musafir

कविता

2011-06-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

कभी यूँ लगता है , कि मन उमड़ रहा है

क्या कुछ नहीं कह डाले प्रवाह जो बह रहा है

पर शब्द सूरज की किरण हैं

पकड़ो तो नहीं हैं

आँख बंद कर लो तो रोम - रोम में वही हैं

कविता का प्रयास ही एक हार लगती है

की हम इतने लीन नहीं हुए की कविता का ख़याल भी नहीं आया

A glimpse into rural Bihar...

2011-06-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

When i boarded the first AC Rajdhani back to Delhi from Bihar, i felt soo very odd! Straight out of rural fieldwork for 9 days, with a face tanned like a monkey and with such earthy impressions fresh on my mind, i felt almost mean when Hanju, a local Santhali guy my age, who worked with us, came in the help me load my luggage.
To travel in such style after doing grassroot work! But i must say the cool AC and the steaming cup of black tea soon helped me feel quite justified in my actions :)

Anyway... the trip, though shortened to half its original length, was so enlightening. Really, India is a country of countries... We went to 3 villages in a district in Bihar. each of these villages was vastly different.. the first one had mostly Santhalis living in it, the second had Many Muslims apart from some Santhalis and others. The last had a huge number of people from the Yadav community. Each is so different and the Santhalis with their simpler ways were so much more nicer and relaxed...

I was pleasantly surprised to find villages in Bihar so green and clean. Banana, Maize, jute, paddy, lady finger and chilli fields lined the roads, bamboo groves near every house, pigs, cows, ducks, chickens, goats, brown sheep and buffaloes being reared and feeding on fresh fodder.

Elder Women still donn saries without blouses... the lungi is commonly worn, saw small pretty temples, entered a small local Masjid in the village, where children get Madarsa education as well...

Owning to the active political awareness in Bihar, the people in most of these communities are strongly aware of their rights, especially so for the Yadavs and the Muslims (considering the villages i saw).
It was funny as well as intriguing to delve into the internal politics of the village and understand the opposing stakes in the local school and in resources that come from the government. Every group and side had their own story to tell us, spiced with a few village scandals.... or a new, educated and pretty bride just married into a Santhali family, hoping that she can continue her studies... women trying to guess if i was married or not looking for markers of marriage...

Of course all was not beautiful... we also met a boy who was 18 and stunted, whose mother had TB and had 4 children and her husband had abandoned her... the poor boy could not control his tears and it was so humbling to see someone in such trouble!

Many Houses were made of bamboo and were so cool, the lack of electricity did not bother at all... the room in the hotel with its concrete and cement was hotter.. fresh handpump water (in regions that did not have iron and arsenic in their soil!!) was ever so refreshing...

And of course, cheap fresh food on highways and walks down sludgy village roads in the rain...

Even though rural work was not new for me, this trip remained quite special. And it was great to see Bihar form the inside rather than through the stereotypical lens that Biharis are known through.

Misdirected hatred

2011-03-30T06:06:00.000-07:00

The Indo-Pak match is really bringing out the fact that our nation (i know little to comment on the other other side of the border) is extremely happy to deeply involve itself into things that matter little.
Anything, for that matter that allows us to forget that there are urgent things this nation needs to address. That we may be stuffing our pockets and doing a bit better even as our lives are more and more meaningless. That we have allowed our realities to be defined by soap operas, mundane family obligations and well paying but hardly engaging jobs.

With so little left to wholesomely identify with, obviously India battling in Mohali is the perfect rescue. The bharat bandh, advertised for the upcoming IPL (for some more mass hypnosis) is almost real in Delhi today.

But then we can't be satisfied with just that! We need to feel good about ourselves... and what better way than finding someone you can hate?

In the marketplace of a middle, lower middle class colony (i hope i have the classes right!) in South Delhi today, I saw that some people had put up a pandal with a big TV screen to show the match. A young sikh man, maybe in his 30s along with a couple of other men (non-sikh) were swaying huge Indian flags on the roadside. Each time India would hit a 4, 6 etc, who knows maybe even take a single they would take run around the roundabout in the market waving their flags, while some hired drummers would beat drums. Several auto drivers had abandoned their work (which comes to most of them easily) and had joined the audience of about 50 odd people. At intervals one would hear chants of Pakistan hai hai!

The more we display such brainless hatred, the more it reflects the fact that our own cultures, systems and values have gaping holes and that people are less and less willing to question themselves.

Swearing by the historic tolerance of our nation is of little meaning, if the pride that comes with it, makes us hate all others who's culture is not 'as exalted as ours'.

While most people are enjoying the match today, even as they jokingly deride the hype and political gimmicks that are going on along with it, many of them are secretly fighting notional identity battles inside their hearts. While we are busy winning small battles here, we may find out, too late, that meanwhile we have lost the main front.

