PRELUDE
I firmly believed in love.
I was a fool.
Nina and I stumbled over each other at the gates of a bookstore. She was hurrying out while I was trudging in. We were crinkled embarrassingly into each others arms the next minute.
This is how we met.
Literature and film are strewn with such chance meetings. In my case it became a reality and I thought, Lady Luck finally smiled upon me.
We exchanged glances without deciphering the significance of such mutual compassionate looks. I was then preparing for a trip to Bangkok. A tedious regularity my office had forced upon me.
SCENE 1
The temperate coup de grace with Nina changed it all. Mutual exchanging of the glances went beyond imagination; we exchanged addresses, cell numbers, even the book that we bought from the bookstore. A single moment of exchanging looks turned into endless days of maddening euphoria.
The following weeks were brilliant. I flattered my colleagues telling them of false commitments in the family. They wondered what have come of me who otherwise treated family affairs with utter apathy. However, I was happy to get out of that graveyard, a less sophisticated media agency offering little to go on with my lavish life-style. My expenses were looked after by my grandfather’s lawyer, who meticulously arranged the demands of ours, the good for nothing grandchildren of Barrister Azizul Huq, now deceased.
SCENE 2
Sex never made us quiver.
Of course, I won’t say that I didn’t enjoy the buxom beauties popping up every now and then on those Indian channels. A self-proclaimed feminist, a friend of mine in the college often used to assault me with her proverbial diatribe “imprudent chauvinist”. The ladies from the virtual world twisted and turned with me every night in bed and I used to wake up in the middle of the night just to tame the firm virility disturbing my slumber.
I was an artful voyeur at best before I met Nina.
As for girls, it is repeatedly told; pretend to spend their entire life dodging the man they love. Sex, for most of them, is a way to beget children. Babies are born and perhaps the urge to revel dies out. I thought Nina might very well fit into that stereotypical bourgeoisie category.
Mythology often threatens to disrupt the bourgeoisie sexual aesthetics. As is the case with Hera and Zeus, failing to decide who derives the most pleasure from mating, summons Teiresias. He alleges if measured on the scale of pleasure, in the act of sex man has one measure to woman's nine. At this Hera becomes incensed and curses the hoary prophet with perpetual blindness. Man and women, it seems, is locked up in a mortal combat as to who wins the battle of the sexes. But the battle also extends as far as to who derives the most pleasure in love making.
I had never come closer to a girl before Nina. Closer with regard to the laws of attraction Nina was the first one who gave me a finicky feeling of being closer to something indestructibly attractive. I felt the wonders of conquering the unattainable other.
I hardly cared for her body. It was more of a Platonic passion. I never told Nina that we should smooch or if more outrageously put, sleep together. I was literally an apostle to St.Augustine in life and love. I gave up on my addiction for the cyber girls. She turned into my reticent obsession. I loved the times past midnight when she rang up and we talked till the silly prayers from the nearby mosque urging the faithful to bend their back signaled our parting for the day. We hung up the phone to go to bed and I started to dream about her soon. I wonder if she had done the same.
Each and everyday the phone conversations followed a linear momentum, assumed the structures of a parallelogram, confirmed to the hyperbolic regulations.
“Darling, you looked a goddess today”,
“I know…my looks are all for you”
“I think I found the love of my life”
I often heard her sniveling smiles at the other end when we delved ourselves completely into the passionate grammar and syntax of love.
She disappeared one day without any hint. Failing to locate her I was devastated and felt doomed. I had already earned a bad reputation in the office and now it seemed as if the whole sky came crashing down upon me. I hounded for her like a madman.
SCENE 3 as Interlude
“A trip to Thailand will help”, Hafiz argued the day when I disclosed her disappearance to him. Many of my male colleagues agreed to that. Perhaps they understood my situation best. When the one you love is gone it is very easy to let your oddities go loose. Ogle, ooze (getting an erection) and ovulate (wank) as vulgar Shams in the finance department put it while uttering his experiences spontaneously.
Love fades while you are away from your lover, he declared with a tepid certainty. But I just couldn’t fathom it at all. Mere physicality all the time, this is what they really prized. I just cannot be like those guys unaffected by the seamy sides of love. I felt our bumpy office was turning them into heartless beasts.
I repeatedly told myself that it was the worst of times and as I lost my life/love (the way I thought back then) desperate measures were the order of the day.
Either I had to sip one of those deadly pills to put an end to this psychic torment or I had to ward off her memory in style (by following Hafiz’s flashy prescription).
SCENE 4
I was decided. I had to go to those modern pleasure gardens to ward off her memory. In ancient India they had sumptuous pleasure gardens with cavorting courtesans. A few adept in Ars Erotica taught the rules of love while the courtesans willingly submitted themselves to put the lessons learned into practice. The modern version of the pleasure garden is overtly materialistic and regulated as per market economy. Boldly put, pleasure gardens declare the might of lust (just like harems did centuries ago).
I reached Bangkok after some hustling days in the office at Dhaka. I checked myself into a hotel and soon headed off to find ‘pleasure’ as hyenas scavenge for flesh. Soon I landed into an escort agency. I was sensing Nina memories will soon disappear for good.
And there I met Francoise, a lanky Frenchman Nina once introduced to me as her colleague.
“Bonjour”, his words seemed wry to me.
“Ça va”, I chuckled back in uneasy French.
He said he was surprised to see me in Thailand. Drawing out a visiting card he disappeared and I stood there grasping the importance of his petty gift. It was perhaps that of his funky business Nina told me about. I wondered how this visiting card will draw my lots.
I decided to pay the Frenchman a visit.
Françoise welcomed me heartily inside his mansion. It was a large villa, well-decorated inside with a pool at the rooftop. He showed me around.
“Today we are in here for a surprise”, he said all of a sudden. I was taken aback as he spoke in wily voice.
He offered me a drink. Today I was uneasy with him from the beginning and pretended religious conviction forbade me to drink. In no time, he was at his Dionysian best and began snorting as a pig.
“I’ll show you something you clean ass”, now words came fumbling out of him, “Lets go see the babes, them all crazi, luvelee, eeu’ll wuunt them.”
Like a lover in heat forcing her mate to bed he rushed through the staircases to a room from where tangy music was hollering outside. Françoise flung the door open and we thrusted ourselves into the room. And there I stood amidst the craziest of acts possible. In the most bizarre fashion few lady boys were entertaining a bunch of tourists, men and women included.
Bored I came outside the hotel putting paid to the frolics Francoise seemed to have reveled in. A while later he also came out. Seeing my melancholy mood he put his hands on mine. Though taken aback I guessed he will be uttering something about Nina. And he did.
“There is something I need to tell you boy”, he seemed procrastinating “I know I should have told you earlier but I just couldn’t. “
SCENE 5 as the End
I sensed melodrama might now anchor the shores of mine which up until now distanced away from me.
What Françoise uttered came out as revelations, “Nina is fighting for life for some weeks now in a hospital in Bangkok. She was send here by our employers’ trust as soon as the disease was diagnosed. There is no chance of survival. A genetic disease has swallowed her as the doctor said.”
I lost words for an instant but then with a frantic, lullaby-like voice told Francoise to take me to her. And the next couple of hours I waited with a pounding heart in the car while the burlesque Frenchman drove.
Soon I discovered myself in front of her hospital room where I was going to see her after months. With a tepid knock I entered her room. She saw me the moment I saw her.
But then what I did was something even more melodramatic. I scurried out the place with tears gushing forth. I bussed myself to a nearby town within hours and boarded a hotel overlooking the sea. I wandered the beach aimlessly with a death wish.
Somewhere in my heart, voices told, it’ll take me closer to Nina soon.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
God is dead, Marxism is undergoing crisis and Bangladesh is tottering
These are the multinationals, like General Motors and Nestle; these are the big industrial groups that weigh, on the monetary scale, much more than big countries like Egypt.
Ahmed Ben Bella
Since Nietzsche declared the death of God, Allah or the Over-Soul as Emerson puts it, the world has seen the fall of the Berlin Wall, the sad demise of communism, China’s rapid march towards market economy as well as the brisk rise of US militaristic imperialism. While the public tentatively accepted these changes the market gave rise to the vulgar cult of Madonna, Britney Spears and Anna Kournikova. Today the market encourage obscenity on one hand while on the other, states continually devise firm laws (both religious and secular) to impose subtle control on the population. Human dignity in this Mammon driven age has also sunk to the lowest. Societies are obsessed with the fetish, frolic and food. The states are forebodingly Kafkaesque more than ever. This situation is more relevant to the Third world countries.
Man’s greed for personal wealth, jealousy towards the Other and a primal urge to dominate gave rise to capitalism as early as the times of the Pharaoh. Feudalism soon took over. Renaissance and colonization established a deft capitalist system. Then came advanced industrial capitalism fuelling the economy of major Western European nations. All these countries had colonies scattered round the globe and their industries were fuelled by raw materials produced by the native labors of the colonies.
Marx had argued that communist revolution spearheaded by the working class (or the proletariat) was inevitable in advanced industrial nations. It was in the rational self-interest of that class to create such revolution and alter what Marx called the ‘relations of production’ to keep pace with the ‘means of production’. He felt people were led to misrecognize reality by false ideas which were put into circulation. Marxism did triumph and the 20th century saw the rise of egalitarian states as dreamt by previous visionaries. The capitalist forces stumbled across the globe giving rise to states based on the concept of communism.
Capitalist counter-revolutions were also sweeping the globe with the United States leading the party. Finally, religious fundamentalism (who are only but allies of capitalist ruling class) and CIA conspiracy aided by Pentagon made to survival difficult for the Leftist block. Of course, there were irregularities and corruption within the state system of the Communist bloc that made it difficult to survive. However, some communist nations still survive as pariah nations. Ferocious market economy has made the very conception of Communism obsolete. One might go as far to say that the former communist nations are themselves to blame since they had everything in common with the modern day military regimes (with censorship, totalitarianism, state-sponsored oppression). As military regimes around the world are the finest examples of the American policy of ‘regime change’, states were forcefully turned communistic by the Soviet Union. Former Czechoslovakia is the finest example of that.
People often fail to distinguish between Marx and Lenin. Antonio Gramsci comes to their aid distinguishing intellectuals as traditional and organic with the organic prioritized because he is able to change the society through revolution. Lenin was an organic intellectual who implemented Marxist theory while Marx remained an intellectual in the traditional sense. Of course, there is no denying the role Ché Guevara, Mao Tse-Tung or any other great revolutionaries in shaping the history of proletarian struggle. “Revolution” is what made Marx’s ideas come to reality. Such revolutionaries now only seem a mere shadow of the bygone century. What the 21st century has in store for us?
Bangladesh as many argues has experienced “revolution” with the present CG govt. taking control of the state after the political parties failed to hold on to a crippling democracy that ran for almost sixteen years. Bengalis fought a glorious war of liberation to free themselves from imperial hegemony, religious fundamentalism and oppression of the poor and helpless by the rich. But soon a system was erected to ensure a permanent military-bureaucratic exploitation of the masses. Is the current govt. at the helm is truly ‘revolutionary’? A rational mind will say it is not; a military-elitist (sushil samaj) takeover aided by the bourgeoisie can never be a revolution.
Moreover, democracy has been dormant for months now. As the days are galloping by it seems the naughty elite has finally got a firm grip upon the state. Begging for advice from the ADB and WB has become regularity. Privatization has become one of the ways to make the rich richer. And then there is the army to instill fear upon the public. The arrests of the DU teachers plainly serve as a better example.
True, our democracy failed partially due to the short-sighted politicians. They not only failed to bolster the parliament with hotly contested constructive debates but also indulged in rampant corruption irrespective of the ruling party or the opposition. The nation has failed to grasp the immense potential it has in terms of manpower as well as national wealth (gas, coal etc). The bully-boy BNP-Jamaat alliance govt. left no stones unturned to sell the gas and coal to the multinationals waiting to pounce upon the Third World wealth. The AL govt. was not an exception either. Now where will the Bangladeshi public go from here? Is there no way out for them or they are just stranded in the cul-de-sac of dirty oligarchic politics?
The questions asked will only be answered in the future. In the meantime, we can only hope for a similar U-turn taken by many Latin American rulers to lessen American hegemony. But that too seems impossible for us. The rise of Islamist neo-cons is an eerie sign. They have extended their complete support to the present state of the nation. It’s a heaven for them to promote religious laws to subjugate, oppress the masses further and they have grabbed their opportunity to the fullest only to serve the rulers’ interests. But the most beneficiary is the business community. That’s why syndicates still exist to raise price of the essentials. New multinationals are also flocking to exploit our weaknesses to the fullest. The beneficiaries again are the elite and a certain section of the growing middle-class. Others are just busy trifling and aimless loitering in the murky waters of globalization in the false hope of shaping their future.
The solution lies within the public. They must rise to explore their potential to the fullest. History is full of impetus with the recent Phulbari & Kansat uprising, the glories of 1969, 1971 and the 1990 uprising to bring an end to military dictatorship. This road to freedom is by no means easy. They must stand up to the ill motives of the elitists, religious fundamentalists and their perfect ally “the good for nothing bourgeoisie”. The military-bureaucratic forces might prove difficult to beat but their ignominy in the face of mass uprising is a part of the glorious history of mankind. The people must beat out the burden of history to re-create history itself.
Ahmed Ben Bella
Since Nietzsche declared the death of God, Allah or the Over-Soul as Emerson puts it, the world has seen the fall of the Berlin Wall, the sad demise of communism, China’s rapid march towards market economy as well as the brisk rise of US militaristic imperialism. While the public tentatively accepted these changes the market gave rise to the vulgar cult of Madonna, Britney Spears and Anna Kournikova. Today the market encourage obscenity on one hand while on the other, states continually devise firm laws (both religious and secular) to impose subtle control on the population. Human dignity in this Mammon driven age has also sunk to the lowest. Societies are obsessed with the fetish, frolic and food. The states are forebodingly Kafkaesque more than ever. This situation is more relevant to the Third world countries.
Man’s greed for personal wealth, jealousy towards the Other and a primal urge to dominate gave rise to capitalism as early as the times of the Pharaoh. Feudalism soon took over. Renaissance and colonization established a deft capitalist system. Then came advanced industrial capitalism fuelling the economy of major Western European nations. All these countries had colonies scattered round the globe and their industries were fuelled by raw materials produced by the native labors of the colonies.
Marx had argued that communist revolution spearheaded by the working class (or the proletariat) was inevitable in advanced industrial nations. It was in the rational self-interest of that class to create such revolution and alter what Marx called the ‘relations of production’ to keep pace with the ‘means of production’. He felt people were led to misrecognize reality by false ideas which were put into circulation. Marxism did triumph and the 20th century saw the rise of egalitarian states as dreamt by previous visionaries. The capitalist forces stumbled across the globe giving rise to states based on the concept of communism.
Capitalist counter-revolutions were also sweeping the globe with the United States leading the party. Finally, religious fundamentalism (who are only but allies of capitalist ruling class) and CIA conspiracy aided by Pentagon made to survival difficult for the Leftist block. Of course, there were irregularities and corruption within the state system of the Communist bloc that made it difficult to survive. However, some communist nations still survive as pariah nations. Ferocious market economy has made the very conception of Communism obsolete. One might go as far to say that the former communist nations are themselves to blame since they had everything in common with the modern day military regimes (with censorship, totalitarianism, state-sponsored oppression). As military regimes around the world are the finest examples of the American policy of ‘regime change’, states were forcefully turned communistic by the Soviet Union. Former Czechoslovakia is the finest example of that.
People often fail to distinguish between Marx and Lenin. Antonio Gramsci comes to their aid distinguishing intellectuals as traditional and organic with the organic prioritized because he is able to change the society through revolution. Lenin was an organic intellectual who implemented Marxist theory while Marx remained an intellectual in the traditional sense. Of course, there is no denying the role Ché Guevara, Mao Tse-Tung or any other great revolutionaries in shaping the history of proletarian struggle. “Revolution” is what made Marx’s ideas come to reality. Such revolutionaries now only seem a mere shadow of the bygone century. What the 21st century has in store for us?
Bangladesh as many argues has experienced “revolution” with the present CG govt. taking control of the state after the political parties failed to hold on to a crippling democracy that ran for almost sixteen years. Bengalis fought a glorious war of liberation to free themselves from imperial hegemony, religious fundamentalism and oppression of the poor and helpless by the rich. But soon a system was erected to ensure a permanent military-bureaucratic exploitation of the masses. Is the current govt. at the helm is truly ‘revolutionary’? A rational mind will say it is not; a military-elitist (sushil samaj) takeover aided by the bourgeoisie can never be a revolution.
Moreover, democracy has been dormant for months now. As the days are galloping by it seems the naughty elite has finally got a firm grip upon the state. Begging for advice from the ADB and WB has become regularity. Privatization has become one of the ways to make the rich richer. And then there is the army to instill fear upon the public. The arrests of the DU teachers plainly serve as a better example.
True, our democracy failed partially due to the short-sighted politicians. They not only failed to bolster the parliament with hotly contested constructive debates but also indulged in rampant corruption irrespective of the ruling party or the opposition. The nation has failed to grasp the immense potential it has in terms of manpower as well as national wealth (gas, coal etc). The bully-boy BNP-Jamaat alliance govt. left no stones unturned to sell the gas and coal to the multinationals waiting to pounce upon the Third World wealth. The AL govt. was not an exception either. Now where will the Bangladeshi public go from here? Is there no way out for them or they are just stranded in the cul-de-sac of dirty oligarchic politics?
