My surreal world

Excerpts from Amnesty International's Report on mining at Niyamgiri Hills

2010-07-31T01:56:00.008-04:00

Excerpts from an Amnesty International's report on Bauxite mining and refinery in Niyamgiri hills, Orissa, India (More details at: http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGUSA20100209001&lang=e)

Don't mine us out of existence: Bauxite mine and refinery devastate lives in India

In Amnesty International’s discussions and interviews, major concerns emerged around the possible effects of mining on the sources of water that the Dongria Kondh have traditionally relied on for drinking, personal use, for growing crops and supporting their cattle. The streams which originate from the top of the Hills are the only source of water for communities who live on top of the Hills and a major source for others who live lower down the hill (some of these villages have tube wells), in a region that receives limited rainfall through many months of the year and is often subject to drought conditions. Any negative impacts on the streams, through pollution or disruption of water re-charging capacity and drainage patterns or any other effects on the quantity and quality of water could have disastrous consequences for the communities, most of whom are completely dependent on this water in order to continue to live on the Hills.

Ecological Impact on Water Supply

It has been argued by environmentalists that the bauxite deposits on top of the hills are crucial for ensuring a perennial slow water supply in the low rainfall seasons because of the porous nature and high water retention capacity of bauxite. Sreedhar Ramamurthy of Academy of Mountain Environics, New Delhi, one of the organizations which had mounted the legal challenge to the mining project at the Supreme Court, explained: “In several bauxite-topped mountains in south-west Orissa and northern Andhra Pradesh, the bauxite layers are often water-rich and provide the base for the emergence of natural springs on Concerns about the impact of mining on water were shared by some people from other communities who live on the hills and in and around Lanjigarh. The Chief Conservator of Forests at the MoEF’s regional office in Bhubaneswar, while inspecting the proposed mine site, also expressed concern that mining may impair the water system in the area by altering the inflow of precipitation and natural drainage systems. The Wildlife Institute of India, Dehra Dun, which carried out its own assessment of the impact of the proposed mine, stressed that mining operations might result in desiccation, reducing the flow of the Vamsadhara and Nagaveli rivers. Operations would also cause increased erosion and pollution of the water systems, which in turn would result in a deteriorated water quality and damage to riverine habitats. The Institute study further stated: “...the threats posed by the proposed project to this important ecosystem will lead to irreversible changes in the ecological characteristics of the area.”

Ecological Impact on Forests

The mining project also poses risks to the natural environment in the region, which the communities depend on for their own food and livelihoods. The main risks are posed by the cutting down of forests for the mine site and related infrastructure, noise, blasting and other impacts of the mining operations themselves and management of waste produced as a result of the mining operations. These concerns were reflected in the testimonies collected from the communities. A Dongria Kondh man in his thirties told Amnesty International, “The mining will affect the forests, which provide us with all the wood we need and the forest produce we collectively rely on. We plant at various parts of the hills. How will the mining affect our crops? This is how we sustain ourselves and earn our livelihoods.” Another Dongria Kondh woman from one of the hamlets close to the mine site said: “We are worried that many animals will leave our forests when they begin blasting.” Another Dongria Kondh man who had visited other sites in India where mining has been undertaken stated, “We have seen what mining does to the land and we do not want that to happen here.” The Dongria Kondh also expressed concerns about how the mining project would affect their traditional way of life, culture and ability to retain their distinct identity. A Dongria Kondh man told Amnesty International: “Our language, the way we dress, songs, marriage rituals, worship of Niyam Raja, our livelihoods are all linked to these Hills and the way we live here. We have seen what happens to other Adivasis when they are forced to leave their traditional lands, they lose everything.” Many expressed concern that the impacts of mining on water and forests or the noise and dust from the mine may make it impossible for them to continue to live where they currently do and force them off their Hills and traditional lands. J. M., a Dongria Kondh man, said, “Our people are not educated. If we are forced to leave these Hills because of the mine, we will end up in poorly paid jobs in towns in the plains.” An elderly woman from one of the hamlets near the proposed mine site stated, “If we have lakhs or crores of [Indian] rupees, how many days will it last, but this mountain will last generations.”

Lack of resettlement and rehabilitation efforts

India has no national law yet in place for resettlements and rehabilitation of local communities displaced and affected by large irrigation and industrial projects. Instead, it has a number of state-level and sectoral policies and practices. Recent protests against inadequate policies and practices, especially over the displacement of Adivasis by the construction of dams across river Narmada, resulted in the authorities framing a national level policy, which is yet to be made into a law.

The impact of loss of communal resources was described to Amnesty International by several of those affected: K., who is in his early thirties from Chhattarpur, described his predicament: “I owned 6 goats, 15 cows and 2 buffaloes. They used to graze in common land where the factory stands today. It became difficult to take them for grazing, and buying fodder is very expensive so I have now sold all the cattle. We used to have home-made milk products to eat but now I have to buy milk from outside.” Another man from Bandaguda provided a similar account: “I also used to work as an agriculture laborer in a nearby field where the factory stands now. Even though I was earning 40 to 50 [Indian] rupees (around US$ 1) daily, it was enough, as we could access vegetables, forest produce and wood freely. We had at least one vegetable every day. Now, if I earn 70 [Indian] rupees (US$ 1.50) daily it is very difficult to eat good food as we have to buy everything from the market. There is a marked increase in the price of, say, tomatoes, which used to cost five [Indian] rupees and are now 20 [Indian] rupees due to so many new people. Life has become very hard now. I want to feed my three children regular milk but can’t. I miss my life before the factory. It was more comfortable.”

The Supreme Court-appointed CEC had recommended that: “The project authorities should acquire equivalent non-forest land [to 59 hectares of common and forest land] for carrying out plantations to meet the biomass requirements of the villagers and the area be notified as village forests.” As far as Amnesty International could discover this recommendation has not been implemented. The increase in food prices at the local market is another serious concern for many local people. Some blamed this on the pressures created by an influx of a large number of people into the area to support the operations of the refinery, arguing that this had led to an increase in demand and prices. Local landless laborers have seen their standard of living undermined on two fronts – loss of access to natural resources on the one hand, and an increase in food prices on the other. Despite this double negative effect, the government has made no provision of alternative grazing land or support in terms of employment opportunities for these people.

Water Pollution by Vendanta

In 2007, when the refinery was moving into full production, the OSPCB (Orissa State Pollution Control Board) investigated complaints made by the villagers that Vedanta Aluminium had been discharging caustic water into the river during the night. The OSPCB tested the water at various points of the river. The test results indicated that water accumulated near the boundary wall of the refinery (outside the factory) adjacent to the river had a pH value of 10.5 and 11. The following day the OSPCB carried out investigations along with the Head of Operations at the refinery and tested water accumulated outside the boundary wall. They found the water had a pH value of 12. They also found accumulated water near the storm water drain and the dirty water pond inside the boundary, which had a pH value of 12.5. The OSPCB also documented the fact that Vedanta Aluminium had started construction work for expansion of the refinery without the company having obtained the necessary regulatory permissions, including the environmental clearance, to proceed with an expansion. The problem continued to recur in 2008. OSPCB officials recorded that their directions to stop feeding bauxite for processing until the process water lake was ready for use and to evacuate the alkaline wastewater from the red mud pond had not been complied with. The OSPCB also recorded that highly alkaline wastewater continued to seep from the red mud pond. It stated that the high concentration slurry disposal method, which Vedanta Aluminium was supposed to utilise, was not being followed, resulting in accumulation of alkaline wastewater in the pond. The thickening of the waste prior to disposal through this method is necessary to significantly reduce the potential for pollution.

Air Pollution by Vedanta

In a report dated 26-27 September 2007, the OSPCB stated that the refinery could have emitted fine alumina particles during the trial operation of the calciner and reprimanded the company for not informing the villages of possible problems during start-up operations. Two months later, in a more detailed inspection, OSPCB officials found that particulate matter emitted from the boiler was recorded to be 795 mg/Nm, more than five times the stipulated limit of 150 mg/Nm. They stated: “such high emission within a valley has the potential to cause atmospheric pollution in the vicinity and health hazards.”

Despite these failures by the Vedanta Aluminium, and the risk to which they expose local communities, the authorities have not strictly enforced their own directions to the company, including directions to stop operating equipment until regulatory requirements were complied with. This failure of government authorities to effectively and adequately regulate industry has undermined protection of the environment and human rights. Not only has the government failed to take adequate action to protect people from the negative impacts of the refinery, it has failed even to provide them with information gathered by the state authorities. Neither the nature nor the extent of both the actual and potential water and air pollution associated with the refinery has been disclosed to the local communities.

Amnesty Int'l Recommendations to Government of India & Orissa:

In relation to the refinery
Take action to address the negative environmental, health, social and human rights impacts of the refinery, in full consultation with the affected communities. This should include:

Ensuring that Vedanta Aluminium undertakes a comprehensive clean-up of the pollution it has already caused and reports on this publicly and regularly in a manner accessible and available to the local communities.

Ensuring that any person whose human rights have been violated have access to justice and to an effective remedy and reparations.

Take prompt action to prevent any further contamination of the river and to address existing problems. If necessary suspend operation of the refinery until pollution problems are addressed.

Ensure that all applicable regulations, including those related to water and air pollution are enforced consistently and transparently.

Carry out systematic health monitoring on the possible health effects of pollution associated with the refinery and take appropriate action to address negative health impacts.

Undertake an independent and impartial human rights and environmental impact assessment of the proposal for expansion of the refinery; ensure genuine consultation with communities and individuals who may be affected by the proposed expansion.

Ensure information on the nature and extent of the pollution and associated risks are made accessible to communities.

Ensure respect for and protection of the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly; the policing of protest actions should be fully consistent with human rights law and standards, including in relation to the rights to freedom of expression and assembly and the use of force.

Ensure that no expansion of the refinery is allowed to proceed until:
Action has been taken to adequately address existing problems in a manner that respects human rights
A human rights impact assessment has been carried out as detailed above and all appropriate action taken in light of this assessment to protect human rights.

In relation to Mining in the Niyamgiri Hills

Establish a process to seek the free, prior, informed consent of the Dongria Kondh in relation to the bauxite mine. This process must include:

Providing communities with accessible and adequate information, including to those who are not formally literate, about the mining project.

A comprehensive human rights and environmental impact assessment of the bauxite mining project, undertaken in genuine and open consultation with the Dongria Kondh communities. Appropriate procedural safeguards should be established to ensure the Dongria Kondh can participate in the assessment process and that their knowledge and perspectives are given due weight and respect. The time given to this process should be adequate to enable an effective assessment of the potential human rights impacts and to develop plans to address any risks identified.

Ensure the Dongria Kondh’s free, prior and informed consent is obtained prior to any continuation of the proposed project and respect their decision if they do not provide it. It is clear that the Niyamgiri Hills are of vital importance to the Dongria Kondh, and essential to their survival as a distinct people, and maintenance of their livelihood, culture and way of life.

Ensure respect for and protection of the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly; the policing of protest actions should be fully consistent with human rights law and standards, including in relation to the rights to freedom of expression and assembly and the use of force.

The Death of an Anarchist

2010-07-13T00:00:00.072-04:00

THE DEPARTURE

A shroud of winter fog hang over the valley of death
where he trudged along, lonely as an orphaned ghost,
hands in his pockets, collar upturned, 
a light flickering between his lips, 
puffs of smoke vanishing in the whiteness abound

His little village now lay behind him, 
beyond the eastern horizon,
where a halo of flames danced beneath the morning sun
Fire, Fire, the villagers were screaming
For them he was now dead, engulfed 
by the flames that were burning down his hut
And for him they were dead too, 
blurred into oblivion by a wall of fog

With his eyes fixed onto nothingness,
his mind empty, his heart heavy with freedom,
he whistled and laughed aloud as he vanished
like a puff of smoke in that white valley of death

This is a very bad poem that you are writing. Or is it prose, I can't even tell the difference. I don't understand what's gotten into you. 8's mother was looking at him with admonition in her sad green eyes, they matched the green dress she was wearing, its frayed sleeves shamelessly revealing their poverty. You don't understand either poetry or prose, grumbled 8 as he gave her the piece of paper. The poem was titled 'The Departure', handwritten and barely legible. Later when you read it alone, you'll understand, he said and went to his room. Do you want something to eat? No, I'm fine, I am going out now. At this hour? It's only 10pm, I will be back soon. 8 brought out a large bag from under his bed and took it out with him. What is in that thing? Must you need to know everything, mom?! Just leave me alone.

The night outside was slightly cold. Lights had gone off in most houses. On Market Street 8 saw a police patrol car and took cover in a dark alley. The detour took him a little longer to get back on Market Street, but when he finally reached the bridge over the expressway, he was relieved to find it empty. On warmer days one could find some drug addicts and drunks sleeping or lying unconscious on the bridge, but today there was none. 8 was in luck. He looked down from the bridge. It spanned across the river and the expressway that ran along its left bank. From the bridge 8 watched the three quivering lines of fast approaching headlights that stretched as far as he could see. On the other side of the white divider were three receding lines of lights, the three eastbound lanes running in the opposite direction, they appeared dimmer. 8 watched the speeding cars for sometime. Mercedes, BMW, Toyota. Rich fucks. Should shoot them down like dogs, he cursed. The expressway reverberated with the sound of a highway freight truck. All the drivers seemed to be speeding towards death, or perhaps trying to escape from it. Yes, they are escaping from it this time for sure, 8 mused as he opened the chain of his bag and brought out an automatic assault rifle. He crouched behind a large road-sign board that was hanging over the expressway from the side of the bridge. The barrel of his rifle was pointing at the passing cars below. The plan had been in place for long and 8 had surveyed the area several times. And now the hour had come for the final act. This is it, 8 muttered to himself. On count to ten: One, Two, Three, Four....

...Five, Six, Seven... Are you feeling better now? Try to get some sleep. I am trying to, I was counting sheep, replied 8 with a slight smile. Poor mom!, he thought as he stared at her green eyes, which, as far as he could recall, have always been sad, but uncomplaining, as if they have lost all hope in life. Is pops coming home today? Don't ask me, I don't know, he never tells me anything, go off to sleep now. No, don't go away, please stay a little longer mom, I want to read you a little poem I wrote:

THE TEACHER

In a corner of his empty classroom the teacher sat
reading books that no one in his village had ever read
The villagers respected him, but feared the village elders more
You cannot teach here, our children don't need your knowledge,
the elders told him, scared of losing their hold over the masses
But the teacher knew that the day will come
when knowledge would triumph over ignorance,
when the villagers would wake up to read books written in blood

...Eight, Nine.... The nine of you will only be known by your respective numbers, announced the commander to the nine young men who stood before him in a row (our protagonist was number 8). You are not supposed to use your real names, they are to remain secret from each other. Fancy names are a bourgeois trend, there is no need for that in our ranks and file. Secrecy and loyalty are extremely important for our mission, and remember, no traitor will escape death. Now coming back to our agenda, first, is the plan of action, the commander turned towards his comrade and said, the floor is all yours. The comrade's face was wrapped in a black scarf through which his two eyes were shining brightly, little white hair of his eyebrow lent them a terrifying gleam, like the eyes of a cat. His red badge identified him as number 0, the mastermind. 0 began in his stentorian voice, boys, you are the bravest of men, and the wisest too. We all have only one goal: to send a chill down the spine of those who refuse to stand up and fight against injustice, against the arbitrary violence of society, against its hypocritical notions of morality, and against all the oppressors that thrive in these societies. And to do this, Violence, the most shocking acts of violence, is unavoidable; violence that will rock them off their torpor and send a warning to all around the world. You are the brave ones who will help in achieving this, and through your act of self-sacrifice you will become immortal and live on as a legend.

THE DELIVERANCE

For three weeks the teacher locked himself up in his classroom
where Dostoevsky, Kafka and Turgenev gave him company
No one came to bother him, for them he was an outcast,
a vagabond from an unknown land, a man of no use

When he finished reading all his books, he stepped outside
A new dawn was fighting against the lingering darkness of the previous night,
a shroud of winter fog hang over the valley of death,
stretching between the village and the sleeping mountains around
The spirits of our ancestors live in the valley, the villagers had told him
If you stray there you can never return, their eyes had warned

The teacher locked the classroom door and lit a cigarette
An abyss opened up before him
And as he looked down into its depths
he felt calm and confident, wisdom had finally dawned on him
Through the window he tossed in his burning match-stick,
his pile of books lit up, blazing in a glory of liberation
He walked away, lonely as an orphaned ghost,
hands in his pockets, collar upturned,
a light flickering between his lips,
puffs of smoke vanishing in the whiteness abound
The village burned behind him amidst screams of Fire, Fire

...Ten.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat

Excerpts from a local news report:

A shooting rampage on the P8-I9 Interstate Westbound has left more than 40 people, including a suspected gunman, dead. Officers say that around 10:30 pm last night, the lone gunman fired indiscriminately from an automatic rifle at cars traveling on the interstate, resulting in a pileup involving at least 20 cars. This is the eighth such incident of random acts of violence that have targeted civilians in the last two weeks. Police are investigating the identity of the gunman and have claimed that they have tracked some links to a banned organization behind the attack....

Our reporter has also learned of unconfirmed reports leaked from the Bureau of Investigation that warn about the possibility of a ninth attack of similar nature. Officers across the state have been alerted and citizens are being requested to report any suspicious activity without delay. The Bureau has been under increasing stress from the Home Ministry to hunt down the culprits, but their progress so far has been very limited. Most political analysts agree that if a ninth attack were to occur, the Government may be faced with a popular uprising and the opposition will capitalize on this growing discontent among the citizens. Reports of demonstration, arson and riots are pouring in from several parts of the city. National security and stability has once again become the most important issue for the upcoming elections....
*********

Postscript:

Having finished reading the news report, 9 folded the paper silently, picked up the bag that had his gun and walked out of his apartment. He rubbed his palms together to warm them, turned up his collar and pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his frayed gray jacket. As he lit a match-stick and brought it close to the cigarette which he held between his lips, a cold breeze kissed his cheeks fervently like a jealous lover reluctant to let him go. He walked down an empty alley towards the busy railway station, wondering if he will be able to prove himself to be as brave as the eight other boys.

"The simplest surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd" - Andre Breton.

(Credits: The plot about shooting randomly at cars on a highway was a product of a discussion with SC after a night of few drinks and libertine talks.)

The Witch (Part 3): The Witch Hunt

2010-07-08T00:47:00.015-04:00

A month passed. The meteorological department finally revoked their earlier announcement that the rains were due to a cyclonic disturbance in the Bay of Bengal and reluctantly accepted that the monsoon season was already half way through without them having realized it. The rain and thunderstorms continued. The ponds brimmed up to their banks and overflowed onto the streets. Street children went about collecting trapped fish from potholes when the waters receded. New life emerged through the cracks of the old building walls. Little plants penetrated through the layers of soil and surfaced out in search for air and sunlight. The trees were all lush green, the groves verdant. Tender grass shafts started to grow once again on tracks that had almost become barren under human footsteps. And all this while the sun and the clouds carried on their age old feud for dominance over the skies. On the turfs dragonflies hopped and their translucent wings shined with either the glitter of sun rays or the vibrant hues of the rainbow that appeared against the gray sky after a shower like an arched gateway to heaven. The dark monsoon clouds formed different shapes and on the roads one could often see parents of a petulant child trying to distract its attention from the roadside vendor’s ice-cream cones to the sky where bloated resemblances of rabbits, cows, dogs, cats and other imaginary beings of bedtime stories floated past silently. Raindrops drummed rhythmically and rolled down the slanted sides of fresh green leaves like shimmering, transparent pearl beads, and then coalesced to form rivulets that ran down the length of the veins and trickled off the tips, drop by drop, into small water puddles on the ground below as they reverberated with concentric ripples.

