it to prove a point. And, though it is beyond the question if such a use is 'fair use' (I think it was), unfortunately that is how Wittgenstein continues to be read and understood and dealt with in the academia these days. It's not a tragedy that happens to Wittgenstein; when the great practitioner who inflames, invigorates, difficult theory with his own lively words and elucidations leaves the scene, he and his work is left open to scavenging. The result is the establishment of a mauled and battered idol that somehow resembles an incomplete human being.

Wittgenstein has become a punctuation mark, or an apostrophe, or an embellishment to literary and philosophical dialogue, in much the same way biblical quotations have become embellishments in similar situations. It is a natural progression, the purists dread it, and I hate it.

And now, to answer your guide, who really hasn't made any sense of Wittgenstein at all: No, it is not "impossible." The question is not one of possibility (he assumes naïvely—if not conveniently—that Wittgenstein, being so clear and clever, should have found it out if it had been possible) or impossibility. The aim of the book is to draw the line between sense and nonsense, between proper questions (which have proper answers) and improper ones (which do not have any answer, and are hence not questions). Language does not make anything possible. (When a lion kills an antelope, it is hardly the doing of language.) Language merely signals communicative possibility, which is only one among many possibilities. Things—objects and ideas—contain the possibility of certain events. To say that something is impossible is only to express a particular idea in language, in speech, in writing, in thought. 'Thinking both the sides of the thinkable limit' is merely a linguistic construction, not something which we logically encounter in our thoughts, in much the same way we do not encounter a colourless colour. I would heartily recommend to him the following thought, which is, surely enough, from the Brhadaranyaka, which expresses this basic limitation of language and knowledge (logocentrism, to jargon-freaks) in this stunning idea:

How can the truth be known? How can the knower be known?

(It is no wonder that the best formulations of all the issues of linguistic limits are to be found in the Upanishads. I don't think it is possible to improve upon the preceding formulation of the problem.)

The deep forest is not outside of us, existing in some remote place where we would like to go one day, on vacation or for dying; the deep forests are the forests of our thoughts, it is within us. Language is something we use to record our thoughts and to reach out to others. We do not use language for our thoughts. Thoughts are something primal, they are a reaction to stimuli and to internal excitements;—

Thoughts...do not speak. Thoughts do not write, either; thoughts only show. When we record to preserve the thought (a trace, if at all), we lose the process. And it is exactly this—that which is lost—makes the difference, and draws the line. The limit to thought is not the unthinkable but the impossibility of depiction of even simple thoughts. Recorded thought—makes no difference at all; what we read are not thoughts but the depiction of thought, which is inferior and altogether a different thing.

En passant: thanks for the great collection, the many-splendoured disc (x6).

[Two-penny verse]

When the brothers joined together
Disc-to-disc, shoulder-to-shoulder
The movement-image arrested the blinking text,
Shifting, seething, screaming with life...and what's next?

The brothers they faced the world anew,
Seeing things through the mind's eye,
Ever-blinking but never sinking, unlocking
Secrets consecrated to printer's dye.

Just imagine: Scorsese's Age of Innocence padded by The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton! Think! Rejoice!

You did not call...I waited, and then I rang you up, but me got the bleating network.
...So I write to fill the silence in me eardrums.
...And I held on so tight.
(Willie Garvin, on mobile phone misuse, with apologies to Paul Hewson.)

[1762, after nine straight edits and corrections; additional edits 8 June

2008-05-17T02:15:00.002+05:30

Style::A Writer's Locus of Words

To Raphæl

Words—nouns especially—have meanings which are satisfactorily explained in a dictionary. A dictionary is familiar to us as a compendium wherein we try to make sense of words by using other words. We do this by treating a specific word as the object, as the subject of a reality independent of it, so that we can explain it in terms of other words used in a similar sense. We cobble together the meaning. Related to the dictionary is the thesaurus and the encyclopædia, which work similarly, on the basis of associations: words make sense only in connection with other words, which give it a context. This is in keeping with the original (serendipitous) "design" of words as atomic items or symbols that "stood for" things and grains and so on.

