A town from the past

"Time is an endless lane/ And Life a little mile without a bend...Behind us what? Before us, if we ran,/ Might we not be in time to seek the Grail?" Morton, In search of England

It was a small and safe town, and the place I stayed between '79 to very early '83 was 157, Cliff Gardens. It was located in what was then known as South Humberside. The house I stayed was bang opposite to the Scunthorpe General Hospital. The hospital looked huge back then and very grand – made of brown brick – and yet when I checked in on google images on a whim – it doesn’t look that huge any longer. The whole street view feels very strange to see…and I’ve never, ever wished to go back into my own past, and I’m not exactly sure why or how I’ve been tempted to write the following. Maybe it has to do with reading a book in sudden and very drawn out shifts or maybe they are old memories simply rearing like ghostly horses upon being jogged by different essays I've been reading and the conversations I've been having, and they almost feel like they happened to somebody else... 

There were not a few families with children living on the same street, and my memories while they are not linear – I do remember playing with them, and I would walk the three or four blocks on some early afternoons and mornings to go play with the kids. On one occasion three of us ventured out of the back gate in their garden after some days of wondering of what lay beyond – a space which was covered with grass and had trees and looked like a little forest grove. I remember holding the youngest child’s hand in mine as we set forth for our adventure one fine day. I don’t remember any longer how long the walk was or whether there was even a path but eventually somehow or the other we made our way into concrete and tarmac actually and I remember looking at the building that we could see rising in front of us. As we walked all around it we realized we had reached nothing but the front of the hospital building. Another day while sitting in the back yard I saw a helicopter in the air for the very first time in my life. I waved and waved and yelled but the chopper after hovering around for some long minutes flew off. The front garden and I had a relationship going. I planted some orange pits and something of a strawberry once, and watered the plants regularly but sadly enough never got any fruits for my labours. There was a sweet shop cum general store a little way off but I don’t remember what I got from there apart from lozenges for which I showed a great fondness. Those days the tinkling musical ice-cream van with its friendly man, on Sundays was a regular feature. I don’t think we got ice-creams every Sunday but certainly every now and then. I showed a penchant for only ice lollies in garish colours and sometimes in a ‘cola’ flavor and none for the creamy stuff.

There was a library close enough. It was a circular in shape from what I remember and  had a few broad stairs, and every week there were 3 books that I got. I don’t remember getting to learn English, and I don’t remember when I started to read on my own. I remember reading lots of ladybird books for children, a mix of different books for  kids, the Mr. Men series, Paddington Bear, encyclopaedias of space and geography books filled with pictures and  a mishmash of different kinds of general knowledge books with lovely pictures, and then an Enid Blyton – only I didn’t know she was the Enid Blyton until later.  Never read a Dr.Seuss until I was in my late teens. I remember there being a small book-shop inside the hospital. I used to go to the hospital every now and while ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ had been a birthday present, ‘Heidi’ was a general gift. Both were in comic book form, and by the same publisher with black and white sketches. ‘Heidi’ I read much later but the unabridged ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ I never could read. The kids’ version gave me the chills.

I joined St. Augustine Webster Primary school – meant for kids between 3-ish and 12-ish – and after I showed an overwhelming reluctance to go to a pre-school for toddlers. These are the only bus trips I remember. Otherwise all the places I went to in the town were on foot. I remember the school years and the teachers and a few incidents rather vividly, and the kids in school. Alison Kent – a tiny sprinter and a fast friend, Francesca Ristangio – the Italian, Cecelia, Fiona, Anne-Marie, Sarah, Sarah’s friend Alison Brader, and the dark long haired Natalina whom I may have forgotten…, and other girls whom I vaguely remember. I didn’t get along with the boys in my own class but have fond memories of a younger boy and a few of the older ones. I remember Miss Queen who was the loveliest, very cheerful, and youngest teacher I had and she used to laugh a lot apart from one day when she was in a crying fit and a temper and had scolded us when one child had spilt a bottle of milk. Every school child used to get a glass bottle of milk before lunch hours. I hated the milk. I don’t remember what I did with it but one day I feigned illness after finishing my class work just so as to not drink the bottle of milk. That was the last year that they gave us milk in school. Alison and I were such fast buddies that Mrs. Joan Miller whom we had in class 4 declared on the first day of class 5 that while the circular seating arrangement in the class with a girl seated next to a boy would apparently mean fewer noisy conversations in class, she didn’t have the heart to separate Alison and me even if we were noisy. So we gloated in the class with angel wings sprouting from our heads although I wouldn’t have minded exactly being seated with a  nice enough boy on either side... Fate had different ideas however. Not within minutes of settling down, the Headmaster, Sir Paul Ibbotson (who was always in his Mr. Chips garb) walked in and called out my name. I stood up and walked out of the class with him, and I still remember thinking that it was a funny day to be having an impromptu reading test. But they were always lovely and one got to be with the Headmaster for some glorious minutes in his idyllic office and he answered different questions  about the pictures that graced his office and one could even sit in an armchair for a few minutes after the reading test – and if one performed well one got a toffee (now I think everybody did but one still felt mighty special). I traipsed along with him that day and was almost sure about turning the corner in the corridor when he was talking about this and that and said that I was to do classes in class 6 and not in 5. That happened often enough – jumping a year (I don’t think it had anything to do with being smart or clever – I think there was some age factor too playing in the equation). I was not happy about it and I don’t remember what he said but he gently herded me into class 6. The best thing about that was that the Headmaster used to take our special science classes and that’s the first time I knew what “gravity” on the earth as compared to the moon meant because the Headmaster did a pretend moonwalk in the class. There were prayer services which I quietly adored, ‘best effort’ competitions which involved drawing and colouring but I don’t remember any writing competitions apart from the regular classwork and homework, and there were no exams on a regular basis at that age. I remember learning the multiplication tables till 4 at home. I learnt the five times table from Alison’s stopwatch, and that was my one moment of glory for the rest of my life as far as Maths was concerned.