Mother earth was fertile again at this time of the year, governed by her regular cycles of seasons that got her the rains, the droughts, and her yearly fertility. And while life was blooming everywhere, Mala got the operation done to rid herself of the curse of fertility. A ‘small and happy family’, like the one on the red and white batch, is all she dreamed of. She knew that although the NGO lady would have supported her action, the slum-dwellers would despise her. Boorimashi had taken her to Doctor Munshi for the operation. The operation wasn’t a big worry for her but its consequences were. She wished that the NGO lady was there to help her out in explaining it to Nitai.

Lying on the hospital bed, she imagined how furious Nitai might get upon hearing it, how the vile and foul-mouthed women of her slum would scoff at her, and how the bigoted priest of the local Shiva temple would project the act as a sacrilege against nature and god and possibly recommend others to ostracizing her. She had prepared herself for all these slanders that she believed were to engulf her life, but it had not dawned on her that Boorimashi, her accomplice in this act, also stood in danger. Never in her dream had she thought that the slum-dwellers would turn against Boorimashi for encouraging the act.

After the operation, Mala returned from the hospital accompanied by Boorimashi on a day that started out as surprisingly sunny. On their way back from Doctor Munshi's hospital they passed by the sweet shop on Station Road which kindled in Boorimashi a slight desire for the sweets that she loved. Boorimashi decided to prepare a fresh batch of cow dung cakes that would afford her this little luxury. But later in the day when Boorimashi returned after pasting her cow dung cakes on the eastern wall, she found a mob surrounding her hut. Nitai was leading them. He had returned the day before and upon learning about the incident from neighbors, he felt cheated and humiliated. The tinge of sarcasm that he deciphered in his neighbors' voices made him feel as if his manhood had been mocked at by two women. His rage was so profound that he would have beaten Mala to death had her mother not arrived in time just as planned. Unable to teach Mala a lesson, Nitai's hatred turned towards Boorimashi. The local priest who had for long eyed the small plot of land on which Boorimashi's hut sat, instigated Nitai to defend his honor. 'Be prepared fully to wipe out an evil from the society if need be', advised the priest cunningly.

Nitai bellowed out loud with rage, ‘She is a witch. Today she took my wife for an operation without my knowledge, tomorrow she lure others into doing the same. Now my wife won’t be able to give birth anymore! This old hag wants every female to turn barren like herself!’ Blood throbbed in his temple and his eyes burned with anger.

An agitated female voice shouted out hoarsely, ‘Yes, she herself is barren and that’s why she is forcing others to do the operation. It must be her black-magic with which she convinced Mala to commit such a sin’. The priest agreed with a few nods and wisely added, 'Shameful! heinious act against the will of the Lord'.

Others cried, ‘She will kill all our children with her black-magic. Last week Shibu’s little child died suddenly after two days of illness….it also must be because of her black-magic. Old witch!’

‘Yes I had seen Shibu’s son playing near this old hag’s hut a few days before he died. I had seen her giving him biscuits. She must have poisoned him,’ concocted another bystander, surprised at the fecundity of his own imagination. ‘She is a danger to us all. She can’t be allowed to live in our slum!’ cried out the mob in unison.

They dragged Boorimashi out of her cottage and hit her with their sticks. Blood squirted out from her forehead. Her weak body wriggled on the ground, pleading for mercy. But nobody listened to her claims of innocence, nobody cared to believe that the operation was not her black-magic. Nobody heard Mala when she cried from her bed and yelled that what Boorimashi did was only on her request for help. The sight of blood had turned the men into wild beasts feasting on a weak prey. It became a macabre display of machoism for some, thrill for others. The children of the slum, naked and hungry, watched it all from a safe distance and took refuge behind their excited mothers who angrily shouted epithets at the old witch. The incessant blows on Boorimashi lasted till the revenge had been taken. The sinner had been punished. As the heads cooled down slowly, a sudden dismal feeling of shock, shame and worry overcame everyone. They began convincing themselves that it was not their fault, the rules of the society had been broken and the sinner had to be punished, the evil had to be wiped out from the slum.

An approaching police jeep’s siren was heard at a distance and everybody ran away. The men who had just bravely meted out justice turned into fugitives. The 'witch' lay dead in a pool of blood. Gentle rain drops that descended from the black monsoon clouds fell on Boorimashi’s body, but she didn’t grumble at them any longer. Her body lay on the street, still and cold. The clouds thundered overhead and flashed their swords. The black cat purred and leaped across the soggy alley. Mala wept in her bed, she lay weak and helpless as her mother sat by her, holfing her arm in an iron grip. The police made some cursory arrests, ransacked a few houses for goodies, nabbed a few innocent drunks from the local liquor shop and left the scene. Reporters scribbled furiously the mumblings of Pagla Khokon, a known madman in the slum, who having proclaimed himself as an eyewitness went on to provide them with a fictitious account of the event. The photographers clicked away at all angles to get the perfect shot of the dead. Their heads were busy searching for catchy titles for the news report. The municipal ambulance that collected the body made its way behind the police jeep, its siren rising feebly above the general din of the streets and the rumblings of the clouds overhead. And in the meantime the raindrops worked their way at softening the last batch of cow-dung cakes that carried the imprint of Boorimashi’s hand, erasing all signs of them from the old factory wall, steadily and stealthily.

THE END

The Witch (Part 2): Mala's Problem

2010-07-07T22:58:00.008-04:00

Boorimashi came back from the old factory wall and went inside her hut, grumbling and complaining to herself about the monsoons, loudly enough to draw Mala’s attention. Mala stayed in a dingy hut only a few steps away from Boorimashi’s. Mala smirked on realizing that the curses were meant for the monsoon clouds and thought of chatting with poor Boorimashi.

Boorimashi managed to light a lamp after fumbling in the darkness for a while. She looked up on hearing Mala’s approaching steps. Mala came and stood near the door. Her weary eyes, seated deep in their sockets, found Boorimashi sitting at one corner of the room. Mala was in her early twenties, fairly tall, dark, and lean with worries. She was already was a mother of two. Her eldest son, Poltu, was born four years back and then three years later she was again blessed with a daughter whom she had named Minoti.

‘I heard you shouting….what’s the matter Boorimashi?’ asked Mala, carefully suppressing her smile.

Boorimashi took up her torn straw-mattress that was resting in one dark corner, folded in a cylindrical form and propped at an angle against the walls. She unrolled it, holding one side with both her hands, and waved it twice to shake off the dust before spreading it out on the floor. Then her wrinkled hand reached out for her torn palm-leaf fan and started cooling herself. Mala sat down on the mattress with her legs splayed and hands resting on the floor behind.

‘Why was I shouting?’ retorted Boorimashi at Mala’s question as if the answer was evident. 'The monsoon is here. It’s the most wretched season of the year. Today the entire lot of my cow dung cakes has been washed away'. ‘You are always complaining about something or the other!’ replied Mala teasingly. Boorimashi ignored her comment and went on fanning herself.

Mala hesitated for a while and then moved on to discuss something that was more important to her; something that had been gnawing at her heart for quite sometime then. She moved close to Boorimashi and said softly, ‘You know, he has been asking for a third one.’*

Boorimashi seemed to be happy on hearing it. She smiled, her eyes squinted, and her shriveled lips parted to form a wide joyful grin, exposing her red gum and the few unevenly spaced teeth that stood on them. But Mala didn’t seem to be very excited that her husband, Nitai, was in favor of having yet another child for she was quite happy with the two she had and didn’t want a third one. She was worried about it and had come to ask for Boorimashi’s advice. Boorimashi had served as the midwife during her previous two deliveries and Mala trusted her and valued this old lady’s opinion. One NGO lady who once came to visit their slum a year back had told Mala about the need to maintain a ‘small and happy family’ and had handed her a red and white batch to her that carried a symbol of a couple and two kids- one boy and a girl. The NGO lady had explained that only a small family like the one shown can bring prosperity to the nation. At the time Mala was happy to find that the symbol matched exactly with that of her own family; she felt as if the symbol had been solely inspired by her own family. She had enjoyed watching the envy in the eyes of her women neighbors when the NGO lady praised her family and mentioned it as an ideal example.

However, Mala had not fully understood the things that the NGO lady said, she had mentioned some kind of surgery and all. Mala had stared with awe in her eyes, amazed at the lady’s smartness and confidence. But she had only realized that the words of the NGO lady had truth in them and that she would need to follow her words if she wanted her children to grow up well. She had seen how two of her elder sister’s five children died of some disease which the doctor had said were caused due to malnutrition. She didn’t want the same to happen to her kids. She wanted both Poltu and Minoti to be healthy, she wanted them to go to the nearby Government school, and she dreamt that one day Minoti will get a good groom and Poltu will be working in some office instead of becoming a rogue like his father. She told it all to Boorimashi, the details of her immense worries and her little hopes. Boorimashi listened to her carefully, nodding her head in approval from time to time, and finally she said, ‘Don’t worry. I will take you to Doctor Munshi if you want; he will be able to tell what actually needs to be done. I have also heard about this surgery. Last month, Chatterjee’s daughter got it done. The in-laws were at first upset, but they didn’t stop her. Chaterjee ginni was telling me about all that some days back. She said that it is a small operation and is safe too. I will ask her for details about it. You go to sleep now, don’t worry so much, things will be fine’. ‘But I am only worried about Nitai and other people here….do you think they won’t mind if I get the operation done? I think they will curse me and talk bad about me,’ said Mala despondently.

The old caring voice once again responded with the usual consolation- ‘Don’t worry.’ Mala hesitated a bit as if she had more things to tell but got up slowly. She complained that Nitai hadn’t come home for the previous two weeks. Her brows knitted together with disgust at the thought of her husband’s frivolity but she controlled her anger. Boorimashi stood near her cottage door with her soot stained lamp that threw a suffused yellow light on the alley and watched Mala as she walked back to her hut. The gloomy night sky, still covered with clouds, hang low with a sense of foreboding. A black cat mewed and emerged stealthy from the backyard; its green eyes glowed fiercely in the darkness of the surroundings. It gave a momentary pause, alarmed by Boorimashi’s peering eyes, and it swiftly leaped across the soggy passage before disappearing in the night’s cloak. Boorimashi grumbled at the inauspicious creature with disgust and scuffed back to her room.

* Women in these parts don’t take their husband’s name while talking; rather they refer to them with pronouns like ‘he’, ‘him’, and ‘his’; a tacit convention that everyone follows well.

The Witch (Part 1): The Arrival of Monsoon

2010-07-07T20:21:00.045-04:00

Dark and sullen nimbus clouds appeared over the horizon. They had found their way into the city earlier than what the weather forecasters had predicted. The sun which had ruled over the city sky for the last three months of a scorching summer found itself surrounded by these somber adversaries; its orange rays flickered like dying sighs before it vanished behind the black folds. The dark clouds grumbled potent threats and flashed their swords as they spread across the sky. Mischievous wild gusts of wind carried away clothes from the cloth-lines, rattled window panes in desperate attempts to free them from their iron hinges and rummaged through unattended notebooks to liberate all the loose pages tucked away between them - love poems of a shy teenager, photos of a childhood sweetheart, letters to the beloved that were never mailed.

It was the beginning of the monsoon season in Calcutta.

People scurried for their homes. Little kids pouted their lips as their mothers dragged them off the playground. Only the street urchins continued with their game of football. The black clouds, languid and overweight, swallowed up the sky bit by bit. A heavy downpour followed. People fumbled hard against the strong winds to lock all the doors and windows to keep out the torrential, yet cherished, rain. Only a few who could not resist the temptation of soothing themselves by letting the raindrops trickle down their parched skin came out and stood in the open and got soaked to their heart’s content. Taking advantage of their mother's struggle against the winds at the cloth-lines, the kids sneaked out to dance in the rain and to enjoy the freedom of the street urchins. They sailed paper boats in the puddles formed in potholes. But soon their angry mothers came out, warned them against fever and forcibly dragged them home with a few gentle slaps. The frail paper boats, deserted by their little owners, struggled to float for a few minutes, but were either toppled by heavy raindrops or got crushed under the wheels of rickshaws and bicycles. It rained and rained, heavily and incessantly. The roar of lightning and thunder was met with the monotonous sound of conch that housewives blew in unison to placate Indra, the god of storm.

It was nine-thirty, almost four hours since the rain had started. By then the rain drops were tired of following their predecessor’s way of ricocheting from the windows, tapping against the glass, running down the window sills like a perennial stream of sparkling beads, filling up the potholes, flooding the sewage drains, and had weakened down to a soft drizzle. Lightning continued to flash across the dark night sky intermittently, albeit with a limited arrogance. The thunder had reduced to an occasional rumbling among the moisture drained clouds. The city inhabitants were preparing their beds after the scrumptious dinner of plate-full khichdi and onion pakodas, specially cooked to mark the beginning of such long awaited comfortable nights. As the household lights were turned off one by one, the city started vanishing fast in an expanding grip of darkness. An unusual stillness loomed everywhere, its eeriness being occasionally shaken by the shrill cries of the drenched street dogs. At times their cries were prolonged enough to form depressing moans that sounded more inauspicious than irritating, and added a latent discomfort somewhere deep down in the sleeping souls. A few dim but brave streetlights fought against the fast-spreading darkness to faintly illuminate the city roads, casting tall shadows of Boorimashi on the nearby dank building walls as she made her way back to her hut. Mud squelched under her slippers making it difficult for her to walk. But Boorimashi trudged along carefully till she reached her destination- a tiny hut at the end of Chaulpotti Lane, one of the many slums that dot the city of Calcutta.

Chaulpotti Lane was full of makeshift huts with thatched roofs and some with orange-red baked mud tiles that were arranged adjacent to each other over sloping roofs. Their walls were mostly made of rags and bamboo. Blue and black tarpaulin tents littered with lean and hungry bodies inside occupied the footpaths. The rainwater had spoiled their rags and so they slept on piles of old newspapers and cardboard boxes. The western part of the slum, a comparatively low-lying area, was faced with even a bigger problem of stagnant water that was almost knee deep at places. The contents of the nearby garbage dump where the city municipality trucks came every day to clear off the city’s trash had been washed away in the rains. Filth lay strewn all over the streets and a stench hung heavy in the air. But this wasn’t anything new for the Chaulpotti Lane slum dwellers, they had got used to all these over the past decades. They had learned not only to endure it but also to accept it as the wish of that almighty who determines everyone’s fate, and whom they had been worshiping sheepishly and unquestioningly as an impartial and omnipotent power behind the workings of the vast universe.

Boorimashi was in her late sixties but her wrinkled skin and thin bony arms with saggy lumps of little flesh dangling below gave her the appearance of an octogenarian. She had dense white hair which fluttered in the air and almost toothless gum which made her look like an old oriental witch from the pages of some fairy tale. But in spite of her frail looks she wasn’t very weak. She lived alone and managed all her things by herself . The rain had stopped and the faint murmurs among the clouds sounded like a jostle among birds as they settled down for the night. Boorimashi reached her hut and stood outside inspecting the puddles of water and looking around to estimate the extent of damage caused by the rains. She suddenly remembered the cow-dung cakes that she had left to dry on the factory wall that morning and hurriedly went there to find out if they too had been washed away. Cow-dung cakes* were a source of a small income for her. Boorimashi had managed to coax the old Chatterjee couple who owned the Lodge at the crossing of Chaulpotti Lane and Station Road to allow her to collect the dung of their two cows. Boorimashi had been working as a maid at the Chatterjees’ Lodge for more than twenty years and so this longtime acquaintance made the Chatterjees agree to her request without much reservation. Milkman Bhola Halder’s wife, Champa, a peddler of cow dung cakes, bought the cakes that Boorimashi produced and sold them at higher price in the city suburbs. But Boorimashi was happy with whatever extra money she earned this way. The salary that she got from working at the Chatterjee Lodge along with this little extra income was sufficient to meet her basic expenses and even allowed for occasional little extravagance like a two rupee ice-cream cone or a couple of sweets from the fly infested sweet shop on Station Road. The delight from indulging in this slight profligacy that the extra income allowed was so great for her that she didn’t mind tiring herself with the additional work. Everyday she used to go out to collect cow-dung in the morning and then pasted it in the form of small, flat, circular disks on the old factory wall with her own hand and left them there to dry in the sunshine. And on drying she collected them in sacks and kept them ready for Champa to buy.

The old factory wall where Boorimashi dried her cow-dung cakes belonged to a closed factory that was once known as the Raheja Jute Mills. It was a dilapidated structure with green moss stained walls, lined with deep cracks inhabited by reptiles. The rusted iron frame of the roof jutted out menacingly against the sky with broken asbestos sheets dangling precariously from its chassis. Weeds and shrubs had grown erratically in the factory precincts. The main entrance door to the factory was tinted green with moss. A huge iron lock, red with rust, hang on it. Just above it was a ‘Suspension of Work’ notice, written hastily in black paint some twenty years ago when a labor unrest over due wages forced the management to close the factory for once and all. Since then the factory that once used to roar with the noise of thousand machines, chattering of the workers and hourly whistles fell into a dead silence. Nobody had entered its premises over the years. But its outer walls still served a variety of purposes; the eastern wall was for Boorimashi to dry her cow-dung cakes while the others displayed various graffiti- a hammer and sickle painted in red, notices of political rallies, election promises, and slogans of ‘Vote for a better Government’. These were flanked by arrays of colorful posters of political leaders pasted all over the walls without any reverence for the dead factory’s ‘Stick No Bills’ warnings.

Boorimashi heaved a sigh of despair. All her efforts had gone in vain. The walls were spotted with little remnants of the cow-dung cakes that she had left to dry. The heavy downpour had managed to soften the dung and broke them away from the wall. She cursed her luck as she headed back for her hut. More than the financial losses what pained her was the loss of the cakes themselves for she never thought of them as inanimate entities meant just for selling but had a rather strange affection for them. This conspicuously weird behavior of Boorimashi started ever since she took conscious notice that every cow-dung cakes she made carried the impression of her palm, unaltered, right from the time of their conception as she pasted them on the wall to the time when their pitiable life ended up in smoke. Each one of them had a different shape and size but all of them faithfully carried the same impression -the impression of her hand, the imprint that identified them as hers, somewhat like the faint imprint of parent's facial features that all children carry. And so she sometimes felt that instead of selling them she could as well preserve these little creations of her barren life. But then she knew that it was a crazy thought and she herself would smile at her silliness.

*a cheap fuel still in use for cooking in very few households, mostly in suburban areas.