The questions asked will only be answered in the future. In the meantime, we can only hope for a similar U-turn taken by many Latin American rulers to lessen American hegemony. But that too seems impossible for us. The rise of Islamist neo-cons is an eerie sign. They have extended their complete support to the present state of the nation. It’s a heaven for them to promote religious laws to subjugate, oppress the masses further and they have grabbed their opportunity to the fullest only to serve the rulers’ interests. But the most beneficiary is the business community. That’s why syndicates still exist to raise price of the essentials. New multinationals are also flocking to exploit our weaknesses to the fullest. The beneficiaries again are the elite and a certain section of the growing middle-class. Others are just busy trifling and aimless loitering in the murky waters of globalization in the false hope of shaping their future.
The solution lies within the public. They must rise to explore their potential to the fullest. History is full of impetus with the recent Phulbari & Kansat uprising, the glories of 1969, 1971 and the 1990 uprising to bring an end to military dictatorship. This road to freedom is by no means easy. They must stand up to the ill motives of the elitists, religious fundamentalists and their perfect ally “the good for nothing bourgeoisie”. The military-bureaucratic forces might prove difficult to beat but their ignominy in the face of mass uprising is a part of the glorious history of mankind. The people must beat out the burden of history to re-create history itself.
Friday, September 21, 2007
RAGE
Voila! The righteous and the religious (ISLAMISTS) have done it again. Bangladesh rally round the khatib to drive out the Satan (like they are driving out corruption, I wonder whether this means showing the brute force of military totalitarianism).
How the media & the conscientious people did went silent on such an issue as a state-perpetrated fatwa just as they did when teachers were arrested and jailed. Where on earth we see such phenomena these days except for our beloved muslim middle-eastern nations and their perfect ally fakistan. Well, curse me if I’m supporting the vandalism let loose days ago in the streets of Dhaka & hating dictatorial religious sentiments of muslims around the world.
We perfectly forget how we fought for a free, secular nation only to be ended up in a religio-centric nation. And we slaughtered the architect of our nation as his beloved Shonar Bangla turned out to be otherwise as opposed to many other muslim nations.
We are saying these days we will end up with a holy, corruption free, naïve Vatican like nation after the storm. Mullahs, bigots and divine priests (Bangla hobe afgan/amra hobo taleban) will thrive there. And as always an Orwellian Commission of truth will continue to stifle free-thinking. Perhaps we have played the George Bush blame game too much. Now it’s time to fix our own house.
How the media & the conscientious people did went silent on such an issue as a state-perpetrated fatwa just as they did when teachers were arrested and jailed. Where on earth we see such phenomena these days except for our beloved muslim middle-eastern nations and their perfect ally fakistan. Well, curse me if I’m supporting the vandalism let loose days ago in the streets of Dhaka & hating dictatorial religious sentiments of muslims around the world.
We perfectly forget how we fought for a free, secular nation only to be ended up in a religio-centric nation. And we slaughtered the architect of our nation as his beloved Shonar Bangla turned out to be otherwise as opposed to many other muslim nations.
We are saying these days we will end up with a holy, corruption free, naïve Vatican like nation after the storm. Mullahs, bigots and divine priests (Bangla hobe afgan/amra hobo taleban) will thrive there. And as always an Orwellian Commission of truth will continue to stifle free-thinking. Perhaps we have played the George Bush blame game too much. Now it’s time to fix our own house.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Life/death deconstructed
Motel Money Murder Madness
Let's change the mood from glad to sadness*
They thought of Gnostic sages, argued, squabbled
basked in the sun,
in that lush, topless retreat
of unusual loves, lovers.
Their love negated a=~b
An algebra equation of staggering proportions,
It was evil to fogy, insipid men,
libelers of The Satanic Verses.
Ideas, counter ideas
leads to Adam & Eve,
Lusty apples, the lost of Eden
Faust, the rebel Angel,
Brief dangling with the crisis
of existence drifted to W B Yeats
who observed the CENTER ‘decentred’,
oddities, things fall apart.
The lovers head back to hotel
Ending erudite exchanges at sunset
Letting love toys take over,
they sizzle later with sex.
Their sultry bodies quiver,
setting the virile East on fire.
* lines from Jim Morrison’s L.A Woman
Let's change the mood from glad to sadness*
They thought of Gnostic sages, argued, squabbled
basked in the sun,
in that lush, topless retreat
of unusual loves, lovers.
Their love negated a=~b
An algebra equation of staggering proportions,
It was evil to fogy, insipid men,
libelers of The Satanic Verses.
Ideas, counter ideas
leads to Adam & Eve,
Lusty apples, the lost of Eden
Faust, the rebel Angel,
Brief dangling with the crisis
of existence drifted to W B Yeats
who observed the CENTER ‘decentred’,
oddities, things fall apart.
The lovers head back to hotel
Ending erudite exchanges at sunset
Letting love toys take over,
they sizzle later with sex.
Their sultry bodies quiver,
setting the virile East on fire.
* lines from Jim Morrison’s L.A Woman
Rethinking Living In Sin*
Lesser a solution is
bursting into a pool of tears
when love goes to exile,
making a brief visit at last night’s dinner
signs of pleasure here and there.
But the dinner leftovers, the Persian shawl
bring back sadness,
as a beetle from the cupboard
mumbles to her the vagaries of life
without love, personified in the acts of her man,
who shrugs the mirror, scratches his unkempt beard
before rushing down the stairs for a cigarette.
* A poem by Adrienne Rich
bursting into a pool of tears
when love goes to exile,
making a brief visit at last night’s dinner
signs of pleasure here and there.
But the dinner leftovers, the Persian shawl
bring back sadness,
as a beetle from the cupboard
mumbles to her the vagaries of life
without love, personified in the acts of her man,
who shrugs the mirror, scratches his unkempt beard
before rushing down the stairs for a cigarette.
* A poem by Adrienne Rich
Dusky reflections
Walking the streets at dusk
is worth a discovery,
busy streets, crowded shops,
slurping sounds from the tea stalls
indigenous hill tracks maidens buying vegetables,
But at the crossroads when I stand
Just a few yards away from my house
tickling aroma of roasted steak
reminds me of T S Elliot’s poem
with windy winter night, steaks, leaves flying all over,
Failing to conjure up the poem
my lungs fills with acrid smoke of cigarette
my second of the night,
I grope my way home
A bitter, treacherous taste ruffles me up,
reminds of my foibles.
is worth a discovery,
busy streets, crowded shops,
slurping sounds from the tea stalls
indigenous hill tracks maidens buying vegetables,
But at the crossroads when I stand
Just a few yards away from my house
tickling aroma of roasted steak
reminds me of T S Elliot’s poem
with windy winter night, steaks, leaves flying all over,
Failing to conjure up the poem
my lungs fills with acrid smoke of cigarette
my second of the night,
I grope my way home
A bitter, treacherous taste ruffles me up,
reminds of my foibles.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Satanic overtures and the Miltonic Fall
The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and folw and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse. But let a third party enter the game—a visitor from another planet, for example, someone to ehom God says, “Thou shatl have dominion over ceature of all other stars”—and all at once taking Genesis for granted becomes problematical.
The Abrahamic religions are based on the myth of man’s fall from God’s realm. This quintessentially narcissistic, overtly patriarchal interpretation of man and the reason for his existence on earth still goes unchallenged and is believed by millions of ‘believers’ across the planet. Milton’s Paradise Lost is a literary version of this biblical story. The crucial aspect of the text is the conflict between God/Satan and the fall of man due to Original Sin {Disobeying God or the CENTER (Derrida) or the super-structure of Power (Foucault}. Derrida’s fierce criticism in the form of Déconstruction of such Logocentricism (God as the CENTER, binary oppositions-- good angel/bad angel Satan, Adam/Eve) gives the text a complete new perspective. Derrida’s “there is nothing but the text” is perfectly applicable to Paradise Lost. Since the religious implications of Paradise Lost and the Miltonic motives are based on Western humanistic ideas, a deconstructive reading of the text will prove the relativity of the traditional Semitic religious canon and the holy books illustrating Jean-Françoise Lyotard’s notion of ‘incredulity towards the metanarratives’. Freud, a key figure in the Western thought was also largely opposed to the Abrahamic religions, calling them a psychological disease. Despite such claims these Semitic ‘metanarratives’ are tending the hearts of millions of believers across the world.
Deconstructing Milton’s seminal text gives a very good idea of how overpowering religiosity has not only overshadowed the mythical quality of the conception of Original sin, the fall and the hardships faced by our first parents but also has been the center of violent debates and conflicts through ages. Deconstructive reading uncovers the unconscious rather than the conscious dimension of the text, all those things which its overt textuality glosses over or fails to recognize. Derrida’s own conception of deconstructive reading: “must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived by the writer, between what he commands and what he does not command of the patterns of the language that he uses…[It] attempts to make the not-seen accessible to sight” which has the same purport as Barbara Johnson’s notion of Deconstruction being closer to the word analysis rather than not synonymous with ‘destruction’ in The Critical Difference(1980) is perfectly applicable to Paradise Lost. J. A. Cuddon, in his Dictionary of Literary Terms asserts that in deconstruction—“a text can be read as saying something quite different from what it appears to be saying…it may be read as carrying a plurality of significance or as saying many different things which are fundamentally at variance with, contradictory to and subversive of what may be seen by criticism as a single ‘stable’ meaning”. Paradise Lost in this regard opens up a new dimension of textual analysis, also subverts the traditional religious belief inherent in the plot of the text establishing it as an elaborate mythology of staggering anthropological significance.
Mythologizing of Paradise Lost makes the text essentially humane and elevates it to the position of Iliad, Odyssey, even links it to the Eastern myths of Ramayana and Mahabharata and the sacred texts and belief system of different indigenous communities. It brings the supposed superiority of the Semitic monotheistic religions (Islam. Judaism, Christianity) down to earth, placing them in the same alters as the pagan religions of the past, Hinduism, Buddhism and other belief systems and metaphysical quests. Also it sheds some light on the clash among these Semitic religion despite the staggering commonality of ideas and rituals. Paradise Lost also speaks the voice of Foucault, proving that the superiority claimed by each of the Abrahamic religious traditions are nothing but constructs of the subtlest priests and religious scholars, erected to dominate, control and manifest Power through founding different parochial customs (Prayers, pilgrimage, sacrifice) that become Kantian categorical imperatives for its’ believers.
Freud, Milton and the monotheistic Semitic religions
Freud throughout his life grappled with the religion of Judaism. In Civilization and its Discontents (1930) he writes, “My deep engrossment in the Bible story (almost as soon as I learnt the art of reading) had as I recognized much later, an enduring effect upon the direction of my interests”. Discontent in Civilization begins with an examination of the idea that religion is based on an “oceanic feeling of connectedness.” He suggests that the narcissism that underlies this feeling is originally independent from religion, but gets retroactively utilized and interpreted by religious belief. Freud begins to examine the so-called religious experience more closely and finds that it may have traits similar to an obsessive neurosis, but in its essential features it is more akin to a psychotic structure. Another procedure operates more energetically and more thoroughly. It regards reality as the sole enemy and as the source of all suffering, with which it is impossible to live, so that one must break off all relations with it if one is to be in any way happy. The hermit turns his back on the world and will have no truck with it. But one can do more than that; one can try to re-create the world, to build up in its stead another world in which its most unbearable features are eliminated and replaced by others that are in conformity with one‘s own wishes. But whoever, in desperate defiance, sets out upon this path to happi¬ness will as a rule attain nothing. Reality is too strong for him. He becomes a madman, who for the most part finds no one to help him in carrying through his delusion. It is asserted, how¬ever, that each one of us behaves in some respect like a paranoiac, corrects some aspect of the world which is unbear¬able to him by the construction of a wish and introduces this delusion into reality. A special importance attaches to the case in which this attempt to procure a certainty of happiness and a protection against suffering through a delusional remoulding of reality is made by a considerable number of people in common. The religions of mankind must be classed among the mass¬-delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say, who shares a delusion ever recognize it as such.”
The frightening perspective that Freud opens within the above train of thought, is the generalization of psychotic structures: He discovers them underneath what we would call normal behavior and thinking, and as being far more pervasive than commonly thought. We create a delusional view of reality by introducing a wish into the real, and the mechanism of this alteration of reality remains unconscious. Thus he concludes religion to be a compulsive neurosis.
In Moses and monotheism (1937) accuses Moses of stealing from Pharaoh Akhenaten the unitary concept of god. He claims that religion is not an illusion, but rather an imaginative way of relating to and adapting our environment. Freud states his position clearly in the book: “How enviable, to those of us who are poor in faith, do those enquirers seem who are convinced of the existence of a Supreme Being! To that great Spirit the world offers no problems, for he himself created all its institutions! How comprehensive, how exhaustive and how definitive are the doctrines of believers compared with the laborious, paltry and fragmentary attempts at explanation which are the most we are able to achieve! The divine Spirit, which is itself the ideal of ethical perfection, has planted in men the knowledge of that ideal and, at the same time, the urge to assimilate their own nature to it. They perceive directly what is higher and nobler and what lower and more base. Their affective life is regulated in accordance with their distance from the ideal at any moment. When they approach to it – at their perihelion, as it were – they are brought high satisfaction; when – at their aphelion - they have become remote from it, the punishment is severe unpleasure. All of this is laid down so simply and unshakably. We can only regret that certain experiences in life and observations in the world make it impossible for us to accept the premises of the existence of such a Supreme Being. As though the world had not riddles enough, we are set the new problem of understanding how these other people have been able to acquire their belief in the Divine Being and whence that belief obtained its immense power, which overwhelms reason and science.”
Religion now becomes the ‘return of the repressed’…”hat children have experienced at the age of two and have not understood need never be remembered by them except in dreams; they may only come to know of it through psychoanalytic treatment. But at some later time it will break into their life with obsessional impulses, it will govern their actions, it will decide their sympathies and antipathies and will quite often determine their choice of a love-object., for which is so frequently impossible to find a rational basis. All the phenomena of the formation of the symptoms may justly be described as the ‘return of the repressed’”.
Derrida takes Freud’s psychoanalytic approach to task since it is a part of the humanist tradition in his lecture “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences” (1986). Derrida did put Freud’s account (his science, his speculation, his commentary, etc,) into the perspective of its own performance, its own playing and acting out. He denies the historicist cognitive Freudian method as simply an attempt to explain the ‘real’.
Whatever may be the post-structuralist view of Freud, his contributions to de-mythologize the dominant religions did play a vital part in the secularization of modern Europe as did Marx and Darwin.
Satan: Is he the hero?
William Blake, the poet-prophet of Romanticism stated that Milton was “of the Devil’s party” without knowing it”. Satan essential human qualities of intelligence, energy, courage, jealousy and the ability of suffer makes him a sympathetic character in Paradise Lost. His individuality is a refreshing aberration in a text bogged down otherwise in overbearing religiosity. He controls the events unfolding much more than does God himself. His bold declaration of non-servium dazzles the otherwise insipid Paradise Lost.
After the banishment from the Edenic power-structure Satan is burdened with an ‘inward grief’ that eventually leads to his resolution to inflict further pain to God’s realm. He comes to earth and is overwhelmed with the beauty on earth—
“Terrestrial heaven, danced round by other heavens
That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps
Light above light, for thee alone, as seems,
In thee concent’ring all their precious beams
Of sacred influence”.
Satan acknowledges God’s being the structural ‘centre’ of all and is distraught in his reversed state. Previously he was the most respected of the angels. But now he is whittled down to a mere bully boy. His bold decision not to bow to Adam though disbanded him has ushered a new dawn. God, the all-seeing, omnipresent, omnipotent Power, the designer of the Universe has been violated. Satan has incurred his wrath, a negative quality. The rebellious spirit procrastinates regarding his decision but there is no going back for him. God, the center in structural terms has been violated, tickled. He feels subconscious elation though the ‘surface meaning’ of the Miltonic text is hardly designed to show that. It shows his guilt, remorse and more importantly attempts to prove him an Evil (He is associated with the Seven Deadly Sins as was shown in the Morality Plays). Milton makes a big mistake at that.
Satan next goes on to achieve another feat. He challenges God’s idea that his creations Adam & Eve will not violate him. This concept is of greater contradiction. At one hand, our first parents had free-will and on the other, they were not supposed to split away from God’s careful eyes. So when Eve is tempted to the Tree of Knowledge, God is apparently vanished from the scene though the whole incident is taking place in his sublime architecture the Garden of Eden.
Just when Eve devours the fruit of the tree the ‘center’ declares a complete absence. Thus the oppositional conflict (Adam & Eve vs Satan) takes a new turn. Satan begins to threaten God’s position as the CENTER, scatters or “disseminates” the meaning or the significance of God. He threatens to become the CENTER, if not wholly in Book 9 of Paradise Lost where the fall occurs. The binary oppositions (Adam & Eve/Satan, Seven deadly sins/God’s order, Life/Death, Eden/Fall) which till now existed also come on the verge of dissolving. And it comes full circle when Adam also acts his part in the fiesta. After her fall Eve becomes concerned with the idea of Adam marrying ‘another Eve’. That must be prevented at any cost, if she is to die, Adam must die with her:
“So dear I love him, that with him all deaths
I could endure, without him live no life.”
What she is determined to forestall is the possibility of his living on without her. Her real motives have been turned inside out, and as she goes off to meet Adam it is as if a new character had suddenly entered the poem.
Adam is confronted with tricky arguments just as Eve was previously by Satan. The Tree of Knowledge she declares excitedly is not deadly at all. Its fruit has made her divine. For the first time in the poem their conversations have been conflated, devoid of naïveté. Adam, then, eats the apple not out of pride or ambition but, as the argument states, out of love. Thus, Milton insists that Adam is ‘in the transgression’ precisely because he is ‘not deceived’ as he sinned with eyes open. His wife was ‘by some fair appearing good surprised’ as he had warned her of the impending dangers. He willingly chooses what he already knows to be evil. Her failure as Milton showed is primarily intellectual and his moral. After Adams’ transgression they become aware of their sexuality and wallow in sex.—
“So said he, and forbore not glance or toy
Of amorous intent, well understood
Of Eve, whose eyes darted contagious fire.