Christmas was a beautiful time. I remember getting a few gifts every year, and I opened them on Christmas morning with great excitement. I loved the carols and knew all about Jesus and the timeless tale of the baby born in the manger in Bethlehem, and the places of Nazareth and Galilee I used to roll around with my tongue, and the inarticulate deep feeling for the spirit of Christmas and for Jesus have stayed with me, and have probably grown deeper if different through the last decade... There were not a few dinners with a mix of guests at different points of the year – and that’s how I tasted wine and alcohol and had a go at cigarettes and cigars before I turned 8. I remember the fireworks from one year, and it was the same year when I first got a very long stick of pink peppermint candy, which I saved like a miser. The fondness for peppermint and mint have stayed.

There was a park somewhere – the name of which I have clean forgotten. The park, I did not visit alone but I had the habit of brushing my fingers along the trees and bushes on the way to the park which was along a hilly road, and every time I would come back with what I now know are painful nettles. I liked the hilly park and yet I didn’t learn how to swing on my own till I was 8 and so I had to wait to be pushed on the swing unless I romped around. It was in that same park that a big dog had chased a neighbourhood friend and I had looked on aghast. I don’t think the excited dog had any real intentions of biting him because the dog pranced away after some seconds once his master called him but the huge brown-black barking dog with a  wild face running after the friend is something that had terrified me.

The bridge connecting South and North Humberside wasn’t built till ‘81 apparently and I was there in that town till  very early ’83, I think. I remember a few trips to that bridge and also eating take-away fish and chips wrapped in newspaper in a strange place off the bridge with little seats and on a cold day. I don’t know whether it was the same day or another like it but on one occasion I stared for long minutes at a horse which was wandering around in a grassy field with lots of trees. It was probably somebody’s house with a space of a small field. The horse was simply wandering around and did not take much of an interest in me, as far as I remember, but I was fascinated by it, and insisted for the first time that a picture be taken with that dark brown horse and me. Everybody tried to convince me that the horse was not a particularly fine horse as horses go, and that it was all angles and bony and most likely unwell but I couldn’t care less. That picture is still around somewhere but not with me but I remember the horse and my stubborn face which shows up on the picture.

I used to watch a fair lot of TV too. I must have watched children’s shows as well but don’t remember them too well. But I watched Panorama on TV and the old James Bond movies with the incomparable Sean Connery, Casablanca, Guns of Navarone (I remember liking ‘Force 10’ better when I watched both a decade later) whether I understood much or nothing - and other movies which I don’t remember. It’s from TV that I got to know about the Falklands War and Jack the Ripper, and the race riots that used to break out in parts of England, and God knows what else. I heard and saw a lot of music on TV too. That’s how I got to hear ABBA, The Beatles, Cliff Richard, Julio Iglesias Sr., Tight Fit, Modern English, The Cure. …Shakin Stevens was probably my long-distance first infatuation but I won’t bet on it. I watched ‘The Sound of Music’, and ‘Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang’ (supercalifragilestiexpialidocious!) and ‘Charlie and the Chocolate factory’ and ‘Pygmalion’ during the Christmas special film telecasts on TV, and I heard the songs and also a few other pieces from the old records that were purchased and played on a record player.

I was also with not a few bizarre fixations...I wanted seven brothers and a maybe a few sisters and all of us would have bunk beds and talk a lot and be great friends. It was one of my fondest fantasies. I fell ill once, and for the longest time I believed that I had seen the doctor drawing out some spinal fluid with a huge needle. Only many years later did I realize that it was a false memory because the doctors and nurses would not have put up a mirror on the ceiling for my benefit simply because I preferred seeing what was being prodded into me. I had one sudden infatuation when about 7-ish: he was a friendly, communicative, red-haired (!), tall, and lanky bus driver whose name I remember, and I remember feeling the pangs while singing songs during prayer service when in school, and at some point I had a quiet crush on an older boy named Steven, and very badly wanted to talk with him but never did. For the years there in that town I was rather boisterous and noisy and adventurous in some ways, and also quiet and fairly precocious and sometimes silly, I think and yet I remember feeling the feeling that life lay somewhere else and I missed a deep part of me, and one day when I knew I was coming/going back to India (and I’d known that India was the land where I came from) I was equally excited about the prospect of returning. I carry the smells at the then Heathrow Airport and on Scandinavian Airlines, and I remember nothing else about the return journey. There are other strange memories which kind of rise in the mind and yes, there was the weather in that town in England – but this is more than enough for now...