The loop without a hole

2010-06-16T02:28:00.005-04:00

Once upon a time there lived a writer who became famous (and perhaps even notorious) for always beginning his stories with the cliched opening sentence: "Once upon a time..."
Whether this curious literary style was a product of a pathological level of nostalgia (which may well explain the reported bouts of depression that the writer frequently suffered from) or a quirky modernist experiment (in which case the writer was way ahead of his time) has remained as a matter of great debate among critics and readers. Even to this date his admirers proclaim him as a true visionary, while his detractors reject him as a hack who lacked even the slightest imagination to come up with variations in his opening sentence. But most scholars have noted that his stories were all very original, and each of them was unique in their content and style. Therefore, it would seem more likely that the writer had deliberately chosen to use the same opening line in all his stories. While the debate on the quality of his works raged on, few took the trouble to identify the possible source or inspiration that motivated the writer to adopt this whimsical style. Only recently, a renowned critic and Fabrication Times columnist, Dr. I.M.A. Sinik, presented an idea that best elucidates the reasons for the writer's style. Dr. Sinik argues that the writer got the idea to use the same opening line in all his stories after coming across a fictional account written by some unknown writer in which the protagonist was a quirky writer who always began his stories in the exactly same way. In his last Sunday's column Dr. Sinik revealed that this fictional account, titled "The loop without a hole", was written by a relatively unknown writer (an errata issued later in Fabrication Times clarified that the unknown writer was in fact a resident of a mental asylum for the most part of his adult life), and he cited the following excerpt from the original fiction to justify his claim: Once upon a time there lived a writer who became famous (and perhaps even notorious) for always beginning his stories with the cliched opening sentence: "Once upon a time..."
Whether this curious literary style was a product of a pathological level of nostalgia (which may well explain the reported bouts of depression that the writer frequently suffered from) or a quirky modernist experiment (in which case the writer was way ahead of his time) has remained as a matter of great debate among critics and readers.

Reveal 7 random things about you

2010-03-25T13:57:00.071-04:00

A fat friend of mine whom I know from schooldays (or at least that's how I would like to remember him even if he loses his weight) wrote an entry on his blog about "7 random things about you" at the behest of some other friend of his. My initial reaction was to ridicule him for claiming that he is tidy (or what he calls as his 'organized chaos') since I know from college days that his room was far from it. It was littered with the junk and filth he collected from his seniors. But then I refrained from calling him out on it, mainly because I had started to think whether I also have 7 random things that I could write about myself, that is, do I know myself well enough to write 7 such things? After a bit of struggle, I finally managed to write them down:

1. I like to imagine myself sitting at a window in an old English style cottage on some remote East Coast island. From there I watch the gentle waves of the ocean as they caress the pebbly beach lying beyond a vast patch of sun dried beach grass. I sit at that window all day, envying the playful gulls as they hover above fishing boats in fearless joy. But when I hear the whistle of the occasional ferries that arrive at this island's harbor, I get reminded of the mainland to which I belong, and from which I am always eager to escape, even if only for a moment, even if only on a flight of fantasy.

I did manage to escape to this island once on a cold and misty December morning. It goes by the name of Block Island.

2. I like to wander through a city's streets and back alleys, like a ghost, free of all commitments, worries and squabbles of everyday life, indifferent to all feelings of pain and joy, and just content to watch other people as they go about with their miserable and mundane life. They are all performers on a stage who are blissfully unaware that I am one of their greatest admirers. And so, as a ghost I am fully free to enjoy my anonymity amidst these teeming millions of gifted playwrights and talented performers. They all can act without memorizing any script or having any rehearsals. They come and go, shouting out their lines at random, but still behaving as if their cacophony has some definite meaning. Does this play belong to the Theater of the Absurd? Am I watching Ionesco's The Bald Soprano? But no, this is not it. Gradually I have realized that although this play is meaningless, it is still an epic drama -one whose plot and scenes are totally unknown to the entire cast, and even to a ghost.

3. I like to read fiction and to watch movies. They allow me to forget the burden of existence, which according to me, like almost everything else, is completely meaningless. And any attempt by human beings to assign meanings will be quite arbitrary, and therefore, must be rejected. Some of my friends say that I am a 'nihilist', maybe so, but such labels have no meaning for either me or any true nihilists as far as I can tell.

4. I like to sit in coffee shops and bookstores, and preferably in bookstores with coffee shops. One awakens the mind, the other awakens the senses.
The Rittenhouse Square Barnes & Nobles has a cafe that is particularly interesting; you get to enjoy your coffee under the watchful eyes of Kafka, Joyce, Shaw, Wilde, Woolf, Twain, Tagore, and a host of other literary geniuses, who all share the cafe walls with many yellow hued photos of 19th century Philadelphia.

5. I have a love-hate relationship with my hobbies of painting and sculpting. I have a habit of destroying these works, and I have been like that since childhood. I am very self-destructive; it brings me great suffering and melancholy -the two basic ingredients I need to transform me into my ghost.

6. I am anti-religion to the core.

Religions are the most dangerous invention of human imagination. If mankind has to progress and survive, religions must die, along with all their delusional saints, prophets, charlatans, fanatics, gods and goddesses (yes, I refuse to use capital letters for them). All that should survive this purge are the elaborate tales about these beings that we have spun for our impromptu script, so ardently and desperately with the hope of giving some meaning to our wretched lives, or perhaps to convince ourselves that receiving justice is our birth-right, and that we all will get it someday, if not in this life then in the afterlife for sure. Till then we can only seek pity. The idea of an unfair world is so terrifying that we prefer to live in hope than to face reality. Some like me turn to fiction and fantasy instead. That way they can live in a much fairer and colorful world and carry it around within the modest enclosure of their skull, at least as long as the chemicals inside it permit them to do so.

7. I like to travel.

In my memory, Chicago is Steel Gray, New York is Blue, San Francisco is Orange, Seattle is Bluish Gray, Rome is Brick Orange, Venice is Ocean Blue, Portland (Oregon) is Green, Boston and Delhi are Red, and Calcutta is faded Yellow, like the shades of old photographs from an album that was locked up in a chest and later forgotten along with other memories of yesteryears. I have also seen many photos of the same hue lining the walls of a Philadelphia bookstore's cafe; they were pictures of busy markets, trams, and horse drawn carriages -like the ones I saw in front of the Victoria Memorial when I was a boy growing up in Calcutta.

The yellow photos of Calcutta that my mind has preserved, although somewhat damped and discolored, remind me of the city's lawless yellow taxis and policemen in yellow khakis who have to regularly teach them the law for a nominal bribe; the yellow school building where I wasted twelve years of my life; the yellow pages of the used books bought in College Street; the yellow facade of Medical College where patients and their relatives lie scattered on the front stairs like victims of a massacre; the yellow coaches of metro rail that slither in the city's underground passages and the decrepit yellow trams that once ruled the city's surface; the yellow rajbhogs and yellow kachuris that my grandma liked; the yellow saree that my mother sometimes wore; the yellow goddess with ten arms and four children who comes to Baghbazzar year after year without any slightest change in her routine; the yellow marigold garlands that adorn her neckline; the penniless yellow eyed drunks who having fallen out of the goddess' grace lie next to the drains overflowing with yellow urine; the yellow dump trucks of KMC (formerly CMC) that collect all this shit and garbage from the city, and the yellow river Ganga that dutifully washes away all the city's filth and sins into the heart of Sunderbans -the islands where yellow tigers live, and where playful gulls hover above fishing boats in fearless joy as I watch them from another continent, miles and miles away, through the imaginary window of an old English cottage on a remote island, where I travel freely in space and time, seeking refuge from the realities of my unscripted life.

The controversy surrounding M. F. Hussain's citizenship

2010-03-05T20:40:00.010-05:00

I was constantly surprised to see how irrational most people's views are when it comes to social issues, and in this particular case, about freedom of expression. I read this entry titled, "Does India deserve M F Hussain?" on Soutik Biswas' BBC blog. There was a long list of vitriolic comments left by the angry mob, consisting mainly of patriotic Indians, proud of their new found wealth and status in the world, confident of their self-assuring rhetorics about diversity and tolerance. Most commentators identified themseleves as Hindus, some of whom, surprisingly enough, even claimed that they were liberals, only with a small yet immensely confusing clarification that they were of a special kind that respects freedom of expression in arts provided that it doesn't cross the boundaries of tolerance, that is, as long as their holy cows aren't tickled. As far as I can see, they are the moderates who mistakenly believe that they are liberals, or perhaps enjoy proclaiming themselves as liberals. Anyway, I don't intend to appear condescending based on such trivial matters of nomenclature, especially not when all their arguments can be deconstructed point-by-point to reveal their meaninglessness. The bulk of their opinions fall into one or more of the following four categories, each of which are nothing more than a reflection of the prevalent illogical and reactionary sentiments which continue to plague India's social progress.

(1) Some readers feel that M. F. Husain should have depicted some Muslim or Christian Prophets in nude so as to balance out his 'offenses' in the eyes of Hindus. Their claim is that Hindus are more tolerant and that Husain has exploited this tolerance.

This is by far the most ignorant and illogical argument. It seems that our standard of tolerance has gone down to such a level where Hindus think that they are being more tolerant as long as they don't end up killing an artist for his artworks. Extremism is not the benchmark against which tolerance is to be judged because in that way any fundamentalist action, no matter how damaging and disreputable, can be passed off as a mark of tolerance. Such incidents have happened even in the past with Deepa Mehta and Taslima Nasreen's works, and their recurrences only prove how intolerant the Indian society is, no matter how fervently one claims otherwise. Indians should not even approve, encourage or justify such behaviors, irrespective of what other countries and their religions do. Husain should be free to paint anything he wants, and in similar way, all bans on Rushdie's 'Satanic Verses', Taslima Nasreen's books should be lifted. Those who don't like an artist's work can write a rebuttal or review, but have no right to stop him or her from creating their art or prevent others from enjoying it. Only a psychologically repressed society advocates violent retribution, and unfortunately, India is one, as amply demonstrated by most of the commentators. How did it all come to this is a question that one often wonders when they look at the creativity of our predecessors. For India to truly develop, advances in technology must be accompanied with much needed social reforms.

(2) Some comments argue that Husain's art goes against Indian 'morality'

This too is entirely meaningless, since morality is not an absolute concept; it is subjective, and above all, it continuously evolves over time, and rightly so. In fact, it is the duty of an artist to challenge the prevalent notions of morality and to make people question them so that we don't get stuck with false, yet well-accepted, notions about morals. In any case it is not some abstract notion of morality that Husain's art poses a threat to, if at all, it just exposes the fact that the idea of morality, at least among a large portion of the Indian population, is too closely associated with religious beliefs or simplistic sentimentality as opposed to conscientiousness.

(3) A few commentators suggest that Husain should have been more 'sensitive' about general public opinion.

Artists are perhaps the most sensitive and conscious beings in the first place. Over the course of mankind's progress, it has been the artists, scientists, and philosophers who have mostly held ideas that were extremely unpopular, if not downright unacceptable, to the general public at the time. And so they made many enemies. But that didn't stop them from provoking the public again and again, not out of malice but out of the sheer need to seek truth and to enlighten the masses. If the argument that one should not express oneself out of sensitivity towards the general public opinion was justified, then we would have lost most of the great writers, painters, playwrights, and in fact, we would still be believing that the earth is the center of the solar system. Therefore, it is not only appropriate but also necessary that thinkers continue to offend the general public by forcing them to face realities and questioning their holy cows. Public opinion cannot be a consideration while expressing oneself through painting or writing; if the public doesn't like it then they can simply turn their back. An art form that is unaesthetic it will die out naturally.

In conclusion, it is important to accept that Indians need to show true tolerance instead of simply speaking about it, and that overlooking or denying our society's flaws is not an act of patriotism, but correcting them is. What India desperately needs is a wave of social reforms -an Indian renaissance that will enlighten both its thriving middle income class and its oppressed lower income class. While the technological progress is already happening, the cultural and social reforms are yet to be seen. It is the artists who can show the way. But time is of essence; the nuovo rich society is being numbed by the comforts of the cozy multiplexes and shopping malls and are simply turning apathetic to the need to fight against all kinds of bigotry, religious dogmatism, superstition, and ignorance. It will not be possible to sustain the country's progress in the absence of that consciousness.

Femme Fatale, Part 3: The Sermon

2010-02-27T19:14:00.039-05:00

The Master, Mary's father, began his sermon with a gentle smile.
Dear friends, as you know, we are all the children of God, the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God; a God so potent and virile in His imagination that He managed to imagine the creation of billions of earthlings, each with the same potency and imagination to imagine their real creator in all His glory.
He took a deep breath, peered at the congregation, as if to judge whether they were following him or not, and then calmly continued:
Yet, we have lost our way. False prophets have misled us and established religions in His praise. But a few of us have found the right way, and we have assembled here today to understand and interpret His message in the way He had originally intended us to. The question that we will discuss today is "What is the real meaning of life?" But to answer that we must first understand 'reality' itself. Dear friends, come here one by one and take this from my hand. This is the only substance that can help you to understand reality.

He stood up with a chalice in his hand and the devotees lined up before him. Josh also joined the queue. The Master took out what seemed to be strips of some kind of blotter paper and dipped them in the alcohol of the chalice before putting one in each devotee's mouth. Josh also received one, and moments later he had an experience which is similar, although much more disillusioning, than the one you, the reader, might have on closely watching this video:

The congregation hobbled back to their seats as the Master began to speak again.
Dear friends, our eyes and senses deceive us, what we believe to be reality is probably a mere illusion. God has thrown a challenge for us, it is to see whether we can overcome our immediate notion of reality and use our imagination to find what He really intended. Unfortunately, established religions have failed to guide us. They ask humans to repent and to be afraid of His wrath. They tell us that it is He who will judge us in the end. But dear friends, they are all wrong. God has given us all His potency and imagination, and yet we fail to see that the real meaning of life is to live it. And to live it is to enjoy it. The joy of life, my dear friends, is in the act of union between two bodies. It is the most spiritual experience that one can have, and yet our corrupt society would prefer not to talk about it, and religions make them believe that the purification of soul is possible by renouncing sexual desires. Friends, it is against this false notion of puritanism that we must fight.

Josh could not understand most of the sermon, but images like the one above flashed in his mind. They did seem to be telling him something vaguely similar. The teary eyed congregation was in praise of the Master's sermon. Josh was too confused to understand what they were saying, and he mechanically chanted along with them, 'Master! O, Master, help us to taste the joy of life!'

The Master began to speak again.
Dear friends, now we shall seek God by fulfilling His wish. My dear daughter, Mary, will help you in seeking His grace.
The Master then turned to Mary, who was looking more beautiful than ever. Through the haze of smoke, she came forward like an angel and stood beside her father. The Master invited the eldest member of the congregation, a yellow eyed, hairy, old drunk, who took Mary with him to the next room. Josh sat perplexed, he could not understand it at first. The old drunk came out after a long time, buttoning his shirt, and he handed over a few bank notes to the Master, bowed respectfully, and left. One after the other, the members went in to that room, came out after sometime, either tucking their shirt or zipping up their trouser, and they paid to the Master, bowed and then left. Josh was the last member left in the house. By then he had regained some of his senses. It was his turn to go in. The Master accompanied him to the next room where Mary lay naked on the bed.
- Come here darling, I was waiting for you, she said coquettishly.
- You whore!, exclaimed Josh, gripped in a fit of rage.
At this the Master suddenly thrust at him and pinned him down on the bed next to Mary. Josh had never imagined that the old man was capable of showing such strength and violence. He shouted at Josh, 'You filthy apostate! How dare you insult her?' Josh realized that the Master was searching his pockets and as soon as he had found the wad of cash, Josh's monthly salary, he left the room with it. 'Learn to show respect to the Lady, she will be your savior and your salvation,' barked the Master on his way out.
- Come dear, don't get upset. I am here for you, said Mary.
Josh looked at her with disgust for sometime.
- Come my baby, she said, extending her arms towards Josh.
Josh slowly embraced her and began to sob like a child. Behind his closed eyelids he saw an image which seemed to narrate back to him this story of his life:

Femme Fatale, Part 2: The Invitation

2010-02-27T19:13:00.012-05:00

Mary's desk at the workplace was right outside Mr. Sweeney's office and opposite to Josh's. At lunch, Josh and Mary often had little chats during which she told him that she lived with her father, who was some sort of theologian. Being the only daughter, she had to take care of the home as well. These little disclosures only raised her stature in Josh's eyes and made her seem even more divine, and therefore, increasingly unattainable. Mary's reluctance to talk too much about her life also increased that sense of aloofness about her. Josh found it very hard to find suitable topics for long conversations until he found out that, like him, Mary too enjoyed watching movies. And one day, just like in movies, a downpour came at five in the evening when Mary was about to leave from work, giving Josh the chance to escort her under his umbrella, a wish that he had secretly nurtured for long.

When they reached her home she invited him to come in for a drink. The home was on the second floor of an old, shabby apartment. It had a small hall and two rooms, one belonging to Mary and the other to her father. Her father came out to welcome Josh. He was an old man with wise eyes and shaky hands. He was wearing some kind of a white robe that gave him an air of authority. He informed Josh that he was waiting for his congregation to arrive and invited Josh to join them. Josh did not like the idea, but he was curious to hear that the old man held his sermons in that dingy hall. Moreover, the idea to stay close to Mary, and to get to know her life better, seemed quite appealing to Josh. The old man was pleased with his decision.

- Son, our congregation is held in secret for we believe in ideals that are different and perhaps quite unacceptable to the corrupt society that surrounds us today, the old man informed Josh.
- And what exactly do you preach? Josh inquired.
- You will see soon, they will be here any moment now, we will be glad to have your company.

The bell rang and Mary attended it. Five members of the congregation arrived. They all looked like ordinary men who had just come from their workplace for some evening fun. They referred to Mary's father as the Master. Having renounced all religions many years back, Josh wasn't quite sure whether weekday evening sermons were that common. In any case, all these were irrational he thought. After an initial round of introductions, the congregation took their seats and Mary's father got up to light a bunch of incense sticks. Copious quantities of drinks were passed around, which the members had brought with them. To Josh, all this looked increasingly bizarre, nevertheless he sat down with them and removed his necktie to get a bit comfortable. Mary stood demurely next to her father. The little hall was soon filled with smoke coiling out of the incense sticks. The fumes mixed with the intoxicating smell of alcohol that hung in the air, creating a stifling environment. Josh felt uneasy and excited at the same time, only the beautiful face of Mary calmed him.