To k

2011-03-28T02:41:00.000-07:00

A lost cause am I

A shooting star am I …

But I belong to the sky

We both do

You and I

Stuck in time warps?

2011-02-06T21:35:00.000-08:00

The trouble with tradition is that it becomes its own enemy.

As we romance and deify our religions and ways of life, we are increasingly incapable of adapting to the future. We fear the loss of something that was (as it was) beautiful and wholesome, the future always seems to destructive to our sensibilities. And often nostalgia or fundamentalism become our means of coping with this.

Of course, the new world today also brings such irreverence and lack of responsibility that you are inclined to believe that the world is getting worser. Maybe it is, but this may too be a result of our ineffective adaptations. That we cannot catch the essence and the truly liberal and beautiful aspects of our traditions (and all they all have it) and move those forward along with the swiftly moving times.

For the times are always a changing, and it takes a free mind and spirit to move with it, without also getting carried with the current.

A mind that has understood the spirit of humanity and also its abysses.

90 per cent of the original species of the world have gone extinct since the living world began. It is probably the nature of life to outlive itself. but this destruction happens in the natural world with relative (only relative) harmony, while in the human world it bring infinite pain - wars, riots, feuds and anger.

If only we can surrender to our own demise, we shall find that we rise as phoenixes.

Our cultures are not our identity alone, they are only vehicles, to experience something that shadow dances behind them. But the uncertainty of being socially undefined is much.

This is of course the tug of war of life, between our own spirits of freedom and security, we are at the end fighting our own selves more than anyone around us. But this realisation does make me less antagonistic to people who are holding on, for hey they're not just blind bad people, but are trying to make sense of their place in this world. I am probably doing it in the same way, in other areas. And the old too has its place in the new, so must these people who are romancing the past.

Gross Happiness...

2010-12-07T01:21:00.001-08:00

I seem to find fault in all the work i do.

I see the articles i wrote about my issues with alternate education in Shibumi, with the biases of Sociology, with the selfish motives of Market Research and now i will write about the frustrations of cosmetic social change in the Social sector.

Of course i knew what i was getting int this time. I know it from my family. But then you really wonder, where can one go where there is both SOME money and good, real work?

Seems that is too much to ask for...

Moreover, i find that i get things much faster than others do and they waste so much time making sense of things that are staring them in their face.

Why is that so? And what is the answer? Do i compromise and go to a space where there is money, clear work and excellence but little meaning. or bunk all that and search for elusive meaning? Will it all culminate in setting up yet another NGO?!

Or do i get into teaching - at least a job whose quality i think (who knows) i will have control over?

Because i don't want to leave it all and go live in a village, where just maybe you can make real change. I can. But what about savouring the things of life? They can (albeit differently) be savoured in a village too, but oh not yet!

Meanwhile, lets see, the high life temps but its like fools gold. Especially when your search of another kind. Or is the demand for something more meaningful just a lot of vanity and a lot more of naivety?

-- Although i think I'm missing the point, the world is what it is. the question remains, what moves you? But then again after having seen so much of the present and real character of the world - its economy and society, can you really go back to - simply what moves YOU?

It's about can you deal with hypocrisy within yourself or can you deal with less of the good things in life. Strangely even radicalism has gone elite in some ways- books, ideas, methods... are found in social circles and you find yourself drawn back into all this. To move away from that too would be truly radical - and then the final question that confronts you is that are you just being socially radical or do you want to be personally, spiritually radical as well. And you can't fake that to yourself, unless of course you want to grow into a bitter old woman!

-- Then again, do i make it a big deal, says the ever shifting perspective in my brain? Just go out and enjoy life. Period. hmm. Well. .. so here ends a round of mental masturbation!

Searching...

2010-11-23T03:40:00.001-08:00

all this insight

knowledge immense

pride remains

also repentance

sin is not felt

when i forget myself

why must i remember

regret, desire

faith and suspicion

on such quicksilver

rocks the ill shaped boat

defined by the trend

lost to myself

hopeful of a love

I refuse to grasp

whose words do i write

do i have any at all

climbing a hill

just to escape the ground

on the summit the view

is what i left behind

the blue summit appears

only to be clouded again

the jigsaw completes

and jumbles again

Benaras...

2010-11-23T02:05:00.000-08:00

What can I say about Benaras. Having been to Rishikesh, Dharamshala and Pushkar and of course to Chandni Chowk there was much in Benaras that was a reflection of these places. And yet there is a character to Benaras that speaks to you in its own particular tongue.

The Benarasi is just different. I’m sure the lure of the city life has made inroads into the narrow bylanes of Benaras too and why not, but there is sense of happy calm in the way of the people that you sense immediately. They blend seamlessly with their city and do not seem too anxious to get out of it, the way other small town in today's India do. May be it is the promise of salvation that pervades its subconscious. What is it that has prevented shopkeepers from upgrading their shops? They may sell you Lassi in mineral water (for the umpteen tummies from abroad that comes hunting for culture) but the shop will still be the old, well kept hole in the wall.