I know I missed toast once back in India and I used to get quietly enraged when people didn’t know what the hell I was saying or would laugh about my pronunciation and everybody around me would join in on the joke whether I was speaking in Bengali and even in English, and yet I couldn’t blame them so I would feign a quiet indifference at the beginning. Some two decades later I got to know that there had been a much older boy back then who had defended my pronunciation in my absence, but I hadn't heard of him or seen him back then when I was 8.

On the matter of children and oath taking

I’ve been thinking of children because of the blogposts I’ve been reading and essays and conversations I’ve been reflecting over, and the furrows on my head have grown deeper, and for different reasons. 

This post sort of takes off from the “Lemmings…” post for which Suvro da posted a link and in connection to the particular matter of oath taking and Girl Guides.

The leader of the Girl Guides in an effort to be “relevant” took the old oath about “being true to God, Queen, and country” and changed it to “being true to myself, and my beliefs”. What made me laugh one early morning was that I started thinking about children – the real children that I’ve known (including myself), heard about, read about, and thought about. Children, I think, normally know better than to trust their batty beliefs and they don’t entertain too many fancy notions about their changing “self”. I’m not sentimental about children, and I know 5 or 6 year-olds or even younger children and certainly older ones can be viciously cruel or hurtful or malicious or spiteful or just plain dumb or just vain or silly - both from personal experience and having known myself. But children can also be imaginative and curious and are more engaged in living and investigating and experimenting and can, I know play for hours with a little string or a thread or in a sandpit or with a colourful piece of paper or make a tent with a bed-sheet apart from engaging in reading and writing or thinking provided that there are a few of the external factors in place and no immediately repressive inhibitors and some active encouragement (from teachers in school and/or parents). They can also be stubborn and also very unreasonable but also sharp. And comic strip writers especially and children’s writers and writers writing upon children have pointed out that children can also be intelligent. Calvin knows better – that’s why he speaks with and listens to Hobbes. Dennis (whom I sadly ignored rather often) may not explicitly have a friend he speaks to, but he speaks of a “conscience” with cookie eating. Zooey in ‘Franny and Zooey’ speaks to Jesus. The Little Prince has his Rose. The very real little child in ‘The Selfish Giant’ makes the ogre-ish giant come alive with his love, and the child is no other than the little boy Jesus, and he’s there when the Giant passes away. The girl in a story called “A little bit of Sorcery” has an omnipresent friend when she finds herself most disillusioned and depressed whom she could then call upon. So many children talk to some other part of their Self – a deeper Self, and so do grown-ups….I have talked about this earlier in old posts. 

So to take that original oath of “being true to God, Queen, and country”: I think young children if left to their own devices within the framework of a given culture may prefer talking and arguing and seeing the world with God, Jesus, maybe Lucifer, story book characters or conjure up somebody else with whom they can exchange stuff while the world and the adults around them comes across as confusing and disturbing or just muddled or disgusting or plain hypocritical. In fact, after some more thought on the matter, I say it’s better to talk with the Queen. At least a child’s version of what the Queen implies and what the Queen might or might not say gives the child company to sort out what she sees in the outside world. The whole deal of the oath is that the child knows that there is somebody else within to keep one company…even country makes sense. Being true to one’s country is a deep oath and there is nothing frivolous or inane about it even if one cannot talk with one’s country so to speak in the same way as one would talk with the Queen…. The writer of the "Lemmings..." article was not overrun with sentiment to believe that the original oath of “being true to God, Queen, and country” would make brilliant little thoughtful girls who would go on to do incredible things with their lives. Even with the oath the writer knows that maybe, just maybe one or two or three of the little Girl Guides may be shaken out from their states of sleepy self-satisfaction.

So to go back to the “true to myself and my beliefs” bit. It brought to my mind a story I’d read in my first Enid Blyton (Ruby story book), from which I remember two tales and one was titled, “Because my mother does….”. It had made a very strong impression on me. I won’t go through the whole story but to provide a synopsis from what I remember: thunder and lightning and a storm breaks out while the primary school kids are in the middle of a class, and a couple of very young kids hide under their table and one kid shakes with fright and a couple run to the window to admire the storm, and the teacher asks the two frightened kids why they are hiding under the table. The children shaking with terror say, “because my mother does.” Why did the two kids run to the window? "Because our mother does." And the teacher starts asking the other kids in class about why they do some of the things they do, and don’t do some of the things they don’t and it turns out that all the kids do what they do, “because my mother does…”. A little extreme, maybe, but Blyton transmits her point with a sharp nudge – with the teacher talking with the children, and getting the children to enjoy storms and hold little frogs and some such other stuff, and takes them to the farm to see some cows – and she points out that children tend to do what their mothers do but that there is nothing automatically good or reasonable or noble about doing everything or not doing everything their mothers do. The children are also rather quick on the uptake, and they realize that they are somewhat silly for being scared of so many different things simply because their mothers are. Of course these days such a story would probably be banned on the grounds of being sexist but let me not get into all that. 