Femme Fatale, Part 1: The Arrival

2010-02-26T18:25:00.022-05:00

In the beginning of fall, Josh, a self-declared atheist and confirmed bachelor of forty, ran into the beautiful and pious Mary while ascending the stairs at his workplace. Their eyes met, and they greeted each other. He moved aside to let her pass and watched after her as she made her way down the staircase before disappearing behind the main door leading to the street, leaving only a faint trail of her perfume behind. It was the first time Josh had seen her; in fact it was the first time that he was seeing a lady at his workplace. When he turned his head around, he saw the watchman on the landing of the first floor with his usual coffee mug in hand.
- Met our new secretary?, asked the watchman as his lips twitched to form a suggestive smile.
- I see, so did she join today?
- Yes, apparently the boss is very pleased with her already, the watchman replied, smacking his lips to clear the froth left from his last sip.
- So he arrived early today? Well, that's good, I need to talk to him, said Josh contemplatively.
- No, I don't think you can. He said he is tired today and needs to leave soon. He has to be at the station in an hour, informed the watchman.
- Oh yes, I remember now, he had told me that his wife is going to her mother's today.
- Yes, that must be it.
Nevertheless, Josh went to his boss' office and knocked on the door. He had to talk to him about his salary; he had been promoted three months back, but hadn't seen any raise since. His boss, Mr. Sweeney, was a fat, short swindler, who after having made a fortune in the real estate business had aligned himself with a political party of similar dubious ideology and started the consultancy office where Josh had been employed for the last three years. When Josh entered Mr. Sweeney's office he found the old swine panting as usual, perhaps a little more than usual. He excitedly informed Josh about his new secretary, Mary. While he went on with his monologue, Josh absentmindedly imagined how it would look if one were to hang Mr. Sweeney upside down and slash him from his chest to lower abdomen with a sharp blade so that his entrails fell out like those of the pigs in the abattoirs. While Josh was still engrossed in his grotesque reverie, Mr. Sweeney suddenly looked at his watch, jumped up from his chair and left the room. Josh followed him, but Mr. Sweeney hurried down the stairs with loud grunts and pants. By the time Josh reached the main door, Mr. Sweeney was driving off in his car. When Josh came out on the street, the sun blinded him for a moment and a dark silhouette appeared before him. The familiar smell of perfume told him that it was Mary.
- Are you all right?, asked a mellifluous voice.
- Yes, I am fine.
Mary helped him back to the office. He thanked her and took her around the office, introducing her to all the other employees, just the way Mr. Sweeney had asked him to. It was only then that Josh noticed the innocence on her face, but there was something seductive in her. He observed her moist red lips, her dark brown eyes, the brown locks of hair that caressed her nape, and judged their beauty like an expert jeweler carefully weighing old gold trinkets before buying them. Mary seemed to be more beautiful than he had previously thought. She was twenty something, but there was a charm and poise in her that he had never noticed in any other girl before. Moreover, she had attended college, a rarity among girls in that town. Overall, he was very impressed with his new colleague. Josh had never been very close to his colleagues before, perhaps because he had a certain disdain towards them for their vulgarity and ignorance. Their crudeness and insincerity appalled him. But Mary was entirely different from them. She was beautiful and intelligent. In his heart he felt that her arrival at the office, and therefore in his life, held a promise that was yet to be explored. That day on his way back from work, Josh felt some inexplicable happiness rising in his heart which made him feel strong and young. In his happiness, or perhaps in an effort to preserve it, he even paid off a drunk beggar, which was not only uncharacteristic of him but also went against his principles. He sat down on a park bench. The change in nature had begun, the leaves had taken a yellow hue. He sat there for long trying to recreate Mary's face in his mind.

The Death of a Mantis

2010-02-18T23:59:00.040-05:00

Joshua went out to the balcony for a smoke. He needed some time to think over the entire matter. Marie realized it too. So she quietly retired to her bedroom. "We can't go on like this, I can't take it anymore. You must choose now," she had told him earlier at dinner. She didn't want to say it, but it just happened. Actually, it had to happen someday, and she knew it all too well. During these five years of their courtship, only the fear of losing Joshua had somehow prevented her from saying it out loud. But today an innocuous joke had triggered her outburst. Her concealed anger and frustration had suddenly found a vent, and they poured out with full vengeance, hoping to hurt and shame Joshua, if not make him repent.

"Joshua, I think you never really understood me. To you I am simply an escape from the daily squabbles of your unhappy married life. You behave as if you have every right to turn to me for comfort, but that I should not expect anything from you in return, not even love. I am tired of being the healer, of being your mistress. I want you to leave behind your past, your dysfunctional family. Come and stay with me. You must choose now, or else let me talk to your wife." Marie's words seemed to have taken Joshua by surprise. But no, that can't be true. He could not have been that naive. He knew what Marie wanted. She had waited for all these years hoping that Joshua will leave his family and come over to her forever. But that hadn't happened. Yes, Joshua could gladly leave his wife, but he couldn't live without the two little kids he had with her. "How could Marie even think that I will ever leave the kids?" wondered Joshua as he lit his cigarette. Wasn't it clear to Marie that their relationship could never be anything more than what it had always been? -A relationship whose very existence depended on the complete lack of expectation of it evolving into something bigger. Joshua thought that they both knew it from the very beginning. Perhaps the woman in Marie knew it too, but had never been able to accept it.

Joshua went to the bedroom. Marie was lying under the soft white sheets and watching an Animal Planet documentary on TV about sexual cannibalism in the insect world. Joshua snuggled up to her. She seemed to have cooled down. He caressed her hand, and kissed her. He reached out for the remote control and increased the volume.

Watch how the male praying mantis slowly climbs up on the female's back and then proceeds to mate. The mating can continue for several hours in some species.

Marie's sighs were barely audible. Those were the sighs of both pleasure and pain; physical pleasure and emotional pain. The bed rocked gently with the sighs.

While the procreation is still in progress, the female attacks the partner and devours its head. A greenish fluid exudes from the opening left by the male's head. Researchers believe that since copulatory movements in the mantis are controlled by the ganglion in the abdomen, the mating continues even after the male has lost his head.

Joshua wasn't looking at Marie anymore, he paid no attention to her kisses, whispers, and her pleas. He was watching the hideous drama unfolding on the TV screen. Without a warning the female mantis lashed out to devour its partner. The headless male mantis still remained on top of its female. Caught between the raptorial legs of the female, the helpless male had little chance to escape.

When the mating is complete, the headless male mantis may try to escape but the female grasps it firmly.

"So much like humans," thought Joshua, who was feeling light in his head. Like the headless mantis he too was trying to free himself from Marie's embrace. The violence unfolding on the screen was the violence that has always existed and will continue to exist throughout the animal kingdom. This is the violence of orgasm, of conception, of birth, of domination, of death -the violence that is necessary for the very existence of life. It is the violence needed to ensure the perpetuity of species and for securing a better future for progeny. "Can a father be expected to desert his children for his mistress?" No. "Is violence justified to protect family and children?" Yes.

The male mantis is destined to be a female's meal.

With the speed of a female mantis lunging for its mate, Joshua picked up the pillow and held it tightly over Marie's face. She fought back, scratched him and wriggled under his weight. But it was all over very soon. Joshua shook off Marie's lifeless arms and legs from his back. He had been able to do what the male mantis couldn't -he had freed himself.

Post coital cannibalism is found in other insects as well. In some species one partner actually sacrifices its life. For example, the black widow spider too devours its male partner, but their courtship ritual is even more elaborate than the praying mantis'.

Joshua felt dizzy and confused; he got out of the bed and stood before the mirror. In it he saw Marie lying under the ruffled white sheet, her silver necklace with the little cross pendant lay on top of it. She appeared to be peacefully asleep. But Joshua wished that she would open her eyes and rise up, then call him near and forgive him for all his sins. Perhaps she already had. After all hadn't she always said that she would gladly sacrifice herself for him? The TV set droned on softly, a black widow was busy impaling its mate. All of a sudden time seemed to have stopped ticking, nothing could ever be the same anymore. It was as if the world had silently turned around. Joshua needed some time to think over the entire matter. He went out to the balcony for a smoke.

Good bye, Lenin!

2009-05-10T05:28:00.011-04:00

A scepter is haunting Bengal - the scepter of Anti-Communism.

From Karl Marx Sarani (street) to Lenin Sarani, from Ho Chi Min Sarani to Gorky Sadan, the entire city of Calcutta now stands united in turning its back on the Communists who have ruled this land for 32 years. Their arrogance and hubris have led them to their defeat in the 15th Lok Sabha elections.

The pictures attached here remind me of those scenes that I have so often witnessed in the past. I wonder if these regular scenes from Kolkata streets will soon become only distant memories.

The Left Front has taken the support of Bengalis for granted for far too long. Calcuttans did not welcome Prakash Karat's narcissistic traits, his decision to pull out of UPA Government, his staunch opposition to the nuclear deal with US.

Left lost in all core Calcutta constituencies as well as the adjoining districts even as they tried to appeal to the urban voters by painting Mamata Banerjee as "anti-industrialization". However, the voters were more concerned with ensuring a 'stable, secular' Government at the center. They did not buy into Prakash Karat's wild daydreams about a Third front. Moreover, they did not take the unfair expulsion of a respected party veteran like Somnath Chatterjee very kindly.

There was clear anger against the Left party's stand at the center. For a state like Bengal that desperately seeks foreign investment found the Party's diatribe against capitalism quite hypocritical. They blame the CPM for ruining the industrial infrastructure of Bengal during their three decades of misrule as much more damaging than Mamata Banerjee's recent opposition to Tata Nano factory at Singur. As the scenes of violence in Nandigram and Singur flashed across the television screens, the socialism loving Bengalis could hardly believe what they saw and they never condoned the CPM for its brutal acts. These incidents of land-acquisition for industrialization also made the Left quite unpopular among the farmers and rural voters who have traditionally supported the Left. The farmer's fear of losing his land to the Government was turned into a frenzy by Trinamool and Congress, and thus they finally managed to snatch the rural voters away from the Left.

The Left also lost the support of another traditional vote-bank in their state- the Muslim voters. The corruption in Bengal police and mishandling of Rizwanur Rahman murder case, followed by the Sachar Report that mentioned that the Left had not done anything for the Muslims angered this vote-bank in Bengal. The Left leaning Bengali intelligentsia distanced themselves from CPM, and some even turned against them in fury. The combined effect was a resounding defeat for the CPM in Calcutta.

Moreover, Congress' Manmohan Singh was the perfect prime ministerial candidate - educated, honest and sophisticated, isn't that what the Bengalis had always sought for even in their homegrown apparatchiks? How could they turn down the appeal from this level-headed reformist to allow him attain a stable Government? Quite contrary to public opinion among non-Bengali Indians, CPM is not ruling the state merely by force, for three decades the Bengalis had voted them to power with full political awareness, and when the time came to teach the Communists a tough lesson, they didn't dither either.

Although the Bengalis have sent out an echoing threat to the Left parties in this election, they will still observe the leadership's response before deciding on their fate at the state level in 2011 Assembly elections.

The following paragraph from a newsource (dnaindia.com) summarizes some points aptly:

"In Orissa, the CPM rushed to join forces with the Biju Janata Dal the moment it snapped ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party. In Tamil Nadu it made common cause with Jayalalitha abandoning its 2004 partner the DMK without a clearly identifiable reason. In befriending Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh having attacked her over the years, the CPM converted itself into a party without either the squeamishness that bestowed some sort of distinction on it in the past or the scruples that underpinned its claims to be principled in politics. An electorate that is famously politically conscious viewed it all and has now delivered the thumbs down. But it is a clever verdict, because the change that Mamata Banerjee demands can only happen when the next state assembly elections are due in 2011."

But if the trend continues till 2011, it is almost certain that Bengal will soon cease to be the Leftist bastion and Calcutta will be able to rename its Lenin Sarani and Karl Marx Sarani to something that doesn't remind us of Moscow. It will then be the time to say "Good bye, Lenin!"

Notes on Democracy, Society, Individualism & Morality- Part (4)

2009-05-06T22:57:00.010-04:00

(The following section is incomplete, but it provides the outline for the discussion that I intend to present here. It will be a continuation of the thoughts mentioned in the previous two posts. I will update this post over the next few days)

On Morality

Morality is the fancy of the rich and the burden of the poor.

I. Morality: Relative or Absolute?

II. Morality and Religion

"Religion is the opium of the masses"
- Karl Marx

III. Morality and the Society

Notes on Democracy, Society, Individualism & Morality- Part (3)

2009-04-30T15:59:00.022-04:00

Individualism and Democracy

I. The Individualist and the Society

The latent desire for non-conformation to social rules has motivated individuals to express their individuality. This is because these norms and other socially acceptable standards are supposedly established by the tacit agreement of the majority, and for the greater common good, but it is hardly ever the case that an individual actually gets to explicitly provide his or her consent to such rules. Therefore individuals are reduced to insignificant components of an abstract higher order called society.

However, this definition of a society may be objectionable to some. A more traditional definition of society has been 'a group of individuals who voluntarily associate and cooperate for a particular aim and is usually delineated by cultural solidarity, social solidarity and cultural interdependence'. A closer look at this definition easily highlights the inherent problems. The first one arising in the concept of 'voluntary association' and the second one being related to the boundaries that 'delineate' societies. Let us discuss these briefly.

Speaking about civic societies (as opposed to clubs and fraternities) , it is rather absurd to think that individuals actually 'voluntarily' associate with their peers. Individuals do not get to choose the society, region or country of their birth, and therefore right from birth they become unwilling members of a society that preexisted them. The 'association' to this society arises from the need of individuals to depend on others to survive, and any such 'voluntary associations' are purely selfish by nature (i.e. human). Thus they are not interested in the real 'society' but are forced to be a part of it for their own benefit. This human psyche is reflected in the passivity of the role an average individual plays in the society. They rather conform to existing rules than openly challenge them. But their hidden disapproval of some of the aspects of the society find their way out by inspiring the individual to express his difference in opinion from the rest through manifestations of non-conformance. Thus, it may very well be argued that in reality societies are based on 'involuntary associations' rather than 'voluntary' ones, thus attacking the definition of the society at its core.

The second problem with the definition of society that I alluded to earlier comes from the lack of a clear conception of 'delineating' boundaries between societies. Firstly, the conception of such boundaries are subjective. Secondly, most individuals will identify themselves as members of different such societies based on different ideals and norms. For example, a person can identify himself/herself as a member of an ethnic society based on love for a shared history and culture, but at the same time may subscribe to a philosophical ideology of another society which are in direct conflict with the established beliefs and values of his/her ethnic society. This causes the individual to express his/her deviation from the social norms through non-conformation.

Unfortunately, such non-conformation mostly finds its assertion through materialistic expression, like in appearance, or more broadly, through personal tastes. This includes the human desire to establish individuality through materialistic objects like clothes, cars, mansions etc. The following sections will cite examples that show how such flawed notions of individualism unwittingly led people into the trap laid out by the capitalists of liberal democracies -the very socio-economic structure that these people were rebelling against. A true individualist should always strive to reject such materialistic conception of individualism and solely believe in the spiritual expression of non-conformance which can be achieved through the pursuit of art and rebellion against existing social norms using scientific objectivity.

II. Freud and the Unconscious

Freud realized that lurking beneath the calculated, rational behavior of human beings are dangerous desires and irrational impulses. Therefore Freud had felt that these irrational impulsiveness of human beings needed to repressed by encouraging or demanding certain level of social conformance. Freud's ideas were popularized in the US by his daughter, Anna Freud, and cousin, Edward Barneys. Inspired by Freud's thoughts, Edward Barney started Public Relations Offices for US corporations to help them appeal to these irrational desires of people to sell their products. To do so, knowledge of psychological behavior was used in advertisements. Psychologists helped consumerism to flourish. Thus man's desires were to overshadow their needs. The corporations appealed to the people's desires of materialistic possession and utilized automation to mass produce their items. Realizing the potential of these irrational impulses to cause immense devastation, especially in the wake of Nazi Germany's insanity, the US Government became concerned with using psychological techniques to manage and control the minds of its citizens to preserve their democracy.

III. Reich and Individualism

But the Freudian school of thoughts faced an unprecedented challenge in 1960 from a dissident group of psychologists who had been inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich. Reich himself was a follower of Freud, but he fell out with the Freudian school over his belief that the inner human desires were not to be repressed but expressed openly. His fall out with Anna Freud led to his expulsion from the international body of psychoanalysts. But his ideas became popular again in 1960s when young people started to challenge the notion of conformance that the Government and corporations had so long encouraged. This led to the emergence of a new wave of 'individualism' in US where people wanted to be liberated from the clutches of the big corporations and Government control.

IV. The Trap of Capitalism

The sudden rebellion against the existing conventions and corporations initially befuddled the capitalists. Their existing strategies of psychological manipulation failed to appeal to these 'individualists' who were not eager to buy their mass produced items. Soon the corporations realized that Freud's psychoanalytic thoughts were still relevant as they could still appeal to the irrational impulses of the new individualists if they could make products tailored to their tastes. Although the individualists had some degree of difference in their tastes, they could still be grouped into a small number of groups. Thus if the companies made goods aimed for each of these groups, then these people will buy their products and still feel that they were purchasing goods that reflected their originality. With the technological progress it was easy for the corporations to incorporate changes in assembly line and bring more flexibility to create larger diversity in product ranges. Thus the individualists again became trapped in consumerism, the very idea they had tried to fight earlier. As I analyzed previously, the flaw was that these individualists were expressing their individuality through possession and fashion, i.e., through materialistic expression of their individuality as opposed to spiritual individualism.

V. Lessons from Previous Democracies

Freudian psychoanalytic techniques to influence the human mind was not limited to corporations only. The political parties in both US and UK used them in their strategies to win over the masses.

Reagan and Thatcher

Riding on the wave of this new desire of people to seek liberation from excessive Government control, Republicans in US and Tories in UK appealed to the people with the promises of less Government regulation. Ronald Reagan famously quoted "The Government is not the solution to the problem, the Government is the problem". Their appeals to people's individualism ensured their rise to power. The rise of individualism led people to become increasingly self-centered and they turned a blind eye to their social responsibilities. The Labor Party in Britain stuck to more socialist ideas of Government responsibility and failed to win over the voters.

Clinton and Blair

The Democrats during the campaign of Bill Clinton adopted the new technique of public relations in politics by organizing focus groups. In UK, Tony Blair's campaign adopted the same approach of rhetoric against the existing bureaucratic framework in public services. The idea was to set targets for Government bureaucrats to make them responsible to the public and in return provide incentives to them for providing better service. However, the result was that employees started to find loopholes in the laws to meet the targets, thus creating more harm than good, quite contrary to what Blair had expected. In US, Clinton failed to move ahead with his programs due to financial deficits inherited from the previous administration and was maligned by many false personal accusations. These issues were publicized to influence public psychology once again.

People's effort to embrace individualism has suffered in democratic societies as they fell victims to the traps set by corporations and Governments alike. Their misguided attempts at finding their individualism in materialistic manifestations led to these traps.

VI. Marx and Democracy

The concept of liberal democracies have never been accepted by Marx or his followers. This stems from their belief that democracies in capitalist societies are the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In such societies the all media are owned by bourgeoisie and the politicians as well as the Government is dependent on the funds from capitalists, thus effectively serving their cause instead of the commoners. Marx described parliamentary democracy as "deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament". This is not just a vitriolic statement against capitalism, for it is indeed true that politicians of democratic countries are indeed controlled by corporations. Even our 'independent' media are controlled by capitalist who take the political position depending on their affiliation to parties. The same criticism was voiced by Lenin when he remarked that such Democracies are "Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich – that is the democracy of capitalist society". Marxists believe that true democracy should be the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, Marxists have been often criticized by the West who have claimed that their beliefs have been responsible for the rise of totalitarian regimes.

Notes on Democracy, Society, Individualism & Morality- Part (2)

2009-04-30T15:57:00.016-04:00

Democracy and Social Order

I. The Rules of the Game

Simply put, Democracy is the rule of majority. Consequently, it is not necessarily the rule of truth and justice, although the way it has been traditionally presented to the masses, at least in the Western world, does not seem to make this crucial distinction. And even if they do, such views are deliberately repressed in favor of more optimistic ones. The last few years have even seen the forced export of democracy. Whether it has been the right approach is yet to be seen, but undoubtedly it has changed some lives -the lives of those who were oppressed by the earlier existing form of Governments. For example, the women in parts of Afghanistan are presumably better off with the removal of the Talibans. This point deserves more analysis. At the heart of democracy lies the concept of majority and minority, a chasm that is central to the very existence of a democracy. These factions can be based on Philosophies (Communists Vs Capitalists), Issues (Liberals Vs Conservatives), Religion, Race, Classes or even Language (eg. Sinhalese Vs Tamils in 1956). When an existing form of Government is forcibly replaced by a democratic framework, the roles of the majority and the minority may be reversed as well. However Democracy, by definition, requires that any such alteration in power be brought in by the masses themselves, and until such an alteration in power is realized, the existing majority act as the oppressor of the minority. The idea that a Democratic framework is the best and a viable solution for any country is perhaps a bit presumptuous or misguided. Its success as a form of Governance depend greatly on existing social and religious structures, as evidenced by the recent wars.

