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Anger... forever!

 by rsm 12th Dec. 2011

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On everyday failure to say something,

the boiling sprinkles of reflections

touch me on the self-inflicted wounds...

and remind me of my forgotten-lost soul--

trapped in congestions of expression-less contemplations and

I recall what John Updike said, “For there is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam.”

Why for the moment, then I stop, take a step back and breath deeply?

and not flood my anguish in the channels of metabolic momentum,

Why for that moment, I revert back to my submissive honesty and arrogant sincerity?

and not write down fullest disclosure of my parochial self, selflessly...

Sometimes, I need to think through time with my companions;

...books, nature and my soul-mates.

but then my mother comes and asks loudly,

why you have left me, not to talk everyday, going farther everyday...

How I have become, what I have never been,

as I read yesterday, Focault was saying: “...to become someone else that you
were not in beginning. The game is worthwhile insofar as we do not know what will be
the end.”

Quotations have become my friends and

my friends transformed into rational equations of absolute rules...

Beyond quotations and friends lays

...my unconscious slumbers refusing to respond to pragmatic sounds.

I do not know, is it good, bad or ugly,

but I do not care to rescue myself from that shrinking caves so early...

However harsh may be the agony of thinking alone,

I need to take this BET before I utter good buy from this non-sense world smoothly.

Then comes Thoreau who says: “ If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”

Though I do not follow his line uttered, I admire when he says, “Why, let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

I am sure I do not hear different drummer,

but I am not sure how far I can go alone, lonely to listen to the music of life....

-------------------incomplete……………………

Multiple experiences of modernity....

(Excertps of talk delivered by Prof. Avijit Pathak at JNU on 14th October 2011) 

Modernity is confluence of ideas. It is symbolic, meaningful, experimental and universal generalization, narratives, poetics, subjective. Especially in the context of interdisciplinary, it is the cross disciplinary idea and culture.  Experiences with modernity and landscapes of modernity are vast and complex. There is no singular way to approach the modernity. There is historical and cultural memory—historically unique and culturally specific. Multiple experiences of modernity are not binary expressions of tradition and modernity. It is legacy of historical heritage. Traditionalisation of modernity and modernization of tradition are in a way indicating past being recalled, reinvented so as to redefine modernity.

Who reinforced this modernity vision? Voltaire, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Kant and likewise. The events of industrial capitalism, secularism, epeistological optimism of science, political democratization, rationalization. All of these contributed to enlightenment. The universes of experiences and critically dissenting voices also contributed to scientificity of culture. When Manchester was symbol of industrial capitalism, then it was also epitome of romantic ideology depicting the transition on the agrarian economy to industrial economy and the pains inherent in it. Also group of intellectuals led by Freud on one side and by Marx on other side developed the critic of enlightened modernity.

Then came the fission of enlightened modernity and colonization with reference to the engagement with the west. Establishment of modern university, scientific education and arrival of modern communication systems and philosophers like John Sturart Mill and Bentink shaped the modern thought. Proponents of European modernity happened through reason, science. Therefore meaningful dialogue with west also brought huge influences from their culture, lifestyle and progressive democratic ethos. This process of engagement with the past also gave rise to the deep reflection on the past, leading towards glorification of certain convenient aspects of it.  Debate with the western enlightenment, industrial capitalism and notions of progress can be traced by four reminders who are deeply rooted in Indian freedom movement and nation building. Aurbindo Ghosh, Mahatma Gandhi, Ravindranath Tagore and Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar invented the interpretations of the western modernity.

Aurbindo, a saint philosopher advocated and radiated intuitive reasoning to support Darwinian survival instincts as against instrumental rationality. He envisioned the world beyond physical manifestations for quest of deeper and subtler layers of universal mind. Gandhi`s Hind Swaraj protested against aggressive project of colonialism and violent aggressive impulses of modern development. It advocated a paradigm shift required from brute force to soul force. This soul force will help us to look inside for solutions, where really they are located. It has critic of Parliament and modern systems.