Her hands he seized, and to a shady bank
Thick overhead, with verdant roof embowered
He led her, nothing loath; flowers were the couch,
Pansies, and violets, and asphodel,
And hyacinth, Earth’s freshest, softest lap.
There they their fill of love and love’s disport
Took largely, of their mutual guilt the seal,
The solace of their sin, till dewy sleep
Oppressed them, wearied with their amorous play”.
Freud would see it as a triumph of the Libido, the flaming of Eros while Satan rejoiced in his success in violating God’s precious creations. Textually, the CENTER is ‘decentred’ and ‘free play’ becomes a reality. The binary oppositions collapses as momentarily it seems both Adam & Eve/Satan are on the same plain, rejoicing in the guilty pleasures of violating the all-good, benevolent, omnipotent CENTER.
Milton’s Satan shows tremendous dexterity while tempting Eve to the tree of knowledge. He assumes the form of a serpent, immediately fascinating Eve to the utmost (Serpentine figures have sexual overtones). He speaks to Eve arguing that his ability to talk is a blessing of the Tree of Knowledge. It gives Eve apparent proof of the tree’s potency, it suggests the possibility of undergoing ‘proportional ascent’ herself, and it allows him to prepare the ground for his second deceptive trick; man’s alleged state of deprivation. Satan squabbles as if Adam & Eve are ‘low and ignorant’ and thus the apple becomes the ‘cure’. This idea of elevating to a superior state is ‘knowledge’ based and it would mean the accessibility to ‘power’ as defined by Foucault. Milton makes Satan approach in the most delicate fashion regarding the temptation of man. In other words, the possibility of possessing knowledge entails the possibility of ‘decentering’, disseminating or scattering of ‘knowledge’ which up until now is a copyright of God, the CENTER. Satan is also a victim to ‘return of the repressed’ in Paradise Lost, thus, unable to perceive how grand a task he has performed through revolting. He has created instability, questioned the order and as Milton’s creation has unsettled the entire history of Western thought that has closer ties to Semitic religious belief system based on hierarchial oppositions: good vs evil, mind vs matter, man vs woman, speech vs writing; in other words LOGOCENTRICISM. This makes him a hero in the post-modern sense.
Deconstructing the consequence of the fall
The fall of Adam & Eve is a tragedy as Milton intended it to be. But deconstruction calls into question Milton’s delineation of the conflict between fate and free-will. This tussle between fate/free-will is a significant in the Western thought pregnant with endless dichotomies and polarities. Adam alludes to this classical idea in Paradise Lost—
“But god left free the will; for what obeys
Reason is free; and reason he made right
But bid her well beware; and still erect
Lest by some fair appearing good surprised,
She dictate false, and misinform the will
To do what God expressly hath forbid”.
This argument arises when Eve mentions they should work separately. This shows the ‘latent’ independence of spirit within Eve. She has been subordinated by Adam (created from his ribs) as Milton intended a CENTER that has marginalized her to the ‘periphery’. As the fate/freewill opposition collapses at the moment of the fall Eve is elevated from the margins. This event necessarily entails the functioning of différance and deference within the text.
Milton’s Puritan ethics convinced him to illustrate Sophoclean motives of terror and pity through the text. Religion works through this method. It provokes terror and pity and catharsis through various accounts of biblical prophets and God’s wrath upon the non-believers and pagan of the past. But the most potent of them is the concept of Original Sin committed by Adam and Eve. They were thrown out of Eden, incurred hardship on earth and have given rise to these hordes of mortal men and women burdened with a propensity to sin and who will only be redeemed in the afterlife if they have lived a life according to the scriptures. Milton’s intention in Paradise Lost is nothing but establishing similar religious sentiments within the perimeter of conventional Western literary architecture.
The fall humanizes Adam & Eve as they have shed their Edenic skin on earth living like ordinary mortals. Adam accuses Eve of corrupting him just as any other man would while quarreling with his wife/friend. Eve’s subversive position at this moment in the text undergoes virulent criticism from the feminist. It was natural for Milton to show such patriarchal fervor as he was simply imitating the story of fall written in the Genesis. Examples of Adam’s irritations are many in Paradise Lost. He calls Eve a serpent and laments ‘without feminine’ such terrible consequences wouldn’t have occurred but forgets his own contribution in the fall. Eve pleads fervently and Adam forgives her. They learn to compromise and attain some form of Hegelian dialectic by synthesizing Adam’s uxoriousness and hot-temper with Eve’s free-spirited bend of mind. Thus the oppositional existence (man/woman) is crushed to the post-structuralist situation of a=~b. Moreover the structural existence of the text (God as the CENTER, Adam & Eve and Satan as binary oppositions) faces extinction with a new deconstructive existence with the difference between God and Satan coming to a non-existence, both becoming competitors of each other in luring mankind to their own realm as the Torah, Bible and Koran supposes. This is essentially a paradox/contradiction within the sacred texts since there must be a prevailing binary opposition, God/Satan, good/evil etc. Similarly Milton’s text destabilizes the oppositional qualities its author wanted to illustrate that gave rise to moments within the text when the adequacy of language itself as a medium of communication is called into question. Milton followed the tradition Western rule of privileging speech & presence over writing & absence. Thus Adam’s adumburation sticking to fate dominates Eve’s ‘latent’ free-will.
Just as Derrida finds both speech and writing are beginninglessly structured by difference and deference, a deconstructive reading of Paradise Lost entails similar results. Hence the dichotomy between fate/freewill ‘overlaps’ and swirls in the abyss of nothingness.
Freud and C S Jung calls religion a creation of the unconscious, and a creation of the deepest fears within human psyche which is often erased by the humanizing aspects of religion (again defined within the binary codes, good/bad, holy/evil, perennial/transitory, death/life) argued by religious scholars and propagandists and the Faith (again faith is privileged over no faith) of millions. Derrida in his commentary on Freud’s ‘mystery writing-pad’ shows that différance is present even in the structures of the unconscious ("Freud and the Scene of Writing,").In this regard the religious overtures of Paradise Lost creates textual disunity by giving rise to ‘aporia’. The textual deconstruction gives rise to an essential ‘instability’ that takes the debate of creation and fall further forward giving rise to a virtual motion within the grammatical disunities and discursive diatribes of the text. As a consequence, the dominance of “the metaphysics of presence” or speech-thought (the logos) is disrupted. Paradise Lost becomes a text hardly imploring the need to construct the ‘real’ since the ‘violent hierarchies’ (God/Satan, Eden/earth, Adam/Eve, man/woman) has been deconstructed.
CONCLUSION
The conflicts between differing religions and metaphysical beliefs have tormented the world since human histories have been written. More recently the clashes between Zionist Israel and their Semitic Palestinian cousins, the grotesque rise of Islamism overdriven to take Muslims to medieval times and racism/ xenophobia has its roots in religion. The 21st century also grapples with the possibility of a religious war though waged in oblique ways through rhetoric, media, academic practices and through aphorisms such as ‘the clash of civilizations’. Derrida argues in an interview after the September 11 incident that Europe has long come out of the darker days of religious clashes. In other words, Europe have wholeheartedly embraced the Enlightenment ethics (‘cogito, ergo sum’). Such argument takes back Derrida to structuralism or in a stage where he contradicts himself (Arguing Islamic fundamentalism necessarily representing the Other could thrust the whole Islamic world back to darkness). In fact, his arguments have a true basis since holding on to the ‘fundamentals’ of religion means going back to the CENTER. Derrida points out to the LOGOCENTRICISM at work within the Islamic thought process. However, Paradise Lost deconstructed shows us how such propensities are destroyed by the postmodern post-structuralist theories. Derrida points out Europe no longer is afraid of the ‘opium of the people’ as Marx put it, that is, it has become Secular. But one problem, Derrida fails to answer regarding the brutal European colonization which started since the 15th century and perhaps going on still now (more subtly). His Déconstruction though has the power to de-mythologize Paradise Lost, a text reminding the world of Europe’s muddled, violent, sectarian and narcissistic Christian times.
Milan Kundera, The Unbearbale Lightness of Being
The Abrahamic religions are based on the myth of man’s fall from God’s realm. This quintessentially narcissistic, overtly patriarchal interpretation of man and the reason for his existence on earth still goes unchallenged and is believed by millions of ‘believers’ across the planet. Milton’s Paradise Lost is a literary version of this biblical story. The crucial aspect of the text is the conflict between God/Satan and the fall of man due to Original Sin {Disobeying God or the CENTER (Derrida) or the super-structure of Power (Foucault}. Derrida’s fierce criticism in the form of Déconstruction of such Logocentricism (God as the CENTER, binary oppositions-- good angel/bad angel Satan, Adam/Eve) gives the text a complete new perspective. Derrida’s “there is nothing but the text” is perfectly applicable to Paradise Lost. Since the religious implications of Paradise Lost and the Miltonic motives are based on Western humanistic ideas, a deconstructive reading of the text will prove the relativity of the traditional Semitic religious canon and the holy books illustrating Jean-Françoise Lyotard’s notion of ‘incredulity towards the metanarratives’. Freud, a key figure in the Western thought was also largely opposed to the Abrahamic religions, calling them a psychological disease. Despite such claims these Semitic ‘metanarratives’ are tending the hearts of millions of believers across the world.
Deconstructing Milton’s seminal text gives a very good idea of how overpowering religiosity has not only overshadowed the mythical quality of the conception of Original sin, the fall and the hardships faced by our first parents but also has been the center of violent debates and conflicts through ages. Deconstructive reading uncovers the unconscious rather than the conscious dimension of the text, all those things which its overt textuality glosses over or fails to recognize. Derrida’s own conception of deconstructive reading: “must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived by the writer, between what he commands and what he does not command of the patterns of the language that he uses…[It] attempts to make the not-seen accessible to sight” which has the same purport as Barbara Johnson’s notion of Deconstruction being closer to the word analysis rather than not synonymous with ‘destruction’ in The Critical Difference(1980) is perfectly applicable to Paradise Lost. J. A. Cuddon, in his Dictionary of Literary Terms asserts that in deconstruction—“a text can be read as saying something quite different from what it appears to be saying…it may be read as carrying a plurality of significance or as saying many different things which are fundamentally at variance with, contradictory to and subversive of what may be seen by criticism as a single ‘stable’ meaning”. Paradise Lost in this regard opens up a new dimension of textual analysis, also subverts the traditional religious belief inherent in the plot of the text establishing it as an elaborate mythology of staggering anthropological significance.
Mythologizing of Paradise Lost makes the text essentially humane and elevates it to the position of Iliad, Odyssey, even links it to the Eastern myths of Ramayana and Mahabharata and the sacred texts and belief system of different indigenous communities. It brings the supposed superiority of the Semitic monotheistic religions (Islam. Judaism, Christianity) down to earth, placing them in the same alters as the pagan religions of the past, Hinduism, Buddhism and other belief systems and metaphysical quests. Also it sheds some light on the clash among these Semitic religion despite the staggering commonality of ideas and rituals. Paradise Lost also speaks the voice of Foucault, proving that the superiority claimed by each of the Abrahamic religious traditions are nothing but constructs of the subtlest priests and religious scholars, erected to dominate, control and manifest Power through founding different parochial customs (Prayers, pilgrimage, sacrifice) that become Kantian categorical imperatives for its’ believers.
Freud, Milton and the monotheistic Semitic religions
Freud throughout his life grappled with the religion of Judaism. In Civilization and its Discontents (1930) he writes, “My deep engrossment in the Bible story (almost as soon as I learnt the art of reading) had as I recognized much later, an enduring effect upon the direction of my interests”. Discontent in Civilization begins with an examination of the idea that religion is based on an “oceanic feeling of connectedness.” He suggests that the narcissism that underlies this feeling is originally independent from religion, but gets retroactively utilized and interpreted by religious belief. Freud begins to examine the so-called religious experience more closely and finds that it may have traits similar to an obsessive neurosis, but in its essential features it is more akin to a psychotic structure. Another procedure operates more energetically and more thoroughly. It regards reality as the sole enemy and as the source of all suffering, with which it is impossible to live, so that one must break off all relations with it if one is to be in any way happy. The hermit turns his back on the world and will have no truck with it. But one can do more than that; one can try to re-create the world, to build up in its stead another world in which its most unbearable features are eliminated and replaced by others that are in conformity with one‘s own wishes. But whoever, in desperate defiance, sets out upon this path to happi¬ness will as a rule attain nothing. Reality is too strong for him. He becomes a madman, who for the most part finds no one to help him in carrying through his delusion. It is asserted, how¬ever, that each one of us behaves in some respect like a paranoiac, corrects some aspect of the world which is unbear¬able to him by the construction of a wish and introduces this delusion into reality. A special importance attaches to the case in which this attempt to procure a certainty of happiness and a protection against suffering through a delusional remoulding of reality is made by a considerable number of people in common. The religions of mankind must be classed among the mass¬-delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say, who shares a delusion ever recognize it as such.”
The frightening perspective that Freud opens within the above train of thought, is the generalization of psychotic structures: He discovers them underneath what we would call normal behavior and thinking, and as being far more pervasive than commonly thought. We create a delusional view of reality by introducing a wish into the real, and the mechanism of this alteration of reality remains unconscious. Thus he concludes religion to be a compulsive neurosis.
In Moses and monotheism (1937) accuses Moses of stealing from Pharaoh Akhenaten the unitary concept of god. He claims that religion is not an illusion, but rather an imaginative way of relating to and adapting our environment. Freud states his position clearly in the book: “How enviable, to those of us who are poor in faith, do those enquirers seem who are convinced of the existence of a Supreme Being! To that great Spirit the world offers no problems, for he himself created all its institutions! How comprehensive, how exhaustive and how definitive are the doctrines of believers compared with the laborious, paltry and fragmentary attempts at explanation which are the most we are able to achieve! The divine Spirit, which is itself the ideal of ethical perfection, has planted in men the knowledge of that ideal and, at the same time, the urge to assimilate their own nature to it. They perceive directly what is higher and nobler and what lower and more base. Their affective life is regulated in accordance with their distance from the ideal at any moment. When they approach to it – at their perihelion, as it were – they are brought high satisfaction; when – at their aphelion - they have become remote from it, the punishment is severe unpleasure. All of this is laid down so simply and unshakably. We can only regret that certain experiences in life and observations in the world make it impossible for us to accept the premises of the existence of such a Supreme Being. As though the world had not riddles enough, we are set the new problem of understanding how these other people have been able to acquire their belief in the Divine Being and whence that belief obtained its immense power, which overwhelms reason and science.”
Religion now becomes the ‘return of the repressed’…”hat children have experienced at the age of two and have not understood need never be remembered by them except in dreams; they may only come to know of it through psychoanalytic treatment. But at some later time it will break into their life with obsessional impulses, it will govern their actions, it will decide their sympathies and antipathies and will quite often determine their choice of a love-object., for which is so frequently impossible to find a rational basis. All the phenomena of the formation of the symptoms may justly be described as the ‘return of the repressed’”.
Derrida takes Freud’s psychoanalytic approach to task since it is a part of the humanist tradition in his lecture “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences” (1986). Derrida did put Freud’s account (his science, his speculation, his commentary, etc,) into the perspective of its own performance, its own playing and acting out. He denies the historicist cognitive Freudian method as simply an attempt to explain the ‘real’.
Whatever may be the post-structuralist view of Freud, his contributions to de-mythologize the dominant religions did play a vital part in the secularization of modern Europe as did Marx and Darwin.
Satan: Is he the hero?
William Blake, the poet-prophet of Romanticism stated that Milton was “of the Devil’s party” without knowing it”. Satan essential human qualities of intelligence, energy, courage, jealousy and the ability of suffer makes him a sympathetic character in Paradise Lost. His individuality is a refreshing aberration in a text bogged down otherwise in overbearing religiosity. He controls the events unfolding much more than does God himself. His bold declaration of non-servium dazzles the otherwise insipid Paradise Lost.
After the banishment from the Edenic power-structure Satan is burdened with an ‘inward grief’ that eventually leads to his resolution to inflict further pain to God’s realm. He comes to earth and is overwhelmed with the beauty on earth—
“Terrestrial heaven, danced round by other heavens
That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps
Light above light, for thee alone, as seems,
In thee concent’ring all their precious beams
Of sacred influence”.
Satan acknowledges God’s being the structural ‘centre’ of all and is distraught in his reversed state. Previously he was the most respected of the angels. But now he is whittled down to a mere bully boy. His bold decision not to bow to Adam though disbanded him has ushered a new dawn. God, the all-seeing, omnipresent, omnipotent Power, the designer of the Universe has been violated. Satan has incurred his wrath, a negative quality. The rebellious spirit procrastinates regarding his decision but there is no going back for him. God, the center in structural terms has been violated, tickled. He feels subconscious elation though the ‘surface meaning’ of the Miltonic text is hardly designed to show that. It shows his guilt, remorse and more importantly attempts to prove him an Evil (He is associated with the Seven Deadly Sins as was shown in the Morality Plays). Milton makes a big mistake at that.
Satan next goes on to achieve another feat. He challenges God’s idea that his creations Adam & Eve will not violate him. This concept is of greater contradiction. At one hand, our first parents had free-will and on the other, they were not supposed to split away from God’s careful eyes. So when Eve is tempted to the Tree of Knowledge, God is apparently vanished from the scene though the whole incident is taking place in his sublime architecture the Garden of Eden.