This workmanlike treatment of words—words as the object—could not be more disastrous to the writer. No other idea could be more useless, even wrong. Viewed thus, we can always find the apt words to suit the situation, match the context. We are accustomed to there being a subject independent of words when there is none.

The word...is its own subject. A word creates its own space. Words create ambience, words make up style. Ambiance is something abstract, something which we have perhaps felt and want to reproduce in writing; ambience is never concrete. It is always an idea, an ideal. It stands for something we feel, or something we felt. Ambience never makes up—or selects—suitable words to express itself because; it's not there.

...Words make up an ambience. Ambience, or context, is something the writer builds up, brick-by-brick, word-by-word. Ambience is the end-product, the result, of the exercise and a gauge of the writer's skill. It is not given. It is never a question of finding the words to "create" an ambience. Such a notion is purely theoretical. Such a notion of imagining wordless worlds belongs some place else, not to literature.

Writing...is not a "trip." A word—is not a drug.

2008-05-02T15:20:00.001+05:30

Cycles
That Which We Don't See

People notice certain things after particular intervals, like the alternating seasons. It might be a way of injecting spice into a monotonous life; it might be habit, or it might be a fundamental property of human consciousness. Whatever it is, it gives variety to the human experience, which, when we look at it from a distance (this is a dangling statement in itself) isn't much varied at all. (Human beings are born, they live and they die: whatever can be said can be said in three words.)

So, this particular person, having built an impressive collection of movies, is now contemplating (now that a salary hike is around the corner) purchasing a recliner from a reputed manufacturer. He wants to wallow in comfort while enjoying the fruit of his labour (which is, sitting cross-legged in a pose resembling the praying mantis or the posing stork and adjusting the parameters of the leeching/seeding cycle, letting the heart flutter with each dropping down of the TCP/IP transmission ramp, and gleefully celebrating the rising edge of the ramp). And suddenly he remembers that one cannot watch movies per se, ad nauseaum, but one watches one or at the most two a day, with the undesirable effect that the first film is washed away, or gets drowned, in the second. So, for the best viewing experience, one film per day seems enough. And he becomes conscious of the so-called movie-watching cycle, or the movie cycle.

Suddenly, like a newly sprouted mushroom opening its eyes to find dolmen-like fellow-creatures all around him in silent contemplation of tranquillity, he is aware of so many of the cycles which ward off dour routine. Cycles, by an almost spontaneous flareup of the imagination and a consequent benumbing of the reality, make us forget, for varying durations of time for different persons, that we are all clogged in our own pigeonholes all the time, never able to extend our tentacles more than a few arm lengths from our rotting bodies. Cycles...make us forget the status quo, which is the stationary state, or stagnation. More importantly, cycles takes away that one bean of awareness which is fundamental to the experience of surprise: cycles take away our awareness of, and preparedness for, cycles. Cycles are omniscient, in that it knows why it exists and what it must not let happen for it to exist. It is self-perpetuating by the stratagem of make-forget. To occasionally become aware of cycles, and each time have the same thoughts about cycles without feeling remorseful or wasted, was to experience god. It is a simple communion that we allow ourselves in the age of tactile implosion where even the privacy of death is open to investigation, and the event itself commemorated in the potfuls (pintfuls?). Surprises take the role of God in an age devoid of goodness.