To go back to the oath then with the ‘be true to myself, and my beliefs’ . With no God or Queen or country in the proceedings – who are little Girl Guides going to be true to? They might not want to trust their batty beliefs in entirety but the little girls can now be true to their mothers and their mother’s beliefs, and be little clones of their mothers. Or else they can have the whole of society in their minds  – and be true to that society with all its concomitant sicknesses, and do exactly and only what society tells them is alright or any dogmatic tradition of beliefs that manages to wheedle itself into minds which have forgotten or which have never known what is good and beautiful or have only faintly wondered about meaning and purpose in life, and why these elements matter. The same idea, if one thinks about it raises its ugly and evil head in ‘Harry Potter  and The chamber of Secrets’. Ginny, the lonely child who has nobody else starts writing in a diary which starts writing back, and Riddle is able to control her for his own demented purposes, and yet Ginny being essentially good is able to fight back. There are other examples that I can think of – but this is sufficient, for now....

This is not a matter limited to little girls. 
And people in their teens, mid twenties and older and older still – the grand middle class in the world is converging towards some unspeakable and mindless and horrifying mean; conforming to the standards that have been laid down by the consumerist culture and the accompanying bombarding ubiquitous messages – buy, splurge, booze, eat, shop, preen in public, go with what titillates the senses but nothing more, and make sure you have the cash to throw out. And that’s what we have…an increasingly mindless planet in which the masses cannot distinguish at all amongst what is shallow and filthy and crude and disgusting or mind-numbing and what lies in the middle and what is the true and the good and the beautiful. It makes me go back to my original rant that little children need to be taught what is good and beautiful and what is ugly, among other things...And what can I say about the great majority of sociologists who ignore the matter of "values" altogether or imagine that values are too "fuzzy" to talk about as sociologists or don't want to investigate why it is that we are becoming so mindless that "50 shades" becomes a best-seller and the "gangnam style" video gets million hits and is applauded by VIPs around the world...maybe for more than most it is a matter of "living in glass houses" when they aren't in their academic towers or maybe we are happy taking pot-shots at the "culture industry" and the media, and maybe many haven't ever articulated what values they themselves live by. While being prodded into being reminded of "A Brave New World", I was reminded of Orwell’s "1984", and there is a very interesting comparison between the two books on Wikipedia ("Anthem" is a book I'd place in the same category but as a mirror image). 

What I do wonder about is why people who when young and have the opportunity to learn a little from someone who is better don't try harder. 

I know how easy it is to feel unnervingly lonely or be swept away or to feel horrified and this in spite the fact that I've always been, as far as I can remember, a thinking & feeling being more than anything else, I think, and I know I've been deucedly lucky and blessed in a couple of ways, which makes me wonder all the more at times. 

 So I still hope because...And I stick to the hope because of the because... More, later.

Why I'm not a feminist...

The previous post was supposed to have been titled, “Why I am not a feminist” – but the title that I used seemed and felt more appropriate and while concluding the previous post I felt there was a lot more I had to say, and so I left it open. I have thought about this much, and more than I have wanted to (and because of the comment in the previous post apart from other writings) because for one thing there could be very many different ways to approach the issue of women. Indeed if one starts with oneself one may find not a few yucky and peculiarly feminine traits in oneself, which makes pondering or contemplating upon the issue not a particularly pleasant prospect. But I'll save all that for another time...

- for now, I'll take a different bull by its horns.

I’ll begin with a question: what do we mean by equality when we talk of men and women (and indeed any social identity)? Here’s a sober and thoughtful post people might like to revisit. Equality of opportunity– the one that interests me here – in its very basic terms means that everybody has the right to participate in whatever arena of life s/he chooses. Entry shall not be barred on the basis of sex. And so (in modern nations), we have universal adult enfranchisement including the right to vote, the right to work, the right to education, and the right over one’s own body (including but not limited to reproductive rights). These are the very basic ones and there can be many more that other people can and will locate.

Even tunnel-visioned academicians realized that gender (the social identity more than a biological identity) does not function in isolation within a society. So what other identities become important? Class and national origin become two factors of importance within a society. Depending upon national origin (and thereby the specific culture) and class – other identities become important in understanding which females have what rights and what obligations but also concomitantly the rarely broached matter these days - which males are burdened with fulfilling their obligations and must not only do their duties but also keep quiet about what females take for granted because such societies are now going through a very strong phase of the female “liberation” movement. Now let’s see – the feminist movement has had a forty year strong history in the US and political rights were established in 1920. I’ll talk more about what I’ve noticed over the last decade or so about equality but before that two tiny anecdotes.

I saw a little news clipping a couple of weeks ago when the summer finals week was on the run. A prominent US university was lauded because it had strong feminist organizations on campus and had activities planned through the week of final exams during summer. One of the activities was about “women’s rights over their bodies and the right to feel good” – guess what had been planned on campus? Females who were stressed over final exams could go and get manicures done and “pamper” themselves.