The local man still approaches his art and knowledge like a connoisseur and is ever ready to tell you reams of significance and meanings about every aspect of his life.

Perhaps it is the less ruptured inclusion of the Muslim who also lends this character to the city – they being still the carries of old world traditions and rootedness in community living.

Maybe it is just narrow lanes that prevent a certain invasion by expansive modernity… for architecture is also the praxis of social change. In these lanes curd is still jamaod in open paraants and served fresh as a snack, even as a cow ambles by. Breakfast can be a 7 rupees meal of kachoris, pulses and mint chutney.

This city has never had to go anywhere. Everything has come to it…

Rajahs from distant lands have built forts here, restored a temple destroyed by a Mughal king, donated gold and financed ashrams and boatmen. Politicians have financed the building of crematoriums and philosophers have passed by, learnt, delivered sermons and even settled here. It of course symbolizes the end of the body’s journey for the Hindu.

History is in the making here… every boatman, co-passenger, shopkeeper and trinket seller is ready to tell you a story about what beget what and why the present is the way it is. With so many gods rubbing shoulders, tradition must be reemphasized and boundaries of identity have to be re-marked. A Hindu shopkeeper emphasizes the greater powers of the idol of Ganesha over that of the Buddha and nomenclatures add to the multitude of this religion with no borders.

Benaras has so many faces for me – Korean, Japanese, Thai and Sri Lankan Buddhist temples, Nepali Hindu temples, Hash smoking tourists, photographers or culture developers, old couples rolling by on a boat, claiming their freedom from worldly roles and that little talked about Rajghat school where a sensitive, religious education that goes beyond religious identity is attempted. As a continuous stream of bodies burn along the Manikarnika Ghat, there is both an acceptance and revulsion towards the starkness of death. The Ghat is the holiest of them all but the domes who cremate the dead remain the most defiled.

Meanwhile the locals seems to understand your need to explore this city… as you walk down the streets; there is no fear of getting lost, for everyone is eager to show you the way. And also to tell you where not to go.

Also refer: http://shivangi-thestudentoflife.blogspot.com/2010/11/rangrasia-benaras.html

Educating teachers...?

2010-10-07T03:57:00.000-07:00

As long as teachers themselves carry a paternalistic attitude into their classrooms there is little room for real change. And this attitude still hugely exists through the entire system. Unless we recognize that education is something apart from imparting certain knowledge that has the haloed character of necessity, there is little chance our being open minded enough to allow for progress in education.

For education can only happen when we enter with the adventure of – ‘the discovery of the unknown’. No what we learn but learning the ability to learn is the key. And within this there are endless possibilities of what is learnt and taught.

Education is about making the child believe he is good, worthy and capable and making him see that everyone else is the same too. For this whether he is taught through mathematics, craft or play it matters little. But whatever happens, needs to be in the right spirit.

This is the training the teacher needs, not the content. The content reveals itself as you teach and it is in the collective discovery of knowledge that real learning happens.

The 'teacher' does not exist. It is only an illusion we develop in self-pomp. There are only learners. Learning this is probably the key to overthrowing deep-seated authority in our own minds.

Reality Check

2010-08-31T03:31:00.000-07:00

Over this year I have had the opportunity to be exposed to the possibility of a wholly different way of growing up.
When we grow up seeing every child around us going to school, then college and then hunting for a job, we come to believe that it is the way of the world. In just the same way as we begin to automatically believe in death, in God, in the need to have wealth or social standing or so on. Simply because we have not been exposed to another paradigm at all.

It has been observed that prior to the Renaissance, artists were less concerned with the illusion of reality and more concerned with the content and symbolism of their work. The size of each element in the image related much more to its importance, rather than it's placement in a space. So clear three dimensions drawings where all objects or persons are in relative size to each other, began to be drawn only when the modern, western world began.

The sense of perspective that automatically comes into play when we draw or sketch anything is thus not inherent in the human mind. It is only one way of looking at the world.

Expand the implications of this and we realize that the world we know, as WE know it, maybe hides so many other dimensions, simply because our minds do not look at life that way.

You are the world, suddenly, has much greater meaning than before.

Such a realization posits that there is no absolute right we can hope to arrive at. Only multiple universes that we glide in and out of. The universe that feels more like home to our nature, is where we decide to set up home.

--

Meanwhile, going back to where I started, it was both scary, sad and liberating to know that there are several parents in the country who have been and increasingly are home schooling their children. Scary because radical change always challenges oneself to question deep assumptions and fears. Liberating because it shows us the fact that the dominant system is not entirely inescapable.