Just when Eve devours the fruit of the tree the ‘center’ declares a complete absence. Thus the oppositional conflict (Adam & Eve vs Satan) takes a new turn. Satan begins to threaten God’s position as the CENTER, scatters or “disseminates” the meaning or the significance of God. He threatens to become the CENTER, if not wholly in Book 9 of Paradise Lost where the fall occurs. The binary oppositions (Adam & Eve/Satan, Seven deadly sins/God’s order, Life/Death, Eden/Fall) which till now existed also come on the verge of dissolving. And it comes full circle when Adam also acts his part in the fiesta. After her fall Eve becomes concerned with the idea of Adam marrying ‘another Eve’. That must be prevented at any cost, if she is to die, Adam must die with her:
“So dear I love him, that with him all deaths
I could endure, without him live no life.”
What she is determined to forestall is the possibility of his living on without her. Her real motives have been turned inside out, and as she goes off to meet Adam it is as if a new character had suddenly entered the poem.
Adam is confronted with tricky arguments just as Eve was previously by Satan. The Tree of Knowledge she declares excitedly is not deadly at all. Its fruit has made her divine. For the first time in the poem their conversations have been conflated, devoid of naïveté. Adam, then, eats the apple not out of pride or ambition but, as the argument states, out of love. Thus, Milton insists that Adam is ‘in the transgression’ precisely because he is ‘not deceived’ as he sinned with eyes open. His wife was ‘by some fair appearing good surprised’ as he had warned her of the impending dangers. He willingly chooses what he already knows to be evil. Her failure as Milton showed is primarily intellectual and his moral. After Adams’ transgression they become aware of their sexuality and wallow in sex.—
“So said he, and forbore not glance or toy
Of amorous intent, well understood
Of Eve, whose eyes darted contagious fire.
Her hands he seized, and to a shady bank
Thick overhead, with verdant roof embowered
He led her, nothing loath; flowers were the couch,
Pansies, and violets, and asphodel,
And hyacinth, Earth’s freshest, softest lap.
There they their fill of love and love’s disport
Took largely, of their mutual guilt the seal,
The solace of their sin, till dewy sleep
Oppressed them, wearied with their amorous play”.
Freud would see it as a triumph of the Libido, the flaming of Eros while Satan rejoiced in his success in violating God’s precious creations. Textually, the CENTER is ‘decentred’ and ‘free play’ becomes a reality. The binary oppositions collapses as momentarily it seems both Adam & Eve/Satan are on the same plain, rejoicing in the guilty pleasures of violating the all-good, benevolent, omnipotent CENTER.
Milton’s Satan shows tremendous dexterity while tempting Eve to the tree of knowledge. He assumes the form of a serpent, immediately fascinating Eve to the utmost (Serpentine figures have sexual overtones). He speaks to Eve arguing that his ability to talk is a blessing of the Tree of Knowledge. It gives Eve apparent proof of the tree’s potency, it suggests the possibility of undergoing ‘proportional ascent’ herself, and it allows him to prepare the ground for his second deceptive trick; man’s alleged state of deprivation. Satan squabbles as if Adam & Eve are ‘low and ignorant’ and thus the apple becomes the ‘cure’. This idea of elevating to a superior state is ‘knowledge’ based and it would mean the accessibility to ‘power’ as defined by Foucault. Milton makes Satan approach in the most delicate fashion regarding the temptation of man. In other words, the possibility of possessing knowledge entails the possibility of ‘decentering’, disseminating or scattering of ‘knowledge’ which up until now is a copyright of God, the CENTER. Satan is also a victim to ‘return of the repressed’ in Paradise Lost, thus, unable to perceive how grand a task he has performed through revolting. He has created instability, questioned the order and as Milton’s creation has unsettled the entire history of Western thought that has closer ties to Semitic religious belief system based on hierarchial oppositions: good vs evil, mind vs matter, man vs woman, speech vs writing; in other words LOGOCENTRICISM. This makes him a hero in the post-modern sense.
Deconstructing the consequence of the fall
The fall of Adam & Eve is a tragedy as Milton intended it to be. But deconstruction calls into question Milton’s delineation of the conflict between fate and free-will. This tussle between fate/free-will is a significant in the Western thought pregnant with endless dichotomies and polarities. Adam alludes to this classical idea in Paradise Lost—
“But god left free the will; for what obeys
Reason is free; and reason he made right
But bid her well beware; and still erect
Lest by some fair appearing good surprised,
She dictate false, and misinform the will
To do what God expressly hath forbid”.
This argument arises when Eve mentions they should work separately. This shows the ‘latent’ independence of spirit within Eve. She has been subordinated by Adam (created from his ribs) as Milton intended a CENTER that has marginalized her to the ‘periphery’. As the fate/freewill opposition collapses at the moment of the fall Eve is elevated from the margins. This event necessarily entails the functioning of différance and deference within the text.
Milton’s Puritan ethics convinced him to illustrate Sophoclean motives of terror and pity through the text. Religion works through this method. It provokes terror and pity and catharsis through various accounts of biblical prophets and God’s wrath upon the non-believers and pagan of the past. But the most potent of them is the concept of Original Sin committed by Adam and Eve. They were thrown out of Eden, incurred hardship on earth and have given rise to these hordes of mortal men and women burdened with a propensity to sin and who will only be redeemed in the afterlife if they have lived a life according to the scriptures. Milton’s intention in Paradise Lost is nothing but establishing similar religious sentiments within the perimeter of conventional Western literary architecture.
The fall humanizes Adam & Eve as they have shed their Edenic skin on earth living like ordinary mortals. Adam accuses Eve of corrupting him just as any other man would while quarreling with his wife/friend. Eve’s subversive position at this moment in the text undergoes virulent criticism from the feminist. It was natural for Milton to show such patriarchal fervor as he was simply imitating the story of fall written in the Genesis. Examples of Adam’s irritations are many in Paradise Lost. He calls Eve a serpent and laments ‘without feminine’ such terrible consequences wouldn’t have occurred but forgets his own contribution in the fall. Eve pleads fervently and Adam forgives her. They learn to compromise and attain some form of Hegelian dialectic by synthesizing Adam’s uxoriousness and hot-temper with Eve’s free-spirited bend of mind. Thus the oppositional existence (man/woman) is crushed to the post-structuralist situation of a=~b. Moreover the structural existence of the text (God as the CENTER, Adam & Eve and Satan as binary oppositions) faces extinction with a new deconstructive existence with the difference between God and Satan coming to a non-existence, both becoming competitors of each other in luring mankind to their own realm as the Torah, Bible and Koran supposes. This is essentially a paradox/contradiction within the sacred texts since there must be a prevailing binary opposition, God/Satan, good/evil etc. Similarly Milton’s text destabilizes the oppositional qualities its author wanted to illustrate that gave rise to moments within the text when the adequacy of language itself as a medium of communication is called into question. Milton followed the tradition Western rule of privileging speech & presence over writing & absence. Thus Adam’s adumburation sticking to fate dominates Eve’s ‘latent’ free-will.
Just as Derrida finds both speech and writing are beginninglessly structured by difference and deference, a deconstructive reading of Paradise Lost entails similar results. Hence the dichotomy between fate/freewill ‘overlaps’ and swirls in the abyss of nothingness.
Freud and C S Jung calls religion a creation of the unconscious, and a creation of the deepest fears within human psyche which is often erased by the humanizing aspects of religion (again defined within the binary codes, good/bad, holy/evil, perennial/transitory, death/life) argued by religious scholars and propagandists and the Faith (again faith is privileged over no faith) of millions. Derrida in his commentary on Freud’s ‘mystery writing-pad’ shows that différance is present even in the structures of the unconscious ("Freud and the Scene of Writing,").In this regard the religious overtures of Paradise Lost creates textual disunity by giving rise to ‘aporia’. The textual deconstruction gives rise to an essential ‘instability’ that takes the debate of creation and fall further forward giving rise to a virtual motion within the grammatical disunities and discursive diatribes of the text. As a consequence, the dominance of “the metaphysics of presence” or speech-thought (the logos) is disrupted. Paradise Lost becomes a text hardly imploring the need to construct the ‘real’ since the ‘violent hierarchies’ (God/Satan, Eden/earth, Adam/Eve, man/woman) has been deconstructed.
CONCLUSION
The conflicts between differing religions and metaphysical beliefs have tormented the world since human histories have been written. More recently the clashes between Zionist Israel and their Semitic Palestinian cousins, the grotesque rise of Islamism overdriven to take Muslims to medieval times and racism/ xenophobia has its roots in religion. The 21st century also grapples with the possibility of a religious war though waged in oblique ways through rhetoric, media, academic practices and through aphorisms such as ‘the clash of civilizations’. Derrida argues in an interview after the September 11 incident that Europe has long come out of the darker days of religious clashes. In other words, Europe have wholeheartedly embraced the Enlightenment ethics (‘cogito, ergo sum’). Such argument takes back Derrida to structuralism or in a stage where he contradicts himself (Arguing Islamic fundamentalism necessarily representing the Other could thrust the whole Islamic world back to darkness). In fact, his arguments have a true basis since holding on to the ‘fundamentals’ of religion means going back to the CENTER. Derrida points out to the LOGOCENTRICISM at work within the Islamic thought process. However, Paradise Lost deconstructed shows us how such propensities are destroyed by the postmodern post-structuralist theories. Derrida points out Europe no longer is afraid of the ‘opium of the people’ as Marx put it, that is, it has become Secular. But one problem, Derrida fails to answer regarding the brutal European colonization which started since the 15th century and perhaps going on still now (more subtly). His Déconstruction though has the power to de-mythologize Paradise Lost, a text reminding the world of Europe’s muddled, violent, sectarian and narcissistic Christian times.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Confused aphrodisiac
Sultry night,
A cold body lies,
Unkempt unaided
in a hospital morgue
Huddled in that gloomy building
are camera crews
Journalists
soaked wet in the monsoon rain,
Back in office
Sexy anchors air the verdict
on TV with less gaiety
as such special deaths
demand due declaration.
Carnal Pleasure meanwhile
ruffles bed-sheets of cavorting lovers;
feels a sudden urge to wank
on TV screens littered otherwise with tedious talk-shows.
A cold body lies,
Unkempt unaided
in a hospital morgue
Huddled in that gloomy building
are camera crews
Journalists
soaked wet in the monsoon rain,
Back in office
Sexy anchors air the verdict
on TV with less gaiety
as such special deaths
demand due declaration.
Carnal Pleasure meanwhile
ruffles bed-sheets of cavorting lovers;
feels a sudden urge to wank
on TV screens littered otherwise with tedious talk-shows.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Cricket in the Caribbean: From Colony to Capital
Two greatest pundits of West Indian cricket, C L R James and Michael Norman Manley put cricket on a high pedestal in their respective books Beyond a Boundary and History of West Indies Cricket. James is well-known as a Marxist post-colonial intellectual while the latter had an illustrious political career in his native Jamaica. Their books demonstrate how over the years, islands commonly known for sugar plantation, plantain and coffee produced a barrage of cricketing greats. Cricket is a crop of British colonization and in the beginning was fiercely controlled by the colonial elites. As colonial control waned local cricketing figures were produced in the form of the George Headleys and Learie Constantines. Finally through Frank Worrell’s beatification as the first ever black to lead the West Indies team, West Indian cricket sensed a new destiny. And more glories did follow with tales of greater heroes than the greatest of epics.
The cricketers of the fifties and sixties never craved for fame and money. These wholehearted cricketers enjoyed to be out there to give their best shot. When the di Maggios were making big bucks in the US playing baseball, these islanders remained true to their passion for cricket. But these brave sportsmen did a much nobler job in shaping up the identity of the Caribbean people. C L R James shows a gradual shift of power in Windies cricket since the colonial days in his book. White elitist domination gave away to the likes of Everton Weekes, Frank Worrell and Clyde Walcott, not to forget the fierce fast bowlers Wes Hall, Manny Martindale and Herman Griffith with the great all-rounder Learie Constantine. While Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, James’ scholarly neighbors made a more comprehensive splitting of the affects of imperial rule, C L R James meticulously dissects the impact of British rule in the sports. Cricket, he argues was a blessing under imperial constrictions that divided communities of different race and religion and belief in his native Trinidad.
But the fiercely contested cricket matches had another unintended effect on the Caribbean public, he observed. James argued how they learnt to fight though obliquely or allegorically—
“I haven’t the slightest doubt that the clash of race, caste and class did not retard but simulated West Indian cricket. I am equally certain that in those years’ social and political passions, denied normal outlets, and expressed themselves so fiercely in cricket (and other games) precisely because they were games”. (Beyond a Boundary)
The lessons learned from the cricket field were transposed into the field of politics. The blasé heroism of black West Indian cricketers rearticulated and transformed cricket into a symbol of West Indian nationhood. The West Indians saw in the supreme batsmanship of George Headley or the electrifying all-round capacities of Sir Learie Constantine, their hope of a new, self-determined nationhood.
The 1970s & 1980s were the Golden Age of West Indian cricket. Supreme domination was the password for a team consisting of Greenidge, Haynes, Lloyd, Viv Richards, Kalicharan when it came to spilling over the scoreboard with runs while Michael holding, Joel Garner, Malcom Marshall and Colin Croft hunted in pack proving deadlier than the deadliest of hunting dogs to their opponents. The Windies won two consecutive world cups while narrowly losing to India in the third one in 1983. They were more than devastating in test cricket, demolishing opponents for the greater part of the seventies and eighties. Like their predecessors they were faithful servants to the spirit of Calypso cricket.
Another important aspect of cricket was that it enabled different nations to jell together under the iconic name of West Indies in a world fiercely divided on political grounds. In the West Indies team Viv Richards and Andy Roberts hailed from Antigua while Garner, Greenidge, Marshall, Haynes were native Barbadians, Holding and Dujon Jamaicans while Lloyd came from Guyana. Other small island nations were duly represented given the merit of the players.
But these great sportsmen were underpaid yet they had a dogged allegiance to West Indian cricketing glory that goes back to as early as 1890s. James in his book has not included the saga of the warriors led by Lloyd but he sees in Headley, Constantine and perhaps in the pre-industrial father of cricket W G Grace a biblical sign that makes him to argue that cricket shared aesthetic properties with the so-called ‘high’ art forms of classical music, ballet and drama, as well as with the visual fine arts. Given the articulation of Lloyd’s men James rightfully embarks on a supreme theory.
The aesthetic value has gone down the drains with the waning of commitment and spirit since the 1990s. The cricket administration in the Windies has not given proper attention to nurture young talents when there were too many distractions in the form of American sports. Intra-nation feud was a recurrent incident that reared its ugly head and then there was a lack of funding necessary to sustain the game in a changing world. The team failed to make any significant impact in the one day arena and suffered heavy defeats in test matches with constant whitewash by the Aussies in the last few years. Ambrose, Walsh, Lara, Hooper and to an extent Chanderpaul still held sway at times but their efforts often proved insignificant. All these players have retired and now it seems Gayle, Samuels, Sarwan and Edwards would never be able to repeat the feats of their predecessors. International Cricket for them has become a Sisyphean struggle.
True, the team which was a proud beholder of Walsh, Ambrose, Lara and Hooper until recently also suffers because youngsters in the Caribbean are more into NBA and EPL (English premier league), vending machines in a truly post-modern sense. The international governing body of cricket can also be held responsible for the debacle. The cricketing world is cashing on in 20/20 and Kwik cricket.
C L R James would have been profoundly saddened if he had lived to this day. The decline would have pained him but the vulgar involvement of corporate companies would have repulsed him. And so would have Norman Manley who led the anti-colonial struggle in the earlier days of Jamaican anti-colonial movement.
The cricketers of the fifties and sixties never craved for fame and money. These wholehearted cricketers enjoyed to be out there to give their best shot. When the di Maggios were making big bucks in the US playing baseball, these islanders remained true to their passion for cricket. But these brave sportsmen did a much nobler job in shaping up the identity of the Caribbean people. C L R James shows a gradual shift of power in Windies cricket since the colonial days in his book. White elitist domination gave away to the likes of Everton Weekes, Frank Worrell and Clyde Walcott, not to forget the fierce fast bowlers Wes Hall, Manny Martindale and Herman Griffith with the great all-rounder Learie Constantine. While Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, James’ scholarly neighbors made a more comprehensive splitting of the affects of imperial rule, C L R James meticulously dissects the impact of British rule in the sports. Cricket, he argues was a blessing under imperial constrictions that divided communities of different race and religion and belief in his native Trinidad.
But the fiercely contested cricket matches had another unintended effect on the Caribbean public, he observed. James argued how they learnt to fight though obliquely or allegorically—
“I haven’t the slightest doubt that the clash of race, caste and class did not retard but simulated West Indian cricket. I am equally certain that in those years’ social and political passions, denied normal outlets, and expressed themselves so fiercely in cricket (and other games) precisely because they were games”. (Beyond a Boundary)
The lessons learned from the cricket field were transposed into the field of politics. The blasé heroism of black West Indian cricketers rearticulated and transformed cricket into a symbol of West Indian nationhood. The West Indians saw in the supreme batsmanship of George Headley or the electrifying all-round capacities of Sir Learie Constantine, their hope of a new, self-determined nationhood.
The 1970s & 1980s were the Golden Age of West Indian cricket. Supreme domination was the password for a team consisting of Greenidge, Haynes, Lloyd, Viv Richards, Kalicharan when it came to spilling over the scoreboard with runs while Michael holding, Joel Garner, Malcom Marshall and Colin Croft hunted in pack proving deadlier than the deadliest of hunting dogs to their opponents. The Windies won two consecutive world cups while narrowly losing to India in the third one in 1983. They were more than devastating in test cricket, demolishing opponents for the greater part of the seventies and eighties. Like their predecessors they were faithful servants to the spirit of Calypso cricket.
Another important aspect of cricket was that it enabled different nations to jell together under the iconic name of West Indies in a world fiercely divided on political grounds. In the West Indies team Viv Richards and Andy Roberts hailed from Antigua while Garner, Greenidge, Marshall, Haynes were native Barbadians, Holding and Dujon Jamaicans while Lloyd came from Guyana. Other small island nations were duly represented given the merit of the players.
