A Visit to Hans, being some notes on alterity and cinema

To Prashaste Sinha, 

“Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed.” 

* 

Cinema is such an integral part of much of urban human life that quite often we don’t concretely articulate what we might have to object to it. Like most experiences and commodities, engaging with alterities in this case too provides a range of valuable insights. 

First, the conditions of cinematic reception, the ways in which movie halls are constructed and prostituted – made available as part of the commodity market – easily become naturalised. Cinema, as the critic has noticed, is such an instantaneous form of artistic consumption that it engrosses and orients wholly towards its own internal dynamics much more than to the conditions of its immediate consumption. Given that, the module of consumption which offers greater tangible comfort in a basic sense of being finds easy acceptance and is readily integrated as natural and indispensible. 

Comfort, however, is not quite the objective universal. True, there is a sense in which comfort can be standardised and conceived in qualitative terms as a hierarchy of instant and utter sensual gratification, but the contextuality of the concept still coexists and so makes comfort also a matter of choice, perception and circumstance. Part of all of this, of course, is the economics of comfort, the cost of creating, sustaining and consolidating comfort – or comforts as the unacknowledged case usually is. 

The case of movie theatres seems somewhat similar. Comfort devolves on seating, on air conditioning, on screen, projection and sound quality respectively and on the availability of snacks. More than these tangibles, however, comfort is a corollary of the successful creation of an illusion of comfort, of the presentation of signs – from flooring and carpeting to sanitary fixtures – associated with comfort. Cinema is in any case a peculiar art form that has since its inception continuously reinvented itself to be ahistorically contemporaneous; not surprisingly, then, the visual paraphernalia of a sanitised modernity has more or less unquestioningly been an inherent part of its fashioning as the carrier and site of progressive prosperity. The movie theatre as much of Hindustan seems to know it today is precisely the consolidated product of these motifs and impetuses: we associate comfortable cinematic reception with the multiplex module not as much because that is comfortable in a comfort qua comfort sense – if such a sense does exist – but because it represents and fulfils aspirations of class and national mobility and the attendant desires for sanitised, instantly consumable entertainment. 

In such a scenario, the fact that entertainment, and the same form of entertainment, has different modules is an undesirable truth. A visit to Hans Cinema in the Azadpur area of the Capital reinforces as much. Hans is what in middle class colloquialisms is usually dismissed as a cheaparh hall, the bastion of Bhojpuri cinema frequented by destitutes and low income parts of the populace. The bourgeois visitor to Hans is at first more or less naturally struck with the exotic, and disturbing, otherness of the prospect. Class prejudices being too pervasive, the cheaparhness of Hans is, again, a factor of perceptual economics and all the attendant notions of comfort and respectability, cheapness itself being an essentially comparative qualification premised on fiscal dynamics. 

But even given the validity of these bias induced standards – for standards there must be, criticism being impossible without them – Hans is not cheaparh in many ways. The tickets are, to say the least, inexpensive, ranging from a maximum of thirty-five to a minimum of twenty. The movies are usually family dramas in the currently understood and appreciated stereotype of family dramas – romance, action, suspense, tragedy, union – and are mostly sourced from Bhojpuri and other allied, so-called regional industries. The hall itself is situated on the junction of the Grand Trunk Road with the city’s Inner Ring Road and stands opposite to Azadpur gaon and Azadpur industrial area and is flanked by high income Model Town residencies on one side and the service sector industries of Bara Bagh area on the other. It does not, from the outside, give an impression of neglect, but neither does it give the reassuring sense of unceasing maintenance of the quintessential multi-chain multiplex. 

The crowd too was of a socio-economic composition that can be thought of in similar terms. Most of the patrons seemed locals from the nearby gaon and slum cluster and seemed qualified, by their appearance, for censure from bourgeois eyes: one expected hooting, whistling, jeering and comment, just as one expected, mainly by the appearance of the theatre, semi-pornographic, crude cinema. Yet, such typical biases proved unfounded and the patrons seemed possessed of as much demeanour as those of any of your posh multiplexes. The movie, certainly simplistic in much of its technique, had as much skin and crassness as any of your regular, mainstream Hindustani cinema and the plot, nothing much to boast of, required as much willing suspension of disbelief as much of our conventional blockbusters. Most interestingly, the hall itself, the theatre from inside, was remarkably egalitarian in its structure, allowing, like the Elizabethan stage, all economic classes – vis-à-vis ticket purchasing capacity – the same, albeit gradated in terms of air conditioning and upholstery, access to the same entertainment. 

Of course, the very fact that demeanour and decency were considerations in this scenario, and at that considerations premised on distinct economics of being, indicates the continuance of biases even as they are challenged and interrogated on other planes. We tend, that is, to take such experiential economics as is out of the common currents of our analyses and engagement in ways indicative of our own biases and though that seems natural in many ways, it is nonetheless responsible for much avoidable injustice to peoples, places and perceptions. 

A visit to Hans demonstrated as much. The movie, nothing much to speak of in the untrained audience’s sense of judgement, was still entertaining in its own right; the hall, nothing much to speak of by bourgeois standards, was still comfortable in its own way. The own of here is significant: one judges by one’s own standards, but faced with alterity and difference one must consider one’s own loci and their fundamentals as much, if not more, than the other’s existential basis. We who are accustomed to the comfort economics of multiplex cinema must interrogate the basis of that comfort, the conditions on which it is provided and what that persuasively invisible process of availability entails: if other industries, as much regional – or national – as so-called Bollywood, can work and be consumed on more equitable basis, on basis reflective, even if unintentionally, of economics comparatively less discriminatory of class and the largely superficial paraphernalia of culture and taste, then there seems no convincing reason for the supposed mainstream to not operate similarly. 

That it does not indicates not as much the exigencies of recovery or the indispensability of comfort as the pervasive hold of extensive, unscrupulous profiteering on these forms of production, dissemination and consumption. In that sense, to be used to certain modules of consumption and to have sets ways of conceptualising socio-economic dynamics is perfectly alright, as, to a lesser degree, is holding on to them when faced with alterities. What we must endeavour when faced with such alterities, then, is to interrogate the basis of our own conditionings and rationalisations and see whether they themselves cannot be bettered in ways which would make them more equitable and oriented towards a communal sense of welfare and well-being, the community being, as the proverb goes, of all, for all and by all. Cinematic consumption has the potential to set such standards and Hans, even if unintentionally, leads the way.

Mosquitoes and Civilisation

The fact that there are mosquitoes in this room is a sign of a deep rooted civilisational malaise. It’s an absolute blot on humanity, a disgrace on our entire civilisational effort, a matter of deep shame for all of mankind that there are mosquitoes in this room.

Or perhaps it’s not a disgrace on our science, on our technological might which can atomise whole worlds, but a comment on existence itself. That there are mosquitoes in the same world as there are humans is a reminder not just of the ultimate animality of our species but also a strong comment on the undeniable animality of our civilisation.

Yes, the animality of our civilisation. After all, progressive civilisation as we’ve come to know it is based essentially and inextricably on unsustainable exploitation of resources and peoples. We are humans and have laptops and the internet not simply because one bloke long back had the ingenuity to tame lightning and direct it with wires but also because we have the mechanisms, tangible and intangible, to dig up mounds of soil to make miniscule little chips and blow up mountains and rocks to make slender, fine wires. All of that digging and blowing – and that is just a very, very general understatement of all that goes into laptops and the internet – is achieved at the expense of a variety of ideas and organisms, human and otherwise. To be civilised is to be fashionably brutish.