II. Social Order

The minority can rarely conform to the decision of the majority, and hence terms like 'freedom of speech' attain supreme importance. The minority can only grieve and protest till the next electoral season. Free speech is the channel through which the upset minority gets to discharge its anti-incumbency rhetoric, without it peaceful coexistence would undoubtedly be harder to achieve. The accumulation of anger would otherwise manifest itself though violence and anarchy. Whenever the Government in a Democratic framework tries to stifle the voice of the minority, clashes in ideology leaves the premises of Parliament and emerges in the open streets. In such circumstances, those citizens who had once voted the incumbent to power will withdraw their support, their desire to fight power will grow stronger and their inherent mob mentality will take over their law-abiding instincts. History has records of many such events.

But the chain of events do not always follow the above pattern. Sometimes the incumbent manages to hold on to the people's confidence in spite of all their wrong-doing and labels the minority voices as 'reactionary' or 'anarchists'. One effective tried and tested strategy of winning over the ignorant masses has been 'fear mongering'. Human beings are insecure by nature, as evidenced by their need to conjure up an invisible Supreme power who can protect them from dangers. Such insecurities manifest themselves in xenophobia, homophobia etc. Exploiting these insecurities has been at the heart of many political moves.

III. Demagoguery

Mencken described demagogues as "one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots". The cynic in him was astute in this observation. Falsifying ideas, demonizing opponents and other targets, melodrama and rhetoric are only some of the tools used by demagogues. Most parts of the world have witnessed the shrewdness of demagogues in appealing and motivating the masses. Europe saw the rise of Hilter and Mussolini, while India has more recently seen the rise of parties peddling Hindutva ideology that foments religious intolerance for gaining political power.

IV. The Role of Justice

An independent Judiciary is a principle tenet of Democracy. However such a system can hardly be realized if judges are appointed by the executive or legislature instead of an internal process within the judiciary. Partisan judges are in glaring contradiction with the principles of Democracy. The judiciary system in United States has been under criticism for similar reasons. The judiciary system is supposed to uphold the rights of the citizens, and especially that of the minorities, which it would fail to do without the impartiality expected of judges.

V. The Question of Rights

The rights that the citizens enjoy in a democracy are those that are permissible under the existing social and cultural norms of that country. Therefore individuals in a democracy are forced into accepting only a subset of human rights and be content with it. The majority (or the legislature) once again gets to decide which rights are to be included in that subset. Only an impartial judiciary can thwart any possibility of violating some fundamental human rights by a paranoid majority. However even the judiciary may be too weak in front of the zealot majority. We have witnessed abuse of power by the Government in many democratic nations. Sometimes the paranoia and suspicion leads to a growing number of enemies of their watch list and such developments are not only detrimental to foreign policy but also for the citizens. Even the citizens become the suspect, the paranoia turns inward and finds solace in labeling the minority as the enemy of the State. This can only end in widening the rift and self-destruction of the country. Governments have often suspected their opponents of colluding with enemies and branded any disgruntled citizen as disloyal, if not a terrorist. Nationalist sentiments are expected to be shown publicly at every opportunity and any criticism of the Government's functioning raises suspicion of being 'unpatriotic'. In such situations, the minority is often driven to fight for themselves. A Democracy that justifies all compromises on the human rights as a necessity for an effective response to the enemies fail to live up even to the already weak fundamentals of democracy on which their system is based.

Another trait of a Democracy that is weak is the recognition of the violation of human rights but unwillingness to act on them under the pretext of more important issues that need to be resolved. Often this more important issue comes in the form of a 'security threat'. Again 'patriotic' citizens are expected to compromise until the impending 'threat' is over- the underlying assumption being that mere 'existence' is more important than even the basic 'rights'. Thus often in democracies, ignorance trumps reason, fear trumps freedom, survival trumps happiness.

Notes on Democracy, Society, Individualism & Morality- Part (1)

2009-04-29T22:26:00.012-04:00

Notes on Democracy

In The Republic, Plato expressed his belief in the idea of a philosopher King as the ideal form of Governance in the Utopian Kallipolis in the following words: "philosophers [must] become kings…or those now called kings [must]…genuinely and adequately philosophize". For Plato, other forms of Governments like Timocracy, Tyranny, Plutocracy and Democracy were not sustainable. However, there is much argument to be made against the very idea of a philosopher King that Plato espoused. Many philosophers have dismissed Plato's utopian idea as unrealistic, if not simply harmful. 20th century philosophers, like Sir Karl R. Popper have blamed the platonic idea for the rise of two of the most notorious political figures of the century, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. The Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini was also said to have been inspired by Platonic ideas. While these men exhibited strong leadership, they were all dedicated to wrong philosophies that have caused immense suffering to humanity. Even Plato himself failed to raise Dionysius II along the lines he had himself laid down for the development of a philosopher King. The lessons from history highlight the great risk of mistaking a ruthless tyrant for a benevolent philosopher King.

Timocracy, a Government formed by men of honor, also suffers from the risk of becoming corrupt and turning into an Oligarchy (Plutocracy) where the 'men of honor' are replaced by or are transformed into 'men of wealth' over time. This Plutocracy is probably the most dangerous form of Government that can exist. A single despotic monarch can be removed from power easily through a co-ordinated uprising of the masses, but a Plutocratic Government, consisting of the most wealthiest men, will have firmer roots that can run deep into both the politics and the economy of the State. It may be argued that it is this form of Government has existed and continue to exist in most parts of the world in the guise of democracy. However, in spite of the position and power that the ruling members of an Oligarchy enjoy, they are not immune to existential threats. Their biggest enemies are the class struggles. As the financial divide between the rich and the poor (the oppressor and the oppressed) increase, the tension gives rise to defiance, and eventually leads to violence against the rulers. In world history, the scepter of Communism has often haunted the Oligarchies and their Feudal predecessors. Class struggles lead to new social orders where the principle of equality becomes most dominant, and this usually leads to a more democratic framework for Governance.

But achieving a true democracy can be as hard as realzing the utopian concept of a philosopher King, if not harder. This is because raising a single child to develop into a philosopher King with the adequate knowledge may be easier than educating the entire mass to empower them with a sense of good judgment. One of the foremost requirement of Democracy is the participation of well-informed masses. It is the only way it can function effectively. Without it, Democracy attains the definition that Bernard Shaw provided for it: "Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

However education is an expensive commodity and it demands dedication. The masses may never be able to grasp the true importance of education before being allowed to exercise their voting rights. And for politicians in many countries it may well be in their own interest to deprive the masses of this enlightenment, as doing so might hurt the attempts at realizing their own selfish goals. Moreover, even in a democratic environment, the minds of the people may be influenced, in fact controlled, by their potential rulers to vote in their favor. After all, psychoanalysis has revealed the irrational tendencies that lurks beneath the human skin, and that these forces if manipulated carefully can be used to mislead people. In another lesson from history, one should not forget that Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933 through a democratic process.

The biggest threat to democracy indeed lies in the irrationality of the unconscious human mind. A charismatic demagogue may win the minds of most citizens with passionate propaganda and fervent rhetorics that appeal to their inherent prejudices, fear and expectations. Only over time do such leaders expose their true despotic nature. The other threat to democracy comes from its fundamental structure itself -its ability to create partisanship. At the core of democracy lies the forced acceptance of the agenda of the majority by the minority. The resulting society with a split opinion can hardly function in a healthy way, and that too the majority may in fact be much misguided. If majority opinion were to decide the right and wrong, we would still be believing that the sun revolves around the earth or evolution is a hoax. The reason is not too difficult to grasp -if there are too many different voices in a room, most of which are loud and ignorant, then none of them can be clearly comprehended. This discussion brings out some of the inherent weaknesses of democracy that are often overlooked in modern societies. But arguably, it is one form of Government that has a better chance of success than the alternatives.

In the next post, I will discuss the impact of a democratic framework on the Society. As alluded to earlier, a democratic society is one where the minority is expected to bear with the agenda of the majority. This often leads to disagreement, dissent and, in extreme case, civil struggles. In this context, the concept of a society and its relation to the Individual will be discussed as well. In later posts, I will analyze the relation between an Individual and the larger democracy. In the last post of this series, I will focus on the concept of morality and its relation to the individual and the society.

To write or not to write...

2009-04-29T01:43:00.004-04:00

I haven't written anything for quite sometime now and the reason being that I do not know where to start and how to say things without necessarily offending others, not that I have ever cared much about the latter. Over time I have either developed a narcissistic trait or else got to realize the insignificance of most of the people whom I meet. I observe how they interact, how they spend hours arguing over trivialities and how they find joy in banter. In reality, it is probably their behavior that is in fact human, all too human. But I cannot relate to them or their interests; for me their earthiness is not just disappointing but simply stifling. So I stand at my balcony every evening to look down at the overwhelming stream of humanity in the streets below. They all wear different clothes, carry themselves differently and scurry in different directions. Yet they do not appear as individuals. They are all unaware participants in a composition laid out by an unknown artist. Their only function is to serve as the basic element of a larger crowd. These are the ones that haven't been burdened with the realization of the horror of mortal existence. It is difficult to say whether I feel sorry or contempt for them, but I am only too happy to barricade myself against their encroachment into my life. Their vulgar ways and bigoted beliefs will be too poisonous and excruciating for me to bear. And maybe even their ignorance and blindness is contagious too. I cannot take a chance with that. I will either stand atop a tower and look down at them or go underground for ever. A self-imposed exile to the nether world is better than to be infected with their vices and their intellectual bankruptcy. But before you judge me, let me tell you that I did call out to them -more than once, but they couldn't hear me or perhaps they do not want to hear me. Or maybe I don't even speak their language. That is why I neither call out to them anymore nor scribble in this notebook. Alas, I could never figure out where to start, but my only consolation so far is that there is an end for sure.

Three Oddest Words

2008-12-13T00:39:00.001-05:00

- Wislawa Szymborska

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.

Scream Bloody Murder (CNN presentation)

2008-12-04T23:36:00.003-05:00

Scream Bloody Murder: Christiane Amanpour and members of the CNN

Shouts and murmurs

2008-11-25T01:01:00.003-05:00

They revolted against me, fully aware that they were to get crushed and destroyed. The anarchists came with visions of reform -half conceived with reason and the other half conjured with irrational emotions. They hammered away at the high stone walls I had erected around myself, failing miserably, panting but not giving up. I heard them out in silence before crushing the uprising of these naive dreamers. Soon their mangled bodies lay at my feet, their placards burnt and blood stains erased by the raindrops. I watched the drenched spectators disperse. Scared, confused and troubled with incoherent thoughts. They will all forget it soon, but I will have the cries to torment me for long:

We're not gonna take it
No, we ain't gonna take it
We're not gonna take it anymore

We've got the right to choose and
There ain't no way we'll lose it
This is our life, this is our song
We'll fight the powers that be just
Don't pick our destiny 'cause
You don't know us, you don't belong

We're not gonna take it
No, we ain't gonna take it
We're not gonna take it anymore

Oh you're so condescending
Your gall is never ending
We don't want nothin', not a thing from you
Your life is trite and jaded
Boring and confiscated
If that's your best, your best won't do.

19 hours in flight

2008-07-26T04:57:00.007-04:00

A search for randomness

At Heathrow Airport the police officers perform routine ‘random searches’ to prevent terrorist attacks. This ‘random’ search is basically a process where armed officers go around checking passports of non-whites. They looked at my documents too, and a smirk appeared on their lips when they found that I stay in the US. It was the same smirk many Londoners carry when they refer to USA or when their leading daily, ‘The Mirror’, comes out with an issue titled ‘How can 5 million people be so stupid?’ with a photo of Bush on the front cover. Obviously their sense of self-righteousness never allows them to remember that they were also equally stupid in electing Mr. Blair to office -the man who is often referred to as Bush’s pet dog by the US media. The verification process for my documents took some five minutes or so, and I realized that their so called ‘random’ search was based on a sort of a racial profiling in disguise. I do not mind even if these people were racist. Nor do I resent the fact that they wanted to see my passport; they actually helped me to kill five minutes of my six hour transit time, but what I do resent as a researcher is that they were using a sophisticated mathematical concept like ‘random’-ness so frivolously. I wanted to sit with them and teach them the probabilistic meaning of randomness but refrained from doing so as I feared an arrest.

The Qantas outside my window

As I sat at terminal 4, waiting for my next leg of a 10 hour flight to India, I watched the red and white Qantas Boeing Jumbo jet 747 standing outside the glass pane of the terminus. The jet stood proudly with ‘The spirit of Australia’ painted in black on the front part of the fuselage, just below the cockpit. The electronic display near the boarding gate informed that it was to fly from London to Australia via Singapore. Indeed this aircraft carried on its wings the onerous duty of keeping the island nation connected with the rest of the world. I sat watching it with admiration, exchanging silent glances with it. I had probably fallen in love with the plane. Yes, fallen in love with an inanimate object, and I will go on to say that it was perhaps the most purest form of love as it was most spontaneous and free from lust. I know that you are saying that I am weird, but I protest. I voluntarily distance myself from you all too humans. You, humans, try to define love in a very conservative way, and as a matter of fact you don’t even want to separate love from lust. And those who protest against it are branded by you all as weirdoes. It was perhaps those few hours of silent glances and a strange affection for that body of duralumin that made me a bit depressed when I heard the news that QF30 had suffered a minor accident on its way back from Melbourne to London. I hope that one day I will be able to get on board that flight and make a journey of a lifetime across the great oceans to the island continent.

Aubergine on British Airways

The British Airways is now serving pathetic aubergine curry and rice on its long distance flight to India!-what can be more fascinating than to have an allergic reaction and an itchy lip at thirty seven thousand feet above the sea level for some nine hours or so?!

I used to think that only food on domestic airlines sucked, but it turned out that food on British Airways flights between UK and India was even worse. To incease your exaspertation, you should contrast it with the food on the flight from US to UK, which is substantially better, and definitletymuch more edible. I guess that maybe the ‘first-world’ countries need to meet out different treatment when it comes to service on flights to ‘developing’ countries. Gate Gourmet, the official caterer for BA has angered me even in the past; the last time I cose BA in the fall of 2005, their workers went on an indefinite strike, forcing me to fly all the way from Calcutta to London on a breakfast of one samosa and a piece of sandwich. So my experience is that the food on British Airways is always substandard. They should start following the path laid out by their American counterparts where they literally serve peanuts on a 7 hour long flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles.

Landing in Calcutta

The first thing you get to notice that the international terminal still doesn’t have the jet bridges to let people enter the airport premise directly from the aircraft. And the next thing I noticed was that my fellow traveler emerging out of the executive class of the BA flight was none other than Biman Bose, CPM leader party Secretary of West Bengal -a true patriot and the leader of the poor against Western imperialist powers, who divides his time wisely between denouncing the bourgeoise class and indulging in a little bit of luxury and a few yearly visits to the enemy lands.

Philadelphia diary, 4th July

2008-07-06T02:43:00.004-04:00

Fireworks above Museum of Art, Independence Day celebrations, 10:30pm:

Some people have can't afford to take a break!
This is what I found outside my house at 11pm when I returned from the Fireworks show:
(Two cars were involved in an accident on one of the busiest roads and then the drivers started fighting)

The two things together make Philadelphia a proper city!

The burden of democracy

2008-07-04T01:39:00.004-04:00

I have often wondered if democracy has ever been a very successful concept. Well it is certainly a great concept, much better than a totalitarian regime for sure, but my question is more about whether democracy has been able to evolve beyond simply enfranchising the masses to something closer to a system where an elected Government is really a Government "of the people, by the people, for the people". In addition we must not forget that this Government is also expected to be reasonable so that democracy does not lead to the "tyranny of the majority".

Aristotle's view of democracy was based on freedom and justice, which is reflected in his views:
"...one factor of liberty is to govern and be governed in turn; for the popular principle of justice is to have equality according to number, not worth, and if this is the principle of justice prevailing, the multitude must of necessity be sovereign and the decision of the majority must be final and must constitute justice, for they say that each of the citizens ought to have an equal share; so that it results that in democracies the poor are more powerful than the rich, because there are more of them and whatever is decided by the majority is sovereign."

Today different forms of democratic frameworks exist in many countries of the world, at least most pretend to have one in place. But have we fulfilled either of the major objectives of democracy? Have we been able to prevent "tyranny of the majority" or make the poor "more powerful than the rich"?

First of all my opinion is that in a democratic framework, "tyranny of the majority" is inevitable. In a democracy every party has a manifesto or ideals and priorities, and people expected to vote based on these issues. The minority by definition are those who did not agree with the ideals of the elected party, and therefore it is inevitable that the aspirations of the minorities will not be met.

Secondly we have not seen much instance of the 'poor' enjoying more power than the 'rich', even Communists also couldn't bring that to happen.

Thirdly I think democracy is a futile exercise unless people are able to make their choices judiciously, but for which they need to be educated and be substantially informed about the realities and be able to think through the possible consequences before making their choice. An average person is simply not capable of doing that; it has been proved time and again by the wrong choices that people have made, and sometimes they even make choices that go against their self interest without realizing it. In other words I do not think that a utopian concept like democracy can ever be in the safe hands of ignoramuses (which unfortunately includes not only a huge illiterate population but also many so-called educated ones). The problem with democracy is that we assume that all human beings are equal -an idea that sounds good but is simply untrue in real life- I will not talk much about that here. Human beings are never born equal in terms of their background, never get equal opportunities, and are never equal in their tastes, qualities, talents and merits. Therefore I opine that Democracy is a good, but a flawed concept and it is surely not a panacea for all social problems. Majority doesn't mean right necessarily, if we were to decide everything by some democratic methods then probably we would still be believing that the sun revolves around the earth.

Some Favorites

2008-06-29T01:37:00.005-04:00

This post is mostly for myself, a way to quickly listen to any of my favorites at any time instead of searching on Youtube. But you are also welcome to listen...

Mozart: Symphony no. 25 k. 183, Wiener Philharmoniker, Conductor: Karl Bohm
(Remember those old Titan Advertisements?! Listen at 1:40 mins)

Jacques Offenbach: "Orphée aux Enfers" (Can Can)

Khachaturian: Sabre dance, Berliner Philharmoniker, Conductor: Seiji Ozawa

Rossini: William Tell Overture, l'Orchestra della Scala, Conductor: Riccardo Muti

Rimsky-Korsakov: Procession of the Nobles

Rimsky Korsakov: Flight of the bumblebee, Berliner Philharmoniker, Conductor: Zubin Mehta

Carl Orff: Carmina Burana, O fortuna.
(Remember the Old Spice advertisement?)

