Fidelity

This piece has its origins in a conversation with a friend about his relationship/s.

I think, one, sex is overrated; two, sex complicates everything. He (the friend) said that the latter was from the movie, The Holiday. (whatever!) Anyways, like i was saying, sex complicates everything. Which means, the whole idea of fidelity is actually a completely screwed up construction of/in society. The point is, there can be nothing like fidelity if you were to follow whatever it stands for very strictly. fidelity creeps into any relationship only when one talks of it vis-a-vis any sexual relationship. i dont think people usually understand the notion of emotional fidelity. for instance, during the period of the renaissance, i.e. 15-16th century in italy, people did understand the notion of emotional infidelity, which is why they could "approve" of it. that is, for any one partner in a relationship to be emotionally involved with anyone else was alright. in other words, platonic love was allowed. platonic love - the love that binds you to a person emotionally but not physically/sexually. that means you can love someone but not kiss/sleep with him/her.

The point i am making is, if fidelity in our times stands for only sexual fidelity, i dont think i really approve of the whole idea. it sounds corny. you can love someone else emotionally but still be sleeping with the one you are supposedly in a relationship with. how does being sexually faithful to one mean anything at all if your emotions are not faithful to him/her. so the question is, why does society propagate the idea of fidelity only sexually. why do emotions not matter? i guess coz you cant be taken to court for your emotions. nobody can prove your emotions to be unfaithful (though i prefer the word faithless to unfaithful). so at the end of the day, it is only a validation of the legal system, and by extending the validation, of rational philosophy. i am beginning to believe Plato was more sensitive and perceptive about emotions than most of our philosophers!

To put it in a nutshell, sexual fidelity is zero without emotional fidelity. and emotional fidelity is much more precious to me than the sexual one.

Shall i tell you about my life, they say I'm a man of the world...
I cry out, I shatter glasses, get angry, break people with hockey sticks and cut them with knives...
I shatter and break, falling piece by piece, wishing for someone to just hold me to hold it altogether...
I crack their skulls, and cry out, I only wanted you to acknowledge my presence, my existence...
and to come back to reality after all this as if nothing's happened...

Future Disrupted

We Indians are complete idiots. We lack far-sightedness in almost everything we do.
Like female foeticide and infanticide.
Like BJP and Congress and so many other parties, which refuse everything one party comes up with only for the sake of opposition. Like the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Like the so many projects (usually infrastructural, but many others as well) that are left incomplete, abandoned only because governments changed.
Like the authorities of a college cemented the entire ground before the canteen so that there would be no dust flying about in the wind. Asses. Now dust collects in one huge layer on the cemented ground. And it does fly about. They should have made paths with cemented bricks, planted grass and shrubs in the area, and used the green patches for outdoor tables under umbrellas.
Like the University of Delhi Academic Council, which is arguing over whether or not to pay Rs 3000 stipend to M.Phil. students which the UGC (University Grants Commission) has allowed to encourage students to take up the course since they need teachers in the University. What has happened is that because of this indecision on the part of DU, the M.Phil. might be scrapped completely this academic year. Thus the University gets no more teachers, which was the problem that the whole thing started with in the first place.
Like the lack of scholarships and the likes granted to Ph.D. students in DU. Instead of being the producers of knowledge, we Indians are mere consumers of it. Usually students fly abroad to USA or UK or Australia to do their Ph.D.s, since India lacks in the educational sector vis-a-vis resources and organization. Thus the production of knowledge actually happens outside the country, no matter how bright the students. On top of that, DU has announced that departments cannot take in Ph.D. applications unless they come from students who have cleared the NET (National Eligibilty Test) alongwith a JRF (Junior Research Fellowship). The NET is a farce in itself, smirked at not only by students but also teachers. It is a completely irrelevant exam when it comes to assessing the ability and aptitude of aspiring university teachers. And in any case, how can an exam tell anyone how good a teacher is? The whole thing only promotes the concept behind the Indian educational sector, which is the virtue (or vice) of a sharp memory, not intelligence. What has basically happened is that applying for Ph.D. in DU has become more difficult, so let's just forget the whole idea of the production of knowledge!
And like this new start-up company I was working with last year. They wanted to make money, without caring about their employees. (Just like DU's least prized asset is its students.) So when I take the employees' grievances to the employers, I get to hear how they don't care, how the employees can leave if they want to since they will get new employees very easily in students who are looking to work part-time and are alright with getting peanuts for their work because they are desperate for some amount of money. The good thing is (ha!) that by the time I resigned, they were left only with three employees. Ten people resigned with me. (I was an editor handling a team of 13 writers.) So by the time I left, I hope I did some good to those who left with me, and bad to those employers!