Of course, there is no one way of being civilised. Progressive, liberal, growth oriented civilisation is what we know the most and live through, but civilisation can be various states of being and relativity, various diverse modes and degrees of exploitation and engagement with ideas and objects and their respective interactions with each other. Yet, over the past hundred years or so our civilisations have been tending towards a singular, modular civilisation, towards a more or less composite, set way of engaging with alterities and otherness and of conceiving the self in relation to itself and to these alterities exterior to it.

The fact that despite jaalis there’re still mosquitoes in this room is indicative of the coming to age of this homogenising, super-civilisation. A civilisation which directs the gaze inwards, which gives agency but sequesters it to leave much of experience outside the pale of action: we are citizens of more or less democratic communities which engender notions of free will, free press and free speech, but democracy and freedom themselves are temporal subjectivities prone to subtle domestications.

It is these domestications which, ultimately, allow macchars a free reign in the troposphere. Contemporary politics gives us the freedom to romance, the access to schooling and the choice to gainful employment, but it increasingly presents all of these in such pleasant provisos as limit their exercise for progressively transparent, equitable modes of socio-economic engagement. Market logic dictates that focus should be the self and selfhood the primary, even exclusive, domain of action – what lies outside is the responsibility of the state, the communal, the increasingly atomised yet faceless collective.

The politics of mosquito repellent merchandise is an exemplary instance of such invisible yet potent diversification. The macchar-chaap coil and machine, the mosquito repellent cream, the fly zapper, all these are symbols of a larger, global impulse towards the barricading of interiors, of the polarisation of home and world in ways which put all possible premium on the former and relegate all possible responsibility towards the latter to the ethereal yet ever strengthening arm of the state. We can control only what goes on in our own little homes and so we have jaalis on our windows and subscribe eagerly to even stronger chemical combinations to kill those who invade our domestic castles. The state does its bit in conducting fumigation once in a while, disseminating information against mosquito breeding and conducting investigations on actions taken by citizens in their homes and so the responsibility of the opens is comfortably devolved onto agencies and factors outside individual control. Whether that responsibility is undertaken to the fullest and whether such a delegation of powers allows any significant scope to the public individual is, then, a matter of and for more or less self-limiting academic debate.

Be that as it may, one can’t deny that in its entirety individual control is a happy impossibility. Still, the very fact that individual agency needs, increasingly, to find legitimate outlet through institutionalised effort is reflective of the ways in which the private is obfuscating the public even as the public is restricting the private. As long as our civilisations move towards this ideal of civilisation, individual agency and endeavour will continue finding gainful realisation in the private and macchars, for all that our achievements and economies are worth, will continue finding safe haven in our homes.

On Rakhi

The simplest of decisions can be so difficult to execute.

Take rakhi for instance. I’ve been saying it for quite some time now, but this year I firmly decided to stop observing rakhi. A simple decision, one would think, involving no one but me and the sisters concerned. Just a matter of personal choice, of talking it out and being done with it.

If only.

A paternal outburst was expected, but that ‘twould come a full blown storm was the least of my expectations. Bitter accusations and criminations apart though, the incident proved interesting by throwing in sharp relief some of the many values and behavioural patterns which we tend to take for granted and which provide a comforting cushion to everyday existence – that, and the validity of our, or at least mine, questioning of them.

But first things first. Why did I want to stop observing rakhi? Well, simply because I think it’s an antiquated ritual which has lost its symbolic value in the present scenario. Of course, when I say the present scenario I mean my own milieu, the narrow circle I move in and not the world at large. Also, when I talk of the symbolic value of rakhi, I take the meaning understood and inculcated in most of us urban bourgeoisies – that rakhi, as a pan-cultural symbol common not just to the Hindu religion, is an observation and assertion of a brother’s duties to his sisters, to love and protect her from all harm.

Which is what’s problematic. Protect her from all harm? Of course, it’s not written anywhere, but that’s what’s implied, and being so includes almost everything possible, from bees to boyfriends, rats to rapists. I always say I’m a sorry excuse of a mard and that I manage to keep myself alive is enough without being specifically tasked with the protection of any female as a particular duty. If it’s bad, it’s bad for me as well as for the sisters and so it’s unfair to expect me to be a saviour of any sort for anybody. Got enough to fend for myself without bothering being ever-so-old-fashionedly chivalrous.

Sounds valid? That’s what I thought. It’s nice to put an end to these patriarchal, paternalistic rituals, isn’t it? As feminists of some sort of the other that’s what we ought to do too, I suppose. Put an end to patriarchal, paternalistic, phallocentric modes of being.

For what? Ay, for what? For what and what for?

In this specific case, given my narrow, urban, predominantly kayasth bourgeoisie circle, none of that bit about rakhi meaning protection is valid. Nobody expects brothers to protect sisters from harm in that bhaiya mere mode of the 70s; in particular, nobody expects me to bother much. It’s just a ritual shorn completely of its meaning, a collective habit which is just observed. Of course, it’s all very nice and proper to argue that even if the ritual’s meaning is not evoked its symbolism still stands and that to be enmeshed within that too is a sign of ideological indoctrination so that it’s still our responsibility to resist and change, but then, well, even that’s a bit facile, hmm?

How? Well, first and foremost, not only can the ritual not be taken in a particular way, but its symbolism too can change. There isn’t anything particular which can fix a meaning to something in any inherent manner, is there? If rakhi can mean paternalistic protection, it can also be just another bahana for meeting.

Which is what it’s taken as for the most. True, brotherly obligations are still part of the world we live in, but then those values are not in the least thrust upon us as writ in stone to-dos. As family one has certain obligations – and indeed, obligations which, given proper indoctrination, needn’t appear so – towards caring for and feeling, to varying, subjectively determined degrees, responsible for the welfare and well-being of family members and the brother-sister dynamic, if not exaggerated back into the 70s of Hindi cinema, is a legitimate part of them. That scratching the surface does indeed propel quite a few of us back there is also true, yes, but so is the fact that in quite a few cases it doesn’t. Besides, while it’s alright to argue in isolation that families are patriarchal and their idiom and basis phallocentric, one can’t but concede that with a little give and take, with a little adjustment – indoctrination and assimilation if you will – there’s nothing too bad about them. What, indeed, would we do without them? Do we have any alternatives to families? Not families as we know them, families as they have been, but families, groups of humans clustered together with a certain commonality of birth and relation – can we exist without being together?

We can. Not in the same way of course, but then not with the same, or even similar, basis. Humanity can be organised in a zillion other ways I suppose, but then all of those would be conscious efforts, would be structures systematically thought out and rationalised. We can have, with a supreme, well nigh impossible effort, a society structured on the basis of equality and justice – and equality and justice as some of us who bother about them today understand them – but then, well, is that even desirable?