***

The plant had overgrown the shrub stage and was on the road to becoming a tree. Water spouted in the general direction of the dead leaves, and he observed two small black dragonflies, silky gossamer wings wetted in black and girded by sheer, luculent white, flap on to a branch in an almost casual sweep. Their cloaca were joined in a dreamy forgetfulness, and he looked away. Water spouted, and his left arm was tickled by the insolent spray. Alas! He now saw it: both the dragonflies were dead, but one of them seemed to have a little bit of life left. No, he was mistaken. He felt oddly disturbed. It was a cool morning, cool for that part of the year, but the heat arose in him inexplicable, but he knew: did he frighten the creatures, did they suffer a heart-attack and give it up just then...? Oh! It was quite possible, he was aware of it; and he helplessly wished it were otherwise. But there was no one around, he was alone, there was no consolation of judgement. From a distance, he flung his eyes for a fleck of dirt on the dead leaves.

2008-03-17T03:44:00.005+05:30

Three Days and Three Nights: II
February 28, 2008

Another bad day: and the sad thing was that it was all predictable.

Call no man happy until he’s dead. And no day happy until the last word is uttered between husband and wife. Often the last exchange signifies how the twine interpret the day in its totality. A poor exchange of words does damage to both parties.

B probably spent her day in the most meaningful manner possible. She started it off in a bad enough sort: she got scolded for not parking the car conveniently (when she parks it in the garage—which is an open one, where four two wheelers and a bicycle are also kept—she leaves about four feet of space to the front, when she could very easily park it close enough to the facing wall). She forgot to brew Baby’s hot water (with the basil leaves).

They picked a quarrel over the parking of the car. He raised his voice, and Baby began aping him, raising her own voice as if it were a game, and she pranced about. They changed the subject.

Husband left in a gruff mood, because the rice cake had nothing to go with it by way of aperitif. He had, of course, meant to see pappadam, which he knew was long exhausted, but couldn’t remember to buy the day before, when he’d gone to the store. In his mind, he always held B responsible for this, because she usually gives him a list (verbal). It was not there, so he merely consumed the tea and left in a grumpy mood. His mood was also due to the following things he’d left unfinished.

Three leaking taps, one of them unusable
Hair grown too long, no time to have it cut, half-mind only
Two pairs of shoes to be given for repairs. One pair to be fetched back, but the work isn’t over anyway
Desire to study long and a lot and get certified (a long-cherished pipedream)
The desire to sleep—which however has reduced considerably in the recent months, especially after Baby

As he left for the Office, B joined him, and as she walked to the car, she told him she’d park it properly. He said something about being civil.

He kicked the ‘bike to life, and he thought it would have been better if he’d left without answering her, letting it simmer, leaving like a block of ice. However, his natural instinct to finish business (as long as it could be finished by lip service) won out in spite of him.

He sped to the office. The day started for him. It was 1030 in the morning.

***

She rang up her friend S*. They were on the line for about three minutes, and it might have been something important (he never realised).

Baby had been fed, she was quite well-mannered. She even solicited food occasionally. And then, B left to boil her milk.

He picked a quarrel with her again over the method of boiling milk. She replied that he always did things his way; to each his way. He said something sarcastic which made no difference at all.

She wanted to tell him all about it: XYZ Dept has not reported the seven vacancies, and as for ABC, the file is still sitting in their office, it has not been forwarded to ABC. The clerk at ABC has agreed that he would forward it immediately, but the XYZ officers were just ignoring it. She wondered what had happened to M*, it seemed as if nobody was interested any more.

He indicated to her that she should have informed the issue to his Dad. She replied that she was in the know only recently—she never knew these details until S* had told her a few minutes before.

He said something sarcastic about her style of leaving things until it was too late. He further suggested that if nothing was to be done, there was no need to tall him these things any more. (The basic difference between men and women.) On the verge of tears, she promised him so.

After a few moments, when the baby had cried for no reason, she swore. It was the last straw, but he’d been stone for some time.

As he turned his head, she suddenly noticed the cotton balls he used to plug his ears with. She joyfully squeaked at the discovery, and likened them to the ear studs she was wearing. And then she said it was not. And then she wanted to see if he had it in the other ear. ‘Aha!’

The milk was ready, B came and picked her up from his lap.