But these great sportsmen were underpaid yet they had a dogged allegiance to West Indian cricketing glory that goes back to as early as 1890s. James in his book has not included the saga of the warriors led by Lloyd but he sees in Headley, Constantine and perhaps in the pre-industrial father of cricket W G Grace a biblical sign that makes him to argue that cricket shared aesthetic properties with the so-called ‘high’ art forms of classical music, ballet and drama, as well as with the visual fine arts. Given the articulation of Lloyd’s men James rightfully embarks on a supreme theory.
The aesthetic value has gone down the drains with the waning of commitment and spirit since the 1990s. The cricket administration in the Windies has not given proper attention to nurture young talents when there were too many distractions in the form of American sports. Intra-nation feud was a recurrent incident that reared its ugly head and then there was a lack of funding necessary to sustain the game in a changing world. The team failed to make any significant impact in the one day arena and suffered heavy defeats in test matches with constant whitewash by the Aussies in the last few years. Ambrose, Walsh, Lara, Hooper and to an extent Chanderpaul still held sway at times but their efforts often proved insignificant. All these players have retired and now it seems Gayle, Samuels, Sarwan and Edwards would never be able to repeat the feats of their predecessors. International Cricket for them has become a Sisyphean struggle.
True, the team which was a proud beholder of Walsh, Ambrose, Lara and Hooper until recently also suffers because youngsters in the Caribbean are more into NBA and EPL (English premier league), vending machines in a truly post-modern sense. The international governing body of cricket can also be held responsible for the debacle. The cricketing world is cashing on in 20/20 and Kwik cricket.
C L R James would have been profoundly saddened if he had lived to this day. The decline would have pained him but the vulgar involvement of corporate companies would have repulsed him. And so would have Norman Manley who led the anti-colonial struggle in the earlier days of Jamaican anti-colonial movement.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Dr Humayun Azad, West & efficacy of the Carnival
I am not concerned here with poetry
My subject is Life, and the protest
against the enemies of life
The Poetry is in the protest
A TO Z, AZAD (For Humayun Azad)
These are lines penned by poet Kaiser Haq as protest against the grotesque rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh. Dr Humayun Azad, a noted linguist, non-conformist author and essayist and a professor at Dhaka University fell a victim to unknown terrorists on a Friday night in late February 2004 after leaving the Ekushey Boi Mela premises. He was butchered with knives and machetes but survived gory wounds quite amazingly. He left Bangladesh for Germany for a post-doctoral research. He was found dead in his hotel room while the doctors confirmed he died out of injury related complications. He left his beloved motherland reeking with bigotry and extremism. The then BNP-Jamaat alliance knew very well who his murderers were but went silent. It saved them from the blushes of arresting top-notch religious leaders and the imam of the national mosque, a virulent critic of Dr.Azad and free-thinking. Previously the bigots issued fatwa upon this maverick intellectual and other scholars, poets and authors million times but the state remained unconcerned regarding the rise of Islamism.
“Fatwa” is hardly a word West knew till Salman Rushdie fell a victim to it in the 1990s’. Now they were terrorized with the fact that a “black skin/white mask” bred in their own backyard could be challenged by clerics from far beyond. Though liberals were shouting that Rushdie must not be tried (or hanged as Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed) and the values of expression of freedom should be upheld, there was a new truth emerging. The colonial tsunami has not only left colonizers “divided” as per class, race and religion, it also created a multi-faceted hiatus. That is, the new nations were subdivided, fragmented and their values scattered into hundreds of ideologies.
Perhaps the whole of western civilization (as they claim) reached an epoch at the end of the 20th century where they thought the only enemy to be the former enemy in the Crusades. Their media continually argued Muslims to be locked in their own prejudices, religious belief and demonstrated a high degree of exclusiveness. To make matters worse Francis Fukuyama included Muslims as part of the battle called “clash of civilizations”. The mullahs thought they were vitally important. Extremism, bigotry, fundamentalism then reached a new height, especially in Afghanistan, Pakistan. Fundamentalist groups were funded by the CIA and wealthy Arabs to destroy the Communist block. Gradually they became a treat in their own countries. They avoid anything that is progressive (terming them western) and they only raise voices against those determined to change the stagnant Muslim societies whether it be in Bangladesh or in the Middle East. The vicious propaganda and a plethora of criticism against Dr. Azad justify the point.
The filthy waters of religious extremism in Bangladesh have been flowing since the days of partition in 1947. It has raised leaps and bounds with the change of global politics. The world sadly became unipolar at the end of Cold War and America as an imperial power renewed interest in the “Other” as part of its ‘universal’ hegemony. The former colonizers, Britain and France saw men & women of their former colonies into dehumanized ghettos in their own cities. Authorities of these countries often hypocritically chant clichés regarding those fated people’s inability to “jell” with the mainstream. Ironically, most of these immigrants happened to be Muslims from North Africa(a former French colony) and the sub-continent (in Britain) who got a belligerent interpretation of their religion from clerics and desperate “ethical” men trying to upstage a Fanon-like revolution to upset imperial standards. The result inevitably was a rejection of Western values and a war of terror against Western interests.
But the home brewed mullahs are different from them. They serve particular interests of the ruling class and as the state and religion being loyal bedfellows they thrive. Such is the experience in Bangladesh. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, many regard the architect of the nation exonerated the war criminals of 1971. This was obviously a mistake. It was also an act of weakness on the part of the leader. These people with a Middle Age mind-set rapidly gained control of various state institutions and they conducted madrasas, schools, and hospitals. Now-a-days they even own a bank (Islami Bank).
These mullahs (clerics) continually utter their coveted words of jihad and fatwa. They think they are united under the buzzword Ummah & wreck havoc wherever they see a wall against their interest. The recent Lal Mashjid incident is a perfect illustration of their destructive capability. Unfortunately, Bangladesh was a part of Pakistan for almost twenty-four years & “fatwa” and “jihad” were drilled profusely in the hearts and minds of pro-Islamists in Bangladesh. The post-independent chaos in the era of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at the helm paved the way for a new demon in the form of military dictatorship. The mullahs were well-paid and fed by successive military regimes. Their ideas and interests did spread like cancer & when Bangladesh finally did breathe the air of democracy the people discovered a world antagonistic towards Islam.
Now with the emergence of literary theory we can look at these group of men (Islamists are narcissistically patriarchal) with a new vision. Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque affirms carnival as a potent force against bigotry & religious Puritanism. Dr Azad novel Pak Saar Zameen Shad Bad evaluates such aspects of the Bakhtinian theory. The protagonist finally revels in an act of aesthetic desire absent till he was bounded by his religious ethics. As more and more women in towns and villages of Bangladesh are becoming burkha-clad Azad’s fear of Bangladesh turning into “Pakistan” cannot be ruled out.
But Bakhtin comes to our rescue. Our celebration of Pahela Boishakh can be seen as an act of the carnivalesque. To Bakhtin carnivals gave rise to the disobedience of authority, with the mass parodying official ideas of society, destiny, history, fate as unalterable. It was festive pleasure, the world turned topsy-turvy, destruction and creation with extravagant juxtapositions. Carnivalisation thus “makes it possible to extend the narrow sense of life”. Pahela Boishakh is such an occasion. The students of Fine Arts Institute cloth the streets with arts, parodies and masques are made jeering the state, institutions and religion. The last few years of Pahela Boishakh was more gay and fabulous than ever before. It seems the more extremism and intolerance is on the rise, the more protests people come up with. And it is fully manifested each year in the day of Pahela Boishakh. Each and every Friday Muslims go to mass Jumma prayers to seek blessings for the nation and the Muslim Ummah. Their prayers are hardly answered but the festivity of Pahela Boishakh reminds us we can make the impossible happen. We fail at times but we remind ourselves after the darkness come the light. Thus with carnival & color we satiate Dr Azad’s soul with a message that there is a possibility of building a secular, hunger free, modern democratic Bangladesh despite snarls from hierarchal quarters.
My subject is Life, and the protest
against the enemies of life
The Poetry is in the protest
A TO Z, AZAD (For Humayun Azad)
These are lines penned by poet Kaiser Haq as protest against the grotesque rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh. Dr Humayun Azad, a noted linguist, non-conformist author and essayist and a professor at Dhaka University fell a victim to unknown terrorists on a Friday night in late February 2004 after leaving the Ekushey Boi Mela premises. He was butchered with knives and machetes but survived gory wounds quite amazingly. He left Bangladesh for Germany for a post-doctoral research. He was found dead in his hotel room while the doctors confirmed he died out of injury related complications. He left his beloved motherland reeking with bigotry and extremism. The then BNP-Jamaat alliance knew very well who his murderers were but went silent. It saved them from the blushes of arresting top-notch religious leaders and the imam of the national mosque, a virulent critic of Dr.Azad and free-thinking. Previously the bigots issued fatwa upon this maverick intellectual and other scholars, poets and authors million times but the state remained unconcerned regarding the rise of Islamism.
“Fatwa” is hardly a word West knew till Salman Rushdie fell a victim to it in the 1990s’. Now they were terrorized with the fact that a “black skin/white mask” bred in their own backyard could be challenged by clerics from far beyond. Though liberals were shouting that Rushdie must not be tried (or hanged as Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed) and the values of expression of freedom should be upheld, there was a new truth emerging. The colonial tsunami has not only left colonizers “divided” as per class, race and religion, it also created a multi-faceted hiatus. That is, the new nations were subdivided, fragmented and their values scattered into hundreds of ideologies.
Perhaps the whole of western civilization (as they claim) reached an epoch at the end of the 20th century where they thought the only enemy to be the former enemy in the Crusades. Their media continually argued Muslims to be locked in their own prejudices, religious belief and demonstrated a high degree of exclusiveness. To make matters worse Francis Fukuyama included Muslims as part of the battle called “clash of civilizations”. The mullahs thought they were vitally important. Extremism, bigotry, fundamentalism then reached a new height, especially in Afghanistan, Pakistan. Fundamentalist groups were funded by the CIA and wealthy Arabs to destroy the Communist block. Gradually they became a treat in their own countries. They avoid anything that is progressive (terming them western) and they only raise voices against those determined to change the stagnant Muslim societies whether it be in Bangladesh or in the Middle East. The vicious propaganda and a plethora of criticism against Dr. Azad justify the point.
The filthy waters of religious extremism in Bangladesh have been flowing since the days of partition in 1947. It has raised leaps and bounds with the change of global politics. The world sadly became unipolar at the end of Cold War and America as an imperial power renewed interest in the “Other” as part of its ‘universal’ hegemony. The former colonizers, Britain and France saw men & women of their former colonies into dehumanized ghettos in their own cities. Authorities of these countries often hypocritically chant clichés regarding those fated people’s inability to “jell” with the mainstream. Ironically, most of these immigrants happened to be Muslims from North Africa(a former French colony) and the sub-continent (in Britain) who got a belligerent interpretation of their religion from clerics and desperate “ethical” men trying to upstage a Fanon-like revolution to upset imperial standards. The result inevitably was a rejection of Western values and a war of terror against Western interests.
But the home brewed mullahs are different from them. They serve particular interests of the ruling class and as the state and religion being loyal bedfellows they thrive. Such is the experience in Bangladesh. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, many regard the architect of the nation exonerated the war criminals of 1971. This was obviously a mistake. It was also an act of weakness on the part of the leader. These people with a Middle Age mind-set rapidly gained control of various state institutions and they conducted madrasas, schools, and hospitals. Now-a-days they even own a bank (Islami Bank).
These mullahs (clerics) continually utter their coveted words of jihad and fatwa. They think they are united under the buzzword Ummah & wreck havoc wherever they see a wall against their interest. The recent Lal Mashjid incident is a perfect illustration of their destructive capability. Unfortunately, Bangladesh was a part of Pakistan for almost twenty-four years & “fatwa” and “jihad” were drilled profusely in the hearts and minds of pro-Islamists in Bangladesh. The post-independent chaos in the era of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at the helm paved the way for a new demon in the form of military dictatorship. The mullahs were well-paid and fed by successive military regimes. Their ideas and interests did spread like cancer & when Bangladesh finally did breathe the air of democracy the people discovered a world antagonistic towards Islam.
Now with the emergence of literary theory we can look at these group of men (Islamists are narcissistically patriarchal) with a new vision. Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque affirms carnival as a potent force against bigotry & religious Puritanism. Dr Azad novel Pak Saar Zameen Shad Bad evaluates such aspects of the Bakhtinian theory. The protagonist finally revels in an act of aesthetic desire absent till he was bounded by his religious ethics. As more and more women in towns and villages of Bangladesh are becoming burkha-clad Azad’s fear of Bangladesh turning into “Pakistan” cannot be ruled out.
But Bakhtin comes to our rescue. Our celebration of Pahela Boishakh can be seen as an act of the carnivalesque. To Bakhtin carnivals gave rise to the disobedience of authority, with the mass parodying official ideas of society, destiny, history, fate as unalterable. It was festive pleasure, the world turned topsy-turvy, destruction and creation with extravagant juxtapositions. Carnivalisation thus “makes it possible to extend the narrow sense of life”. Pahela Boishakh is such an occasion. The students of Fine Arts Institute cloth the streets with arts, parodies and masques are made jeering the state, institutions and religion. The last few years of Pahela Boishakh was more gay and fabulous than ever before. It seems the more extremism and intolerance is on the rise, the more protests people come up with. And it is fully manifested each year in the day of Pahela Boishakh. Each and every Friday Muslims go to mass Jumma prayers to seek blessings for the nation and the Muslim Ummah. Their prayers are hardly answered but the festivity of Pahela Boishakh reminds us we can make the impossible happen. We fail at times but we remind ourselves after the darkness come the light. Thus with carnival & color we satiate Dr Azad’s soul with a message that there is a possibility of building a secular, hunger free, modern democratic Bangladesh despite snarls from hierarchal quarters.
Friday, June 22, 2007
History will teach us nothing
1.
There was a time when Englishmen came hard looting our destiny, our pride. No doubt I am talking about the time when Clive conquered Bengal in the battle of Plassey. English colonial glory in Bengal galloped from then on. One is but forced to recall W B Yeats’ Leda and the Swan. Zeus disguised as the swan consummated the mortal Leda, thus giving birth to Hellenic culture. Or this is what Yeats wanted to tell us through his poetry. English colonization as I see it was such an act. A violation of mortal well-being as the gods often did in the older times.
Colonization was a burden. The heaviest of burdens are destined to transform human destiny. Defeat, the tragedy of betrayal gave rise to a new consciousness. And lo! emerged out of the wasteland Henri Derozio, Michael Madhusudan Dutta and Raja Rammohan Roy. They were wondrous visionaries. And here they were before my eyes
acting as if turned into Renaissance gallant glowing with potency. .
Visionaries are always defamed, destined to face retribution and no doubt, burdened at times by the weight of their greatness. They are simply far ahead of their time. And cursed in a manner relevant even to this day.
No effigies are burnt. Only a handful of misery....
2.
Henri Derozio walked out of the Hindu college with a heightened sense of pride. He had done it. Persuasion is not always the easiest of jobs. Yet the day was one of success. The principle has finally allowed his methods of teaching the students. He can now be as free as a bird. Quite an exception with the norms of Hindu college.
‘How could the young lad defeat me with arguments’, thought the Presbyterian gentleman.
Derozio was unstoppable today.
‘Why can’t I teach my students humanism, the essential call for freedom of man’, he said boldly.
‘Our students must be taught the way it is fit for India. They must adhere to the college policy. And serving the British Empire will be the motive of their teaching’.
‘I cannot but only proclaim the glory of man. I must teach them Rousseau though they
are not bound to know him. They must know what “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” mean
to the world’
‘You are taking your arguments too far young man. You are not the person to teach
them life’
‘I think I am’
The principle would not argue further with this talented teaching stuff of his. Losing him will be disastrous for the college.
Derozio went back to the classroom with his lips still murmuring "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”.
3.
Madhusudan loved to party. He was the metro sexual of a society plagued with Victorian morality living an auspicious life in their jaminder house. He entertained friends as gaily as he could. The best of French wines felt an astounding presence in his room. They indeed flowed as did profligacy.
He loved to recite poetry to his friends and was wedded to the poetry of Keats, Shelley, Byron, Pope and the likes and dreamt of attaining greatness following their footsteps.
‘Drink to me with thine eyes’, he would tell his friends hesitant to be alcoholic as he was.
Drunkenness led to recitations-
Could I embody and unbosom now
That which is most within me,- could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,
Only his friends knew how much he liked Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. He dozed off as alcohol gradually overwhelmed him to the utmost.
4.
The year of our Lord 1828.
The Brahma Samaj is formed.
Raja Roy sits with a hookah pipe with his friends. A cool autumn breeze blows overhead.
Over the last few years he had done what few Indians would dare to do. He has crossed
the Kalapani, came up with reform bills for the widows and what not. But now intentions were more daring, enraging even to an extent. He changed an age old tradition, a tradition dear to the public.
Derozio also longed for such a change; a destruction of the old tradition like the annihilation of ancien regime.
Then I asked myself a rather difficult question. What about 1867? The rebellion against the colonial forces.
What would have happened if the course of history were altered?
Hamlet would readily answer such questions, “Maybe it was good; maybe it wasn’t.”
Then he would have come with an ominous inquiry, “How you assure yourself of the
men being reformists rather than propagandists. History is not always true.” and added,
“Speak to him Horatio. Thou art a scholar”.
5.
Suddenly there is a knock on the door. Then the door bell rings.
I hurry myself to open the door.
I see Derozio and Madhusudan standing at the door.
‘Come in’, I lead them rapturously to my monkish retreat.
I discover them to be souls rather than the being what they were. Becoming I suddenly
recall.