Seriously, is a just and equal society even desirable? I’m all for comparatively just and comparatively equitable, but wholly so? A society where legality and the rhetoric of rationality would keep in check all truant desires, negate the possibility of violence and discrimination by intricate mechanisms of checks and balances and create, enforce, a sense of equality is just way too Orwellian for my comfort. Personal relations and subjectivity would, in such a world, be subsumed under the larger need for objectively defined equality. Men and women would be equal, yes, but what then all those gamut of passions and desires which make inter-sexual dynamics what they are today would no longer be valid. Just as it wouldn’t do to expect your female partner to cook your food (if you were a male i.e.), it would also not do to abuse someone just because they cheated on you. Truths tend to be ossified, but in a social setup guided wholly by rationally determined codes and legality that sort of ossification, backed by appropriate indoctrination, would be complete.

Which, even if it were not for an overwhelming taint of absolutism, would be stifling boring.

Wouldn’t it? I mean, who would want to live a life wholly determined by received notions of rationally acceptable behaviour? To be correct all the time, to always give a damn and never, ever be wrong, who would possibly want that? Of course we need safeguards to make sure we don’t all run amok, but isn’t doing that every now and then part of being human as we know it? Who would want to completely change that, to deny themselves the privilege, even if rare, of not caring – or pretending not to and doing all possible bosh in the guise? To not do as one is expected to but deliberately go against, to feel that sheer, perverse joy of going against and do so knowing, after all, that even though it’s not justified completely it is, given certain received circumcisions, understandable, even pardonable. All said and done, there might be an essence to things – that there needn’t be one, that for all our rationality we needn’t be so all the time, that we may let go and accept, critique that acceptance, nuance it, but let go, let be.

To think of rakhi just as a patriarchal custom and so condemn it is, then, to be naive in a way that that curious creature, the campus feminist, is. Yes, it is patriarchal and heavily consumeristic as a festival, but even as it is, to argue against it just on those grounds, grounds based on the logic of rationality and semantics, is to further deprive our lives of those moments of sparkling irrationality, unthinking-ness if I may, which the larger social framework of post-enlightenment global capital has already made suspect. In many ways one is and must be thankful for that, for the life we live is quite literally a creation of these ideas and ideals; but even so one cannot but be wary of the banishment of irrationality, of craziness and insanity, from life. The world, perhaps, is not half as crazy as it used to be a hundred or so years ago and one must be glad that it’s not, but if it were to wholly be not so – and regardless of the way, good or bad (again, these as understood by most today) – it would be not half as nice a place to live as it is now. Rakhi, as a ritual without meaning, a symbol sans its symbolism, is just one instance of the insanity we are intent on proving obsolete: it might be nice to prove it so and push it out of consciousness, but then whether it’ll be worth the effort is, and will be, open to continual contention.

Which is why, I suppose, it’s so difficult to execute the simplest of decisions.

*

Of course that bloke off Har-ki-paudi was right – in just this one instance, that this would materialise. This, then, to him.

An Appeal

to

Cinema Actors, Directors, Fashion Designers, Models, Painters and other such like Personalities

of

the Glamorous and Fashionable World

In the true and proper interests of humanity and considering the considerable influence you exercise on the public mind, this petitioner finds it fit to momentarily inflict his society onto your exalted selves and thus bring to your notice a matter of the most pressing significance – you. The masses have since time immemorial tended to emulate and with schemes of representation being what they are today, you are the models on which millions fashion themselves. This is all as it should be except for one miniscule matter – you are all too perfect.

Indeed, too perfect. You must all be commended for realising in form the perfection imagined by earlier generations in stone and on canvas, for maintaining, even to the perdition of your own clayey cages, that delicate beauty formerly the preserve only of the gods. In this, in sustaining long standing traditions of beauty and excellence you are to be praised and your efforts entrusted to the continual perusal of posterity. Yet, you are too perfect, too perfect.

One recommends your perfection, yet one cannot but condemn it. Condemn not as much the attainment of perfection but the very idea of perfection, of standards created to be achieved. For the standards you propagate and create are suspect at once to adoration and immediate emulation, to the eager, hungry eyes of the deprived, ordinary multitudes who look up to as veritable gods, models of perfection to strive for.

This being so, it will not be out of bound to assert that to these multitudes, to these adoring multitudes you have a responsibility, the responsibility of ensuring that the standards which you propagate and create are as inclusive as can be. As it is, beauty and perfection move in narrow bounds limited by archaic considerations of colour and form. It is up to you and you alone to enlarge these horizons and thus, doing so, open as yet unexplored vistas for the labouring masses: to allow them, i.e., not a standard but many standards, a multitude of choices for a multitude of people. For you, rightly, are mirrors of society, reflecting and representing human passions and forms in all their multifarious multitudes as well as inspiring all that you reflect in those from whom your baser matters are formed.

Therefore, as long as the perfection you portray remains ideal, idealistic, you shall continue inflicting an injustice upon your followers, upon those who look to you for inspiration and who live thwarted and deprived existences in their need to be more like their gods, you. Let us then, O directors, have actors of all forms; let us, O designers, have clothes of all types – and without the connotation of ridicule associated as of now with difference; let us, O painters, see muses of all sorts, not unattainable figures of fancy; finally, let us, O actors, see you put on some weight, be baggy and humanely human, not the animate mannequins you are now.

On Caste

I don’t think caste is such a bad thing. Of course, it’s problematic to say so, not the least because the very idiom in which we talk of caste and caste based discrimination is replete with connotations of derogation and extremism, but still, fact remains that caste based discrimination, both as a concept and as a social reality, is nuanced way beyond the narrow confines of the general understanding of the matter.

How? Well, first of all, discrimination in itself: what is so bad, so hugely taboo about discrimination? Like all others, the word means many things, some of them all at once at the same time. To argue that discriminate connotes discretion is, of course, not to argue in favour of caste based discrimination as we generally understand it to be, but it is still to add a spectrum of possibilities to the word, the process – and these not necessarily adverse to any particular person or persons’ welfare and well being. After all, discrimination, with all its paraphernalia of functionality and utility, with the implied sense of order and structure, is the foundational premise of nature and of humanity; not just this, discrimination is also the premise of equality, not just the cause which makes it desirable but also the basis on which it is conceived and organised – for, again, what is equality without an order, a structure, and how may these be had sans discrimination?

To argue that discrimination per se is bad, to talk thus in black and white, is then to be naively in the mould of the post-enlightenment, rationalised and so-called progressive realm of social aspiration, a discourse which has provided millions much food for thought and which continues, hypothetically at least, as the end of much of human activity today. Within this discourse equality and equity stand strong as the operative concepts which, though consistently interpreted differently, have yet inspired much idealism and fervour over the last two hundred or so years and still continue to be the stuff dreams of countless well-meaning, make-it-a-better-world people’s dreams are made of. Discrimination, being one of those things one likes to associate with feudalism and all that was, is and could be bad with humanity, naturally finds no place in the overall schemata of these dreams.

Yet, dreams too require a certain amount of discrimination; or, to put it otherwise, the stuff such equity-equality utopian dreams are made of too involves discrimination at some level. That level, indeed, may be such that causes the least possible discomfort or inconvenience to the least number of people, but the fact would remain that at the semantic level, it would be discrimination still.

Which, in short, is my point about caste based discrimination: when I say it’s not too bad, instead of referring to the active prejudice and handicap which it imposes and in a way necessitates, I think of its import, of what it means and has meant as a concept and as a way of life to all of us who are Hindu or of Hindu origin. I think of caste as a cultural artefact that has been the marker of so many of our Hindustani people’s identity.