Mozart: Eine kleine Nachtmusik

Beethoven: Ninth Symphony, NBC Orchestra, Conductor: Toscanini

Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker Suite

Igor Stravinsky: lullaby and Final Hymn, Firebird
(A rare video of Stravinsky conducting his own Firebird)

Antonin Dvorak: Carnival Overture, Boston Symphony, Conductor: Seiji Ozawa

J S Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No 2, Mvmt 3, Conductor: Claudio Abbado

John Philip Sousa: Stars and Stripes Forever, Boston Pops

Puccini: Nessun Dorma, Turandot, The three tenors: Domingo, Carreras, Pavarotti, Conductor: Zubin Mehta

Some of the best Piano pieces:
1)Mozart, Rondo Alla Turca KV 331 (Sylvia Cápova.)
2)Beethoven, Fur Elise (Marián Pivka).
3)Beethoven, Moonlight Sonata: Adagio Sostenuto.
4)Beethoven, Pathetique Sonata 3rd Movement.
5)Chopin, Waltz Op.64 No.1, Minute Waltz.
6)Chopin, Grand Valse Brillante, Op. 18.
7)Chopin, Polonaise in C Sharp Minor, Op. 26 (Ida Cernecka).
8)Chopin, Etude op.10 No.1, Allegro (Freddy Kempf).
9)Chopin, Etude op.10 No.3, Tristesse (Freddy Kempf).
10)Chopin, Etude Op. 10, No. 12 Revolutionary Etude (Sylvia Cápova).
11) Liszt, Liebestraume No. 3, Dreams of Love.
12) Liszt, Etude No.3 La Campanella.
13) Liszt, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.
14) Schumann, Kinderszenen Op.15 Träumerei.
15)Rachmaninov, Prelude in G minor op.23 (Vladimir Ashkenazy).

Flight of the bumble-bee

2008-06-27T22:46:00.004-04:00

Composer: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Composition: Flight of the bumblebee

Orchestra: Berliner Philharmoniker

Conductor: Zubin Mehta

From Russia with Love

2008-06-26T00:27:00.003-04:00

The Philadelphia Orchestra
Venue: Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts
Wednesday, June 25 at 7:00 pm.

Conductor: Rossen Milanov

Compositions:

Musorgsky: A night on Bald Mountain

Rimsky-Korsakov: Caproccio espagnol

Tchaikovsky: Waltz from 'The sleeping beauty'

Rachmaninoff: Vocalise, Op.34, No.14

Prokofiev: "Montagues and Capulets" from Romeo and Juliet, Op.64

Shostakovich: Symphony No.5 in D minor, Op.47

Strvinsky: Suite form 'The Firebird'

Very impressive performance, it was completely enjoyable even for a person like me without any background in music. Although some patrons chose to sleep through the program, perhaps dragged in after a tiring day at office by their music loving wife, the majority in the hall was wide awake and applauded at the end of each piece enthusiastically. It was a place for snooty, high-class people and so I had to dress up and had to even wear a tie, polish my shoes and comb my hair. Tomorrow I am going back to listen to pieces of American composers like Bernstein and Souse. I hope that it will also be equally enjoyable.

Obituary: Sir Andrei Valet

2008-06-24T21:30:00.020-04:00

STEVEN CATACOMB

FUNERALSHIRE, 31 Feb- Sir Andrei Valet (Pronunciation: \ˈva-lət, ˈva-(ˌ)lā, va-ˈlā\), CBE, eminent social activist and owner of StolenAuto Corp., has passed away in his sleep last night. He was 99 years, 364 days old. His physician, Dr. Sarcophagus, reported that over-excitement from anticipation of the congratulatory birthday card from the Queen, which he was supposed to receive the next day, led to a massive cardiac arrest. Sir Valet is survived by his wife, 7 children (3 legal, 2 disowned, 2 never-owned) and 25 grandchildren. He is credited with conceiving the idea of 'Valet Parking', a kind of parking service that is now widely offered by posh restaurants and hotels in North America, where a personnel from the establishment will park the customer's car, thereby saving the hassles of 'self-parking' to incompetent drivers.

Although Valet Parking is nowadays offered as a service, Sir Valet, then known as Andrei Azmakhov Valenolovich, had originally used this idea to fool rich customers into handing over the keys to him for parking, and thus allowing him to steal the expensive cars quite easily. This innovative approach in automobile theft caught attention of the international media in early 1930s when Sir Valet, then a mere auto-thief in a Moscow shanty, boldly used the pretext of 'Valet Parking' to steal Comrade Joseph Stalin's official red limo outside the 'People's and Worker's Restaurant' -a Moscow downtown restaurant which at that time was restricted to only high profile members of the Government. That night Stalin was accompanying famous Englishman, George Bernard Shaw, to dinner. Andrei fled Russia in fear of persecution and traveled to United Kingdom where he sought political asylum. The British tabloids lavishly praised him for his courage to stand up against a tyrant by daring to steal his car. However Bernard Shaw, who was supposed to be a witness to the incident, refused to testify before any Magistrate whether it was indeed Andrei Valet who had stolen the car that night, and instead claimed that Stalin would have never agreed to 'valet park' his favorite red car. Officials however had dismissed Mr. Shaw's statement since he was well-known for his sympathetic views towards Stalin's regime. Whatever the truth might have been, it is often suggested that later in his life Sir Valet had helped the British intelligence to plot similar attempts to steal Herr Hitler's car. Upon personal recommendation from Sir Winston Churchill, Andrei was awarded the Knighthood in 1954, although his critics alleged that Churchill was bestowing this honor on Andrei to prevent him from coveting Churchill's brand new car which he had purchased that year with his Nobel prize money.

Sir Andrei Valet became a successful auto-parts dealer in his own right and even started his own manufacturing company in 1948, the StolenAuto Corp. -a name that suggests Sir Valet's love for good humor. However his company's reputation has suffered greatly in the recent years following several legal battles over complaints of real stolen cars being repainted and resold with new registration numbers. In a note scribbled on tissue-paper that Mr. Thug, the Vice-President of StolenAuto Corp., has sent to our News Bureau, he described that "the Company employees will always remember Sir Valet as a formidable boss" and "although everyone is grief-stricken, tomorrow we will be having a grand party at the HQ as per the last wishes of Sir Valet, which he had mentioned only to the trustees and stockholders in private." Sir Valet leaves behind a legacy of a courageous man, a visionary, a philanthropist and a life-long activist for human rights. A funeral mass will be held in his memory tomorrow afternoon by Rev. Grave at the local Catholic Church, where Lord Banter, Earl of Shortford, will be reading a condolence message from the Queen.

Why CPM wins in West Bengal?

2008-06-22T00:36:00.007-04:00

Over the last few months the Communist Party of India and its Leftist allies have had a really bad press over issues like Nandigram, Singur and their opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal. Particularly the Left Front Government led by CPI(M), the bracketed Marxist group, has been in the line of fire from the Indian media. Even the Left leaning Bengal elites were vociferous in their criticism. Whenever such troubling events unfold, any Bengali, in my opinion, should avoid any serious political discussion with non-Bengali colleagues, because then you will have to explain to them why Bengalis vote for CPI(M), which, without any shard of doubt, is an onerous task -you will have to walk a very thin line. For example, in the Nandigram incident, if you try to argue that Industrialization is important and the opposition may have played a role in fomenting violence, then the chances are high that you will be branded as a Communist. On the other hand if you criticize the Government unequivocally and convince your colleagues that you are not a Communist goon, then you will have to answer even a more difficult question -"Why Commies win in Bengal?".

This situation is even trickier because now if you support Mamata Banerjee, then you can either blast fellow Bengalis for electing Communists to office or use rigging in polls by CPM cadres as a possible explanation. But if you neither support Mamata nor the CPM and you want to probe deeper to really answer why CPM gets elected, then boy, you are in for some trouble!
Believe me.

I happen to be a registered voter of the South Calcutta constituency where Mamata Banerjee won in the last couple of elections. However I have never voted in any election as I had left Calcutta long before I even got my Voter's ID card. Strangely enough, even then at times I find myself being held responsible and answerable for the three decade long rule of CPM in Bengal. Therefore to settle the deal for once and all, I will now write down my take on this issue. Before doing so I need to state two things: (1) if I were to ever cast a vote, I will not support Mamata Banerjee unless she takes a few English lessons and develops some etiquettes (Yes, I do not want to be embarrassed by my CM, esp not after having seen President Bush and Laloo Yadav). (2) I am not a Communist -democracy and freedom of speech are very dear to me.

There is no doubt that the Communists have done immense harm to West Bengal- by not taking advantage of the Software boom in time, by slow-poisoning most Industries or at least by not doing enough to save them, and by running a corrupt Government. It was the growing frustration with Jyoti Basu's Government that led people to turn to Mamata Banerjee, whose clean image, fierce criticism of Govt policies and repeated antics appealed to many. Even the snobbish liberal Calcuttans, who had always felt that Bengal was in safe hands of CPM, were forced to put down their 'The Telegraph' to consider her seriously for the post of CM. Calcutta gave its verdict in 1998-99 elections when all the five constituencies of the city and two in its suburbs went to Mamata's Trinamool-BJP alliance. The newspapers proclaimed mockingly that CPM Government was ruling over a Bengal without the capital. The situation could have got worse if Jyoti Basu had continued to stay in power. His successor, Budhhadeb Bhattacharya was a man who brought hope, for he put behind the age-old Communist hostility to Industries and became what can be best described as a "Capitalist Communist". He has been a popular CM so far, and once again Calcutta came back as a CPM stronghold.

Having covered the basic history in a nutshell, now is the time to analyze why Bengalis favor CPM. This question has alluded many of my friends, and I am sure there are others too who ask the same question- "How can you guys vote for the same Government for 30 years?" my friends will gasp, and I will respond in a sarcastic tone, "Yeah, you guys are lucky, you get to elect new film stars in every election, especially those who can play Shiva and Parvathi well!" (if he is from the South) or "because Bengalis won't vote for BJP" (if he is from North).
Though these may sound facetious, they do contain many elements of truth. In rural Bengal CPM is probably popular because of the land-reform and redistribution initiatives etc, but I will restrict myself to analyzing the psyche of the people in the city of Calcutta since I can only comment on things that I have seen and experienced.

Calcuttans, by and large, do have a socialist leaning, a left-liberal inclination and an utter disdain for uneducated politicians (especially their next door illiterate goons in Bihar). Moreover they are quite secular in nature, and definitely scared of any remote possibility of a bloodbath -so Modi has no chance in Bengal however hard he may try to motivate Hindutva among Bengalis. The chances of the likes of Shiv Sena are even less because Bengalis care the least whether Valentine's Day cards and gifts are a Western custom or not. Surely our culture is not so weak that it will be ruined if we allow some other traditions to coexist. To add to the anger of Shiv Sena cadets, here is some news: Deepa Mehta's 'Fire' was screened in cinema halls in Calcutta and nobody rolled their eyes at it. In fact Calcutta went to become the first city to support a huge gay rally on the streets, effectively laughing in the face of the antiquated Indian Penal Code that describes same-sex relation as illegal. So BJP and Shiv Sena simply do not have the right cards to play in Bengal. Caste-based politics is also absent in Bengal (thankfully!) and so Mayawati and Karunanidhi also have the wrong cards. And Rajnikanth's on-screen antics can only turn away the voters in Calcutta. Above everything is the fact that Calcuttans are happy with what they have, and this remarkable complacency comes from a deep faith in their culture and heritage. This is indeed a difficult concept to get across. To the rest of India, Calcutta just stands as a forgotten former capital -still lost in a reverie of its former glory, indifferent to the changing world, but to Calcuttans it is an abode of peace, culture and tolerance, untouched by bourgeoisie lust, fundamentalist hatred and ignorant conservatism.

CPM wins simply because there is no viable alternative for Bengalis. Mamata is too frivolous and is even incapable of holding her party together. In short, she has lost her chance. Her frequent antics and state-wide strikes are only coming to bite her back. Congress is too weak as a party to take on CPM. And as for CPM, they have been playing the cards right- they maintain a secular and socialist nature, they keep the prices of essential commodities remarkably low, they have been trying to boost the State's economy and increase jobs, they play in tune with the liberal intelligentsia and they make sure that they have somewhat educated party leaders- that's all it takes to win over the Bengalis.

Friends of the Earth

2008-06-19T18:29:00.006-04:00

It was only after Al Gore won both the Nobel Prize and an Academy Award for his horror film on Global Warming that the new fad of 'doing something for the environment' really caught onto people. 'Friends of the Earth' and other clubs specializing in environment related issues sprung up overnight across the University campus, making everyones life quite miserable by pestering for signatures and donations to save the environment. However I was quite skeptic about the whole thing in the beginning, as I had assumed that President Bush's plan of including the sun in the axis of evil -according to the ongoing rumors following a White House memo leak- will solve the matter. Or at least the scientists would surely be able to find a way to reduce sun's temperature. But when my physicist friends informed me that it wasn't a feasible solution, I became a bit concerned for the first time. And when I found my money plant shriveled and lying dead in its pot after the four days of scorching heat wave, I finally decided that it was time to take things in my own hand. I quickly grabbed my purse, drove down two blocks to the apartment that housed the 'Friends of the Earth' and paid to register myself as a member. I vowed to work with them till every single human being was terrorized with the fear that the earth was a toast.

I started to enjoy working with this new group, specially because now every evening I could drive for two blocks in my new car. Since most of the shops and the University were very close to my apartment, I never had to go out in my car, but now this two block drive everyday, which although took less than two minutes, was at least giving me an opportunity to drive around. It was all good until the price of gasoline hit $4 per gallon, and I had to sell off my car to break-even with the cost of refilling my lighter.

As an active member of this group, I really worked very hard, often accosting people and pestering them to sign a petition for a new environment friendly legislation or bullying school children to sign petitions under their parent's name. Although I was diligent in my work, I must admit that sometimes this work seemed boring, and standing under the shade of some tree with my petition book in hand, I wondered if it was better to take up some other summer jobs. I toyed with such immoral thoughts before being struck by a sense of duty on catching a glimpse of two slender legs in a miniskirt and speeding up to them in quick steps to start a chat, obviously starting out with global warming before quickly moving onto other more interesting topics.

My diligence earned me the admiration of my peers and before I knew it I was made the President of the club. Only later I realized that the post of the President became available after the last incumbent had found it wiser to take up a summer job than to spend time collecting signatures of people who didn't give a hoot about the environment. As the President I felt the need to restructure the organization and to declare a manifesto. Writing a manifesto proved to be no easy task. I toiled for days, in fact months, before I had finally penned down my thoughts. It was a whooping 800 pages of facts, figures and threats about the impending doom. My colleagues at the club were impressed immensely, and some of them even compared me to Gore himself.

One of the members whose father owned a press felt that this manifesto could be made into a book, and before I knew it the typesetters were at work. I wanted the fonts to be large so as to make it easy for people of every age to read, but when I realized that it would indirectly mean cutting down more trees, I reluctantly agreed to lower the font size. The book became an instant success in the market and climbed to the top of the bestsellers list. My guess would be that people found the cover, that showed a penguin with its wings on fire, more attractive than the contents. The success of this book threw me into the limelight. I was congratulated by the Mayor and was invited for many talk shows, for which I had to fly from East coast to West and back many times a month. Our club was also now a much bigger organization. We got monetary help from many companies, surprisingly from some automobile and oil companies as well, and we accepted their donations gratefully. Soon we left our old apartment and moved into a bigger club house that was made after clearing off a part of the Old City Park and its adjacent pond. 'Friends of the Earth' became a major voice against environmentally destructive Government policies. We protested against almost everything -plastic bags, Chinese toys, SUVs, deforestation and so on.

Just when we were at the height of our success, a major problem broke out among the members. It was about the 'Animal Rights'. A faction wanted to start campaigns under the banner of 'animal rights' and they wanted to make a difference by starting an attack on the poultry farms, slaughterhouses and non-vegetarians. This was a radical idea to begin with, and I vehemently objected, and so did a few of my loyal supporters. But the 'animal rights' group had started off aggressively brainwashing the superdelegates of our association and was gaining support among them. We debated for hours whether animals were a part of the environment or not, and discussed the possible adverse effects should we divert our attention from the major environmental problems to include problems of animals as well in our agenda. Clearly it wasn't a part of the 800 page manifesto I had written. We tried a vote among the members, but the results were inconclusive as most of the superdelegates voted on both sides. It was a real political deadlock that the association was facing since its inception. Things were getting out of hand just when I received an offer letter from ExxonMobil and found it better to accept it. Within days I was impeached and my loyal supporters left the association in rage, blaming the animal rights wing for the breakup. The animal rights wing took over the 'Friends of the Earth' and changed its name to 'Friends of Earth and Animals'. I kept myself busy at my new job and quite forgot about them, until I bumped into one of my old loyalists last night who informed me that the 'Friends of Earth and Animals' had ceased to exist after a scandalous incident involving a photograph taken by Paparazzi that showed the incumbent president and many members of the group devouring platefuls of Kung-Fu Chicken in a cheap Chinatown restaurant .

By This River

2008-05-10T01:56:00.002-04:00

I heard this song of Brian Eno for the first time when I watched the Italian movie, 'The Son's Room'. The movie is a beautiful one, and I recommend it. This song, played towards the end of the movie, especially impressed me for it seems to strike a chord somewhere deep down in our heart, captivating us with its metaphysical appeal.

BY THIS RIVER

Here we are
Stuck by this river,
You and I
Underneath a sky that’s ever falling down, down, down
Ever falling down.

Through the day
As if on an ocean
Waiting here,
Always failing to remember why we came, came, came:
I wonder why we came.

You talk to me
as if from a distance
And I reply
With impressions chosen from another time, time, time,
From another time.

The Last Concert

2008-02-14T00:13:00.003-05:00

Sir Walter raised the baton in his hand and paused for a moment before throwing his hands forward and immediately a dozen violins and violas came alive with the cheerful melody of the first movement of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

"About two months or so," the doctor had muttered hesitantly after much persuasion. Two months- that was all left for Sir Walter to live. Sir Walter was about seventy years old, and he had got everything that one could possibly ask from life, and moreover he knew well in his heart that he was nearing his mortal end. He hadn't worried about it much, for he had realized that he will continue to live through his music in the hearts of many classical music lovers. All he wanted was to die peacefully in his sleep, and even better if that was to happen on a moonlit night, when a soothing melody from afar had found its way into his bedroom through the open windows. He had given the world everything he had to offer as a musician, and had always felt that it would only be fair if he were to have a graceful end, like a candle flame that finally drowns itself in the molten wax. But that probably wasn't going to happen. When the Doctor numbered his days, for Sir Walter it came like a sudden mortality notice handed down to him from the heavens above. The fake reassurance from the Doctor, "We will try chemotherapy," only exacerbated his agony, since the medical treatment portended more suffering as opposed to his earnest wish for a quiet end.

"Only two months!!" was the reaction from Henry James, the Executive Director of the New England Philharmonic Orchestra, on hearing the news about Sir Walter's health from the Orchestra's concertmaster, Zbigniew Rubinsky. "We will need to start to get arranged for his last concert immediately," he announced. 'CD and Video recordings of Sir Walter's Last Concert' were surely going to sell a few million copies, and so he quickly set forth with the calculations. "Talk about it to Sir Walter, and ask him what he would like to conduct," he instructed Rubinsky. As Rubinsky was about to leave the room, Henry called out again, "Ask him if he would like the orchestra to play the requiem of Mozart, and then Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or maybe some Vivaldi". That collection would surely boost the sales he thought in his mind, and a smile appeared on his lips but it stopped spreading over his cheeks on being stung by his conscience. He felt a bit embarrassed and quickly went about doing his usual business.