Almost everybody will remember (better than I do) about the “slutwalk” that was organized first in Canada(because a male police officer said something stupid and just wrong – both morally and factually) and which spread like wildfire in different parts of the world. The cop who said that women get raped or molested because of the way they dress said something utterly stupid and wrong, yes – but how did masses and masses of women respond to one stupid comment? They decided to walk the streets, and in items of clothing that can hardly be called clothing and they called it a "protest movement"? Now of course I do have my own questions: Why do women dress up so much or dress down and spend so much money and time on shopping to look – let’s say the word -“sexy” and preen about in public? But apart from this I still absent-mindedly wonder why masses and masses of women from Canada to India were so keen to dress up in frankly weird ways and take to the streets because one cop in Canada said something utterly daft and wrong? Should so much attention have been given to one daft remark, in this instance? I mean just imagine what would happen if some of the men got together and started paying heed to what the feminists of different hues have been saying for across forty years?

But I’ll return to the above another time for let’s look at the other side of the picture and get a handle on what feminists like to talk about when they talk about “equality”. Let’s take one of the arenas from those rights based equalities: the right to work. Very well and good. White, middle-class women, at least in the US, following the period of WWII when they had gone out to work in factories and elsewhere with the men off at war (and yes, let’s not forget: boys and men are the ones to be conscripted where conscription and drafting exist – not girls and women)realized during the prosperity of the 1950s that they didn’t want to sit at home and just play house. They wanted to go out and work. So one of the legitimate demands that arose and was made into a law through the provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act, 1964 was that no work place with more than 15employees could discriminate against the woman who wanted to work. And yes, there had been legitimate reasons to consider when hiring women before this. Women do go through days of leave during childbirth and right after – and workplaces did not want to hire employees who might take leave. I’ll consider he fairness and unfairness from another perspective. When it came to bodily rights – women wanted the full right to be able to abort a foetus whether the father of the baby wanted the child or not. The right was considered to be absolute. This was the hallmark jurisdiction that came about through the famous Supreme Court case of Roe versus Wade, 1973. As I pause for a moment I can almost hear women standing up wishing to pelt me with words if not stones. They will claim that a majority of the males did not even want the child and that no matter what, females should have supreme control over reproductive rights because this is a matter related to the absolute right over one’s body. That is not my point however, ladies. I am neither arguing against the right nor for the right in this instance.

My point is – it doesn’t make sense does it to demand rights in certain places (the right over one’s body, as it is called) and privileges in other places (the right to work with full pay)without consciously making room for the fact that we cannot – I repeat -cannot demand “equality” simply because there are places where establishing “equality” between males and females is impossible and rather stupid. I have heard very modern women saying about a couple who are about to have a baby, “they’re pregnant”. Now having a baby is one thing – couples have a baby (or babies). But excuse me, “They” are not pregnant. The female is – not the male. Biologically speaking – this is the fact. We can’t change this bit no matter how politically correct we try to be. On the other hand, I see no reason to side with bands of juvenile feminists who have decided that women who have babies are extra terrestrial aliens if not nasty and repulsive creatures. I see nothing amusing about their jokes. So let’s consider work rights in connection to the right over one’s body. Society then considers women able even if they do go through childbirth (there are interesting anthropological studies on some societies about cultural practices but I’ll leave these aside for now). The assumption is that this biological difference does not make a difference in one’s ability to work. So far so good, I guess. And so a lot of noise about the right to work and equality in the workplace and the right to education paid a dividend in as ense. Within thirty years of the right to education bill being passed in theUS – there were clear cut rises in the number of females passing out from medical school, law school and also those who received their doctorates. So the law did benefit average middle-class women. But that’s not my point.

Let’s look at the bit about “equality” in the work arenas, and a little more carefully. I’ll pick on one aspect although there are plenty of arenas where I can look at and dispassionately. Construction workers, garbage disposal workers, road builders, movers, bus drivers, policemen, firemen, mechanics, truck drivers (this is how almost all supplies are transported), security men, railway men, soldiers, and even pilots actually….Some of these occupations are still 99.9% male or overwhelmingly filled with men. Feminists may grumble again or may pretend this is not their concern. Most likely because they don’t know where I’m going with my point. Well the world is controlled and dominated by some horrible distant males and androcentric norms and values which “privilege” male attributes, they say? Well what if all these men – and in f act all working men went on a quiet two month strike? What would happen? Could someone then please tell me how “equality” exists within the workplace arena, and in very modern and liberal parts of the world? I know of some of the arguments that have been forwarded by feminists of different hues. Women can perform any of these jobs. They are capable. The other argument is that these jobs are higher paying because they are dominated by men, and so women have been kept out of these jobs while yet another argument is that these jobs shouldn’t pay more than the jobs that are dominated by women (I don’t see any reason why a secretary should be paid more than a construction worker but maybe this is just me?). And yes, sure – the exceptional female can become a fireman. And yes, I’ve seen a few women driving buses here and I’ve known one gutsy little woman in ten years who worked as a truck driver, and I’ve seen a few policewomen, and there have been a few women who have been tom-tommed post Iraq(when women entered the US army at higher numbers – but anybody can check the numbers through a basic google check; and considering the low numbers of females as compared to the males, let's not forget that when Abu Ghraib happened, which involved both the military and PMFs - women were immediately involved n the same...so really, how can feminists say that war and violence and brutality exist only because men are around or that we should sympathize with the women because they were/are simply “caught” in the traps of the androcentric norms of war and had to participate in cruelty…? – about war some other day).