Tagore observed crisis of collapsing civilization but had great hope for modernity. He saw great danger in acceleration of nationalism and consolidation of nation-state. Rationalization of nation state may lead sometimes to narcissist state. Ambedkar`s commentary on Hinduism not only gave us new frame of religion but also of making justice with economic and social inequality. Buddhism provided counter culture. He embodied the universal values of liberty, equality and fraternity oriniginally espoused in French revolution. He made those values as permanent feature of Indian constitution legitimized by struggle of social movement.  But tragedy of modernity is that country is not able to forget the caste. Caste continues to acquire new logic and avatar as we go ahead in modern life. This also implies for secularism. Both majority and minority forces have been communalized beyond civilized limits. Kinship identity has crept in politics and films to migrate to other professional fields.

History of India is not only political history of country in making. It is history, rather, histories of everything. Rather it is part of larger civilization heritage—through oceanic flow of which multiple currents of ideologies and maternities pass simultaneously. Thus during this flow the process of becoming is always taking shape. So, today we are witnessing historical, multiple and post-colonial modernities. 

You are my Florence, You are my Venice...

 

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You are my Florence,

You are my Venice;

You are the ultimate destiny,

of my suffering, troubled soul...

 

You are my MichaelAngelo,

painting Sistine chappel of my life...

You are my Leornado,

Carving David, Monalisa of supreme virtues...

 

You are my civilisation,

which never declined, never falls...

Empire and citadels come and go,

but your delicate firmness rules the every droplet of republic...

and giving birth to singing shower of rewarding sweat.

 

You are in Saint Mary and you are in Saint Peter,

either religion does not matter, you are everywhere;

You are my sole god teaching me to love nature...

When my self belief fades away,

I start meditating about you...

 

You are the colours spread on the paintings of renessaince,

you are the curves deeply rooted

on the wounds of progressive sculptures

you are in the lips of lyrics and

in the fingers composing symphony of compassion....

 

You are the tolerant voice and

you are the aggressive hope; 

you are the accomodative spirit,

but you are also dissentful declaration...

 

I am a small flame,

merging myself in you every moment,

and the moment I find myself..........

....................away from you...

my agony .....................

creates Rome, Florence, Venice!

 

I dont want that agony,

because you are my heritage,

you are my history-arecheology,

you are my melancholy...
                                                          
                                                       (5th September, Rome) 


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A conversation between Heritage and History !

We speak, we do not speak. But we think of the silence felt by each other. Every second is a dormant seed with the doubts, questions and curiosity about the void we share. This void is not empty or dark! In turn, it is cultured with the threads of thoughts exchanged in last few years. These thoughts largely were the epiphanies of everyday life. We refuse to get overwhelmed by multidisciplinary scholarly analysis about what is the meaning of life. Instead, we are driven away by the nuanced understanding about the small ironies bearing bigger meaning behind those sequels around sphere of mutual imagination.

These threads of thoughts are true identity of our existence. We know each other by these thoughts. We nurture ourselves by coloring these thoughts in different experiences of life. We do not have any prejudice about the colors. We are equally rigorous about weaving positive and negative, pleasant and unpleasant feelings of color. Every day, what then makes this process most fascinating is that it never stops us from unfolding new secrets about this shawl, woven by the versatile colors of constantly thinking threads of celebration of the virtues we inherit and virtues which continue to search new aspirations of time.

Have we ever understood that time around us is simultaneously withering away and also building up a different world for us? Second, seconds; hour, hours; week, weeks…just go for nothing. For all these timelines, we continue to adhere to the ambiance around us. We enshrine and continue to emerge in certain kind of affinity towards the life- solely assigned by singular vision about the voyage to be embarked upon. We suffer a lot due to this affinity; still we do not acknowledge that there is great degree of urgency to address the uncertainty about the voyage. We think that this singular vision has all the answers of the daunting challenges waiting to shatter us in coming eras. But many times we are proved wrong; this living concept of time has established itself as a greatest falsifying agency of the universe.