Several resource materials are now available for dedicated parents to teach their children at home. With much time on their hands, these children are able to travel much more, spend time learning in depth the things they like to do or are good at. They can learn a subject for the sheer joy of it and not with the pressure of exams on their minds.

Now the fact is that by the time they are 18, these children have quite possibly learnt lesser than their school going counterparts. (at least lesser than mainstream school, if not alternate schools)

But obviously, how much of what we learn at school is ever used. In fact increasingly, we are studying for the degree, and eventually we have to unlearn much of the patterns and ethics (if any) that school life has given us, when we step into working life.

However, the shift here is much more that just one of less or more learning. It is about growing up for the sake of living life itself, enjoying it, exploring it, being exposed to its multitude of forms - for the sake of those things themselves and not because they’ll get us somewhere.

A slow, unhurried education, allows for the flowering of a happy, secure person, who is not always worried about who is going to outsmart him.

Why should climbing a mountain only be about a school trip, about taking a break from what is the normal life. The mountain, its streams, its trees and plants are education – biology, geography.

Otherwise we just visit the mountain in summers, litter the slopes, talk loudly and completely fail to come in touch with the life that vibrates in it. Not that talking loudly doesn’t have its own charms J

To grow up with lesser fear and competition and to be able to be exposed to subjects as an interactive whole and not dissected areas of expertise…

To know that we are of value irrespective of the value we derive from doing socially rewarded actions – giving exams, getting prestigious jobs, marrying well… even while these things can be done

--

In our minds a ‘different’ education was the luxury of only the extremely rich or a compulsion of the poor.

The rich were anyway outside of the normative space. Meanwhile, thanks to well meaning governments and reformers, several of the poor have been convinced of the benefit of public schooling.

But the fact is that mainstream education furthers mainstream norms. Today education gets you a job. As demand increases higher and costlier qualification is required to apply for the same posts.

The poor have also entered this race mainly because education is seen as the ticket to upward mobility. But they are getting caught in a strange quandary. Their children, if by hook or crook manage to fund education till college find that they often join the ranks of the unemployed or at best underemployed educated. Because someone else did a post-graduation and won the race.

Where did the wonder of science, hindi, maths or history go in this whole process? Where did an energy which is not driven from insecure competition, and which is inherent in every child go? What is the point if half the lot feels they won while the other half live with the feeling that they were shortchanged by a system that claimed to be doing them good?
--

However, one must mind that it is dangerous to be caught in the romance of something better. It is the nature of the human mind to envy a life it could not lead.

Home schooling need not be the answer. But the realization that ours is not the only way to live and grow up, or the way we can bring up our children is real. Because it tells us something that we keep forgetting at we begin to robotically follow a pre-patterned life -that we are the boss and not the system that we ourselves have created around us.

i have it 'fingered' out...?

2009-09-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

Ive seen something new about me...

I seem to know what i want much better now than ever before...

I know when i'm in a get together which i need not have come to, i know what extra entertainment or chill out i can give myself even in the middle of work and not feel guilty about it

And - and this is what triggered this bog - i seem to know what exact food i want at a certain time

I get a sudden clearly defined taste in my mouth. Halwa happened somedays back....
right now, just now, midlle of work, came an omlette... fresh, hot, spicy, i could smell it and taste it.
This never used to happen before

is is good that i know what i want...? i hope i dont get to be like this all the time, or life would be such a bore...!!

the food part i dont mind except that it comes at the oddest of moments.. perhaps has to do with the fact that having dispensible income has made me inclined to immediate gratification of desire... hmm... if that's so, my impending unemployment will take some getting used to....

Sniffofit

2008-10-08T04:36:00.000-07:00

Smells are not simply about thing A and its smell B. Smells are a process, inextricably linked with both their subject and their object, so to speak. Only when red chilly finds its way to that pool of smoldering oil does its truely give out its fragrance. Not untill it can make the eyes water a little and and lead to a few sneezes is the experience complete.

Smelly gunny bags in which our daily vegetables present themselves are mouldy proof of the freshness of the merchandise. Can the bhaji sold in plastic trays at modern vegetable malls ever give that feel?Perhaps our urbanised senses have got used to another sort of freshness - big shining, clean vegetables, sanitised cold cuts.

However observation in weekly markets in small towns throws another picture. A litle mud on the vegetable just makes it closer to the land. Poultry must be executed in front of me.

Meanwhile, to return to the point I began with, smells are a coming together of many a thing. What is the item stored in? How is it presented? What are my notions of freshness, natural, reliable? what is it mixed with?

Tea powder is as if waiting to be added to hot water, mud when sprinked with water acquired a whole new dimension. mogra, jasmine, rose and marigold are intimately linked with memories of weddings, adorning hair with flowers while going to school. Rich thick and heady smells are part of rural and small town India.