"Who told it to the Press now?" Sir Walter had asked Rubinsky when he saw the report about his health along with the news of his last concert on the front page of the daily. The Recording Company and the Orchestra both had fed the inquisitive Press and critics about the 'Last' recording of Sir Walter's Symphony. They had culled up a guest list with luminaries from different fields, Dukes and Duchesses, Dames and Knights, Musicians, Artists and Politicians. It had got the publicity that the companies and the sponsors were looking for. Sir Walter had felt utter disgust for the blooming commerce surrounding this event and had even considered withdrawing from it, but deep down within him he knew that he had to perform for one more time, for he had convinced himself that the only graceful exit from this life could now be achieved through one last brilliant performance.

The arrangements for the symphony was overseen by Henry himself. It took less than a month to get the whole thing organized, and the musicians practiced relentlessly under Rubinsky's guidance. Though debilitated from chemotherapy, Sir Walter managed to come many times to conduct practice sessions. And when the night finally came, the opera hall had no seats left. The guests arrived immaculately dressed for the occasion, wearing a somber look on their face. Sir Walter came in through a different entrance and refused to meet the press or anybody else for that matter. He didn't want to be weakened by sympathetic looks. But he did make an exception for his long time friend and fellow conductor, Zubin. Zubin tried to put on a light mood, he had known Walter for a time long enough to know that Walter won't like to hear words of pity, but when they shook hands Sir Walter felt an unusual warmth in the handshake and a small pat on the arm, which was meant for encouragement -the kind of encouragement that one reserves for a dying man.

Sir Walter was standing on the conductor's podium with his eyes closed. The baton in his hand moved gracefully, curving out shapes in air with each beat. They were already in the second movement, the lyrical first theme was followed by a more rhythmic second one. This was the music that Sir Walter's mother played beautifully on her violin. He had grown up listening to music, in fact grown old with music. Well no, he wasn't old, he refused to be called so, for his music hadn't allowed him to become senile. His mind was still young, full of joy and awe for those notes. "This gentleman here is one of the most promising young conductors," was the way he was introduced to Igor Stravinsky at the Royal Festive Hall in 1965. But back then, he was indeed young, physically.

In the early '60s, at the St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, Sir Walter had his first immensely successful performance. That night the nave and the fan vaults of the baroque style cathedral all came alive once more with the melody of Mozart's music. As the tenors and the sopranos sang, the sleeping spires woke up and listened with open wise eyes of a dreaming philosopher. And on that night, Sir Walter had met the most beautiful woman, Angela. She wore flowing white robes and a glittering pearl necklace. She had a mesmerizing beauty in her hazel eyes and the brown locks of her hair. Sir Walter's eyes had followed her dainty little movements and finally somebody introduced him to her at the reception. They had won each other's heart in their first meeting itself. Angela was not only beautiful, but also quite talented; she was a violin virtuoso. She played Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik better than anyone in Sir Walter's symphony. On a cold winter night, her rendition of the song at her house in Vienna had left Walter spell-bound. That melody still lingers in Sir Walter's ears, and even when he stood at the podium directing his last symphony he could hear that melody coming to his ears from a distant land.

It was this melody that Sir Walter wanted to hear again for the last time. And so in spite of Henry requesting him to conduct Beethoven's Eroica, he chose Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik over it. To Henry, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik ("A night of Little Music") seemed to be too cheerful a composition to choose for the night, and he asked Walter, "Do you think it fits to the occasion?" Henry had asked, to which Sir Walter coldly replied, "And what is the 'occasion'? The last performance from a dying man needs to be less cheerful, is it?" Henry had remained silent in shame.

In the green meadows, a little boy would play the violin and his sister would sit beside him, listening to his music like an ardent fan. She too wanted to play the fiddle but she was no good at it. However she had loved her brother's music. That night as Sir Walter conducted on stage, the girl, now an old lady, sat in the audience beside her daughter, with tears in her eyes, as she listened to her brother conducting the symphony with the same delight and joy that she had felt as a child. She remained seated, still sobbing, while the entire auditorium stood up in ovation and the hall resounded with clapping from a thousand palms.

Conversation after a movie

2008-02-09T23:54:00.000-05:00

I noticed his knitted brow, and could also discern the growing impatience and loath in his eyes, and I knew that he must be hating me for being so stoic. It was clear that he hadn't liked my reaction, and in all probability hadn't even expected me to differ from his opinion about the greatness of the movie. Usually I enjoy being hated, which, among other things, is an integral part of my quirky personality. I quickly remembered how a friend of mine in college had sung "You are looking into the eyes of the demon" while actually having the nerves to look straight in my eyes, which when I now come to think of, indeed seems to have been a pretty bold thing for him to do, for I must admit, though without remorse, that I had a rather notorious reputation as a stoic, unfriendly person. However I am not sure if that one line song, repeated with a rhythm, was created with me in mind, or whether it happened just like that. Somehow I had always felt that had I not been there, the song, though poor in its lyrics and melody, won't have had any meaning.

I had momentarily lost myself in the recollection of the incidents involving that song, and had quite forgotten that I was sitting at a coffee bar with another friend from college who was peering at me with disgust in his eyes, perhaps waiting for a clarification as to why I wasn't moved by the movie. Though I was enjoying the fury on his face that manifested itself mostly through his knitted brow, I decided, somewhat against my usual behavior, to actually give him an explanation as to why I wasn't impressed by the movie that had created such a sensation that the Government of India had gone to the extent of making it tax-free.

It's a movie about a dyslexic child called, Ishaan, whose parents don't appreciate his artistic talents and have difficulty in even recognizing his illness, let alone accepting it. However, in school, his Art teacher, Ram, played by a prominent Indian actor, recognized his talent and arranged for an art competition where Ishaan won the first prize and everyone soon got to recognize his talent. The storyline was novel, though simplistic, perhaps even naive at times, but the acting seemed to be flawless throughout. It was indeed an idealistic movie, and above all it has a noble message. My guess would be that people loved the movie because of it's underlying message. The Indian film critics, who are only used to writing rave reviews for stale melodramas that the aesthetically challenged Indian Film Industry churns out, were all loud and magnanimous in their praise.

"The point is...", I said, slurping down some more cappuccino, intentionally delaying my explanation to heighten his frustration and anger, and then continued, "... the point is that it indeed pains me to see that my fellow countrymen actually have to go to a movie to get this message into their heads...and worse of all, they come out of the theaters still with the idea that it was a good 'movie', and that it had a great 'message'."
He blinked, perhaps unable to decipher what I was trying to say.
I realized the need to explain a bit more, "Do you think that Ishaan is the only victim of the Indian psyche?"
Now I was stepping into even more dangerous waters, I had used the term "Indian psyche", that's derogatory to some patriots. Blind Nationalism can be dangerous, that's nothing new to say, Tagore had warned against it even before India became independent.

I could see that my friend hadn't taken my last sentence very well. Anger had returned to his eyes, and he was about to say something when I stopped him to complete my explanation, "I don't think that dyslexic children are the only ones who suffer and whose artistic talents don't get recognized by the society. It is the problem that every individual child faces in India. And that's because of the Indian psyche, where art comes only next to science, or more specifically Engineering and Medicine. We all want guarantees on financial security and prefer risk-free jobs, even if that comes at a cost of compromising with your true interests, and your happiness. As a matter of fact you may be expected to only believe that happiness lies in a white collar job, with a good pay and a family- a progeny, preferably a boy, to whom you should pass on the same beliefs, same fear, and stamp out any possibility of digression form the rest of the herd. Many of us, as parents, don't stop short of stamping out the last possibility for an alternative career, by citing the need for financial security, and That hinders the cognitive development of a child. The disease is in the Indian definition of a happy life; our society tends to define 'happiness' for all of us, which ironically should have meaning strictly in an individualistic context. "

I had said too much, and I am no one in a position to judge the masses, perhaps someone who has already attained some amount of security sounds hypocritical while commenting on the need to live in a higher, utopic world of perfect bliss that stands above all materialistic connotations of happiness. But my fear is that we are perhaps a very scared race; a race that is afraid of any kind of uncertainty; a race where only a few would dare to venture out of the accepted ways, and if anyone does dare to do that, then that person should struggle to swim against current and establish a reputation for himself. Else he would starve and suffer for flouting the social norm.
"..you know, the movie actually has one thing depicted very truthfully, but that was perhaps unintentional. Ishaan had to win a prize to get recognized for his talents. We need to win prizes to earn credibility, and to earn the right to be different while making choices."

My friend was silent for sometime, still trying to make sense of my last few sentences. I continued, "now about the movie, you see I don't like the way Indian movies try to sensationalize things...Ishaan didn't need to win the grand first prize, he didn't need to win any prize at all. That is the biggest problem- the movie seemed to reaffirm the notion that one's talent needs to get recognized through accolades. A dyslexic child need not be some sort of a maestro to earn his self respect. What even if he hadn't won, what should be done then? Should he be discarded as an unwanted element, a bane for the society? What kind of a society have we created for ourselves? The movie claimed as its motto that 'every child is special', and yes, I believe it, but I want others also to stress on the word 'every'. The movie seems to use the word 'every' as a means to stress on the inclusion of physically or mentally challenged children and it assumes that other 'normal' children have a happy life, and that's where they are wrong."

My friend was still unconvinced. He had been bowled over by the songs, I guess the silly song where the art teacher dresses up like a clown and appears before the class. I found myself wincing on remembering that ridiculous scene.

"Anyway, what's the point in discussing all this? All those parents who had come to see the movie with their children had hardly carried any message out of the theaters, they would have been thanking Almighty for sparing them the burden of a retarded kid while munching their mouthful of popcorn, and thereafter would be heading for the nearest restaurant to dine, and then recommend the movie to other relatives and office mates for its strong 'message'. And you and I would be fighting over here on the merits of the movie and its impact. Let's not ruin the day. Come on now, let's get going."
"I won't recommend any movie to you from now on. You just like to criticize Indian films," he said defiantly. I smiled. He had again got me wrong, but I shouldn't say that I was surprised even a bit, since it was surely not the first time that I had fallen out with him on the merits of a film- the last one, as far as i can recall, was RDB, a trash that masqueraded the screens as a 'value' movie aiming to titillate our national consciousness in the most misguided way one could ever come up with.

Return to Innocence

2008-02-09T02:13:00.000-05:00

This is the very spot where a little boy of ten, on a break from school, would be sitting next to his mother in the late summer evenings, gazing at the Hoogly River and the boats that ferried people from one bank to the other. The boy would sometime sketch in his drawing book, while his mother would sit silently watching the trees, river and the birds as they appeared on the sheet in various shades of gray. After every hour a rumbling sound would come from the direction of the bridge, and it would grow louder by the seconds. The boy would jump up to his feet to look at the distant giant structure of steel and concrete that stood against the twilight sky with shining semi-circular arches. It resounded with the vibrations of the passing train which would linger on for some more time after the serpent had made its way across the river. And then the boy would eagerly wait for the candy peddler to arrive with his colorful assortment in glass jars. He would slowly cuddle up to his mother with a shy smile, and she would look into those sparkling innocent eyes, smile secretly, and with a seeming reluctance buy him a candy after adding a warning about tooth decay. They would sit on the bench, right next to the stairs that went down and disappeared under water. The stairs had always been an enigma to the boy. During high tide the river would slowly lap up the stairs, one by one, while at the time of ebb tide the river would seem to withdraw itself remorsefully, revealing more and more of that never-ending flight of stairs. Around seven, the local brewery’s daily discharge into the river would render an unpleasant smell to the moist breeze; it smelled like fermented jaggery, and so the boy and his mother would head for their home, a five minutes walk from the river bank.

That boy was me, some thirty years ago. After spending many years in a foreign country, today I have come back with the hope of reliving some of my childhood memories. But presently I find myself looking around desperately searching for something familiar, something that has survived the passage of time. The river seems to have shrunk, and the water is quite turbid. Our old house is gone; we had sold it off long ago when we shifted to the city of Calcutta, and now in its place stands some ugly high rise flats, with dingy ‘budget’ apartments especially designed for the middle class income group to afford. The quiet river bank that I had loved as a child seems to have lost its serenity; it is now the location for a bustling fish market. The old bridge with its semicircular arches has also been torn down and replaced with a suspension bridge to cater to the increased traffic. The boats have been replaced with streamers, and the staircases that had fascinated me as a child with its never-ending flight of stairs have now become a part of a ferry dock. Only the brewery is still there, and they seem to have increased their production as the air has the repulsive smell of fermented jaggery even during the day.

Sitting at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia in the late summer evenings, I had often lost myself in the scenes from childhood that I have been carrying with me, and nurtured the secret desire to come back to visit this place. My ten year old daughter would notice me brooding over something and nudge me to play with her or tell her stories. She is good at inventing games. I guess all children are. She would sometimes chase the birds and tire out herself and then retire to watch the US battleships anchored on the opposite bank of the Delaware River. And when a commuter train bound for Camden would appear on the Ben Franklin Bridge, filling the air with a heavy rumble, she would jump up to catch a glimpse of it. And at these moments, I feel a surge of affection for my little daughter and I tell her stories of the bridge, the river, the candy seller, the stairs and the little boy and his mother.

I now hear my daughter coming from behind and I turn around.

“Papa, look there is a train on the bridge.”

A shiny serpent is slithering across the bridge. I now think my trip to relive my childhood memories hasn’t gone waste; I have finally found the joy that I came looking for, I am seeing it in her eyes.

“And here was the bench where your Grandma and I used to sit….and over there you can see the stairs I told you about, it goes real deep into the water…..and in place of this new bridge that you see now used to be a bridge with semi-circular arches…..”

Erased

2007-11-05T01:04:00.000-05:00

I sometimes used to write. And though my memory has weakened remarkably since the disease, or at least that's what the doctor and others have made me believe, I can clearly recall that most of the time it was a little red notebook where I scribbled down all my thoughts. Ever since my return from the hospital, I have been searching for that notebook. My nurse told me a few days back that the 'notebook' only exist in my head. Her words had hurt me, and instantly a pain had swelled up my throat as I tried to gulp down the tablet. Actually nowadays I have to depend so much on her that I hardly have any option other than to agree with her on all matters.
But surprisingly enough, yesterday while rearranging the books on my shelf, I finally found my lost possession. It was hiding in a pile of old magazines. The red cover had lost much of its luster. Time had indeed left its mark on it. The pages had turned a little yellow, and it had that distinct smell of age. I opened it gently, careful enough not to let any loose page fall out. However to my shock I found that it was virtually blank. All this while I had been hoping that I will again remember many things about my past unpublished writings once I get my hands on this notebook, but someone seemed to have erased everything from it and left it almost empty, much like my own mind.

Only the last page carried a few lines lines, written in my handwriting:
"I sometimes write. And I spend most of my time wondering why do I write? Probably I use writing as a coy to justify and dignify my psychological and sexual obsessions by attaching them to big moral questions and grand philosophical issues, or to voice my biased views in the safe disguise of art, or perhaps it is just another effort of mine to relate the desolate world inside me to the world outside. It probably has no meaning for others, and hardly serves any purpose for me as well. So why not just erase everything that I have written so far? Can I?...."

The Untamed.

2007-11-02T01:48:00.001-04:00

Paint in ink on paper. Winter 2006.

My parallel Universe

2007-09-30T15:30:00.000-04:00

Someone is knocking on my door -its sound is now gradually getting fainter. But I won't be receiving this visitor, whoever it is; in fact I can't, and I don't wish to. The wind is tousling my hair and I can feel it against my face. I am presently falling down through thin air, closing in on the roadside pavement every moment. Having exhausted my desire to live, I have leaped out of my 20th floor apartment window. I have been contemplating on it for quite sometime now, ever since my wife and son died, but only today I finally summoned the courage, in a fit of severe pain, to jump out of the window.
I have often wondered before what I will be thinking of in my mind as I fall down -will I scream with fear, struck by the realisation of imminent death, or will I cling on to the hope of being saved miraculously, or will I just be silent, still thinking about my beloved ones, hoping to meet them soon somewhere in a place where we all land up after death? Or will I be damned and sent to hell, as the priests say, without getting to meet them ever?
But now as I fall, I am getting to know the answer to all those questions that had troubled me at times. I am actually thinking about myself, as a matter of fact a bit optimistically. I think I am watching another image of myself -another 'me', in a parallel universe, who is still going to be alive, for having decided against jumping out at the very last moment. That 'me' had also wept form the morning, sitting in front of the two photos, caressing the frames with his hand, eagerly digging up old memories, and somewhat voluntarily getting choked with pain. After scribbling down a suicide note and placing it on the writing desk, I, in my parallel universe, walked up to the window, took a leg out, closed my eyes, but finally couldn't hurl myself out; instead I kept thinking of a parallel universe where my wife and son were still alive, staying with me, and that my wife was knocking on the door. I slowly got back from the window and went in to open the door to let the visitor in.
As I fall, now only moments from death's arms, I smile at what I see. I realise that though I will cease to live in this universe, I don't cease to exist. I am alive in many of my parallel Universes where I have chosen to live on, and actually living happily in some of them. But these Universes are all secluded and a great distance apart from each other, yet they are all so close to me even without my having realised that before. I will die in this particular Universe now, but I won't perish, or to put it more correctly: I have just chosen to make this particular Universe cease to exist for 'me'.
Thud!

Todo sobre mi Ra/ All about my Ra

2007-09-29T02:07:00.001-04:00

[Due to some of the matured contents in the following story, the reader is advised to use his/her discretion in reading it. The characters and the circumstances are fictitious. I am sure to earn the wrath of a few of my more conservative friends for writing this piece.]

When Ra told that he was going to tell me his life’s greatest ‘secret’, I had been a bit puzzled, and wondered what it could be, for I had always thought that we didn’t have any secrets between us. I had felt a little betrayed. We were each other’s confidants, and had been very close friends for more than ten years, in fact quite intimate.

When his mother left the house for the day to visit her ailing sister, we went into his bedroom. Normally at this time we would either play cards or end up debating on social issues, or discussing Lorca (1). I stretched out myself on his bed, which I had always found to be softer than mine, and indignantly demanded to be informed about his secret. Ra kept silent. Then he pulled out a low stool and sat down at his desk. I was waiting for him to begin, but he started rummaging through the lowest drawer of his desk and brought out some boxes that were lying hidden under a pile of junk and old newspapers. From another drawer he brought out a mirror and placed it on the desk, supporting its back on the wall. I kept watching him curiously. Ra made two big paper balls with the old newspapers and then stood up, stealing a quick glance at me before undressing himself. Since we almost grew up together, we weren’t much ashamed of our body. I watched his curly dark hair, flowing gently down his long neck and resting on his shoulders, his big shiny eyes, his sharp nose -in all, he reminded me of Michelangelo’s David. To us, being comfortable with each other's nakedness or being bawdy at times was just another aspect of our closeness, rather than anything sexual. We were lovers as in the Platonic sense (which unfortunately most people simply don't seem to get). ‘Ra is quite beautiful…,’ I briefly wondered – and then abruptly jerked the thought out of my mind, suddenly shocked and a bit ashamed on realizing how unexpectedly these thoughts had silently crept up in my mind and taken over its fantasies. I quickly diverted my attention to a book by Andre Gidé (2) which I found lying on his bed. Ra went away to his mother’s room, but came back in a few minutes, dressed in a white petticoat and a pink blouse, probably inflated with those paper balls. I was about to laugh out loud at what I thought to be a stupid prank, but then I looked into his eyes and froze. I sat up quickly, bewildered. He walked up to the desk and sat down in front of the mirror. He opened the boxes; they were full of eyeliners, rouge, face-powder and other cosmetics. I watched him with surprise and a slight disgust as he brushed the powders on his cheeks, coloring them red, blackened his eyelashes, and applied purple eye shadows, gradually changing into something revolting; something that escaped my reasoning. He wore red lipstick and pressed his lips against each other twice in quick successions, smoothing out its effect, before carefully wiping off the borders with a soft handkerchief. Having finished his make-up, he remained seated silently, gazing at his reflection. I walked up to him slowly, dragging my feet a bit, as if under a trance. I could see myself in the mirror, standing behind Ra. He didn’t turn back; instead he raised his misty eyes to look at me in the mirror. I kept staring at my dear friend Ra, somewhat painfully, as I struggled to accept his new feminine appearance –ugly and inexplicable. My heart was beating faster and my head felt heavy. Old memories rushed in and the frightening uncertainty of future posed doubts and threatened me with questions. Disgust, surprise, shock, fear, and a gamut of feelings that probably have no names, rose and ebbed in my mind. They were tearing off my nerves, gnawing at my heart, and thwarting my reasoning. I took a deep breath and waited for it all to subside.