Science... which kind?

It is very weird... this tingling sensation all over my skin.
I'm increasingly losing faith in the established idea of knowledge, which emerges from post-Enlightenment Europe; this notion of rationality, where 'reason' (a particular kind of) supersedes everything else, or is prioritised over all other forms of feelings and thought processes. For us, this whole western legacy of rationalised thinking began with colonisation and the arrival of the railways... the kind of thinking which bases itself on a rationale that rests on facts and figures.
Of course, in the course of history, people have realised how other knowledge systems have been discounted in the process of imperialism and colonisation, which involved almost the whole of the world until the beginning of the 21st century. (Well, the USA still carries on the tradition in a kind of neo-imperialism as we have very well seen in Vietnam and Iraq.) However, there are efforts being made to restore/preserve older/other systems of knowledge, yes, and that's great.
But that's all about the outer world. Returning to the tingling sensation all over my skin...
Guess I aint really losing faith in the system of 'rational' knowledge, but yes, am losing whatever it is that makes us prioritise it over other thoughts. Guess I aint making too much sense, but that's me alright! :) Once one of my aunts had asked why it is that we believe in whatever we can explain through science and nothing else. The conversation we were having was about how energies affect us; what we very commonly call 'nazar lagna'. I was trying to tell her that I can explain the presence of positive/negative energies/entities which we can’t see through science when she asked me this question. And it kind of shook me. Then, two of my friends experienced something negative in my house and it triggered the whole line of the same questions again. It was alright till I felt things, since I'm 'abnormal' anyway. But when two other people mention the same things without me having mentioned anything, you seriously begin to wonder if anything is wrong with you at all!
Why is it that tantra (in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy) has been neglected all through? Why is it that it can thrive only in forms manipulated for acceptance through reiki, yin-yang, vaastu, 'stress-relieving' meditation, ‘black magic’ and other such media? Why is it that they exist only on the fringes; on the margins of accepted social behaviour... of accepted knowledge systems? Isn’t it funny and weird that a world which believes in "energy can neither be created nor destroyed" and bases its knowledge systems on theorems such as this one should discount what people discovered centuries ago? No, I aint trying to be a conservative nativist, but am seriously beginning to question why and how our educational systems and our upbringing today is all about repressing instincts and feelings, and instead focusing on ‘reason’ (the head over the heart belief). Guess it has to do with the cut-throat competition in today’s world; well that is an excuse that can justify even murder today. Of course, you can go and talk about these repressed instincts and feelings to psychologists, etc, but I wonder why and how (of course Freud began the game) everything is usually interpreted in terms of repressed 'sexual/ity' issues.
Of course, these ideas pertaining to personal and cosmic energy still find expression in ‘modern’ life when people say things like, “you know, that woman does not give me good vibes”. The idea of a person emanating and another absorbing vibes, that is, vibrating energy, is one which is part of residual cultures with philosophies of energy. I have met and read many people who attribute such ideas to some kind of spirituality, which is (consciously or unconsciously) pitted against the idea of modernity. I guess this opposition emerges from the associations of modernity with a kind of ‘materiality’ (take into account the industrial revolution emerging from a philosophy of material facts and figures) and of spirituality with a kind of ‘soul/spirit’ thing. Also, if you look at it hard enough, there is a kind of private/public opposition embedded in the two. That is, materiality and modernity have always been associated with a kind of collectiveness, a ‘society’, a ‘modern civilization’. On the other hand, spirituality and other such things have always been associated with the personal and the individual, maybe yes, within a society, yet not as an unimportant/negligible part but as an active one, forming it.
Ah!
And yes, this tingling sensation all over my skin… I wonder if someone’s around me, whom I can’t see…! :)

Ah..