And thus ended another unhappy day for B, a day in which she’d done most things right. She’d parked the car correctly (it is hoped), the baby behaved herself, more importantly she didn’t throw it up, her blocked nose was almost healed by the administration of drops, she’d transferred her money at the Treasury and informed her husband of it. She’d done everything right, and yet—

Thus ends the diary entry of yet another unhappy day.

2008-03-05T00:58:00.004+05:30

Brainless

My friend, in his usual magnanimity, has fed me with dogfood this week. It's been several months since I'd actually asked for it; he obliged this week. An assortment of chow of the following variety.

(1980) Irigaray - When Our Lips Speak Together

(1985) Irigaray - Is the Subject of Science Sexed? (Bilingual)

(1989) Irigaray - The Language of Man

(1995) Irigaray - The Question of the Other

(2004) Irigaray - What Other Are We Talking About?

It spans 24 years in the career of an illustrious (as far as academic presence and visibility are concerned) feminist or female-oriented writer (writress? writer-uss? wry-truss?). I don't really know a mad thing about feminism, but I am still calling her a feminist because she's so very obsessive about categorically pitting herself against Freud (the representative of male macho) and Simone de Beauvoir (who is accorded a place next to him due to similar reasons[i]).

She draws the line conclusively (well, in this small collection) in 'The Question of the Other.' But before we discuss it at some length, let us first look at the blue-eyed lover in 'When Our Lips Speak Together ©1980'.

You may note that two among the five essays are punctuated by '?'. Naturally, a '?' is the best condition we can hope for while reading such asinine topics. (But she does make some wonderful admissions, such as the ignorance of western man to the concept of the other, etc, albeit with the ulterior motive of denouncing Freud and de Beauvoir.)

The essay is trash and not worth a critique. It is not worth reading. It has a historical interest to some; Luce herself may shrink in terror/recoil in horror if you show it/this/what/when to her now. But a written word is like an arrow. It has consequences or it breaks against an obstacle. But this arrow is like mud. It doesn't break, it sullies the place it falls.

I write this because it's the most hilarious and tragically comic essay I've read in years. I usually don't read sh*t like this, but it just happened. No, I never completed it. How did this comprehensive idiot ever sit for a French philosophy exam and pass it - with writing skills like this - is beyond me. With the assurance of a calm pig (OiNK!) I can assure you that in 1980, Luce Irigaray was a branded fool. (And now, she must be a monumental block of you-know-what. No, it happens.: failed poets become journalists, idiots with the attention span of a gnat become philosophers and standard bearers

When Our Lips Speak Together

Luce Irigaray, 1980

'If we continue to speak the same language [...] we will reproduce the same story.'

In this paragraph composed to catch us midair, to catch our attention, Luce generalizes 30 generations of womanhood in a crisp idea which is put forth unequivocally: women have been invented by men, and they live a (social) life that has been given them. She goes on: to close the parallel, plug the holes, and discover new parables.

The essence of it as I see it is: a Frenchwoman must speak a different language, a different French. She cannot use normal French (or normal English, for that matter), oh no, because that language has been the gift of men (ugh! the thought itself!). A language which is 'not yours, not mine'. (Whose, then? Nobody's. How true! Language is language and nothing else.)

As if in a daze, Luce goes on ranting, sleepwalking: 'get out of their language...be attentive to yourself, to ME.' (Emphasis added.)

Luce's great invention is the many meanings of the utterance, 'I love you.' (I love you as uttered by a straight couple who may or may not have ulterior motives of the straight kind.) Some singular observations.

1. 'I love you' is said to an enigma: an 'other'.

Then she dwells at length at what all speakers of this utterance have known all the time: the 'I love you' disappears, and even before the 'you' has been intoned, the meaning is lost. She devotes 140 words to this singluar earth-shattering discovery.

2. 'When you say I love you ... you also say I love myself.'