This is where it gets tricky and, of course, subjective. I can say caste is not so bad because my baggage is not a bit as heavy as of those who’ve been at the receiving end. Of course, that it’s not and that I can think of caste without my blood boiling at the oppression enforced upon zillions has got something to do with both my placement in the hierarchy and my own inclinations, but that still doesn’t take away from the fact that my subjective opinion on and experience of the matter, presented so and not in any way claimed otherwise, is of note. Not, indeed, as of those who wish to end oppression and who in acting tangibly and working for the so-called greater good needs must couch their subjectivity on the matter in the objective idiom of the post-enlightenment and blah-blah society, as of one who, given a certain origin and placement, can afford to be against such discrimination as curtails the making available of equal opportunities to all and still not dismiss caste and caste based discrimination, having in doing so a certain nostalgia for those nuances of caste which make up one’s identity as both an individual and a community.

Yes, a certain nostalgia for caste.

Why not? The experiences of those who’ve suffered apparently and tangibly, though infinitely more worthy of comment when empowering the marginalised and considering programmes for social justice, cannot totally make redundant the experiences of those who have not to the same degree and manner. Which is why if I feel caste in the Hindu and Hindu origin context has a certain cultural capital and that the memories we have of ourselves as castes are endangered by discourses which completely seek to do away with it, then I have as much of a right to feel so as someone who, like me, is against caste based discrimination and who, unlike me, feels caste as a basis for social organisation, as a concept, as a memory, should be erased from our cultural consciousness for good. Indeed, I will perhaps be more justified in saying that. For starters, the ills of the past cannot be wished away and then, even if we were to somehow forget them, we cannot forget that evil for one is not evil for all. Not evil for all, yes, but also not evil in the way that makes evil subjective in a typical oppressor-oppressed relationship.

Which, ultimately, is my point on caste and caste based discrimination. It’s an evil and by far not a necessary evil; yet it is part of those forces which make so many of us what we are and being so, it constitutes an undeniably important part of our identities. Besides this, and which is a bit more important to me here, it provides the basis for so many of our cultural artefacts, particularly intangible artefacts which, as stories, anecdotes and proverbs, are threatened by the zealous condemnation of all those in favour of a caste free cultural consciousness. To condemn and work against active discrimination is all very right and proper; to negate the centrality of the cultural background of such discrimination too is important. But to totally deny and to wish to fully erase the memory of all is, in the final analysis, not just redundant – after all, if we don’t remember what our equality has been achieved against, then the achievement won’t seem worth half the effort – but also dangerously unfair to the rights of those who think otherwise.\

Which is why I say caste is not such a bad thing at all.

On Communalism

On Corruption

I really don’t get the ongoing hullabaloo over corruption. Agreed, scams and scandals of the sort are pretty unpleasant and don’t exactly reflect well on our integrity and honesty as a people, but then that’s it: they’re a loss to the exchequer and a disgrace to the people, but that’s just it. Certainly not worth the fuss that’s been made of them.

Seriously! I mean, just look at it, look at the way everybody’s reacting to it – and this time it’s not just the media – the so-called media properly, news channels for the most – but the people, the common, middle class citizenry as a whole. Everybody’s shaking their head, muttering prophecies of common, universal doom on this decadent age. The country, the people, they’re all irredeemably down in the pot, so much so that to some not even dictatorship, by large an abiding middle class dream, will save us from the throes of narrow selfishness and despair. The dog days, people say, have finally dawned upon us…

Dear oh dear, the dog days. We’ve all been mickeyed, yes, and fraudulence in public life plutoed beyond compare, but still, it’s just that. Not end of the world, not even end of the world as we know it.

Yes, yes, I know I have that tendency, that habit of smoothening rough ends, mitigating general ills and creating continuums of occurrences, happenstances and coincidences. I know I take it overboard at times and doing so dismiss the gravity of the present for the weighty balance of the past. I know all that, but regardless, I’ll still say that all these present instances of scam and corruption are, well, just instances of so, nothing as out of the ordinary as we’ve been making them out as.

I know the sort of objections most would have to this. The first would be money, that though much has been swindled before, such huge sums were never involved. This is almost like saying our swindlers are better cheats and we perhaps much more gullible than our great grandfathers, an argument to which I can only say that, all due respect to those gone by, perhaps the reason why such huge sums weren’t involved earlier would be that they just weren’t in currency. Think about it, the value of money has steadily increased over the decades so that what was much then is so pitiably small now. Really, the sums themselves have little to do with it: Shree 420 rolled in lakhs, but had he been on Lavasa’s board today he would just as well have played in a few thousands of them.

Now, I can see how this denies conscience and takes quite the dint out of morality. If a cheat’s a cheat and all that’s stopping him/her is only pure luck, then not only would quite a few frauds not have been detected but also the power of precept to guide would be but nil. In that case, the moral and ethical worth of humanity all through would be just the same, the variations being only compounds of the material circumstances of particular ages. The idea of moral and ethical degradation then becomes more or less redundant.

More or less. Like most of my ilk, I choose to believe there’s more to matter than mere materiality. If not degradation, then evolution at the very least: change, changes effected by the dynamics of materiality against certain inherent, passed notions.

Which, in other words, is saying that while the world seems so very much in the gutter now, it’s just more probable that it has always been there and that it just seems filthier because we ourselves have made it so.

Nothing, I say, nothing out of the ordinary.

These things keep happening. The past almost always seems noble and ever so virtuous; quite frankly it’s uber convenient to have it so too – a convenient, if somewhat inaccurate, sepia tinted benchmark against the follies and shortcomings of the present are easy to evaluate. Yet, in doing so we mustn’t loose perspective, that what seems is exactly what it is, an imposition, projection, and beyond that rife with tensions not too dissimilar to our own. When, therefore, we shake our head in disappointment and mutter at the corruption in public morals in our own degenerate dog days, then we may be just as sure that our great grandfathers’ fathers would’ve been doing the same. Corruption, moral bankruptcy, unethical behaviour – every age and generation is witness to deviances from the norm.

But that, that alone, is not my contention here. It’s a bit obvious and to say just that is to be just as much. My point here is that there’s really no need to make such a fuss about the whole affair not just because it’s been done in the past and so there’s nothing new about it, but because – which is more important – to take the matter thus is to further a hollow and redundant belief system which denies the humanity of human beings.

Big words, yes; yet, not without merit I hope. When we talk of the corrupting influence of a particular work, act or event, when we condemn a fraudster, a corrupt public servant or an unscrupulous business tycoon, then do we not take righteousness beyond its rightful bounds? Indulging thus, do we not reaffirm binaries, entrench them all the more rigorously, forcefully in consciousnesses both public and private – this even as we farther claim the unsaid private right to keep them distinct and separate? Isn’t being zealously moral and preachy ultimately a disservice to the very aims of morality and, well, preaching?