2008-07-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

And yet again that space from which all appears to be distant and alien. Is it a game of the mind to protect itself or a retreat of the soul form where it can be the observer par excellence. The hilltop where everything else is smaller, the corner seat in the restaurant from where you can absorb the place while the shadows veil your countenance, the flitting vision from the rickshaw from which the city jelously gives away a few relalities

Life in conversation....

2008-04-20T01:28:00.000-07:00

- "had Bkfst"? (coz if not S and me will have maggi)
- do you want the all out liquid?
- hee hee ya..so cool...it was super mild! (when a micro mini earthquake spiced up a
listless day in hostel life)
- don't know about gerda lerner (who wrote on the creation of patriarchy)...darn should have attended classes..! (R in one of the several messages we exchanged about wot readings to do and which to leave out)
- my rack will be up for sale soon..lemme know if anyone keen..
- dude that was sinfully brilliant... i'm not an authority on such matters but i'm convinced that chaocolate is better than sex. (SP when i gave her a lindtt)
- he's left already should be in london by now.. (school frnds are all over the place now..hmm)
- ha ha :-D okat then some other time..just retrospecting..don't bring out the tissues yet.. (P on amby gangs and 'us four' nostalgia)
- cant believe but getting little senti about the 4 of us. could'nt have been a better bunch. (same as above)
- thought it had to do with 'boundary' (S on the forever elusive south-west asia readings)
- surveillance! :-) (P when i wasa trying to find out where she went of in the morning..)
- Neha are you planning to discard your readings and notes of second year? do u know of anybody who is ready to give? i'm in dire need (A: already worrying for next yr, while giving exams for 1st year..! )
- Bored as hell ( P - when it was reaching the limit)
- Elite class in satellite country. literally 'interpretor". (R my mobile dictionary, telling me what comprador means)
- arun agarwal rdng onlne undr title enchantment and disenchantment w concept of cmnty or smthg like that. do a google serach it one a site called science direct. (another one of those)
- oh shit! i can empathies are with you...i got one done last yr. clearly ur eating too much chocolate n growing old fast :-) remeber to get a porcelein n not metal cap fr d tooth. and show the Drji ur a duddette. (A on when i had to get a root canal)
- Can i please shoot tila!! (priceless)

Before i end up deleting these messgs... decided to archive them... D school and hostel in the last few months...

Ruminations

2008-03-06T05:42:00.000-08:00

and yet again i postpone the moment when i will write a full fledged blog!!

suddenly someone who hardlys speaks her mind came up with a really insightful observation about me... its funny we miss out the depth people can think with if they talk too much or too less... but perhaps it should be so...
public transport is ultimate entertainment...forget Citywalk mall and PVR Gold, not the south Ex market but the South-eX bus stop is what makes my heart beat in tune with this city... The bus carries labourers, students, housemaids, miscreants, shoppers and fresh, lost immigrants... its not all beautiful, something an elite observation that distances itself from it all, as if its a 'movie' may begin to do...but its fascinating, vibrant. The man half falling on me when i travelled in first year coll...both hurt my dignity and strangely also made me realise i am a woman now... whatever that is.. ha ha..did'nt hit me otherwise...! the peanut chhilka is annoying to cleanliness loving eyes, but is stangely reminiscent of long distance travel in India...it has a good feeling...
Seeing people from small towns, or neighbouring delhi (i am guessing they are from there... excuse ignorance) relate to the escalator at the metro station is awesome... instance one from many i have seen... three kids and a couple and an old grandfather... the two small kids run to it, elder sister runs to catch them and stop them before they may ascend onto those staircase with a mind of its own. dutifully keeps the restless souls in control till elders reach... mother goes aiee and hops quickly onto it and then laughs loudly... man joins confidently... the stairs are too fast for the grandfather, who belongs to an era with a different pace, which age has slackened further. but steps in stranger man who props him up with his arm in a jiffy and then glides away with a smile... mission, part 1, accompalished... i suppose they found another helpful soul for Part 2, touchdown.
3 years back i was shit scared of escalators, encoutering one for the first time in a mall... i would have felt the same fear and the exileration each time i managed, but of course you hide it, who wants to make a fool of oneself...! ha ha... it was nice to see an open expression of feelings...though i guess back home, even they cant do it...!

grrrrr....