It is important to know the difference between being and becoming. Philosophers have
long been rambled with these ideas.
Now, there is an ominously tentative pause. Would they speak first or it is I who has to
speak.
The wait ends as they spoke with their voices sounding like muffled drums.
‘Where on earth are we?’
'Have we left the deathless world we were living? Indeed this is no resurrection. We see no chaos around us. It’s only a small room’
‘You are now in Bangladesh’, my voice sounded like that tarot lady in the lower streets.
‘Lot’s have happened since you were gone, perished by death. The British are long gone. India is divided. More importantly Bengal is divided. And that is in the line of religion. We the predominantly Muslims are burdened with Bangladesh and the predominantly Hindus are embroiled in a new India charged with ethnic turmoil’, I said.
Of course I knew history better than some of my friends did. I knew what had happened
in 1947, in the nights before and after August 14, 1947 and I knew what Mahatma had
fought for. But I put off those sad things and in a word I described them our present
existence.
Burden is the word that time and again haunted me. Of course we here in Bangladesh are burdened, burdened with the weight of history, burdened with price hikes, load shedding, zealots, corruption and then those ugly looking tentacles called poverty, disease and famine.
The souls of Derozio and Madusudan tried to grapple with my squeamishness. They
might have thought visiting here is a big mistake.
‘We would like to know more’.
Suddenly I became Swift’s Gulliver, detailing the affairs of the world. I told them all, all that were there to be told. Gulliver in the end to me was unlucky. How could a man stand his subservience to Houyhnhnms? They weren’t even passionate, was barred by Nature to enjoy the whipping sex we did. Gulliver was frustrated but certainly not a pessimist till the end he thought it was better to live under the wings of horse-like creatures. He forgot how the human civilization gradually came to rise. Pockets of civilization Monsieur Gulliver, pockets of civilization and that ended in the whole institutionalized world which never befriended a skeptic like you.
Leaving aside the ghost of Gulliver I answered their inquiries head on. I told them about the changes man has experienced since they lived all those years ago. We defeated the horrors of apartheid, saw through the nihilism of two world wars and a despairing cry of human equality started in the form of Marx ended rather sadly with the fall of the Berlin wall. Man landed on moon in 1969 and then they are dreaming of exploring the universe.
Cholera has fled but a new disease AIDS haunts us day and night.
More importantly the world no longer remembers the problems Plato and Aristotle had
grappled with.
6.
They convinced me to leave this world. And away I flew to the tarot Lady, selling my
soul for a brief moment and discovered myself amidst the old parts of 19th century
Calcutta.
And here I was standing in front of a palatial building at dusk.
Jhun, jhun,jhun...
They must be the dancers I thought. And I was summoned in by a lady with a lamp
wearing I must say a ravishingly transparent saree. I could feel the trembling within my heart.
But then arrived Derozio looking raved. He led me out of the trance of sensual music and of course dancing.
I arrive in his Lyceum.
But suddenly came thrusting an eagle, taking me in it’s claws dropping me on the roof
of Madhusudan’s house. I lurk downstairs and find myself amidst Madhusudan with
his friends.
7.
I wake up suddenly amidst an appalling hullabaloo.
Two burly women are making their voices heard in the neighboring slums.
The bed sheet is soaking wet, books and DVD’s strewn all over the carpet.
Not so far from my bed lay my English 306 text Banglar Jagoron and the monitor of my
computer shows Aamir Khan’s Lagaan awaiting to get started.
Oh shit! I had drunk simply too much.
___________ _________________ _____________
There was a time when Englishmen came hard looting our destiny, our pride. No doubt I am talking about the time when Clive conquered Bengal in the battle of Plassey. English colonial glory in Bengal galloped from then on. One is but forced to recall W B Yeats’ Leda and the Swan. Zeus disguised as the swan consummated the mortal Leda, thus giving birth to Hellenic culture. Or this is what Yeats wanted to tell us through his poetry. English colonization as I see it was such an act. A violation of mortal well-being as the gods often did in the older times.
Colonization was a burden. The heaviest of burdens are destined to transform human destiny. Defeat, the tragedy of betrayal gave rise to a new consciousness. And lo! emerged out of the wasteland Henri Derozio, Michael Madhusudan Dutta and Raja Rammohan Roy. They were wondrous visionaries. And here they were before my eyes
acting as if turned into Renaissance gallant glowing with potency. .
Visionaries are always defamed, destined to face retribution and no doubt, burdened at times by the weight of their greatness. They are simply far ahead of their time. And cursed in a manner relevant even to this day.
No effigies are burnt. Only a handful of misery....
2.
Henri Derozio walked out of the Hindu college with a heightened sense of pride. He had done it. Persuasion is not always the easiest of jobs. Yet the day was one of success. The principle has finally allowed his methods of teaching the students. He can now be as free as a bird. Quite an exception with the norms of Hindu college.
‘How could the young lad defeat me with arguments’, thought the Presbyterian gentleman.
Derozio was unstoppable today.
‘Why can’t I teach my students humanism, the essential call for freedom of man’, he said boldly.
‘Our students must be taught the way it is fit for India. They must adhere to the college policy. And serving the British Empire will be the motive of their teaching’.
‘I cannot but only proclaim the glory of man. I must teach them Rousseau though they
are not bound to know him. They must know what “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” mean
to the world’
‘You are taking your arguments too far young man. You are not the person to teach
them life’
‘I think I am’
The principle would not argue further with this talented teaching stuff of his. Losing him will be disastrous for the college.
Derozio went back to the classroom with his lips still murmuring "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”.
3.
Madhusudan loved to party. He was the metro sexual of a society plagued with Victorian morality living an auspicious life in their jaminder house. He entertained friends as gaily as he could. The best of French wines felt an astounding presence in his room. They indeed flowed as did profligacy.
He loved to recite poetry to his friends and was wedded to the poetry of Keats, Shelley, Byron, Pope and the likes and dreamt of attaining greatness following their footsteps.
‘Drink to me with thine eyes’, he would tell his friends hesitant to be alcoholic as he was.
Drunkenness led to recitations-
Could I embody and unbosom now
That which is most within me,- could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,
Only his friends knew how much he liked Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. He dozed off as alcohol gradually overwhelmed him to the utmost.
4.
The year of our Lord 1828.
The Brahma Samaj is formed.
Raja Roy sits with a hookah pipe with his friends. A cool autumn breeze blows overhead.
Over the last few years he had done what few Indians would dare to do. He has crossed
the Kalapani, came up with reform bills for the widows and what not. But now intentions were more daring, enraging even to an extent. He changed an age old tradition, a tradition dear to the public.
Derozio also longed for such a change; a destruction of the old tradition like the annihilation of ancien regime.
Then I asked myself a rather difficult question. What about 1867? The rebellion against the colonial forces.
What would have happened if the course of history were altered?
Hamlet would readily answer such questions, “Maybe it was good; maybe it wasn’t.”
Then he would have come with an ominous inquiry, “How you assure yourself of the
men being reformists rather than propagandists. History is not always true.” and added,
“Speak to him Horatio. Thou art a scholar”.
5.
Suddenly there is a knock on the door. Then the door bell rings.
I hurry myself to open the door.
I see Derozio and Madhusudan standing at the door.
‘Come in’, I lead them rapturously to my monkish retreat.
I discover them to be souls rather than the being what they were. Becoming I suddenly
recall.
It is important to know the difference between being and becoming. Philosophers have
long been rambled with these ideas.
Now, there is an ominously tentative pause. Would they speak first or it is I who has to
speak.
The wait ends as they spoke with their voices sounding like muffled drums.
‘Where on earth are we?’
'Have we left the deathless world we were living? Indeed this is no resurrection. We see no chaos around us. It’s only a small room’
‘You are now in Bangladesh’, my voice sounded like that tarot lady in the lower streets.
‘Lot’s have happened since you were gone, perished by death. The British are long gone. India is divided. More importantly Bengal is divided. And that is in the line of religion. We the predominantly Muslims are burdened with Bangladesh and the predominantly Hindus are embroiled in a new India charged with ethnic turmoil’, I said.
Of course I knew history better than some of my friends did. I knew what had happened
in 1947, in the nights before and after August 14, 1947 and I knew what Mahatma had
fought for. But I put off those sad things and in a word I described them our present
existence.
Burden is the word that time and again haunted me. Of course we here in Bangladesh are burdened, burdened with the weight of history, burdened with price hikes, load shedding, zealots, corruption and then those ugly looking tentacles called poverty, disease and famine.
The souls of Derozio and Madusudan tried to grapple with my squeamishness. They
might have thought visiting here is a big mistake.
‘We would like to know more’.
Suddenly I became Swift’s Gulliver, detailing the affairs of the world. I told them all, all that were there to be told. Gulliver in the end to me was unlucky. How could a man stand his subservience to Houyhnhnms? They weren’t even passionate, was barred by Nature to enjoy the whipping sex we did. Gulliver was frustrated but certainly not a pessimist till the end he thought it was better to live under the wings of horse-like creatures. He forgot how the human civilization gradually came to rise. Pockets of civilization Monsieur Gulliver, pockets of civilization and that ended in the whole institutionalized world which never befriended a skeptic like you.
Leaving aside the ghost of Gulliver I answered their inquiries head on. I told them about the changes man has experienced since they lived all those years ago. We defeated the horrors of apartheid, saw through the nihilism of two world wars and a despairing cry of human equality started in the form of Marx ended rather sadly with the fall of the Berlin wall. Man landed on moon in 1969 and then they are dreaming of exploring the universe.
Cholera has fled but a new disease AIDS haunts us day and night.
More importantly the world no longer remembers the problems Plato and Aristotle had
grappled with.
6.
They convinced me to leave this world. And away I flew to the tarot Lady, selling my
soul for a brief moment and discovered myself amidst the old parts of 19th century
Calcutta.
And here I was standing in front of a palatial building at dusk.
Jhun, jhun,jhun...
They must be the dancers I thought. And I was summoned in by a lady with a lamp
wearing I must say a ravishingly transparent saree. I could feel the trembling within my heart.
But then arrived Derozio looking raved. He led me out of the trance of sensual music and of course dancing.
I arrive in his Lyceum.
But suddenly came thrusting an eagle, taking me in it’s claws dropping me on the roof
of Madhusudan’s house. I lurk downstairs and find myself amidst Madhusudan with
his friends.
7.
I wake up suddenly amidst an appalling hullabaloo.
Two burly women are making their voices heard in the neighboring slums.
The bed sheet is soaking wet, books and DVD’s strewn all over the carpet.
Not so far from my bed lay my English 306 text Banglar Jagoron and the monitor of my
computer shows Aamir Khan’s Lagaan awaiting to get started.
Oh shit! I had drunk simply too much.
___________ _________________ _____________
CAMARADERIE
For three days & four nights they slept under the open sky with constant fear of getting beaten by reckless drunken men. A new dawn had emerged in the country but their lives hardly changed. Less did the policemen. Always a terror to be reckoned with they now acted like mad dogs often unleashing frenzied terror amidst these thin dirty-skinned children, living in the streets. Marjina, Helal, Faruk and Billal lived a parasitic life; sheltered by the age old railway station. The country had seen changes, upheavals, a war called “Liberation”, assassinations and then came an angel called democracy. They were children of democracy aged from seven to twelve. The eldest among them, Marjina, eleven years old as she claimed had already gained a reputation of sleeping with scores of men. She hardly remembered the time when she began her journey towards experience. Initially the men were too painful for her to endure with the kind of perversions they let loose upon her. But now she is used to it.
One day a man with sunglasses ‘on’ came to discuss business with the policemen on duty at the station. They were notoriously called mamus. Marjina along with her gang saw that goodies were being exchanged. On his way back the man detained kutta Selim. He was making a fortune these days selling puris to the reckless nouveau riche swines. To the little abandoned kids they were known as Voddorloker pola. Marjina had an affection for Selim. He often saved her from drunken rapists, more dangerous than the cops. The cops would do it for free but never do it in the unusual way as the rapists did. The man with sunglass threw his glance at Marjina. She was timidly advancing to discern the fate of kutta Selim. The man look molded but more importantly he discovered an aura of mystery in Marjina at first sight. Later he insisted her name to be Marjina who till then was Fuli, the flower girl. He told her Marjina was this houri form the Arabian Nights sending men to the world of unspoken, unimagined pleasure. He assured her to take to the place when cinemas were made. “I will be famous then”, she told with an enthusiastic smile.
Farid, seven was the tiniest of the group. The sense of foreboding he felt was overwhelming when no one was around. He had a troublesome infancy. He proudly explained to his friends that his father was a killer but succumbed to the cops at last. Farid’s dream was to slain each and every policemen he saw in the streets, his mother left him for another man and he saw his two-years old sister die unattended. He hardly knew emotions back then. The only thing he did was cry as he realized the wailing and sudden smiling of this infant has ceased. His mother once told him about death, a long time ago. He asked about his father. She said, he was never to return as he was dead.
Death is a different land altogether. One loses contact with the mundane visiting there. Who knows it might be a world devoid of cruelty and hate. At least, this is what Farid had thought. The most famous among these kids was wily Dipjol. He resembled a famous filmy villain of Dhallywood, the much vaunted local film industry. The group would go on exodus each morning only to return at the railway station to seek shelter at night. The city is full of color during the day. Gleefully they watched rickshaw pullers brawling, small vendors serving endless cups of tea, day laborers exchanging biris, savoring the venomous aroma with cherish. Neatly dressed men & women hurried to the offices, rushing through the pavements sweating profusely; the comrades hardly knew what kept them so relentless. Little did these sights & scenes put them into meditation. They sallied, danced, sang and walked around the city oblivious of their hungry tummies. The dustbins scattered throughout the city provided nasty yet manna-like delicacies to them. Surely they found leftovers from marriage ceremonies of last night.
However there was one thing that made them sad. And that was the pretty faced boys and girls coming out of the schools. Parents were seen waiting to fly them back home. And away they flew to their parents after school. Marjina, Helal, Dipjol and little Farid stood there for minutes if not hours to see the happy rendezvous but with blank eyes watching alien affections pouring forth. Gradually their eyes grew weary watching them. Tediously they melted away as the crowd of pupil and parents also disappeared. The air in front of the school still held a smell of dissatisfaction, signs of their heavy breaths and jealous sighs.
One sunny and bright Friday morning Farid was hanging around with Sulieman in the New Market area when suddenly a busy hawker utters, “Catch, catch the bloody thief”. Sulaiman disappears within minutes. Farid gets severely beaten, falls unconscious, dies in the evening. His mother goes to file a case in the Shahabag police station. Reluctantly the police take the case but soon journalists assemble an interesting story. The boy was murdered because of a feud among fellow pickpockets. The dailies run news on Bashar, a local goon running the entire pick pocketing and other criminal activities in the area. A few days later Suleiman is again seen huddling himself in the crowd. This time, Dipjol and Helal were accompanying him. They have come to revenge Farid’s murder. And they vow to spare none.
But they were haunted by their heavy hearts. Tragedy had not yet left these poor kids. The sun-glassed pauper forcefully took Marjina out of their sights this morning. The lost Farid last Friday and this Friday begins with similar fashion. They heard she was going to be a heroine but yet not so sure. The misfortunes continued. The crowd got hold of Sulieman. But soon amidst confusion he breaks free and disappears within seconds. Suileman as we earlier saw had acquired tremendous dexterity in the stealing business. He was the reason for Farid’s death. Now Helal and Dipjol had been caught in the web. Sergeants were seen devouring such frightening energy and ecstasy shown by the angry mob. The poor boys were then tied to a pole of the shop where Sulieman committed his crime. A beauty with slender waistline curses them after she is detailed of their misdeed. After procuring accessories she vanishes riding an army vehicle. These new gods just descended then upon that unfortunate land holding Helal and his friends to its core. They vowed to drive corruption out of the land as if witch doctors driving away ghosts. The fair lady was declaring albeit unconsciously their dream. “Ours will be a land of the rich. No poor will be tolerated. They will be declared corrupted, immoral, and irreligious and driven away to death.” These were the wishes of the good, religious and righteous. They tolerate no shortcomings, no ugliness.
That evening Sulieman pick Helal and Dipjol from their captor. Now it was Sulieman’s turn to teach his less elusive companions a lesson. He took them to what was promised to be a ‘special place’ after all that merciless beating. They come in front of a large building. Entering inside Sulieman guided them through a strange place as dark and deadening as hell. They saw dark skinned, shabby girls in lipsticks and unkempt clothes wandering here and there. Wobbling through darkened stairs Sulieman knocks open a door they are hurled into a room.
In utter amazement the boys discover a girl sobbing with no clothes on. Her hair was dangling but her face truly resembled one Helal and Dipjol knew so knew. Yes, it wasn’t a mistake. Marjina was lying raucously on the bed. Only then Helal struck Suleiman a death punch. Recovering from double amazement (the blood stained girl and the punch) he brings out a chaku, sharpened enough to kill within seconds. As if in a duel the two boys dangled themselves to the floor. Within seconds blood sputters out of Helal as he lay unconscious but not before Dipjol hurried out of the room with an almost naked Marjina. Deceiving others somehow they reach the streets outside of that morbid building.
Night had then fallen on Dhaka city when Dipjol and Marjina reach the railway station where they lived. During these few minutes Dipjol only remember begging a slightly older rickshaw puller to take them to the place they belonged. Soon Marjina and Dipjol realized what they had gone through all these days. Marjina was crying profusely and complained she had pain in her lower abdomen. Dipjol could only console. The slightest incident of stealing a cucumber has resulted into something unimaginable. So the path to disorder and chaos is very simple. The little universe these kids had built around them has now started to crumble. It was always a castle in the air. Innocence they gladly held on to despite the darkness around them. The rain did set in after midnight. Days in the city have been sultry for the last few days. Now every thing was being washed away, maybe the sins of imprudence as well. Hiding behind ragged clothes, polyethylene and a spare mattress from the old beggar Marjina and Dipjol held each other tight. Splashes of rain did tickle their senses but God only knows how hungrily they slept that night.