Can we catch those missing moments? Yes, we can. Is it so easy? Not, surely. But we will. Picasso said, “Art is a lie to tell the truth.” Anecdotes and Quotations surrounded in our life and literature are the stars in the sky of commentary about how life may be evolving. Art and Culture are one of those quotations of life, to throw light upon. Science and Economics are others. We can write stories, essays, articles, travelogues, poems about the evidences and witnesses of the mortality. This materialism encompassing all of us, no doubt, has greatest impacts on our lives. But can we go ahead audaciously and courageously to try to sculpt the immortal signs of those times which are somehow lost in the quagmire full with rubble of shallow rituals of ordinary life. The extraordinary moments embedded in this ordinary life are moments of trust and hatred, at the same time; affection and doubt; passion and detachment; love and agony; pleasure and helplessness; solidarity and ambition.

So, the seconds, hours and months we do not converse have to have certain kind of special introvert engagement with creativity. In the absence of conversation, the quest for creative, innovative passion will usher for both of us in countryside of blooming flowers. This welcome ushering then will grant us such a unique energy to sustain each other`s legacy for future that for forever we will be bound by the strong attachment to the heritage of minds we have strived to establish. This gift will then enhance and sustain our combined belief in life, being such a massive force coming from natural beauty, humanly adventures and astronomical mysteries. 

Solitude and Companionship are nothing but the two giant lenses to view and to interpret this astronomical mystery, to know the vastness of the problems we could work upon and minute pleasures hidden at every walk of life, with you; without you. Eventually, “I, You and Time; vaporize in Solitude and Companionship.”

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Once Upon a Time in Mumbai...Convergence of Common Filth and Common Wealth !

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Copernicus Marg, 5th October:

Words are the only jewels I posses,

Words are the only clothes I wear, 

Words are the only food that sustains my life, 

Words are the only wealth I distribute among the people. 

     --- Saint TUKARAM (1609-1650) 

                                                                                                           

            Dilip Chitre (1938-2009) : Introduced Saint Tukaram and Namdeo Dhasal to the contemporary globalized world

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True to the spirit of Sahitya Akademi whose official motto above reflects the life and blood relation of an author with that of rigorous engagement he/she has with the process of literary creation, the unique festival and meet of Commonwealth Writers was inaugurated today. The enlightened ceremony was presided over by legendary former President of  Sahitya Akademi Prof. Gopichand Narang (http://gopichandnarang.com/profile.htm).  Opening class of authors were lead by renowned Marathi writer who is instrumental for creating flutters in the so called 'pure, orthodox, conservative' class of literary class where the destruction of form, degree of intellectual connections with the critical social life and potential to penetrate into the narrow comfort zones of the trend setters of established aesthetics was not respected. This poet-writer was none other than Namdeo Dhasal. 

 

Someone has said that:

Oh my master poet, 

Remember one thing, 

After the collapse of this ocean, 

You are my last link to the desert, 

Are you not ?

So, Namdeo is that link which connects our life to that of devil desert which is present in our own life towards which we refuse to pay meaningful attention.

 

The world should know him in following way but still refuses to recognize his credentials for appreciating gravity of the beauty and the pity of life and death in the convergence of clean and dirt. In 2004, India’s national academy of letters, Sahitya Akademi, honoured Dhasal with the only Lifetime Achievement Award it gave during its golden jubilee celebrations.

      "Namdeo is a big poet in the sense Whitman, Mayakovsky and   Neruda are big. But unlike them, his poetry contains large chunks of a real and dirty world peopled by have-nots and their slang. Henry Miller once said, “I am not creating values; I defecate and nourish.” Namdeo did precisely is for Marathi poetry. He restored its soil-cycle by feeding it the very excrement and garbage that could fertilise it for the future. 

                                 --- TEHELKA, October 23, 2004

 

 

Namdeo, struggling to recover from his physical weakness and treatment, showed no sign of downfall in spirit, enthusiasm and argumentative integrity when he was evocatively speaking for the need of literature to focus on the diverse experiences of life instead of being complacently happy and overjoyous in the ivory tower. He expressed his regret about lack of enough attention towards the translations of great, diverse Indian regional language literature. He believes that Indian language literature is in no way behind in experience, expression and excellence compared to its western counterparts but due to paucity of quality translations it is not being recognized worldwide. 