When we focus our gaze on a particular figure for laxity or corruption and thus condemn him/her, there is hidden in that condemnation the unsaid, unacknowledged awareness of our own weakness, the awareness of our being human. We’re all fallible, all of us human; saying this is not as much as condoning corruption or laxity in public or private duty as a natural, inevitable fallout of human nature as advocating an approach to or an understanding of duty and discrepancy as potentialities within all of us. If a certain minister manipulated contracts and regulations to siphon crores of public money in his own pocket, then are all those who so vigorously condemn the act completely sure of their own incorruptibility, of their ability to stand indomitable in face of similar temptations?

It’s an old idea, but essentially pertinent to the way we understand society and relate to each other. Being aware of one’s weaknesses and ready to grant others the same doesn’t, again, necessarily mean condoning those weaknesses when they take a form injurious to other beings; nor, indeed, does it mean disregarding the demands of justice as and when they arise in such cases. What I would have it taken as, instead, would be as an empowering consciousness, as inculcating an awareness which takes humanity and human nature as such, as ever prone to transgressions, and does not make a cathartic fetish of those over the top or too injurious to the public good. These deserve to be punished, unreservedly they deserve to be punished; yet, in carrying this out, in pressing for justice and even retribution, before we ourselves go overboard with righteousness, we, and particularly those who aren’t directly victims of the act(s), should remember that all of us are prone to the same.

Of course this is a bit problematic. Saying this, one cannot escape the implication that justice, retribution, equality, all of these dissolve and become ambiguous, arbitrary. But again, more or less: these are constructs, but they have the weight of history and common practice and cannot be wished away. Indeed, it’d be in our best interests, our interests as so-called civilised, civilising society, to keep them in some form or manner. The best thing, of course, is to realise these as such, as constructs, and work towards making them relevant overall in a manner beneficial to all beings.

Which, said otherwise, is saying all of us, particularly our elected representatives, would be better occupied in orienting ourselves thus than appeasing the lust for blood too much by creating a ruckus about corruption and degeneracy as we are now.

Notes on a Presidential Visit

Don’t you think the excitement over Obama’s latest India visit was a bit overdone, that it was hyped and, to some extent, naïve?

Of course, the visit was important and means a lot for not just US and India but a number of other nations as well. Business deals were agreed on, political commitments spelled and mutual niceties exchanged. All that was very prim and propah, all as it should be.

Yet, Obama is, well, just that, a man after all. All the media coverage about the most powerful man in the world landing, the most powerful man in the world shaking a leg, his oh so powerful wife shaking her booty, the ever so powerful couple paying respect to old Gandhi at his memorial…power, power, power. Yes, we all get it, America’s powerful, the American president’s powerful and can bully one and all. Still, that’s that and there is a line.

Not that the Americans themselves crossed it much this time. They had to bring in all their armoury to defend their powerful man, though technically I don’t see why they couldn’t trust him to the security which our own State accords its holy cows. He’d come here after all and he hadn’t really landed in Dantewada; shoot-outs happen, but I’m sure the Indian State had taken all precautions to ensure all were out and out of bounds. Powerful as he is, he could’ve trusted our capability of keeping our big-shots from harm. As for his car being this and that proof, his guard being so and so geared, his…well, if a man’s clever and really sets his heart on murder, not even the Americans can stop him. Certainly not an armada stationed not far off the coast for purposes just in case. Yes, Obama’s an important man and crucial for a lot of things a lot of places, but I really don’t see why his blokes had to send so much ammunition, much less an entire fleet, to keep him one piece. Surely our own Sardarji’s gear would’ve done?

But then, the very fact of Obama being important, powerful. I don’t quite know if they also do it so much where he comes from, but all the shrill rhetoric about the powerful man doing this and that smacked full-on of a feudal servitude that continues to characterise urban Indian discourse. Obama, the mighty god from across the seas, descends upon our shores in his mighty flying machine and goes about our roads in another, equally might wonder on wheels. Everything about Obama is grand, spectacular, epic: he’s the American President, America’s the most powerful state. We bow to thee, great American Obama!

Great American Obama. No, it’s not meant personally and I do think he’s a decent enough man, but really, most powerful man? Most powerful nation? Seriously? Was it just our media which went bonkers as usual or do the Americans too seriously believe their President’s the most powerful in the world? If they do, have they really given him the constitutional authority to be so? Is there really some console hidden in that room from which their President can play Rudra a la the nukes, no questions asked? I’m not ready to believe the Americans trust their President so much as to give him the power to arbitrate war and peace all on his own. If they have, as all the oh-so-powerful rhetoric – unwittingly? – implies, then so much so for their love of freedom and democracy: what is their President then but a tyrant, a big, powerful bully whose writ is law.

Great and American undoubtedly, but not Great American. Yet, that precisely is what our engagement with him seemed to imply. Thank heavens for the frigidity of foreign offices in general, for the way everybody else gushed one would’ve thought the gods themselves had walked the earth. Obama’s wife dances with Mumbai kids: oh, she’s so pretty, so nice, so fashionable! Obama gives a speech in Parliament: oh, he’s so witty, so astute, such a statesman! Yes, all of that is undeniably true: the missus is nice and fashionable, the mister an astute statesman; but the way we did it implied such condescension, that it was such a favour which the Obamas bestowed upon us all by being nice and human.

Of course, as a nation we don’t expect the mighty to descend to such lows: we expect favours to be coated with red tape and rarefy power to Meruvian heights – something of the sort is always expected and people like me ought to be immune to it. Still, one can’t but be irritated at repeated displays of such awe and fawning in front of foreigners. Think about it, was giving that rock such a big thing? Obama donates a piece of marble from some under-construction memorial for Martin Luther King and the keepers of Rajghat erupt in joy and pride. A piece of marble? Yes, personal choice, perfectly valid; valid too the privilege of such choice to a head of state. But seriously, twas just a rock: along with being President, Obama is also just another man.

Regardless, what irks most of all is the development rhetoric. “India is not rising”, quips Obama, “India has risen”. I’m sorry, but I refuse to subscribe to this rising-risen rhetoric: it presupposes a universality, an underlying consensus on a host of notions on developed and developing, advanced and backward. Western economic models make much of the world down and out, but then these models are quite essentially the result of systems of labour which got consolidated by exploiting the rest of the world in the first place. Applying parameters premised on these models to judge a whole people is co-opting them further into those very systems. When Obama says India has arrived, he puts India on a pedestal created historically and sustained still on exploitation and discrimination. One might excuse him for doing so – I’m sure he thinks twas very nice of him – but the sight of people all over India erupting for joy is, to say the least, as distastefully childish as can be: agreed as urban Indian bourgeoisies we’re as much American as Indian, but still, we don’t really need an Obama to tell us whether we’ve ‘arrived’ or not, do we?

Apparently not. Countless activists can cry themselves hoarse about environmental damage, economic disparity, communal tension, sexual harassment, caste violence and so on. But India’s rising nonetheless. At what cost? The lives of millions of voiceless Indians. Being an industrial and military ‘superpower’ a la the American way seems the only goal to work to; why humanity cannot survive peacefully otherwise is a matter not worth consideration…

Barack Obama’s a sensible, intelligent man. His visiting India was a nice enough gesture. Yet, all said and done, it was just a gesture: it merited a nuanced response, not the hysteria which it provoked in so many quarters.

On bonfires and the Quran

Notes on secularism and will
 

*

I don’t quite see why burning the Quran should be a problem.