Pockets of kindness did reunite them that night. A touch of luck let them flee unharmed, the aged rickshaw puller agrees to give two helpless kids a ride but more importantly the sun glassed man leaves the decision to send Marjina to a renowned brothel pending and landing her to the same hotel room where Sulieman took Helal and Dipjol. All now seemed to have been uncannily related.
The maid servant hailing from a slum nearing the railways had been telling the story since she was drafted in last week. Everyday she would stay for an hour or two for the menial jobs she had been assigned to and all the time she bumped into various stories. Muna’s mother was an avid listener but she was most interested about that story where some street urchins suffered cruelly. And the servant added more color to the story every time she would tell it. Every time she finished her story the lady of the house came up with the same didactic. "Bua", she said addressing their servant, “This is how God intends life to be for us, his creation.” And then drawing attention to her movie obsessed daughter she delivered a sermon, “Only praying to God is the answer Muna. After all, you don’t have a tough life to lead. Go to your room after switching Star Plus for me. I have missed the serials last night”. This went on everyday after the story was told and it disrupted Muna’s obsession with those Hindi movies. Muna left cursing those ill-fated kids that made bua realate their sad tale
She wondered why on earth such kids are to be bothered when she has to deal with more rude complexities of life. Well, she thought of love and assured herself dealing with friends and Rajib is more important than anything else. Yes, the street urchins suffered. So does millions of their comrades each day. This was life. Life goes on and it is not the time to be sentimental. She got hold her mobile as soon as she entered her room. The fated street kids simply disappeared from her life.
One day a man with sunglasses ‘on’ came to discuss business with the policemen on duty at the station. They were notoriously called mamus. Marjina along with her gang saw that goodies were being exchanged. On his way back the man detained kutta Selim. He was making a fortune these days selling puris to the reckless nouveau riche swines. To the little abandoned kids they were known as Voddorloker pola. Marjina had an affection for Selim. He often saved her from drunken rapists, more dangerous than the cops. The cops would do it for free but never do it in the unusual way as the rapists did. The man with sunglass threw his glance at Marjina. She was timidly advancing to discern the fate of kutta Selim. The man look molded but more importantly he discovered an aura of mystery in Marjina at first sight. Later he insisted her name to be Marjina who till then was Fuli, the flower girl. He told her Marjina was this houri form the Arabian Nights sending men to the world of unspoken, unimagined pleasure. He assured her to take to the place when cinemas were made. “I will be famous then”, she told with an enthusiastic smile.
Farid, seven was the tiniest of the group. The sense of foreboding he felt was overwhelming when no one was around. He had a troublesome infancy. He proudly explained to his friends that his father was a killer but succumbed to the cops at last. Farid’s dream was to slain each and every policemen he saw in the streets, his mother left him for another man and he saw his two-years old sister die unattended. He hardly knew emotions back then. The only thing he did was cry as he realized the wailing and sudden smiling of this infant has ceased. His mother once told him about death, a long time ago. He asked about his father. She said, he was never to return as he was dead.
Death is a different land altogether. One loses contact with the mundane visiting there. Who knows it might be a world devoid of cruelty and hate. At least, this is what Farid had thought. The most famous among these kids was wily Dipjol. He resembled a famous filmy villain of Dhallywood, the much vaunted local film industry. The group would go on exodus each morning only to return at the railway station to seek shelter at night. The city is full of color during the day. Gleefully they watched rickshaw pullers brawling, small vendors serving endless cups of tea, day laborers exchanging biris, savoring the venomous aroma with cherish. Neatly dressed men & women hurried to the offices, rushing through the pavements sweating profusely; the comrades hardly knew what kept them so relentless. Little did these sights & scenes put them into meditation. They sallied, danced, sang and walked around the city oblivious of their hungry tummies. The dustbins scattered throughout the city provided nasty yet manna-like delicacies to them. Surely they found leftovers from marriage ceremonies of last night.
However there was one thing that made them sad. And that was the pretty faced boys and girls coming out of the schools. Parents were seen waiting to fly them back home. And away they flew to their parents after school. Marjina, Helal, Dipjol and little Farid stood there for minutes if not hours to see the happy rendezvous but with blank eyes watching alien affections pouring forth. Gradually their eyes grew weary watching them. Tediously they melted away as the crowd of pupil and parents also disappeared. The air in front of the school still held a smell of dissatisfaction, signs of their heavy breaths and jealous sighs.
One sunny and bright Friday morning Farid was hanging around with Sulieman in the New Market area when suddenly a busy hawker utters, “Catch, catch the bloody thief”. Sulaiman disappears within minutes. Farid gets severely beaten, falls unconscious, dies in the evening. His mother goes to file a case in the Shahabag police station. Reluctantly the police take the case but soon journalists assemble an interesting story. The boy was murdered because of a feud among fellow pickpockets. The dailies run news on Bashar, a local goon running the entire pick pocketing and other criminal activities in the area. A few days later Suleiman is again seen huddling himself in the crowd. This time, Dipjol and Helal were accompanying him. They have come to revenge Farid’s murder. And they vow to spare none.
But they were haunted by their heavy hearts. Tragedy had not yet left these poor kids. The sun-glassed pauper forcefully took Marjina out of their sights this morning. The lost Farid last Friday and this Friday begins with similar fashion. They heard she was going to be a heroine but yet not so sure. The misfortunes continued. The crowd got hold of Sulieman. But soon amidst confusion he breaks free and disappears within seconds. Suileman as we earlier saw had acquired tremendous dexterity in the stealing business. He was the reason for Farid’s death. Now Helal and Dipjol had been caught in the web. Sergeants were seen devouring such frightening energy and ecstasy shown by the angry mob. The poor boys were then tied to a pole of the shop where Sulieman committed his crime. A beauty with slender waistline curses them after she is detailed of their misdeed. After procuring accessories she vanishes riding an army vehicle. These new gods just descended then upon that unfortunate land holding Helal and his friends to its core. They vowed to drive corruption out of the land as if witch doctors driving away ghosts. The fair lady was declaring albeit unconsciously their dream. “Ours will be a land of the rich. No poor will be tolerated. They will be declared corrupted, immoral, and irreligious and driven away to death.” These were the wishes of the good, religious and righteous. They tolerate no shortcomings, no ugliness.
That evening Sulieman pick Helal and Dipjol from their captor. Now it was Sulieman’s turn to teach his less elusive companions a lesson. He took them to what was promised to be a ‘special place’ after all that merciless beating. They come in front of a large building. Entering inside Sulieman guided them through a strange place as dark and deadening as hell. They saw dark skinned, shabby girls in lipsticks and unkempt clothes wandering here and there. Wobbling through darkened stairs Sulieman knocks open a door they are hurled into a room.
In utter amazement the boys discover a girl sobbing with no clothes on. Her hair was dangling but her face truly resembled one Helal and Dipjol knew so knew. Yes, it wasn’t a mistake. Marjina was lying raucously on the bed. Only then Helal struck Suleiman a death punch. Recovering from double amazement (the blood stained girl and the punch) he brings out a chaku, sharpened enough to kill within seconds. As if in a duel the two boys dangled themselves to the floor. Within seconds blood sputters out of Helal as he lay unconscious but not before Dipjol hurried out of the room with an almost naked Marjina. Deceiving others somehow they reach the streets outside of that morbid building.
Night had then fallen on Dhaka city when Dipjol and Marjina reach the railway station where they lived. During these few minutes Dipjol only remember begging a slightly older rickshaw puller to take them to the place they belonged. Soon Marjina and Dipjol realized what they had gone through all these days. Marjina was crying profusely and complained she had pain in her lower abdomen. Dipjol could only console. The slightest incident of stealing a cucumber has resulted into something unimaginable. So the path to disorder and chaos is very simple. The little universe these kids had built around them has now started to crumble. It was always a castle in the air. Innocence they gladly held on to despite the darkness around them. The rain did set in after midnight. Days in the city have been sultry for the last few days. Now every thing was being washed away, maybe the sins of imprudence as well. Hiding behind ragged clothes, polyethylene and a spare mattress from the old beggar Marjina and Dipjol held each other tight. Splashes of rain did tickle their senses but God only knows how hungrily they slept that night.
Pockets of kindness did reunite them that night. A touch of luck let them flee unharmed, the aged rickshaw puller agrees to give two helpless kids a ride but more importantly the sun glassed man leaves the decision to send Marjina to a renowned brothel pending and landing her to the same hotel room where Sulieman took Helal and Dipjol. All now seemed to have been uncannily related.
The maid servant hailing from a slum nearing the railways had been telling the story since she was drafted in last week. Everyday she would stay for an hour or two for the menial jobs she had been assigned to and all the time she bumped into various stories. Muna’s mother was an avid listener but she was most interested about that story where some street urchins suffered cruelly. And the servant added more color to the story every time she would tell it. Every time she finished her story the lady of the house came up with the same didactic. "Bua", she said addressing their servant, “This is how God intends life to be for us, his creation.” And then drawing attention to her movie obsessed daughter she delivered a sermon, “Only praying to God is the answer Muna. After all, you don’t have a tough life to lead. Go to your room after switching Star Plus for me. I have missed the serials last night”. This went on everyday after the story was told and it disrupted Muna’s obsession with those Hindi movies. Muna left cursing those ill-fated kids that made bua realate their sad tale
She wondered why on earth such kids are to be bothered when she has to deal with more rude complexities of life. Well, she thought of love and assured herself dealing with friends and Rajib is more important than anything else. Yes, the street urchins suffered. So does millions of their comrades each day. This was life. Life goes on and it is not the time to be sentimental. She got hold her mobile as soon as she entered her room. The fated street kids simply disappeared from her life.
Death in disguise
What is a man’s responsibility towards history?
Figures, benevolent as they are, pop up every now and then from the pages of history. One cannot but hope names extend beyond numerical imagination. Each and every man is a history with their own quests and livings. Nietzsche’s idea of Superman faces stern opposition if one digs down the soil of humanity. Lenin is immortal but so is the ordinary soldier fought for the Red Army. Ordinary voices remain trapped under the ruins of history but they all have individual sense of destiny, responsibility.
This leads us to reflect upon the basic human predicament. Just relocate the macrocosm of universality to the microcosm of a single poor family living in horror. The time is one of anticipation, freedom bell tolling in the air but somehow insanity leads an absurd dancing--a dance towards death.
Migration for that family was and still is a reality. What really leads to migration? The answer is somewhat simple. Desperate parents trying to provide their children with proper schooling hardly available back home, the defeated in their own land trying out for a better life, or a youthful voyager voyages to a land of plenty reassuring parents back home with a false sense of well-being.
Can love lead us to migrate? Let us ascertain the possibilities. Unrequited love can lead to the greatest of journeys as in the Divine Comedia. Dante followed Virgil to one of the grandest of journeys through hell, purgatory and heaven after being jilted by Beatrice, his crush. Finally he ended up meeting her in heaven but still unable to touch her. Beatrice was waiting there with the boldest of purity imaginable. His passions remained locked within his heart as it was in reality. But this non fulfillment made possible one of the most brilliant journeys. It seemed as if a migration to the nether world was good enough to forget the pains on earth. Dante’s migration must have been traumatic; so are the modern migrations. It’s a wild goose chase that will be pursued.
Rana’s father hardly thought of migration. He knew things around him were quickly changing. The country was no longer safe for them to live. Politics had taken it’s toll on the public sphere. They thought the heroes were leading them to Paradise but in fact, they were heading towards Hell. A new world order was soon to be established with few hopes and aspirations for the poor whose misery seemed now to be extended to infinity.
Then there emerged a new evil.
Rana’s father heard about a man walking through Noakhali to stop such an evil turning into reality. The man he heard was lovingly called Mahatma. Events unfolding hardly effected Ramnath Som. He was entirely a family man with a humble job at the municipality. Politics hardly ever touched his life before. But now it had to be reckoned alongside bread and butter. The neighborhood had also changed. Families living together for many years hardly have seen any communal malice. This poor neighborhood celebrated Eid with as much commitment as it did Durga Puja. But now ‘love thy neighbor’ was the least expected ethics a priest in the nearby temple delivered.
Finally a single night was left to sever the embryonic cord that strangely joined hindus and muslims under the same flag for hundreds of years. Today the night beheld something ominous. Wailing cries were constantly heard from not too distant places. As a part of the historic moment Ramnath’s municipal office was declared a holiday. He sat beside his ailing son since evening. Rana often confronted these bouts of fever. The mellowness of his face disappeared; it bore the signs of pain as the fever wrecked havoc in his joints. Rana was rheumatic as a modern day doctor would have said. Night fell. Ramnath sweated watching him suffer and also dreaded the possibility of death if he stepped outside of the house for Dr Malik. His wife Kamala Devi gently washed his son’s head. It seemed the only cure in absence of a more precise treatment. The eight-year old boy suddenly fell unconscious.
Hordes of men had marched through the streets some hours ago. “They won’t force into any house”, he reassured himself. The men were shouting and swearing to avenge the deaths of their brothers and sisters in Calcutta. It was as if a solution springing out of an oracle. Hindu blood from the east while muslim blood from the west. Nobody seemed to have the power to stop such bloodshed.
The bazaar last night also gave ominous signals of impending deaths and looting and vandalism. Ramnath heard no body will be spared. If you want independence blood must be sacrificed. Over the years this very event was a distant possibility. White-skinned men from a distant European land were ruling the country. At least, from the time when Ramnath’s great grandfather was born. His grandmother would often tell stories how the white men revered as shahibs . He heard stories of torture but also of unique boldness. Then there were jaminders to cripple the poor. They enjoyed all the privileges possible along with their English masters. They would levy poor farmers on high rate and share the ill-gotten money with those awfully white men whose face turned red during scorching summer days. Ramnath thought they were deities only next to the stone-gods in the temples. But now, he heard, they were being driven out to the sea. But the English-speaking suave natives hardly left. They declared themselves new gods and demanding bloodshed in lieu of being new rulers and benevolent rulers at that.
Ramnath asked his wife to sit beside son as he decided to look around. The melodious sound of evening prayer was heard from the nearby mosque. He was bending over the vegetables he had planted at the kitchen corner when his wife hollered from inside that Rana is vomiting
“I want water mother”, Rana uttered deliriously in a crippling voice after throwing up a few yellowish mound.
“Dear, I will just be bringing you water”, Ramnath heard his wife’s saddened voice.
He knew time has come to look for a doctor. He had to cross several alleyways before reaching Dr. Malik, just settled here two years ago. This kind hearted, urdu speaking gentleman was born in Gujarat. He left Calcutta to settle here where his elder daughter lived with her in-laws. Dr. Malik’s troubadour-like qualities earned him many friends in this near alien city no sooner than he had settled. He learned his curative trade in London, visited the great European cities before settling down in Bombay after his marriage with a Parsee. Time flowed, two of his sons died and he lost his wife when he was living in Calcutta. Now the city overlooking Buriganga was his fate.
The notion of family has always been difficult to define. On finest of threads they seemed to be hanging on. Sanity that protects a family can vanish any time, any moment. A sudden death or betrayal or irrationality can lead to a fall. Again at times families are made to sail on an outer reality; situations that are loftier than the simpler existence called life or shall we call them irreconcilable. Like the simplest of human migrations for thousands of years. Aryans were thought to have come to the subcontinent crossing Hindukush mountains, native Americans embarked on a difficult journey from Asia to Northern America overcoming ragged oceans and ice. One cannot see rationality being the driving force destroying family ties or ensuing natural disasters. It is as if ‘original sin’ is linked with such catastrophe. Since the birth of family is due to that ancient scriptural sin one is due to pay the price for the blunders of Adam and Eve.
Rana was now under a trancelike state. The abnormalities brewing outside his humble abode hardly interrupted his simple delirious utterances. Illness regularly took him to a different realm. Only he knew how it felt to walk in Paradise. Days were of boundless joy. Gone were the Sanskrit classes of Haridas pundit and tedious mathematics of Jaiswar master. Pleasure flowed like honey dews. Moreover, Rana seemed to lead the study band on. How fascinating those days in the village were. It was a true Paradise with the small river to bathe on, fields to wander, cattle to graze.
The village was always picture perfect. But things changed when his father was forced to bring his family to the city. The sprawling quarter they lived hardly had a better school. Rana was beaten by goon-like pupils when he was admitted to one of the schools. Boys of his age smoked, swore at the mild students, unthinkable to the tenderness of his.
As Ramnath stepped into the streets he felt an eerie lull. The houses just on the other side were already burning. He shivered at the darker smokes curling deviously up towards the sky. Every now and then wailing were heard. Dusk had just paved way for the darkness of night. The local vendors’ shop was looted but not yet gutted down. A lump of despair surged about his throat. He kept on walking.
“Halt”, he heard cruel voices from behind.
Peeping behind he saw a group of men, blood-stained looking at him with malicious eyes. Ramnath’s forty-one years old body trembled with the fear of
awaiting consequences. He had never anything like this before in his life. Suddenly memories flashes before his eyes. Once, he was attacked by water- buffaloes, only to be saved by his father at the last minute. These were men possessed with the same instincts animals would display when let loose.
“Dhuti utaro”, they shouted. This was an attempt they devised to degenerate victims psychologically. Every time a poor man awaited to be slaughtered by the fueling rage of their communal sword he would strip himself naked. They would ask him to perform much outrageous acts. The victim thought it would end his misery but he was killed nonetheless. Each and every man they killed were souls lamenting a body with deformed penis.