Dhasal shared his childhood days. Then he elaborated about younger times when he was kicked out of his home by parents because of affair with a girl which he never regretted. He was driving taxi upto 1972 when the movements of "Little Magazine"and radical dalit explosion of progressive sentiments erupted under the banner "Dalit Panther".   

Criticizing elite class attitude bypassing real life experiences feeling those not worthy of having attention of great synthesis of literature, Dhasal even did not forgive Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul. Naipaul when few years back visited Dhasal`s area and home in Kamatipura, a red light area in Mumbai and then suddenly Naipaul refused to relax there due to dirt and filth of the surroundings. Dhasal argues that if this is the commitment of the award winning author towards the stark realities of the life then I do not wish to get such kind of global recognition which pushes you to the brink of compromise your sensitivities. 

We can sense his angusih if we carefully read his poem "Kamatipua". He concludes in that poem:

Here queue up they who want to taste

Poison’s sweet or salt flavour

Death gathers here, as do words,

In just a minute, it will start pouring here.

O Kamatipura,

Tucking all seasons under your armpit

You squat in the mud here

I go beyond all the pleasures and pains of whoring and wait

For your lotus to bloom.

— A lotus in the mud.

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Being Visible or Invisible (4 July 2010)

Exiled from my own voice, language and roots,

I am invisible to the world I belong,

Only my pain, grief and despair is visible nowdays,

How I am going to show that who I am actually?

So, I laugh, rejoice and celebrate my unseen face

In the small epiphanies of the everyday life,

To forget that invisibleness none wishes to write upon and

For recalling the buried visibility of my glorious past !

Who wants to be invisible anyway,

People like me who do not want to tolerate

The deliberate and shameless mockery of my sufferings;

Or people who resepect me  only because they fear

I hold the key to tarnish their corrupt visibleness ?

Penetrating the code of existence, this realistic invisibleness,

Negotiating with the identities of the multifaceted life, this imaginary visibleness,

I am stranded between the two giant pillars of my own personality;

Both helping me to actually play hide and seek with my fate,

With spontaneous and seamless conjectures and refutations of my image!

What if I could defeat my invisibleness, unavoidable anyhow,

What is I could hide my visibility, reluctant to change anyhow;

I do not want to be judged by relative insight of someone else,

I wish to be remembered by the absolute outlook of everyone else,

So, let me first decide what I really want, being visible or being invisible.

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In and Out of Night ! (3rd July 2010)

When everything around is hibernated, our mind is awakened to touch the countryside fields of utter silence. There we are with ourselves rising to every warm radiation coming from the sky to brighten the pulse of enthusiasm for the nutrition of the times ahead. How many times we have realized the true color of the dark curtain of our life which says show must go on and also says show must go on with ambience of equanimity. It is a black book of solitude, a night of my life. None can snatch away this from me. This is my greatest treasure trove.

Why the day and not the night has gained all the privileges of mortal life. Everyone is used to adapt their life as per the rigid schedule of natural sunlight. We as an organism are not growing food from the sunlight by photosynthesis. We as a pioneer of technological innovations have made it easier to transform the labyrinth of night in a legitimate luxurious liberty to sustain our everyday (?) livelihood. Apart from the question of energy consumption, we can make night in letter and spirit, a true companion for the quest of the goal which somehow is lost in the crazy rush of the day life.

Nisha i.e. Night, my dear friend, with whom every time I converse gives me a feeling that there is someone, something in my alone life that can understand my thoughts. It gives me a very close and affinitive relation to claim for which every time I can rely on to introspect, scold myself and sometimes to sincerely praise and cherish whatever adoring left in my little life. Sometimes when I was immensely grieved due to intolerable self criticism however unjustifying, I took refuge in the embrace of this night, with some droplets of pure emotions out of my eyes washing my sad face. Other times, when I was discovering the talisman of happiness in the occasionally encountered epiphanies and accidently surfaced serendipities, I am left with this night only to share that irresistible joy.

Every time night seems to me equally heartening sandalwood compensating my parting away with the daily quests, however small. Every other time the night seems to me an engulfing fire of imagination the flame of which heralds me towards citadel of creativity, deep reflection and some strength to provoke my capability to strive for true deserving outcome.