I mean, of course, I can see how in the sense people made it out as: it’s not a particularly sensitive thing to do and none too sensible as well, displaying as it does a lack of tact and understanding which may be expected of all clear thinking, inclusive people. I can also see how it might’ve been a particularly inflammatory act given the volatile condition of the Islamic community the world over and everybody else’s relation to it. I can see all of that, yes, and understand it perfectly well.

What I don’t see is why this should be a problem.

After all, the Quran’s just a book. Of great value to billions around the globe, to Musalmans as well as others interested. But all things said and done, to other people, to atheists like me, just another book: of great cultural import, yes, but quite really another book on the shelf.

Also, by that very logic, by being a document of such great significance, something not likely to be diminished in importance by having a few of its countless copies burned – or shredded, or destroyed in any other manner. Islam’s not going to suffer even if thousands of the Quran are burned; I’m sure they make them at a much greater rate than they’re able to destroy them and so there’s not really going to be a paucity of them anytime soon. In any case, I’m sure this wasn’t quite the objection which so many other people had to the idea.

No, if I’m not wrong, what many people’s and States’ problem was that such an act would prove inflammatory and invite backlash in very many sundry ways from the Islamic community. The rhetoric, of course, was a bit different and couched quite often in what our comrades on the other side call the secularist jargon of the liberal democratic setup, of such a move being unacceptable within the secular ethos of modern society, but the import seems to be much the same all over: burning the Quran is dangerous, the mullahs might just burn some more things over.

Which is what my problem with it is.

First of all, it’s just stereotyping the Musalmans way too much as an overtly religious and touchy people bound to flare up at the slightest slight. Agreed, stereotypes are more or less based on factuality, but then to assume that burning the Quran would rock the heart of very Musalman is to force the point beyond belief. I mean, surely the Musalmans have better things to do that forth and fume and work themselves up to fury over a bunch of folk burning the text they venerate. Wouldn’t a majority of them be more concerned about making a living and fulfilling their needs and being tolerably good men and women? How does it really matter if a few of Qurans are burned? Allah’s word is going to remain just the same, a few paperbacks less or more!

That, and that burning things like the Quran might actually help. After all, good man Jones did have a point: the world’s not half as nice as it might’ve been because the Musalmans have very nicely bombed and gunned it up. Sitting there in the backwaters of Florida, there’s little the good Pastor can do anything about it – as little, perhaps, as any of us, us being everyday people more into food and love and exs than theology and restoring Eden on earth. He must’ve felt frustrated – and he has reason enough to – and so planned to do the only thing which could’ve taken his frustration out: burn the book which the Musalmans like the most. Splendidly cathartic idea as I see it: take the Quran, think it up as all of Islam rolled within its pages and then burn it away to glory! Wouldn’t he have felt good after it? Purged, as the word goes.

Is it right then to raise such a hullaballoo over a lone old man and some other friends burning a book which they consider emblematic of all the trouble in the world – and that, specially, when just another symbol, a mosque, was been concretised next to the site of which they most probably consider the greatest blow to their own idea of themselves as a nation by the self same community?

I think not.

I think Jones and Co. have as much a right to burn the Quran – or any other book for that matter – as anybody who buys a book, doesn’t like it and then proceeds to burn it in his/her own backyard. It’s juvenile of course: burning books doesn’t solve anything –indeed, if all of us started burning books as response to the various crises which beset us there wouldn’t be much literature left in any case – and it only adds on to pollution and creates an unnecessary fire hazard. Yet, it is undeniably cathartic and can help people channel their frustration to harmless little bonfires.

It’s only in the public eye, then, that such an act acquires greater weight than it merits. There’s only as much importance to a symbol as one attaches to it and given the paranoia against Islam, it’s but natural so much should’ve been attached to one small flare-up on the margins. Yet, that still doesn’t take away from the inexorable fact that a symbol’s a symbol and attaching too much importance to it unnecessarily and thus blowing things out of proportion only makes that same thing, that symbol, bigger than itself, an entity on its own. If this little would-be bonfire cum blackmail threatened became an international crisis of sorts with heads of various states and religious bodies expressing regret, then it’s more a reflection of the culpability of the general public in allowing itself to be misguided by a zealous media than of the addition of any new dimension to the problem at hand or, for that matter, its solution.

Of course, all that is well known in any case: the so-called general public usually gets misguided by the media, while so-called commentators sweat to expose this same. That isn’t the concern here. What to me is important right now is that while rightly condemning Jones’ plans, nobody on the public scene bothered to qualify their concern by acknowledging the difference between the extremist and everyday Musalman and that while condemning the plans nobody seemed to take cognizance of Jones’ right to a bonfire and, more importantly, to either propose a pro-active, holistic approach towards the alleviation of those conditions which first suggested a bonfire to a Jones and a plane crash to an Osama or at least initiate a sincere, all-party revaluation of existing strategies for the same.

Like good man Jones, I too have no real idea on how to go about doing this and while a part of me does idly itch for that tempting matchbox and those two hardbounds taking up space on my shelf, I cannot but desist. Not just because they cost good money and I wouldn’t want my mother to know I’ve been up to mischief again, but also because the way forward lies inescapably in – in spite of as well as along with bonfires – accepting various things, symbols, abstractions, peoples as they are and not in forging unity through fire and steel. If we are to be truly secular – and this is what I understand secular as, as accepting religion(s) though not necessarily conforming to it(them) – then one of the steps forward we need to take is this, to simultaneously release both publicly and privately peoples out of stereotypes and work towards negating the violent and violence inducing conditions which create those negative, negating stereotypes in the first place.

Which, to put it differently, is to say that we need to be able to come up to a situation where we would first be able to accept a bonfire of this sort as an expression of dissent and disapproval and then handle it without burning up anything else in the process.

On the Right to Education

The Government of India finally granted all Indians the right to be educated early this year. How charming! After sixty or so years of being so, the Indian people can finally demand to be educated: how perfectly charming!

What the heck are they going to do with it though?

Get educated, of course! Move on, move up in life; improve themselves by partaking of the fruit of knowledge and thus be part of India, India shining. Realise finally through learning, through the accumulated wisdom of ages institutionalised and discipline and hard work upheld the great middle class dream: roti-kapra-makaan finally in their jholi.

Or add on to the teeming ranks of the unemployed and underemployed educated.

What else? Employment opportunities have steadily increased in India, but not at such a rate as would keep pace with our population growth. If more of the people who’re born every day get greater access to education and manage to inch up towards matriculation and graduation do not at the same time get access to employment, leave alone fruitful employment, then one of the primary purposes of creating those opportunities would be defeated. Without employment that’d fulfil aspirations and enable those in whom these are generated to live the lifestyle which is held before them, education will only, as it continually has, become a contributor to social dissatisfaction and unrest, the first stepping stone to discontent with the way things are presently.

Of course, not to say that efforts are not being made to increase these, opportunities for employment i.e.: they are, and the expansion of industry in particularly the tertiary sector embodies this as nothing else; in the primary and secondary sector too industry is daily expanding and making more employment available. Yet, while the former caters largely to the urban and urbanising middle class and can offer on a scale of any size employment mostly in low to middle level jobs with few chances of promotion and fulfilment to all, the latter is, owing to increased mechanisation, actually taking away employment from hordes of the unskilled while creating a few jobs for the technically trained. With population growth showing no signs of stabilising and technological innovations changing the way we take to our environment and harness the resources therein, employment opportunities, at least in India, will not be able to keep pace with the demand for the same by the increasing numbers of low to medium level educated job seekers.