2008-02-21T05:29:00.000-08:00

angry at myself.... wots the point of knowing it all if i dont DO it....! Read with concentration, u'll finish in half the time. a day started early, is in your control. You dont always have to feel full upto your diaphram. act only for urself, not to be thot cool. you can maange with 99 cups of tea.
oh when lord will the purpose i assign myself drive me enough to get after it with guns blazing! when will all these glorious romantic images of martial arts and sports achievers, actually reflect in one day led in full chanrge of myself!
BAWL...! phew..i feel better ..will go for a walk...no should study...! oh darn!

hear hear

2008-02-11T05:03:00.000-08:00

a bark
a yell
a whistled lark
a scream
a honk
a radio selling a dream
an engine whines
a clock chimes
a generator hums
and wedding drums

the hawker cries to sell his wares
the rickshaw puller to serve for his missing honk
the bus passenger in anger at the driver
and the children to cheek the rulemakers
the college dudes for they 'just wanna be free'
as the dhaba guy yells his boys into action

i close my eyes... and lend an eager ear
the same world of everyday
offers itself anew

To be nothing to anybody

2008-02-11T04:05:00.000-08:00

someone told me to write something on what an ideal world for young women should be like when i was fishing for ideas to write something on.....
i find that hard to do, coz i don't ever think of 'young'women' as a whole, as a community i can identify with... i may at times relate to a mna's situation better than a woman's.

So, for once let me do away with all good thought about the world, and make a selfish dream about my kind of world, starting with the assumption that i am a woman. I dont necessarily see myself 'a woman', but the world does i guess and that becomes so....
for to me i'm just a soul in this world... living the purpose or lack thereof in it...

the only times i want to be a man is when i want to travel and explore. when i wnat to walk up to the carpenter repairing stuff next door and ask him to teach me his trade, sit and observe the wod carving of the aged muslim artisan who sells his craft in dilli haat, or when i wnat to have a dip in the ganga without bothering to find a secluded spot..when i want to walk around chandni chowk and see the wholeshops, the mosques, old monuments....
or when i want to head of alone to the hills....
Funny that old women repent the lives they live... no more needed by anybody, no more roles to fulfill.... but perhaps few see that this is the age when gendered controls become minimum....
In my ideal world everyone would have a space to be nothing to anyone for sometime at least. It's here that i feel women from urban modern houses have a better time perhaps than their brothers. We can for instance 'work for pleasure' and just sort of make maony along the way... while when do young men get to do that....
my ideal world is there at this moment..when i sit and write, a little work pending, a little to be planned... a free mind.... and a desire to walk the streets by midnight....

2008-01-16T05:57:00.000-08:00

fists in my pocket
a deep breath
i throw up my head
its another day

so much to remember to do
how annoying
but its such a lovely day

2008-01-16T05:40:00.000-08:00

The Human...

very interesting lecture in class today...
the human and the non-human... how modern cinema explores the two realms and how they may not be so distinct as humanitarian discourse might have them be..

terminator, robocop, X men... there was a time when the american cinema saw the enemy as outside..the german, the russian, the muslim today...but its differnt now..the enemy is closer home..its at home..its even within you... the machine overtakes...

Agamben, uses the concept of musselmanner, to under stand the position of a life that if not worthy of living... the musselmanner, was a slang for the typical figure of a concentration cmp that is living but is dead... shuffles around, glazed look. A captive of a camp essentially has no identity. we underestimate how things like having a name, a national identity, a gender identity gives a sense of self... imagine a man with no sense of anything...
dispensible... non-human... non-existent...on no records anywhere...

such a life, who can be killed but no sacrificed...for you sacrifice something of value. and something that the gods will accept. such non-human entities, if you may even call them that, become sites of excessive torture, even in modern camps like guantanamo bay...

at onother level... a life that can be sacrificed, but will not be killed..that can still live on...the figure of the suicide bomber..the martyr.

the machine man, is facsinating in its extreme power. power is seductive, as much as it is destructive... one way we can understand torture perhaps... the machine man is pure... untarnished by any humanity... that is why it fascinates us...

similar reductions to the non human happen in medical experiments, the body drasticlly reduced to its parts... thoroughly objectified... and an entire vocabulary gets built around it... of abuse...

imagine this conception magnified on an entire nation...afghanistan... the red spots on your screen that have to be bombed...targets of the video game... some of the NATO guys in the places who attacked Serbia in the name of democracy, had past records of genocide...

hmm... messy business...

2008-01-09T03:36:00.000-08:00

It is said that a common belief in traditional (though perhaps not ancient) India was that travelling beyond the seas that surround the subcontinent would make a man impure... robbed of his caste, his religion. It was also said that travelling to the char dhams would bring salvation from the cycle of births and deaths, will wash our sins. Today an Indian eyes new York accross 2 seas (why is it seven seas by the way?), and may not have visted his neighbourhood shrine.

The average countryside man in europe or Russia prior to the Rennaissance would have scoffed at a desire to go beyond his town. When a passionate marxist youth tells a bunch of jew men in Fiddler on the Roof that the 'world out there is changing', they said what does it have to do with us. And moreover were they not safe in their haven odf a jew community in roman catholic Russia? Did not the Good Book say that we are one kind of people, the chosen people and they another?