I sometimes wonder about different scenarios, for instance females moving from one city to another - because most 'moving' would come to a semi-halt if the males disappeared. Male friends or professional movers would no longer help them carry out and carry in heavy furniture when they are about to move, for free or for a fee. And kind boyfriends would not be around to bring in grocery bags and this while the lovely females walk into their houses with their little handbags, and there would be no men friends nor mechanics to change the tyres on the cars, and how or why would a majority of women and girls dress down and preen in public…?

How can so many women even afford to neglect or be utterly oblivious to the men who keep so many arenas of work going? I even remember one utterly bizarre case which went to court when a fire department said that there had to be a physical test which stipulated the minimum weight that a person applying for the job would have to be able to lift. Women protested. They filed a case that the fire department was being “sexist”. I don’t want to have to spell out the obvious – but just in case some far out ex-friend is reading this post: who would want a fireman who can’t lift a body if need be?

What makes me wonder is that women who talk so much about equality don’t begin to understand that equality doesn’t work when it comes to men and women. I have heard of the other side of the argument too. Equal but different. And about not being equal at all but being much better. This is not my opinion. The way the feminists have managed to forward their collective points of view is something that sometimes befuddles my brains or makes me go ‘tsk-tsk’. No matter how many “brands” of feminism females come u p with – they share a commonality. It spreads across feminist theory of the environment to feminist theories of science being gendered to feminist theories of war to feminist theories of peaceful societies, democracies and totalitarian regimes to feminist theories of sexuality. How is it possible that feminists attack societies as different as US American society and societies like Afghanistan in the same way as though both were and are equally patriarchal andandrocentric? This is like saying that a democracy and a military state are the same because both have legitimate forms of government. So while talking about “male advantages” why not talk about the advantages enjoyed by females in non-repressive states, the kinds of advantages the sort of women enjoy and also abuse?

No matter whether the feminists themselves keep saying that radical, liberal, Marxist, and post-colonial brands are different – they too share a commonality. What they do is this: when it suits them they talk of the averages and when it suits them they ignore the averages, and they blame whatever is wrong and bad on androcentric values and “men this and men that” or that “men have it better and easier”. An exception is counted in the same way – counted and held up when it bolsters their prejudices, and when the exception demolishes their prejudices they would much rather look away or become abusive or quarrel while parroting matter included in a politically correct soc 101 textbook. I know that gender studies (some schools still call it “women’s studies”) has become a laugh within many schools or just politely accepted for now and in some schools it is still held in high esteem yet who would be willing to bet a hundred grand that none of these schools have a clear and firm section on the man who works tirelessly to make human beings more emancipated? And what about the different kind of men who seek to make women’s lives a little better and men who work to simply get societies to function? And who will tell me that gender studies includes a firm section which talks about how average women themselves engage in cruel practices, silly ones and pass these on to their children (both daughters and sons) and take advantage of how they view and treat males, and not because they are oppressed under the shackles of patriarchy (as if this explains anything!)? And who will tell me that gender studies includes a firm and concrete section on the problems faced by men and boys?…and if aggressiveness and unhealthy competition are apparently masculine traits, who’s going to tell me that spitefulness and malice and deviousness and an overwhelming obsession to “look good” aren’t feminine traits?

The one thing I have to give to the big band of feminists is that they’ve got all their grounds covered. They’ll always tell you, “I’m not that kind of a feminist…it’s the other ones who say that stuff…” – but they’ll rarely if ever critique “that stuff” nor say that it needs critiquing nor say that middle-class women need to get off their butts and start whining less.

As for the “right over bodies” and the “right to express one’s sexuality” – this is the one that makes me laugh unless I’ve got steam jets coming out from my ears. This could do with a post of its own. Sexuality now means that females want the right to dress as they please in public and bat their eyelids and curry favours (mostly of material types – expensive dinner dates and gifts) from the males or simply dress to flirt and string the males along for bits of time or it’s meant to make other females jealous. Sexuality does not mean exploring sexual relationships in healthy ways– it simply means the right to dress up and dare to bare what they please and to flirt in preposterous ways in public places. And yes, there are the other feminists who say that they don’t need the males because sexuality can now be expressed through same-sex relations. Males are not necessary since they are only interested in “penetration”. These females are even more ridiculous. I read on Wikipedia that one of the ways feminists could support the inexplicable rush of female readers for “Fifty shades of Grey” is by saying that the book is a moment of liberation because women now don’t need men to experience romance and experience arousal….