Aha! The plot thickens. In the space of three sentences, Luce transcends the materialistic veil, the ghost of Derrida, straight into transcendental mysticism, straight into the realm of (watered down) Vedanta:

You don't "give" me anything when you touch yourself, when you touch me: you touch yourself through me.

3. [Invocation of physical unity through transcendental props.]

'I love you: body shared, undivided. ... no need for blood spilt between us.'

Now why should a very smart (let me assume) girl say that? She raises the siege, immediately after the blockade. She's offering peace when there was no war in the first place. This practice has become commonplace - as a technique - with female writers of the sort Irigaray represents (oh no, there is such a sort: though Luce might insist she's very much different from other woman writers, etc). It is the commonly known tactic of hit and run. Or run and play dead, Or whatever. In general it is a transition in the state of motion or suspended animation. It is a disappearing act. It is a Houdini shrink-wrapped in a bikini.

4. [The invention of colour : or, 16 million colours from just (255,255,255) and (255,0,0)]

Luce then discovers that from white and red come all the other shades such as brown, pink, blond(?!), green, and so on. Well, frankly, I think not.

5. [The self-effulgence of a couple in love.]

Luce finds it hilarious that the others find them (Luce and her lover, who for all practical things is another woman, or Luce herself) as 'two.' How sad, and how funny! Dear little Luce and Luce, two! Dear little Luce and iffy little Ines, two! TWO! Can you imagine...! Those two, two! Oh, they are in love!

6. [Second thoughts.]

But how can it be different? How can I say it differently? No, really, how can it be any different?

(Serious question: Does Luce often talk to herself, or does she talk to someone else? Is Luce writing all this to the undivided other? How wonderful? And this other undivided Luce must be reading this thousands of times in thousands of places at thousands of awkward situations... isn't that really funny? Or serious? Or what?)

(Another question: What is the basic requirement of speaking? Okay, we need a language, we need the mouth, the ears, etc. But if we speak to us, if I speak to me, then do I need language, mouth or ear? How sensible is it to talk about speaking to an undivided me? Does an undivided me have any need to talk? Does an undivided me have thoughts? Are they necessary?)

…From the fire to the frying pan.

The answer: Luce :: emetic for a stale chicken curry.

7. [Trying to birth the Titan, delivering a tadpole, and then wheezing at the effort.]

I love you: our two lips cannot part to let one word pass. One single word that would say "you" or "me." Or, "equals":

Luce immediately recognises the trap she's laying for her: she's calling language itself into question. All the common words she has to use have been gifted, all these divide people. Luce discovers, much like the dunce in the parable (What parable? Don't pull my leg!), that words divide things, divide people. (In much the same manner, ideas divide the world. Luce's solution would be to do away with ideas, of course.)

8. [Universal sister/mother/other hood with those who are neither mother nor sister nor daughter nor son.]

To cement her play upon the word 'crack' (faille, fault), Luce obsessively taunts the male reader (so she thinks) with repeated references to the female orifices. ("Which are both open and closed at the same time" - how madly interesting!)

Luce can't even force herself to call her mother mother. She entangles herself in the web which she must choose anyway: she choose language, something which she hardly knows how to use (of course the blame is on Diderot and Voltaire: them, men). She trips on the strings repeatedly. She falls flat on her face, she makes less sense all the time. She finally realises that at least an instant of separation is required to intone that enigmatic three words (or is it one word).

***

I finished at this point. I glance at the ending:

You? I? That's still saying too much. It cuts too sharply between us: "all."

And then I realise the game: the feminist's manifesto which failed[ii].

LoL, Luce.

[i] whose wholesale acceptance by P.I.G.s such as myself might be the reason why she's seen as playing to a predominantly male gallery

[ii] I've been reading a piece of her-story. Poor, sightless Luce.

::To Raphæl::

Hoped for better, turned out far worse. Among the four, this one's the pits. And this is not a laugh, I don't feel like laughing at all.