When the colonial era arose on the world did Europe set out the discover the world! To conqure, civilise, explore, educate, proselytise or in some cases to free their own souls. The churning of time and ideolgies brought the formation of America, the land where all our highest ideals were to be realised and lived. Such an ideal land that there is nothing beyond to be seen. Its borders mark the end of the modern, liberal, civilised world, bracketing it off from the rest of the vast mass of barbarians, underdeveloped, pitiable and recently terrorist elements. An average american feels no need to know where India lies on the map, while even small town indians could correct you that Washington lies on the east coast, and california on the other.

And the buddhist monk who travels all over Asia, or the muslim historian of yesteryear.

Aggassi who breakfasts in USA and travels to london from Lunch.

Our ideas of travel have much to do with our beliefs. Not all nations at all times have had a culture of travelling beyond their borders. It is a mindset. When Brit upon brit would travel to Africa and asia and write books about how 'they live out there' you are bound to have an influx, and not so before.
Even our books... lord of the rings, eragon, a travl to another universe, science fiction... a move beyond current paradigms...

These trends speak much of the ways in which we view the world and live our lives... Travl sparks off conquest and spiritual quest,

2007-12-30T03:37:00.000-08:00

sometimes when you see too much of pain...pain and suffering that makes no sense... you begin to wonder at what sort of God is God... and then perhaps whether there is God at all...

But that may be when you see others sufferring... when there is too much suffering, too much unreasonalbleness in this world..then the only thing that appears sensible is the belief in God.

and then you see so many people who have all that a God could have given them, and they are throwing their lives away...

The view from the window

2007-12-11T20:21:00.000-08:00

Its winter time but i have the luxury of travelling in a hostel bus every morning. The tiny yellow bus with its windows shut cosily and packed lunch from the mess. 'Jhantak' bollywood music playing, each girl lying spread out on one whole seat.
Its a insulated beautiful world for us...
As i look out of the window, the sights and images i pass appear so far off. See those people already standing in ques for sundry paper work;ther ragpicker who already has finished his first lap of collection. The begger is sitting on the pavement wrapped in a shawl, and a dog is snugly sleeping next to him. Even we are friends with dogs, but this comraderie had a different ring to it. It was as if they were both sharing their street life, on this cold morning.
The sun rays are getting filtered out throught the trees, i can almost smell the morning through the window... its like a world on mute, a film on mute... and when only one of your senses is operating youoften see what you may not otherwise have. So may cars...
So many students..all dressed differently... i have grown to like the campus. As i walk through it, discover short cuts to the nearest printout shop.
The girl sitting near my seat is knitting. She is from one of the North east states. We have so many north east students on this campus. They have given it a distinct life. The market is full of chinese, tibetan and thai food. The hostel has Korean movie screenings... They set the fashion trends, they cook their dishes on the hostel hot plate...
The conducter just easily jumped into our runnning bus...efficiency isIndia's middle name; yet it isn't.
I think i'll learn to knit from dadiji too. What we 'third world' people have as unique is this ability to make our own stuff and repair it... that's what facinates me about India, so much more than Mr. Mittal buying Arcelor...
Hmmm... so many thoughts..so many worlds. Why am i where i am...

2007-02-15T07:16:00.000-08:00

Who is this
standing before me?

looking me right in the eye...
as if questioning me
my purpose in looking at her

she seems to think
she's pretty
holds herself so vainly
but why
does that now make me ashamed?

As if i have seen
that she's not as much
as she thinks
but why
does that now make me feel small?

I know her from before
quite well infact!
but what she is
still alludes me!

Its as if my fate
is supremely linked with hers
...suddenly i'm scared
what if she fails...?

I smile at her
she smiles back
looks like she too
is trying to figure me out.

Are we not all somewhere
strangers to each other...
a strangeness we cover
with conversation

All this while
we two looked on
silent...
& I wondered then,
do i really know
that person in the mirror?

2007-01-29T01:11:00.000-08:00

march on! on!
why?
where to?
where? - nowhere that i know!!
(leaving out the tarot reader
who said ill meet my man this year)
why then?
for it supremely better then sitting!!
and in fact sitting's got fun only
when i know i have some important role in life to do.