Rain comes pouring down in the falling night
Drowning all sounds except that of trees
Swaying to the rhythm of the roaring wind,
And lovers making love on a cloud's edge.
The moon peeping from behind the clouds
The sky wearing a silver crown
Hands and lips on bodies,
And the heat of passion nulling the cold weather.
The horizon disappearing from sight
Everything except love, lost in the night
Two bodies uniting in ecstasy,
And the earth meeting the sky...

Well..

In the darkness, a flash of lightening. Another virtual heaven crashing down. You are black- dead black- soaked with the soot of the darkness. Then- water falling down. In rain. In a waterfall. The lines of sharp rain hit your face. You look up, open your arms wide and revel in the rain; with the rain. The water falls down- breaking your bones. You look up and the momentum of the water jerks your head down cruelly.
In the darkness, you reach out, touch a leaf. Feel your eyes burn with its green at day. Your foot is lifted and then lowered onto a slimy stone. You slip. You get up. You are blind; a strip of cloth on your eyes; blinded by the darkness and you think you need to open your eyes. Need to see the light of day. Slowly the knot comes off and when the cloth falls, you see blinding light. You stand and wait as your eyes open with the gradual widening of the iris. What is it that you see then?
That the water was the splintered pieces...like needles — of a glass of a building that was bombed? That the leaf was an infant’s hand? That the stone was a corpse’s head?
That the band of cloth was your innocence?

Role of literature and literary analyst

How has Academics vis-a-vis humanities become a closed social sector/space in modern societies? It has been ‘acknowledged’ and ‘accepted’ as an oppositional form, precisely because it is in the realm of philosophy (vs. technology in modern societies), and because it has no power to subvert as it once did. Thus Edward Said and Raymond Williams can write against cultural hegemony and yet not be persecuted.
(Another analogy is the ‘freedom’ that the media ‘enjoys’ in democracies.) A major factor because of which cultural analysis has lost its power to subvert is its institution in modern society within the realm of the intelligentsia, a closed, self-sustaining (vis-a-vis ideas) group. True, Raymond Williams effected the rise of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism, and practitioners of both schools do connect the analysis of the past to their effect on the present, and true also that Said changed the way literary analysis looked at post-colonial texts as well as post-colonial society per se, but these changes have largely remained within the realm of the intelligentsia.
The intelligentsia, though it is almost always in opposition to the dominant culture has been incorporated into the fabric of the social structure so much so that it has lost its ’sting’, if i may say so. (After all, researches are ‘funded’; universities are owned (indirectly) by social groups.) Though the intelligentsia uses culture and society as text, it has no social or political power. So Barkha Dutt (We the People) can keep having her debates on debatable issues, and yes, people are listening, but is anything changing?
The question is, does the intelligentsia as a social group form a part of residual or emergent culture? It is instituted now. Are we able to subvert the hegemony of dominant cultures, or have we been incorporated into the social fabric to an extent that literary theory and criticism have lost their potential of subversion, which they once had? Or can we simplify the workings of society and say that even though academics with its philosophers and the intelligentsia remains a subversive force, the dominant culture is (and will always be) a stronger force? The point is, I think, that a literary critic, analyst, theorist is incomplete without a social activist function.

Make me Love it

i wish this world could be a better place.
better place for whom?
for everyone. for those walking on the streets without anything to wear, anything to eat, and anyone to take care of them.

where am i, i ask?

same question, different answers, at different points in time.

what have people made this life?
a life of ‘competition’, a life where you’ve to tread over another to find food for yourself. is this where we’ve come? where are we as a civilization? polluting the earth, sucking it dry of its juices. there are people dying in stinking hospitals, in gutters and on roads. look around.... this is what we call life in this world.
politics, they say no group of people can exist without having politics between them. relationship is politics. yes? no. relationships vis-a-vis power are constituted as politics.

you don’t know what Pink Floyd and Bob Marley stand for, they say. They stand for the fight against power, i say. that’s what they all stand for. not just power but its abuse as well. look at our politicians...making money, their pockets oozing money. this is what life is. this is what we’ve made of life. that children should commit suicide when they fail in exams or get compartments. that people kill their own for property. this is what we’ve made of life.