After a while when I had overcome my initial revulsion, I slowly whispered in his ears, 'Ra, I will always be your friend.'
I heard his faint sobs, but I turned around and left the room silently, closing the door behind me.

(1) Federico Garcia Lorca was a famous Spanish poet and dramatist, who was killed by Falange militia in 1936. His executioner proudly commented, 'I shot two bullets into his arse for being a queer.'

(2) Andre Gide was a Nobel Prize winning author who championed the cause of homosexuality and Platonic love through his works as early as in the 1920s.

*This story was inspired by Pedro Almodovar's film, 'Todo sobre mi Madre'; the title goes as a tribute to his films.

The heart that stopped beating

2007-09-27T02:54:00.001-04:00

I lay there with my eyes open, almost stiff as a corpse, quite aware of my nakedness beneath the white sheets which smelled faintly of lime. The white sheets weren’t completely white anymore; they were in fact red, and quite wet, soaked in my blood.
“Systolic 56, Diastolic 44, his blood pressure is falling Doctor!” exclaimed a female voice.

Many machines were beeping and droning at my bedside, some with colorful displays on their monitors. The machines had spread their thin tentacles all over my torso, and even extending a few down my legs. I could feel a cold sensation at the spots where they touched my skin.

“Look at this cardiogram, his heart has stopped beating!” said a male voice.
Soon two faces were bending over me. They were staring at me worriedly.
My left hand was resting on my chest, bandaged with a white gauge that had turned quite red. I tried to raise my right hand, the one that carried a band with “Patient Number 2051874532” written on it, but I simply couldn’t. They had pinned it down and had punctured its veins with syringes- one of them was connected to a pipe which fed in blood, and the other to some colorless liquid- saline or glucose perhaps. The fluids from the bottles were trickling down drop by drop into the pipes, and then down their entire length into my veins. I could feel my body gluttonously gulping down every drop of blood and the liquid. I tried to say something, but couldn’t even part my lips.

“His heart has stopped beating!” repeated the nurse anxiously. I could now see her round face, the two small shiny eyes on it, and the dilated cave-like nostrils of her little nose. I could finally recognize her. It was the same pig-faced nurse that I had seen in the doctor’s chamber previously.

I blinked.
“Oh look, he blinks! He is alive!”
“Is the machine working?”
“Check the pressure”
“The ECG shows his heart isn’t beating”
“Get the Doctor. Quick.”

I could see many creatures, dressed in green clothes and white apron, some with blue caps, gloves and ear-loop masks, running around me frenetically, and some of them occasionally stopped by to take a peep at me, as if I was some interesting animal lying there. Interesting indeed! An animal that is alive, but whose heart isn’t beating!

I lay there, turning the sentence over and over in my head: “My heart has stopped beating…My heart has stopped beating…”

However I won't say that I felt alarmed or afraid of an imminent death. Actually it didn’t even surprise me a bit. I knew that my heart had stopped beating a long time back, in fact many years back. Perhaps I could probably be best described as a ‘heartless’ person. I had locked up all my human emotions in some dark corner of my heart, and then deliberately lost the key to that inner chamber. That was the day when love and faith had deserted me; and that was the very day when my heart had actually stopped beating for me. Everything from then on has been ugly, hideous, and nightmarish. Everything! Yes, everything and everyone!

Yet there was a time, I remember, when the sight of slightest plight and suffering would move me deeply; my heart would thump frenziedly against my chest, making my mind heavy with grief till pristine drops of tears swelled up in my eyes, wetting my eyelashes, and crowding at the corners before rolling down the pale cheeks.

But I never cried since then. I had always been able to absorb the severest of all misery and torture without letting a single drop of tear escape my eyes. I became ruthless to an extent that I could even laugh at other’s misfortune- that actually entertained me; almost gave me a fresh breeze of life. I had loved to see others suffer; suffer the same way I had once. I held them all responsible for my lifelong pain.

I looked down and saw the pig-faced nurse busy in removing the suckers of that octopus-like machine from my body, carelessly tearing away tufts of hair as she removed the tapes and bandages. Soon I could see the lights on the overhead ceiling appearing and receding fast from my view; they were wheeling me down the corridor to another room. The fat pig-faced nurse was running on my side, panting for breath, and looking back at times to catch a glimpse my blank eyes. Another doctor and a nurse were running on the other side, pushing the bed. The bottles were hanging from a tall bedside stand, and they swayed and occasionally clanged with each other. I saw hazy figures moving aside to clear our way.

I could suddenly hear the scream of a newborn at a distance. That terrible, wretched wail! The wail seemed to shatter the peace of my hour of death. I could clearly imagine that mean, little, ungrateful creature emerging out of nine months of darkness, bringing upon its mother as much pain as it possibly could, deliberately withholding itself from coming out, and then later on trying to earn everyone’s affection with inane, charming smiles. I could picture its small body, still mottled with its mother’s blood; its round red face, with two slits and two little nostrils, and a large open mouth with which it cried and wailed menacingly, announcing joyfully its existence in this wretched world, and defiantly throwing around its clenched fists and legs in thin air as if preparing itself for the forthcoming struggles for survival in this world.

I had always hated to live, and perhaps that’s why I also hated those who were alive, and those who bring forth more life on this planet in an effort to perpetuate this disgusting human race. I recalled with horror the sight that I had witnessed when they brought me to the hospital by force. I had kicked and fought with the doctors in the ambulance. They had then kept me tied to the bed with belts to prevent me from escaping. They probably thought I was mad. But they never realized that the very sight of sick people coming to hospital for cure repelled me the most. They had sedated me with injections and brought me inside the hospital lobby, where much to my disgust, I came across a horde of wrinkled, old people, scurrying about in wheelchairs, earnestly waiting to be cured. These senile creatures were breathing only to cling onto life with a never-ending desire to live on forever.

Thereafter while I was passing by the maternity ward, I saw something that was even more repulsive. There were mothers sitting on the bed and feeding their newborn babies. The newborns were clinging onto their mother, greedily sucking tasteless milk down their throat, and to me they seemed to be growing bigger and fatter every moment. There were hundreds of them, suckling on like leeches, getting larger and stronger. 'Disgusting creations of Satan,' I had shouted aloud like a madman, and they had hurled me off into a doctor’s chamber where I met that fat pig-faced nurse. She is a bitch, a real one. She had given me some injection that had left me unconscious -completely defenseless against their aggression on my body. She had laughed when I was shouting and yelling with pain- the pain that was entirely mine, and only mine to bear. Nobody had ever got to understand or feel my pain, yet some of the more treacherous ones would try to sympathize, or even show pity! To most of them I was a crazy fellow, a laughing stock. The doctors knew nothing about my pain, yet they wanted to perform some therapy on me; they thought they could cure me with medicines and surgeries! What fools they are!

But I had no wish to give the nit-wits a chance to experiment with me. After a while when they had left me alone, thinking that I was asleep, I had got up stealthily, and slit my left hand vein with a sharp object that I had found lying around in the room. I hadn’t cried. My stoic heart had felt no pain; I had just lain down on my bed, letting the blood gush out, and soon I had become unconscious once again. Those fools fortunately hadn’t got to discover me soon, and I was probably lying there, bleeding for a long time.

But now I could see many doctors buzzing around me like flies, desperately trying to save my life, or rather to make my heart beat once again. They were hurrying me down the corridor. The doctor on the side reached out for my right hand and tried to feel the pulse. “His heart isn’t beating” said someone from the back. I smiled secretly as I thought, “I am a man who is living but whose heart isn’t beating. I have finally escaped life, leaving it astound, outwitting the Machiavellian strategies that it must have laid out for my future. I can now live without ever having to be physiologically alive. I am not a part of the human race anymore; I am not a part of life anymore. Finally my mind is at peace, finally I am free!”

“Emergency. Move, move out of the way”
“No, his heart isn’t beating”
“Hurry, hurry, we can still save him”

I could see the lights of the corridor ceiling flashing by. Two anxious faces were staring at me, hoping that I will blink again. But I was too tired to play their games. I just lay there, stiff and still, with my eyes wide open, watching the ceiling above.

Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Dark….

The night of fear

2007-09-24T10:12:00.000-04:00

“NATO's alliance forces say that its warplanes killed an unspecified number of civilians during a battle with Taliban forces…”
Click.

“…suicide bomber attacks a convoy of soldiers killing a French soldier and several Afghans…”
Click.

“…Bangladeshi cartoonist Arifur Rahman is detained on suspicion of disrespecting Muhammad through caricatures…”
Click.

“…Coming up next is Bollywood Blockbuster…”
Click.

“The New York Police Department denies a request by the President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Ground Zero of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City…”
Click.

“…cyclist Floyd Landis is officially stripped of his win in the 2006 Tour de France and banned from competition for two years after an arbitration panel finds him guilty of doping during the 2006 Tour…”
Click.

“…Britney’s Ex wants legal expenses…”
Click.

“…Due to increasing rocket attacks aimed at Israeli civilians, The Government of Israel declares the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip an "enemy entity", and announces plans to cut utilities to the territory…”
Click.

“…the MTV pop icon of the year award goes to…”
Click.

“…Osama bin Laden calls on the people of Pakistan to rise up in a ‘holy war’ and overthrow…”

Click.

The tiny red light faded away, giving out a slight whine. The room was Silent again. And Black. Neither my chair, nor I were casting our shadows on the wall anymore. Another proof of my existence had succumbed to the darkness. With that effortless click, I had made the luminous screen instantly vanish into that darkness, taking away with itself, the images of a bearded man wearing a white turban and a clean-shaven leader in his black suit. But I hadn’t been able to kill all the images with the press of my thumb; they were still there, hovering around me in that dark room. In fact I could feel them hovering right above my head. A pair of bleary eyes, a naked orphan boy, a weeping widow, a dead baby in the arms of her splinter-ridden mother, the earth; red with dry blood, a burning vehicle of a Lebanese MP, a soldier’s mutilated body, and millions of refugees- they all crowded around me as images. I had seen such images in the past as well. They never cried or shouted, they just stayed; they just seemed to wait patiently for me to give them a thought, but every time I had desperately tried to ignore them. I did the same this time again. But they waited for me with a monstrous calm. I didn’t know what they wished from me; they just seemed to enjoy torturing me with their stillness, their eternalness.

I closed my eyes.

Black.

The sudden flash from the matchstick startled the darkness as I brought it close to light up my cigarette. An insect leaped up to the flame from a dark corner, but the flame died out before it could reach for it, and thus it went back into oblivion as rapidly as it had emerged from it.

Red bleary eyes, a naked red orphan boy, a red weeping widow, a red dead baby and millions of red refugees again appeared before me in the light of the glowing red butt.

I closed my eyes again. Black.

A Peaceful Silence had settled in the room. Only I seemed to be breaking the silence at regular intervals as I inhaled an air full of nicotine and exhaled it shortly afterwards, sending out a stream of smoke that blurred the images for a short while.

I opened the door to the balcony and stepped out. Only then I realized that it was night already, well past midnight. A slice of moon nestled cozily in the folds of the soft clouds shining gracefully in the night sky. A frivolous breeze was flirting with the trees, and made the trees blush and gossip among themselves; they swayed and danced daintily with the wind, and the tendrils below whispered in excitement. The gentle moonlight had colored everything on the ground in white. The houses were all quiet; their inhabitants were by then the audiences in the distant theater of dreams. The prevailing serenity was occasionally stirred up by the howl of a starving street dog or the sudden activeness of a cricket.

While coming back in I left the door to the balcony ajar, and through it the soft moonlight came in, wading past the thick air of nicotine, and creating a long trapezoidal white block on the floor. It fell on the curtains and a suffused white light fought its way to the darker corners of the room, busily cleaning up my dark world. Now I could see the time on the wall clock, ten past one; and next to it hang a poster from Andy Warhol’s contemporary art exhibition, and then below it, just above the old gramophone, was a miniature version of Dali’s The Persistence of Memory that I had cut out from an old art magazine. To the other side was my bookshelf with a photo of Tagore placed on it, and farther away was a photo of Che Guevera – a gift from a Leftist friend of mine who had seen some hopes in me. I went up to the old gramophone, something that I had inherited from my grandfather. After rummaging through the pile of records I placed one of Yehudi Menuhin’s disks on the gramophone and positioned myself in the comfort of my armchair. Soon the divine melody of the music started to have the soothing effect that I was looking for.

The music continued playing. Black again. Images flashed behind my closed eyelids. Unknown humans. I couldn’t identify any of them. They were all walking down the stairs, silently and despondently, into a dark chamber. They didn’t talk; they never looked at each other. Their dull swollen eyes had only fear in them. Behind them came a group of people, brandishing whips and sticks. Some were dressed in white, proudly displaying the bizarre religious insignias that they carried, and the others were dressed in black coat, with lapel pins, white collars and cufflinks. They all went down the stairways and shut the door firmly behind them. Then suddenly there was a bleating of a goat from the staircase above. A milky white goat appeared. It was a strange sight indeed. It could walk on its hind legs, quite erect like a human, and wore the black robe of a judge, complete with a gray judge’s wig through which its stunted horns stuck out. White strands of beard that hang down from its chin and curled up a bit towards the end gave it an old and wise look. It climbed down the staircase, with an air of dignity, and walked about majestically with its front legs clasped behind its back, seeming somewhat concerned and thoughtful. It walked up to the closed door that lead to the underground chamber, placed its goat-ear against the wooden door, sighed and looked around vacuously for a moment, and finally turned around and went back up in remorse silence. The sound of its footsteps got fainter and fainter, and I could once again hear Menuhin’s tranquil violin. It was wading down the waxy ear canals, tickling the little hair that came in its way, and beat softly against the eardrums, then transferring itself over to the footplate of the stapes, pressing against the fluid-filled ducts of cochlea, stimulating the ganglions to fire, and finally whizzing past all old memories and dark secrets, dashing aside many images and wandering thoughts, searching zealously for its destination- the mind. I wished I could help it in finding my mind, but alas, I myself hadn’t ever figured out in which corner of my six feet body it housed itself- in my head to control all my thoughts? In my heart to make it heavy? Or in my eyes to let me appreciate beauty? Or was it in the larynx to help me speak out? Perhaps in my bile and stomach to send out occasional pangs of hunger? Or in some flaccid organ to arouse my lust? Or did it always wandered around ceaselessly inside the mortal body that had trapped it for a lifetime?

The music had stopped playing abruptly; instead there came a shrill cry for help reverberating from all corners of the room. It was followed by more wails, more screams, and more noise. Sudden announcements shattered the web of melody and they ran amok inside the room, bumping against the walls and the objects, and getting even louder and louder: “...a suicide bomber attacks a convoy..... warplanes killed an unspecified number of civilians..... Ground Zero of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York..... to rise up in a ‘holy war’...... increasing rocket attacks aimed at Israeli civilians.....Congolese flee from rebel forces.....the high school teenager went on a shooting spree.....Sri Lankan soldiers carried out an air-raid....effigies of the cartoonist were burned in the streets.....Red Cross is alarmed at the growing.....the World Bank has decided to.... the Darfur crisis.....elections held amidst widespread violence....”

Once again I could hear Menuhin playing his violin, but this time it wasn’t the soothing note, it was now fast and violent. Perhaps it wasn’t Menuhin. It was too bold, too aggressive. The notes crashed and thumped on the walls of my room like huge spiteful waves of an angry sea. They crashed and again rose back in tempo to strike with even greater force, like a gale in the mid seas. I sat up straight with my eyes wide open, partly with fear and partly in astonishment; still trying to overcome what I initially thought to be a hallucination. I watched the gramophone stylus as it incessantly produced colorful solid blocks of notations from the grooves of the record, which immediately flew off into the air and hovered above head. A host of red, yellow, green and blue G-clefs, quavers, minims, semibreves and crotchets were gliding inside the room, and some of the restless ones zoomed past my face like blind bats, flying in random directions and jostling against each other. Long strands of black ribbons appeared from a dark corner, shining brightly in the moonlight. They glided through the room like serpents. Five of the ribbons arranged themselves in parallel and were slowly encircling me. And then for each of them, one of their ends started to descend down, forming a helix around me. I stood there perplexed, with the five parallel helixes forming around me. When the ribbons had completed forming the staff, the notations rushed in mad frenzy to occupy their positions on them, they arranged themselves, and rearranged again, and constantly fought among themselves to retain their occupied positions. I looked around me and surveyed the colosseum, full of noisy notations that cheered and screeched. And I realized that I stood amidst them as their gladiator. I wondered who my opponents were- perhaps some wild beasts; agile leopards or hungry lions. Maybe even Death himself.

The vertical shafts were raised and I waited to find out my opponents, and then they stepped out one by one from the darkness. I could see that I knew them well; they were familiar faces… a scrawny man with a pair of bleary eyes, a naked orphan boy with coarse disheveled hair, a weeping widow with misty red eyes, a soldier without arms, a crippled girl, and behind them stood many more blurred faces. They all were moving closer to me. I felt a sharp pain in my throat; it grew more intense; something was strangling me. I felt my neck and my throat with my hands but couldn’t find that invisible noose, and I knew by then that I wasn’t going to win the fight. I got choked, froth appeared in my mouth, my nostrils dilated in a frenetic effort for more air, my body convulsed, blood gushed out from my gaping mouth, my eye balls were almost popping out of their sockets, the whites had turned blackish blue; they perhaps looked double their size, and the veins in them burst opened, spilling out blood. I swiveled in a last desperate attempt to fight my invisible adversary, and gave a violent jerk. There was a loud noise, but I didn’t have the ability left to decipher its origin. I felt the grip relax slowly. I lay on the floor unconscious, gasping fiercely for air.

At dawn I felt warmth on my closed eyelids. I opened my eyes and saw the gentle morning sun in the eastern sky, perched above the bonsai trees of my balcony. Surprisingly I didn’t feel any pain; there wasn’t any sign of a struggle either. The poster of Andy Warhol hung in its place on the wall, the Dali miniature hang below it. Tagore was on the bookshelf, and Che Guevera was holding onto his position with a defiant look. The clock was ticking away. The record cover showing the master holding his violin lay peacefully on the desk. Everything stood as it was before, except for the gramophone that lay broken on the ground. The dented horn had rolled off behind the chair. The diaphragm, the springs and the needle lay scattered on the floor; the broken wooden casing rested against the desk. At a distance lay the tranquil piece of work of a great artist, fragmented in two.