I’m wont to say that feminism needs to be done away with and all brands of feminism. Feminists can ask me the question: "don’t you think women are treated badly?" To that I’d say “yes, but so are men and so are children” and I don’t see anybody taking up a special baton to rise up in their defense while there are too many women getting an easy ride playing victims of this and victims of that. And anybody who disagrees or says “give me a break” is either dismissed as being barbaric or as being a softie or a male sympathizer. But why does one always have to agree with the feminists...?

There was this elderly female professor in Calcutta who wanted to leave a feminist meeting ina hurry since her husband was ill and alone at home. Some of her colleagues questioned her feminist credentials. She gently but quite firmly told them that she owed a great deal to her husband as a human being, and not being beside him when he needed her was not her understanding of women's liberation. One could see the incident from many angles, and I could write another five paragraphs about this. Now I’d probably have not gone to the meeting but that aside, the incident in a deeper sense comes back to knowing that first and foremost an individual is always more important and more real in one’s own life and that the exception matters. I wish, at the very least that women would remember this as they go about their lives and their work. I always remember one old boyfriend whom I've not met in many years who has told me off not a few times for my bad habits and pre-conceived prejudices, and yet as I say even now, he has made me a little less of a barbarian and has never let me forget what it means to be human among a few other things.

But this post has already gotten too long, and for those who have managed to read through patiently: here’s a little list of girls and women (either from fiction or from history) whom I like and/or respect and/or admire or I find fascinating along with all else, either for a long time or across the years, and it’s more or less a chronological list (in when I started liking or admiring them that is). I know I’m missing outsome women and girls but this might give an understanding of the kind of females I respect and/or like:

George Kirrin, Enid Blyton, Heidi, Joanof Arc, Florence Nightingale, Anne Frank, Rani of Jhansi, Marie Curie, Mumtaz Mahal, Agatha Christie, Portia, Amelia Earhart, Kira, Ayn Rand, Leslie Bach, Dagny Taggart, Miss Marple, Leslie (from The Bridge Across Terabithia), Meerabai, Clara Schumann, Rosalind Franklin, Helen Keller, Rani Rashmoni, Irene Adler, Indira Gandhi, Abigail Adams, VirginiaWoolf, Emily Dickinson, Cleopatra, Anne Sullivan, Leela Majumdar, J.K. Rowling, Pushpo (from Debjaan), Nandini devi Chaudhurani, Kadambini Ganguly, Dominique, Anandamayi(from the Shiva trilogy), and Tara - and let it be known that more than half of the women on my little list come from reading my friend whose two blogs appear on the right, and over the years or from remembering and reflecting over what he writes or through different experiences.

*Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right....*

* from the song by Stealers Wheel.

Female, feminine, girl, woman. I have been puzzling over this issue more so for longer than a month now and rather intensely in short spasms, and some years ago there were some thoughts that swam through my mind when I read (finally read) Virginia Woolf’s A Room of one’s own only because of my friend’s blogpost. I’ve very rarely thought of myself as female, girl or woman – and especially with the passing of years. Being female impinges upon my being-ness very rarely, and very rarely have I been made aware of it or felt it myself – for better or for worse. I think I was innately somewhat more of an individualist than anything else for most of my life. I cannot see myself as a girl any longer, and I remember it was in college when I suddenly realized with a yelp that ABBA and The Beatles were singing about girls who were younger than I was. I cannot see myself as a woman because a very romantic and ideal-type and culturally embedded (yeah, yeah) notion of what a ‘woman’ is sticks to my head. But a woman brings to mind a female in a very lush and rich forest. A very beautiful female and of indeterminate age, and very wise and enchanting and amusing and active and who lives there somewhere with a man. So I do use the general word women to describe other older females but hardly ever to describe myself and when I do I feel dislocated from the word itself.

Some years ago I read an article penned by a female professor, which I actually still remember. In the article she noted how difficult it was for a female of colour to be a professor because such women always feel threatened and intimidated by the male students in their classroom. While reading that I realized with a strange awareness that in all the years that I had been an instructor and a T.A such thoughts had never once crossed my mind. My race and my sex had never entered my realm of consciousness. I taught like my race nor face nor sex mattered, and I had never felt threatened by any of the male students in the classroom – not once. I’d been heckled by male students because they wanted As but never heard back from them after I had explained that ‘wanting’ an A didn’t mean that they deserved one. I had some fun conversations with some of the male students out-of-class too. At a second layer, the thought entered my head that the place I teach probably has a lot to do with feeling safe on an everyday basis. I wouldn’t like to be teaching at a school where knives and guns are brought in as a matter of course and I had heard of a friend’s friend who teaching in Brooklyn I think it was, and she had to flee because of the colourful epithets that had been used to describe her and because she had been threatened of unpleasant consequences to her body if she didn't get lost – not just by the males it may be mentioned but by the female students too. My third level of understanding while going through the article was that the female professor writing that article and pontificating had nary a leg to stand upon while making what she claimed was a “general case”. None of the little narratives that she presented made me think or feel that just because a professor or an instructor is a female and is brown or blue, she should by default experience a loss of power or authority in the classroom or while talking with her male students. A professor who always, always remembers she’s a female first (and the insidious assumption being made was that a female of colour even if a professor was a "weak female" because of something embedded in the collective conscience apparently) does so only because she is far too attached to her female identity, and this becomes her primary identity in all possible encounters. I have a strong suspicion that this is one of those stupid instances (and there are many such stupid instances) where the feminists keep brainwashing us about how we should and ought to feel victimized because sex is such prominent marker of identity, and so we must always wear our "sex" close to our skins (!), always experience a loss of power, and then make a hue and cry for being a victim and then seek payment because we seek to be empowered.