Similar events occurred in the other side of the border. Muslims were being dragged to the streets, stripped naked lay dead with chopped penises, women made breast less after being raped, children with severed body parts. A mayhem that now gripped Ramnath. The hordes knew his identity, yet They wanted to make him ashamed of his identity, or at least curse his identity in desperation. Within seconds Ramnath took his decisions. They yelled at him again.
“You can take my life but not my dignity”, he said in a firm voice. That was the signal, a signal to revenge who knows what.
A torrent swept through the almost ghostly city that night. The condensed blood in the streets gradually had washed away in the gutters. Next morning Dr. Malik discovered an almost naked body a few yards away from his house. The face was distorted as was the rest of the body. Signs of grudge were everywhere. Suddenly a blood-soaked dhuti caught the aged physician’s eye. The pure whiteness missing from the dhuti made him shiver. Before his eyes glimmered the psychic horrors the man underwent during the moments of madness; a madness that resulted into his death.
Dr. Malik felt relieved. After all, he is no longer a minority.
Figures, benevolent as they are, pop up every now and then from the pages of history. One cannot but hope names extend beyond numerical imagination. Each and every man is a history with their own quests and livings. Nietzsche’s idea of Superman faces stern opposition if one digs down the soil of humanity. Lenin is immortal but so is the ordinary soldier fought for the Red Army. Ordinary voices remain trapped under the ruins of history but they all have individual sense of destiny, responsibility.
This leads us to reflect upon the basic human predicament. Just relocate the macrocosm of universality to the microcosm of a single poor family living in horror. The time is one of anticipation, freedom bell tolling in the air but somehow insanity leads an absurd dancing--a dance towards death.
Migration for that family was and still is a reality. What really leads to migration? The answer is somewhat simple. Desperate parents trying to provide their children with proper schooling hardly available back home, the defeated in their own land trying out for a better life, or a youthful voyager voyages to a land of plenty reassuring parents back home with a false sense of well-being.
Can love lead us to migrate? Let us ascertain the possibilities. Unrequited love can lead to the greatest of journeys as in the Divine Comedia. Dante followed Virgil to one of the grandest of journeys through hell, purgatory and heaven after being jilted by Beatrice, his crush. Finally he ended up meeting her in heaven but still unable to touch her. Beatrice was waiting there with the boldest of purity imaginable. His passions remained locked within his heart as it was in reality. But this non fulfillment made possible one of the most brilliant journeys. It seemed as if a migration to the nether world was good enough to forget the pains on earth. Dante’s migration must have been traumatic; so are the modern migrations. It’s a wild goose chase that will be pursued.
Rana’s father hardly thought of migration. He knew things around him were quickly changing. The country was no longer safe for them to live. Politics had taken it’s toll on the public sphere. They thought the heroes were leading them to Paradise but in fact, they were heading towards Hell. A new world order was soon to be established with few hopes and aspirations for the poor whose misery seemed now to be extended to infinity.
Then there emerged a new evil.
Rana’s father heard about a man walking through Noakhali to stop such an evil turning into reality. The man he heard was lovingly called Mahatma. Events unfolding hardly effected Ramnath Som. He was entirely a family man with a humble job at the municipality. Politics hardly ever touched his life before. But now it had to be reckoned alongside bread and butter. The neighborhood had also changed. Families living together for many years hardly have seen any communal malice. This poor neighborhood celebrated Eid with as much commitment as it did Durga Puja. But now ‘love thy neighbor’ was the least expected ethics a priest in the nearby temple delivered.
Finally a single night was left to sever the embryonic cord that strangely joined hindus and muslims under the same flag for hundreds of years. Today the night beheld something ominous. Wailing cries were constantly heard from not too distant places. As a part of the historic moment Ramnath’s municipal office was declared a holiday. He sat beside his ailing son since evening. Rana often confronted these bouts of fever. The mellowness of his face disappeared; it bore the signs of pain as the fever wrecked havoc in his joints. Rana was rheumatic as a modern day doctor would have said. Night fell. Ramnath sweated watching him suffer and also dreaded the possibility of death if he stepped outside of the house for Dr Malik. His wife Kamala Devi gently washed his son’s head. It seemed the only cure in absence of a more precise treatment. The eight-year old boy suddenly fell unconscious.
Hordes of men had marched through the streets some hours ago. “They won’t force into any house”, he reassured himself. The men were shouting and swearing to avenge the deaths of their brothers and sisters in Calcutta. It was as if a solution springing out of an oracle. Hindu blood from the east while muslim blood from the west. Nobody seemed to have the power to stop such bloodshed.
The bazaar last night also gave ominous signals of impending deaths and looting and vandalism. Ramnath heard no body will be spared. If you want independence blood must be sacrificed. Over the years this very event was a distant possibility. White-skinned men from a distant European land were ruling the country. At least, from the time when Ramnath’s great grandfather was born. His grandmother would often tell stories how the white men revered as shahibs . He heard stories of torture but also of unique boldness. Then there were jaminders to cripple the poor. They enjoyed all the privileges possible along with their English masters. They would levy poor farmers on high rate and share the ill-gotten money with those awfully white men whose face turned red during scorching summer days. Ramnath thought they were deities only next to the stone-gods in the temples. But now, he heard, they were being driven out to the sea. But the English-speaking suave natives hardly left. They declared themselves new gods and demanding bloodshed in lieu of being new rulers and benevolent rulers at that.
Ramnath asked his wife to sit beside son as he decided to look around. The melodious sound of evening prayer was heard from the nearby mosque. He was bending over the vegetables he had planted at the kitchen corner when his wife hollered from inside that Rana is vomiting
“I want water mother”, Rana uttered deliriously in a crippling voice after throwing up a few yellowish mound.
“Dear, I will just be bringing you water”, Ramnath heard his wife’s saddened voice.
He knew time has come to look for a doctor. He had to cross several alleyways before reaching Dr. Malik, just settled here two years ago. This kind hearted, urdu speaking gentleman was born in Gujarat. He left Calcutta to settle here where his elder daughter lived with her in-laws. Dr. Malik’s troubadour-like qualities earned him many friends in this near alien city no sooner than he had settled. He learned his curative trade in London, visited the great European cities before settling down in Bombay after his marriage with a Parsee. Time flowed, two of his sons died and he lost his wife when he was living in Calcutta. Now the city overlooking Buriganga was his fate.
The notion of family has always been difficult to define. On finest of threads they seemed to be hanging on. Sanity that protects a family can vanish any time, any moment. A sudden death or betrayal or irrationality can lead to a fall. Again at times families are made to sail on an outer reality; situations that are loftier than the simpler existence called life or shall we call them irreconcilable. Like the simplest of human migrations for thousands of years. Aryans were thought to have come to the subcontinent crossing Hindukush mountains, native Americans embarked on a difficult journey from Asia to Northern America overcoming ragged oceans and ice. One cannot see rationality being the driving force destroying family ties or ensuing natural disasters. It is as if ‘original sin’ is linked with such catastrophe. Since the birth of family is due to that ancient scriptural sin one is due to pay the price for the blunders of Adam and Eve.
Rana was now under a trancelike state. The abnormalities brewing outside his humble abode hardly interrupted his simple delirious utterances. Illness regularly took him to a different realm. Only he knew how it felt to walk in Paradise. Days were of boundless joy. Gone were the Sanskrit classes of Haridas pundit and tedious mathematics of Jaiswar master. Pleasure flowed like honey dews. Moreover, Rana seemed to lead the study band on. How fascinating those days in the village were. It was a true Paradise with the small river to bathe on, fields to wander, cattle to graze.
The village was always picture perfect. But things changed when his father was forced to bring his family to the city. The sprawling quarter they lived hardly had a better school. Rana was beaten by goon-like pupils when he was admitted to one of the schools. Boys of his age smoked, swore at the mild students, unthinkable to the tenderness of his.
As Ramnath stepped into the streets he felt an eerie lull. The houses just on the other side were already burning. He shivered at the darker smokes curling deviously up towards the sky. Every now and then wailing were heard. Dusk had just paved way for the darkness of night. The local vendors’ shop was looted but not yet gutted down. A lump of despair surged about his throat. He kept on walking.
“Halt”, he heard cruel voices from behind.
Peeping behind he saw a group of men, blood-stained looking at him with malicious eyes. Ramnath’s forty-one years old body trembled with the fear of
awaiting consequences. He had never anything like this before in his life. Suddenly memories flashes before his eyes. Once, he was attacked by water- buffaloes, only to be saved by his father at the last minute. These were men possessed with the same instincts animals would display when let loose.
“Dhuti utaro”, they shouted. This was an attempt they devised to degenerate victims psychologically. Every time a poor man awaited to be slaughtered by the fueling rage of their communal sword he would strip himself naked. They would ask him to perform much outrageous acts. The victim thought it would end his misery but he was killed nonetheless. Each and every man they killed were souls lamenting a body with deformed penis.
Similar events occurred in the other side of the border. Muslims were being dragged to the streets, stripped naked lay dead with chopped penises, women made breast less after being raped, children with severed body parts. A mayhem that now gripped Ramnath. The hordes knew his identity, yet They wanted to make him ashamed of his identity, or at least curse his identity in desperation. Within seconds Ramnath took his decisions. They yelled at him again.
“You can take my life but not my dignity”, he said in a firm voice. That was the signal, a signal to revenge who knows what.
A torrent swept through the almost ghostly city that night. The condensed blood in the streets gradually had washed away in the gutters. Next morning Dr. Malik discovered an almost naked body a few yards away from his house. The face was distorted as was the rest of the body. Signs of grudge were everywhere. Suddenly a blood-soaked dhuti caught the aged physician’s eye. The pure whiteness missing from the dhuti made him shiver. Before his eyes glimmered the psychic horrors the man underwent during the moments of madness; a madness that resulted into his death.
Dr. Malik felt relieved. After all, he is no longer a minority.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
The World Cup is a stage and the minnows must play their part
Metaphorically, minnow is referred to a sporting team who might be considered extreme underdogs. They are expected to be Goliath while taking on their more elusive opponents. True that Scotland and Bermuda and Netherlands have shown every signs of being a minnow in WC 2007 but Ireland proved why the minnows in cricket should always be respected. They proved their mettle with a last-ball tie against their handy rival Zimbabwe in their first ever WC game. But more surprise was in store for the cricketing world on 17th January, a day that would change the long lasting stereotypes regarding lesser cricketing nations. India who hardly gave Bangladesh an opportunity to play tests on the Indian soil, fearing revenues will be cut down lost to them comprehensively. But the shock defeat of Ireland at the hands of Pakistan was just too much for Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer who succumbed to a tragic death this Sunday. Pakistan throughout the history of international cricket has been a team shrouded with mystery and Zimbabwe over the years has declined in strength. But what the Irishmen did was simply marvelous. There were very little signs of nervousness though it was their first attempt to prove themselves on the big stage. And they did so with flying colours.
But their achievement did yield greater sacrifices. Just before the WC they lost Ed Joyce to England who served heroics in the last ICC trophy. Now Eoin Morgan is on the line to shift allegiance. But then again the team looked superb and ready for any battle. Similar sacrifices were made by other associate member countries for many years due to the nonchalance of ICC. Andre van Troost of Holland once regarded as the fastest white bowler after Allan Donald hardly ever played any international cricket and went for a premature retirement. Denmark’s Ole Mortensen lightened the county scene but was never seen in the World Cups. Italy has faced strong antagonism regarding ICC rules on non-resident players’ quota. Since UAE tampered with ICC apathy regarding foreign players, new rules were applied. The rules greatly hampered emerging nations like Italy who have a large number of players from Australia and South Africa with Italian ancestry. ICC has not yet reviewed this rules that should be altered regarding resident policies of different nations.
Zimbabwe in this regard was lucky as they have qualified in every WC by dint of their success in the ICC trophy. They caused a huge upset beating the mighty Australians. They had to remain the ‘minnows’ till 1992 when finally they were granted full membership. Since then the ICC cricket World Cup has seen upsets in the previous events. Famous among them are Kenya’s drubbing of the Windies in the 1996 WC while Bangladesh castled Pakistan in the 1999 WC edition. And the Irish win over Pakistan on St. Patrick’s day is just a testimony of the continuing tradition.
The decision to play more associate member countries at the biggest tournament of one day international cricket hasn’t been a smooth sailing. Objections came from all possible corners. Pundits argued they will diminish the luster of the game to a greater extent. Of course, they forget the adverse role played by the MCC in the integration of countries such as USA and Canada in the initial stages of international cricket. Their first class status was also stripped. Again the door was closed for associate member countries for many years till Dr. Ali Bacher came with the idea of globalizing the game. Jagmohan Dalmia took the initiative to a greater height. Now-a-days cricket is played over almost 110 countries which was unimaginable even in the early nineties.
ICC finally has understood cricket does not mean the former British colonies fighting out amongst themselves. It’s a humble game and for the survival of the game it has to expand. Money is now being poured dividing the cricket playing world into five divisions, i.e. Asia, Africa, Americas, East Asia-Pacific and Europe. More countries are being helped with natural wickets, coaching facilities, youth programs and what not. ICC has devised a beautiful qualifying system for the 2011 WC. Each and every member countries, however insignificant, can compete in tournaments regulated by the ICC.
From Argentina to Zambia cricket is being played with more impetus than ever before. Thus there is an increase in the number of associates competing in the 2007 World Cup. Their performance might be disappointing at times but one must not forget playing at the highest level of the game is all together a different ball game. Bangladesh struggled in their early transitional years at the highest level. Now they have beaten the mighty Australians and have caused constant panic in different opposition camps in the last few games. How beautifully the team has matured who would have been written off just a few years ago if asked whether they be a threat to India and Sri Lanka. Kenya also complained about the lack of game which resulted into serious problems within their team. They played brilliant as well as credible cricket when they reached the semi-final of 2003 World Cup. Collins Obuya, Thomas Odoyo and many other emerged as new stars at the cricketing stage.
Similar talents lay in the Ryan ten Doeschates, Alexei Kervezees and Ashish Bagais of this years’ World Cup. They will bloom given the right situation. Who knows more upsets are not on the cards in this years’ WC? Even Bangladesh advancing to the super eights will be dubbed as ‘upset’ by the mighty nations, extremely antagonistic towards the integration of lesser nations on the big stage. The message to the people avenging on the minnows is clear. Just give them more and more chance and shut your mouth. History is destined to repeat itself.
But their achievement did yield greater sacrifices. Just before the WC they lost Ed Joyce to England who served heroics in the last ICC trophy. Now Eoin Morgan is on the line to shift allegiance. But then again the team looked superb and ready for any battle. Similar sacrifices were made by other associate member countries for many years due to the nonchalance of ICC. Andre van Troost of Holland once regarded as the fastest white bowler after Allan Donald hardly ever played any international cricket and went for a premature retirement. Denmark’s Ole Mortensen lightened the county scene but was never seen in the World Cups. Italy has faced strong antagonism regarding ICC rules on non-resident players’ quota. Since UAE tampered with ICC apathy regarding foreign players, new rules were applied. The rules greatly hampered emerging nations like Italy who have a large number of players from Australia and South Africa with Italian ancestry. ICC has not yet reviewed this rules that should be altered regarding resident policies of different nations.
Zimbabwe in this regard was lucky as they have qualified in every WC by dint of their success in the ICC trophy. They caused a huge upset beating the mighty Australians. They had to remain the ‘minnows’ till 1992 when finally they were granted full membership. Since then the ICC cricket World Cup has seen upsets in the previous events. Famous among them are Kenya’s drubbing of the Windies in the 1996 WC while Bangladesh castled Pakistan in the 1999 WC edition. And the Irish win over Pakistan on St. Patrick’s day is just a testimony of the continuing tradition.
The decision to play more associate member countries at the biggest tournament of one day international cricket hasn’t been a smooth sailing. Objections came from all possible corners. Pundits argued they will diminish the luster of the game to a greater extent. Of course, they forget the adverse role played by the MCC in the integration of countries such as USA and Canada in the initial stages of international cricket. Their first class status was also stripped. Again the door was closed for associate member countries for many years till Dr. Ali Bacher came with the idea of globalizing the game. Jagmohan Dalmia took the initiative to a greater height. Now-a-days cricket is played over almost 110 countries which was unimaginable even in the early nineties.
ICC finally has understood cricket does not mean the former British colonies fighting out amongst themselves. It’s a humble game and for the survival of the game it has to expand. Money is now being poured dividing the cricket playing world into five divisions, i.e. Asia, Africa, Americas, East Asia-Pacific and Europe. More countries are being helped with natural wickets, coaching facilities, youth programs and what not. ICC has devised a beautiful qualifying system for the 2011 WC. Each and every member countries, however insignificant, can compete in tournaments regulated by the ICC.
From Argentina to Zambia cricket is being played with more impetus than ever before. Thus there is an increase in the number of associates competing in the 2007 World Cup. Their performance might be disappointing at times but one must not forget playing at the highest level of the game is all together a different ball game. Bangladesh struggled in their early transitional years at the highest level. Now they have beaten the mighty Australians and have caused constant panic in different opposition camps in the last few games. How beautifully the team has matured who would have been written off just a few years ago if asked whether they be a threat to India and Sri Lanka. Kenya also complained about the lack of game which resulted into serious problems within their team. They played brilliant as well as credible cricket when they reached the semi-final of 2003 World Cup. Collins Obuya, Thomas Odoyo and many other emerged as new stars at the cricketing stage.
Similar talents lay in the Ryan ten Doeschates, Alexei Kervezees and Ashish Bagais of this years’ World Cup. They will bloom given the right situation. Who knows more upsets are not on the cards in this years’ WC? Even Bangladesh advancing to the super eights will be dubbed as ‘upset’ by the mighty nations, extremely antagonistic towards the integration of lesser nations on the big stage. The message to the people avenging on the minnows is clear. Just give them more and more chance and shut your mouth. History is destined to repeat itself.
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