2007-01-25T01:24:00.000-08:00

Sociology...
The past 6 months have messed up my brain. literally. the only time i can think clearly is when im not really thinking. and the rest of the time im reading laborious writings in which some other very thinking people are thinking. And i used to think i was a thinking person. Now i no more know what i think.Welcome to my life-world (a sociological term) of a masters in sociology.I have wanted to write my first blog entry for so long, but my brain has been too cluttered. So without putting all that down, i really cannot move forward. To throw it all out is my intention, but that may not be the end i reach. For as sociology teaches us (oh for christ's sake!) life is not simply about means and ends, and a lot of sociology is the study of the unintended consequence [Hence perhaps ur Chattis ka aankda with the theory-loving economics dept!!!]. The original beauty of sociology is undeniable. You see so much of your own thinking, existence, mundane and special activity in such novel ways. Also gratifying in many ways is to see theorists talking of things you have observed from time to time. But then the texts! Its amazing, i mean it is so easy to turn into a bookworm (and not in the delicious enid blyton way) without realising it. And ironically even though you are studying society, you (at least I) tend to feel more and more removed from it. And if that impersonal observer in me (whose existence is also an active area of debate in S_) had not caught me in time, i would have begun to believe myself as some know all. And its not a know all, as in one with with all the answers, but which has all the questions to counter every answer of the other, and hence leave him confused as hell, and myself with this very unsatisfying sense of achievement. Some of the texts are the quitessential social science material. At times i can almost feel i am reading about 10,000 words randomly selected from the dictionary. But coz someone told me, that 'he's' a great thinker, i gotta make some sense of him. But what do i do with something that appears like juggled words to me? Simple. I attribute a sense to them. And my classmate may attribute a thoroughly different one. Wow! its like reading poetry! I donno. I mean either im being foolish not to see the point. Or all my professors are in a maya-jaal, and are pulling me into it too.[ God! i din't know the feeling ran this deep!]Ok now S_ makes me cease to acsribe a sacredity to anything. Religion, says Freud is the universal obsessional neurosis of mankind; says Marx, is the opium of the masses. So all my lovingly held beliefs are kicked away. India is an imagined community. The 'Nation' is an abstraction. My patriotism is gone fro a six. The armed forces are the state's biggest forms of coercion. There goes my charm for the men in uniform. Hetrosexual families involve a hegemony of conventional ideas of sexuality. phut! goes my dream of the happy family. Then most of my insti is pro-reservation. again confusion in the head. Many are largely anti the revival of hinduism, and see it as a reaction to fact that other religions are becoming popular in India. phew! what of my admiration for a spiritual movt. in 'my' religion, with the likes of ravi shaker, jaya row etc... Oh ya! then the argument that Gandhi effected a nation formation where the demands of oppressed classes in India were only pacified and actually the old Brahminical model was maintained. The goes the father of my nation. then this fellow student who argues why we must go to the past to find answers as religionists (my word) do. there goes my gita.And ironically most arguments make sense. But they give me no answers. And given the avalanche of stuff i ingest everyday, i think i can only come to make sense of it in retrospect. After an year of finishing this course.And the entire discipline runs the other way at the very mention of the supernatural -of any (rational or irrational) sort. One prof. - who oweing to the fact that he turned a naxalite in the days of his youth, left it later, only after becoming a chain smoker who is now slowly eating his lungs out, and is now a rightist and as he says a 'convinced hindu' - seemed like someone who my own hinduism partial mind could relate to. But then he said i agree with hinduism in totality. jaat-paat, karma, caste...all the lot. Lo behold! i am confused again! But thankfully i can say that i haven't turned bitter. [as a said i caught myself in time]. I still seem to find solace in reading stuff on reiki, the Gita, taoism, jedi knights... Perhaps i do it for a sense of security. Yes. But God i need it right now. For it would never do to turn into an atheist. And by that i mena,someone who does not at all believe in any sort of divinity, even of the small things in life. like what if the next time i see a baby laughing, i think of the oedipal complex!! dude!! But yeah, thanks to sociology i will never become a totalitarian. And even dissillusionment with the subject wont be so bad. For as the gita prefesses, doubt is essential at the starting journey of any quest, so happily even when i am in doubt i can please myself by believing that i am being spiritual!!

musafir hoon yaron!

2007-01-25T00:56:00.000-08:00

just coz we know something can't be ( at least necessarily) true, does'ne stop us from continuing to imagine it. And ought we not? for what's life without a 'prince charming' and without 'time travel'.
i travel to parallel universes, mutiple life-worlds, every time i flavour a book, a movie, a meal, a conversation. and all that while being embodied in my atomic density. but then the mind travels far and wide, and my body is but an expression of it. my body is what i experience it as - both with the body as the means of this experience and an end.
i am history. for dont i carry in the strands of what bioscience calls memory, the impressions of most that has happened to humanity? i am taught history - no, histories- all the time. every moment is a realisation of pre-determined ends in a world whose ends are far from pre-determined. i make my own history. as do u. and so we all make history.
and if we carry history in our times, must we not set out on time travels. for if i could not escape my world ( if there is anything that is definitely my world) and visit others, i wud definitely be a small person. hardly a person. and if i were actually physically transported to another time, (and hence another 'world' - note the fact that time is what seems to seperate one world from another...), i will observe its history through my own as well. To actually live that history i'll have to be born with it. i'll only end up with adjustment complexes.
But stationed in the 'here', i will, anytime and everytime, travel through time. For what else am i but the accuulation of all times - occured and to come.

2006-12-25T04:22:00.000-08:00

...and hence it begins... on the day of Christmas!! Ho Ho Ho!!!