Education – education of any sort – in this case will not be able to ameliorate the situation. We train men and women to join the workforce; we train them professionally most of all, as experts in this field or that and expect them to add on to the economy’s growth as producers, processors or planners. We also train men and women as trainers, trainers not just of expertise but, more importantly, as educators, as trainers of the basics which would go on to necessitate training, professional or otherwise. Finally, educating people and then not having suitable jobs to employ them in incapacitates them for employment which they would’ve found otherwise: the great dream is to move up, move out from the hinterland to glittering urbanscapes and the chances of a farmer or farm hand’s college educated child voluntarily coming back to the family trade are rare.

The only way out in that case seems to be to not educate the masses. If we don’t want a social revolution of sorts add on to our miseries, then the best way to keep the status quo would be to do just that: not bring education to all.

Of course, there is another way: we, the so-called, supposed people, could all make a collective effort and channel development and economic growth more towards happiness and joy, towards containment rather than the attainment of particular GDP growth rates. We could innovate and create models of growth specific to our own socio-cultural environment and milieu, development which would not hanker for industry and technology just for their own sake; development which would recognise in entirety communality, the rights of people over resources not solely as private property but also as a common whole; development which would at least try to address the consumeristic market and defuse the inflation in demand brought about by it. We could do all this and much more, and so could we make work positively towards checking population growth and industrial development and affect a balance between these and with providing fulfilling employment in other sectors.

We could. Would we?

Much easier, I think, to promise the people education, to dangle before them shiny dreams and lull them on. Easier, I think, to give them some training, some learning, some knowledge: a hotchpotch, create a work force neither here nor there, leave it thus and then punish its deviance as betrayal.

Fulfilment is a birth right, something which cannot be dictated on by a State; education, certainly not higher, technical training, is not necessarily a prerequisite to it – even if it were to be couched so, then, again, it is a birth right, something whose bestowal by a State reeks only of a callous indifference which treats the interests of the State and of the people, the so-called masses at large, as separate and parallel. If we are to consider education as a right towards fulfilment, then we need to look beyond the myth of study as improvement and press for a holistic approach towards making it so.

The right will we quite wrong otherwise.

On Child Marriage: Or Arguments towards its Legalisation

The institution of marriage is recognised by a majority of humanity in almost all the hospitable parts of the globe as particularly conducive to the sustenance and propagation of the race in a manner as holistic as is humanly possible. Where it combines, it leaves a legacy to be carried forward; where it sunders, it creates a bridge that brings together. That matrimony has survived and that it will regardless of infidelity, prostitution, rape, violence and sundry other forms of emotional and psychosomatic attyachaar is proof enough of the vitality and vivacity of the force which keeps it so, and will in the ages to come.

To matrimony is wedded another institution, another great and abiding collection of men and their kind: the family. As a carrier of both virtù and virtue, the repository of culture, goodness and light and the bearer of the wisdom of generations, the accumulated worth of countless minds, the family is undoubtedly the single most vital instrument for the propagation of marriage and all its attendant virtues, baby diapers and paternity leave included. Marriage builds from and to family and family evolves to marriage, and so on and so forth goes the circle of life, one into the other, ying to yang and so all along.

Considering, therefore, the centrality of marriage, and family, to the current order of being and well nigh to the order of things yet to come, it may not, thus, be irrelevant to prescribe the same - the former; precursor to the latter - as vital and essential in all senses of the word to humans in all walks of life, age, sex and monthly income regardless. These conditions withstanding, it will not, then, be aimless to suggest and propose the same as particularly beneficial and, indeed, as altogether complementary to the holistic development and growth of that characteristic class of humans so loved and hated by others in all ages: adolescents.

Indeed, for though there be laws against the same in almost all major principalities of the world, it can, with good reason, be demonstrated that these same are more or less the monstrous outgrowths of certain obsolete, misguided and, at their best, eminently Puritanical notions of propriety and acceptable sexual behaviour for humans of that particular age, eleven or twelve to nineteen - the age group generally classed and classified as adolescent. There will, I know, be marked opposition to this idea and some may go as far as evoking morality and tradition against my name, but to them and the like I can only advise a more critical scrutiny into the ways of the world and the sundry manners in which they are constructed and presented, the forms of interaction which govern our kind’s interactions with each other and limit our horizon.

Any talk of law, therefore, must not preclude the factuality that laws too are societal constructs, of and by the chosen few in power over and above the rest in subservience and as such reflect, or at least attempt to, the necessities of that particular people in that age and time, these necessities in themselves being contingent upon these forces - the chosen few - which conspire to define, guide and ossify the course of history. As times change, so do these defining forces and the necessities which typify them and which they in turn seek to define: so, then, must the laws which attempt through a series of checks and regulations to consolidate and propagate these forces and necessities.

My arguments for the legalisation of child marriage are founded on precisely these premises: that matrimony as an abiding human institution aids the reproduction and sustenance of the race and that the laws which have come to govern its legality are based on outdated models of interaction, acceptability and intercourse. In opening this institution to those currently deemed not of age, society will not only put itself in greater sync with a tradition as old as civilisation and, by all means, closer to the customs of the animal world of which we humans are but more stylized and evolved members but also take yet another giant leap towards resolving so many of the concerns and debilitating humours which are supposed to stem from that fastidious and wayward sect of specialized homo sapiens, adolescents.

By allowing them to interact, mingle and freely consort with any that they choose, members of this clan will not only develop and discover affinities and respects early in the walk of life, but will also learn tolerance and temperance, those two qualities which any in the married state will readily acknowledge as its most crucial gifts and which in any case would do our temperamental adolescents a world of good. To those who are likely to question this proposal on grounds of health and body development and the adverse affects of early pregnancy on the same, may I be allowed to highlight the ready availability and widespread use of contraceptives, preventive and abortive, and of the culpability of adolescents to in any case submit to their passions - and often in a fashion altogether regrettable. Under the protective yoke of matrimony, these passions would be legalised and, under the expert and helpful guidance of guardians, given an acceptable outlet in as healthy a manner as possible.

This last is the final founding premise of the argument, that as young, hot-blooded souls most teenagers and adolescents are wont to acts of passions which in the current moral and ethical setup are looked down upon as regrettable and unfortunate. That these passions, classed commonly as love, find their way to fruition is not any more the stuff of Shakespeare and fairy tale romances: love does conquer all, though khaps, of course, are never too far behind. To guide these passions then, and to provide those victim to them an acceptable outlet, matrimony is the only true and tested answer, a solution that in the form of this modest proposal must be acceptable to all but the staunchest of the traditionalist liberals.

It must be. Indeed, for considering the significance those with a more orthodox bend of mind have steadily been gaining these past few decades within this secular, democratic and socialist republic of India, these needs must be adopted as the necessary compromise between them and the liberal. In any case, it must be readily acknowledged that given our existing setup, the so-called licentious and eminently promiscuous behaviour of our teenagers and adolescents merits no other solution that would not involve blood.