and then you come and ask, why are you so self-destructive? why do you hate the world so much?
what can i say? make me love it.

yes, there are people trying to repair the world, you’d say. oh yes! first screw it up and then fix it! great way to live. let a hundred thousand hundred and one die and then say...we’re trying to make it better. and then, why don’t you become a part of one such organisations that try to make the world a better place?
you mean, become a part of an organisation that’s in for making money in the name of social work. but not that i still didnt try. but they want experience. you need experience to make this world a better place, to help people. this is what we’ve made of the world.

help women...while they are getting raped and killed. take a rape victim to help her to a police station to lodge a complaint. where they look you up from head to toe and you think this guy is no better than the one who raped me, for they look at me with the same lascivious eyes. this is what the world is. pay them and they’ll lick your toes. or bring in some references to get any work done...to get food, to get a job. this is what life is all about. make me love it.

you’ve got an invite from this five-star hotel for dinner; yes, let’s go. as we drive down, i see life at its worst around me. when a beggar comes in asking for money, limbs frail, a baby in the arms, we turn them away saying there are people involved in this...they sit at the top and make money...it’s a scam. the money never goes to the beggar. this is what we’ve made of the world. and we still drive down with all our etiquettes smiling on our faces and eat a meagre meal for a fortune.
you say i hate the world, well, make me love it.

Freedom

Our relationship with freedom is a very ambiguous one; it is never easy to define its contours. We all like to believe we are free. After all we gained our independence in 1947, and we are a democratic state now!
However, many would say that in this fast changing world, we have become slaves of technology. It is easier to be free of technology that be free of the state, institutions, language, culture and society, and the media.
Right from the moment of our birth, we are entangled in the web of the state. We have an identity because of our Voter’s ID! Even our name marks our religion and caste. We can’t drive without a Driver’s Licence; also given to us (after many hours of queues) by the state. And if we do venture to drive without one, we have to suffer the consequences if caught!
Our entry into the world is also marked with one into language and culture. I’m sure many of us have heard how we can’t do something because our culture and society are ‘not like this’ and do not permit this. The hegemony of the English language is visible enough from the fact that some of us got hit on th head, or fined out of our pocket money, in our school for speaking in our local tongue. And of course, one’s value as an employee goes up if one knows English; one gets a more lucrative job then.
From school begins our time of ‘discipline’ while we study a course/syllabus decided for us by those ‘who know better’, and our answer scripts are marked/graded by those who ‘teach’ us. From the time we step into school, our freedom is tinted by what will be allowed us within these institutions. How rebellious can one be without getting expelled, and what kind of punishment do you suffer for bringing crackers at diwali time to school?
College is more fun of course. You can do a lot more than bring crackers, and grow within an institution, if it permits so. Yet we study a course — as they call it — ‘tailor-made’ for us, and we are trained in being productive members of society in terms of material intellectual wealth, just as we had been taught to be morally sound and responsible members of society.
The entertainment media has played an important role all this while through movies and cartoons, by bringing to us notions of family, love, crime, revenge — basically the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ — while also keeping us upto date with the fashion of the times. After all, we can choose our clothing from those available at the showrooms, or get it stitched according to the caliber of the tailor. The journalistic media has sought to condition our ideas of corruption and justice, and has brought to us either incomplete news, or news with an agenda at hand. Every newspaper is either left-wing or right-wing, choosing which (and whose) agenda they want to push.
By the time we are part of the productive section of society, we have learned to forget our instincts and impulses, and to give precedence to our work. We realise the responsibility attached to it, for, ‘work is worship’, I remember someone had taught us sometime in life. By the end of it all, we realise that all of our choices were decided beforehand, that somebody decided what we will study and learn, and unlearn, and what we will become — which is a part of society, and that too, a productive member of society.
Our freedom got lost somewhere on the way while we did what others decided for us. But then, maybe out freedom we lost the moment we enetered into the world, for, that entry was also the entry into the world of institutions, language, culture and society, the state and above all, other people’s expectations of us.