I was never so close to understand the subtle character and underlying currents of the beautiful anti-world of night. As there is parallel for matter and anti-matter, electron-positron, there is this pair of day-night. Deeply engaged with each other; different polarities; and still very much dependent on each another to signify the meaning of each other`s existence. We cannot claim to whom entirely all pervading spectrum of colors in the evening and morning sky belong to. We cannot validate whether where is the real demarcation between day and night; in the emergence of light & dark and in the disappearance of those. Even we cannot prove that night and day differ in thinking about how to be in the gripping, obsessive mind being away from the carefully analyzing the relation of self with the surroundings and about how to in free, wandering state of mad mind believing in randomness of action.

Life in the times of night may be solid indicator towards how much I achieve in day. It is a bond of war and peace. In the peace, we prepare for the war. So, in the silent prosperous moments of evening, night, mid-night, early dawn, dawn, early morning, and morning we are empowered to ponder over the day ahead. Night is a think tank of the day. Night is the power and warehouse of the days ahead. Squandering the nights is invitation to ruin the days. Unfortunately we never realized the true essence of the dark shades of our lives so as we stressed on bright borderlines of achievement. Night is fabulous composition of diverse possibilities beyond objective and certain probabilities of which we are afraid of due to vastly certain uncertainty embedded in it.

When we are away from the happenings, events, celebrations, cremations, gatherings we are only ‘we’ in this course of night, trying to be in sole symposium of self-engagement. Can we gamble on our other privileges to meet this jewel of the season? Can we embark on the discovery of endless virtues becoming explicit in the voyage of this dark passage? Can we consolidate the determination that we will never forgo the blessings given by night? Can we ever bargain with kind of freedom awarded during this solidarity with the invisible struggle for being alone at midnight? This freedom and these blessings are the epitome of our existence in our lives impoverished in terms of new ideas, novel perspectives and unique way in which we philosophize our pragmatic struggle in affairs of the world we breathe.

Night, of course may be very vague, haphazard and widely unstructured in its manifestation. But compared to the day it is this openness of the night possessing the ability to usher into meaningful out of nothing that is remarkable. This openness holds our attention leaving us in astonishment, shock to give the feel of path breaking phenomenon shaping the upcoming scenario. Why night is so unpredictable, so away from our senses of anticipation in its method of expression? May be it is our ignorance or lack of will power to make a friendship with the night, to imagine a life inside life i.e. life in a day and life in a night revolving around each other in concentric circles of thoughts and action.

Why we still are not able to narrate our life sketch in terms of what we will do in night against as always the foresights, plans and pathways of future only in terms of daylight life? May be we never respected other half of life, just like we never asked what really other half wants. We never organized, accommodated and assimilated the ‘voice of other half’ in the ‘vision of our life’. Other half is not the leftover of life, it is an equal signatory to the memorandum we have crafted about the projects we are going to build in this life. We have to ask what other half wants, otherwise hypocritically, shamelessly and unilaterally defining what other half wants will lead to underestimation, insult and subjugation of the values and institutions represented by other half, in this respect ‘night’.

The quiet journey of night is founding stone of the multitude facets of day life. The process of introspection starts in the dark shades of mind, expands in the stretch of extremely slow moving horizon of night and concludes in the decisions solidifying and witnessing the convergence of dawn and morning raga. How far we will avoid this heritage of night making us more humble and more able, more resourceful in our imagination to think and more enriched in our vigor to marshal the professional personification. Night, keeps giving us the keys to the universe of daily establishments. We have to be supremely loyal to this relation of ours with that of night.

The night is empowered light of the day. It is an enhanced insight about the visible world by engaging imagination about the unknown vistas of life which we can only visit in the realms of cool and less warm night. It is the channel of communication from self to others. It is a symbol of existence of our introvert personality trying to have a dialogue with the grave problems of our own and later those of beyond self. It is an award we have been cherishing since our birth, cooling our heads disturbed due to the unavoidable greed of the day life. Night has emerged out as an indisputable opinion leader across our walks of life. It is an endless companion, even after death.

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