There is, of course, one that would absolve them of the guilt of sin that currently a la olde albatross hangs across their necks and clear the situation remarkably. Cutting through all those outdated norms and principles which in defense of a fabricated morality usurp the throne of tradition and uphold a restricting and well nigh ritualised mode of interaction and intercourse, society could move towards a more open and inclusive model of interaction wherein the existing biases against love and its demands would no longer be valid. The trappings of traditional restraint, upheld only as homage to a dead ideal, can all be cut through and free love - an idea not as new as it may seem - may be embraced without the hesitations and prejudices which have attended it so long. Hostility, violence and all other such jealousies contingent on convention and normatively can be slowly weeded out till they truly become what they are, relics of a order past its vitality. Love and its demands, emotional and physical, could be allowed their own course, limited by constraints purely of practicality: health and finance.

But this is only what could be. Given, yes, given our existing moral and ethical setup, we have, as this humble commentator has taken pains to expline, naught but one solution: marriage, a resolution at once traditional and modern. For the benefit of the race, then, and of futurity still to come, let this be the word to go by: marriage.

Semesters Sequestered

Subject since its inception to an abiding public controversy, the issue of the implementation of the semester system in Delhi University remains highly contentious with its barebones still shrouded in mystery. This is of note, for the contention is not just in its alleged “autocratic” implementation but also the manner in which the entire project was conceived and then, soon after, opposed by sections of the academic fraternity. Both betray disturbing trends in our policies for and politics of higher education in India.

Cleared by the University’s Academic Council last year, the semester system promises to radically alter our entire experience of education. Putting aside considerations of nostalgia and for tradition – which in a welfare state committed to holistic well being of its citizens should be of no mean significance – the most important question here is why change. Let this by no means be considered an invective against change: to do so would be naïve and against the current urgent need for inclusive socio-economic development retrograde. What is being asked instead is why change for the sake of change or, perhaps worse, for the sake of a top-heavy international model?

Indeed, not a little of the onus in this matter seems to be to bring our system at par with so-called international models of excellence. That what is international is more often than not Western is common knowledge. What we need to ask ourselves is whether we want to blindly exult in imitation of these models or combine these examples with our legacies and resources to create models of excellence – and excellence not as a superiority to be attained but as a quality specific to milieu – suited for our needs.

The answers need to come from all quarters. In voicing dissent DUTA does not represent all; it silences within even as it protests against autocracy from the top. Yes, the concerns it raises are for the most just, but the tone is too often of irritation at the prospect of increased workload – not, as one would’ve expected, regarding the quality of education. Of course the two are linked, but for that matter the administrative staff – or their union, for individual voices are seldom heard – have till now maintained a studied silence regarding the obvious increase in their workload. What is of greater concern, however, is the disquieting silence of DUSU and other student organisations on the matter. The University, at least ostensibly, is meant for students and not vice versa and in claiming to be their representatives these bodies should address all issues carrying the potential of impacting their education and training in a major way.

What is needed, therefore, is that we move away from a top-heavy, exclusive framework which institutionalises agency to and for a few functionaries to an inclusive and consensual model which takes into account all possible shareholders. The role of surveys and of direct interaction between shareholders in open debates is of no mean importance in this. Students’ Unions too need to be rejuvenated and herein those who claim to be liberals must engender and maintain a sustained campaign for giving student politics a pertinence which as of now it seems to be completely devoid of. Of course this will be no mean task and miracles cannot be expected, but still, given our current biases it has become imperative to make democracy more democratic. To do otherwise would only be to further a policy of estrangement and conflict.

The Way of the World

What is happening to the world! I mean, like heck! What the hell is wrong with things?

Okay, calm down! You want to know what went wrong, right? Like heck you do! Bless me poor soul, like heck I do too! Things fall apart, that’s what it has been!

It all started with M. M who for long had nursed passion for C. He’d told her some time back, yes, but basically it started with him. There we were, G and I, waiting for him by the ramp: at peace with the world, innocently denouncing some hapless teacher. Suddenly the discussion turned to him. To M. To his lamentable case. His fall. The very remarkable nature of this self-same fall. Of other falls. Of my fall. G’s fall. His shady past as he put it. ‘I can’t believe what I said! I’m like ashamed to even own up!’ Yes, quite shady; G talking about it to me of all people- shady indeed! Do all of us have some shades of grey to our past, some mushy cupids in our ivory cupboards?

It seems we do.

For what else am I to believe after old B’s tale? B who of all humanity I thought incapable of such concealment! It was she who bore it, so perfectly hidden from all eyes as to not exist at all! She, so open and trusty, her life such an open book, she put it deep down, so deep as to almost be out of reach for her own self! Such passion, such suffering, all disguised behind that varnished façade of easy familiarity! The more I listened, the more I thought; the more I thought, the more I pitied. I could sympathise with her, yes, but more- I could understand her pain, feel it through that old severed bond. A sad tale, yes, but with hope…

Alas no! I thought I was done for the day, done with the quota of shocks, surprises and falls. Not so, not so!

I came back home and got talking to M. We discussed C; he told me all about it- how, when, where, all of it. Then, talking of falls, he told me of P.

Good heavens! Even P! P, that sturdy, stoic rock of sense and solitude! That lofty personage, so aloof from the base passions of life, so a man on his own, an institution unto himself! P too had fallen, and long too had it been since the fall- long days, long weeks, long months, a long year perhaps…P fell, but not alone. As last man standing he took with him a whole system, an entire way of life: of affection, of camaraderie, of friendship.

Indeed, of friendship. For B apart, we four formed that old-fashioned type of gentlemanly friendship- all good chums, each for the other a fine chap. We lived on discussions, talks and debates, an exclusive life of ideas, ideals and ideologies. We talked of the world; the glories of civilisation, the follies of man, art and culture and all that is noble and high and true!

No more. The group lies broken, the loyalties dissolved. To each his secret heart, the call of love, the cry of desire. What of the world now? The world looses its charms when all your world gets condensed in a single person…

Does it always have to be this way though? Is there no escape? I used to think Sherlock Holmes the epitome of pure reason; pure objectivity untrammelled by the subjective fallacies of common humanity. Aloof, above, beyond- the unflinching rational man of world. But even he had a blind spot. There was always ‘the woman’, Irene Adler of ‘dubious and questionable memory’- she whose one photo he treasured above all gifts and rewards; she whose memory, perhaps, inspired so many of those mournful violin originals. Yes, there was a chink even in his armour, a fault line beneath even his own surface...

Yet, imagine…what if a person could really be out of the structure? Agreed, not as Bohemian as Holmes, not as misanthropic as Timon: somebody gentle, genial and wise, somewhat like the good Doctor without the wife. Someone above the lures of love and its manifold traps, in that calm, undisturbed serenity of perfect harmony. Not ascetic mind you! No, rather someone in and yet out of the system. Understanding love but unaffected by it: a heart not closed but open, so wide open as to remove all possibility of love. Affectionate, yet not desirous; caring, yet not covetous…

Not unless you’re god. Perfection.

And that we humans cannot be. It’s the only consistently human trait we’ve got, perfecting imperfection, loving desire, want, need…it’s a good thing perhaps. Certainly has been very nice for me! We cannot stop loving; even hatred stems from love. Love is universal.

And that is the way of the world.