I’ve seen female graduate students up close and personal. It’s only over the last some years, once I got internet at home that I stopped working in the computer lab in the department, but I’ve had the privilege of hearing females talking among themselves. I have seen a woman working on women's rights and crying by the bucketfuls because she was in terrible debt but not a couple of days later she's also talked of how lovely and soothing stone and gem massages are (I didn’t know there were such massages available). Females who complain about not getting enough graduate stipends have come in with sassy and obviously expensive haircuts and with their hair coloured and highlighted (and no, this is to answer an ex-friend – just in case that somebody happens to be reading my blog – I have never coloured my hair), and fancy clothes and make-up on their faces, and I’ve seen other females coo and gush over the new hairdo and all else. I’ve heard females talking of cheap deals on sweaters (I didn’t know that $80 for three sweaters was what made up a deal). I’ve heard conversations right after Valentine’s Day when the females tell each other stories of candlelight ‘surprise’ dinners, amazing gifts, and the roses that their boyfriends got them and of getting the most delicious body massage ‘ehvuhrrr’…and of being pampered. I’ve heard one extremely dainty, sweet, pretty and amazingly fashionable young thing telling a matter-of-fact graduate student that she was planning to have a baby because she and her husband were bored and were having problems. The matter-of-fact graduate student who went on to get her PhD told her quite firmly, ‘you have to sort out whatever problems you’re having. Having a baby won’t fix them nor solve them...’ The pretty young thing sighed and I don’t remember what she said (but she got her PhD and a job too). Maybe she spoke terribly softly because I’m sure my ears must have been wriggling by then even though my back was turned to the conversation, and my wriggling ears must have given away my interest in overhearing the conversation. The rest of the stuff heard in a computer lab isn't fit for a public blogpost. And these are students who all get their PhD, and write papers, attend conferences and have not read anything beyond their sociology texts.

I have heard Indian females of different feminist groups holler about patriarchy and androcentric norms. I had one telling me off about figure skating because I didn’t know that it was such an-oh-so-obviously sexist sport meant for old leery men who got turned on by nubile or pre-pubescent females dressed in body hugging outfits. But what about gymnasts or divers or swimmers? And what about the male figure skaters? And surely at age 6, I couldn’t be called a leery old man for watching figure skating, diving, and swimming on TV?…the same female had proceeded to show me how incredibly flexible and agile she was by spreading her legs all of a sudden in the middle of a conversation where there were males and females sitting around. I was challenged to show how flexible I was. I demurred. Yet another feminist scholar who knows all the right jargon and has read the right people starting from Judith Butler to Helen Longino proceeded to gyrate in the living room space where a couple of people were dancing to some feet stomping numbers. She started clinging and moving up and down one of the males and pressed her body in such an embarrassing manner that the male, friend though he was started moving off in another direction. And yet when one female is stared at by some Indian male because she's smoking in a public space, the female raises her voice in protest while talking of the "disgusting" incident later for the male is displaying a "general sense of entitlement" by staring at her when she's smoking.

These females they know – all of them know the correct jargon, they know that their male friends are simply too nice to actually point out that middle-class women should really stop complaining while doing all they do but these females know they can call a man an MCP if he dares to voice the same. Well how about calling these women FCSs? Female chauvinist sows, that is. They can't stand males in general and they can't stop talking of androcentric values and they can't stop talking about patriarchy...they can't stand males and they talk about males as a 'species', and they see all men as belonging to one indistinguishable category. And there are plenty of the identical sort sitting in India too. There was one particular female who had a little blogpost titled, ‘Let’s kill chivalry’, which still gives me the creeps. Right. Let's do away with chivalry and politeness, and decency and good manners and general courtesy but let’s also call the rare man who does put into practice courtesy and good manners a ‘sexist’ while we’re at it, and when the rare man objects let's call him an "MCP". FCS, I think is a stunning descriptor for these females.

There are other feminists too who believe that feminism is a way of addressing the structural problems that women face within a gendered society. I don’t disagree that there are problems that females face in situations simply because they are females but it also makes very, very good sense to ask ‘which females’ and address the particular issue at hand rather than ranting emptily and vaguely. When middle-class females call themselves feminists and rant and bleat and complain about facing so much psychological pressure to do this and that (and all because of male hegemony) and that they aren’t getting a fair deal, they would do well to see what I do: 'they want to eat their cake and have it to!'…but of course they haven’t been blessed as I've been (thank God that I am), so I can’t entirely blame them. The matter goes down to seeing individuals too and not just seeing and parroting these terms of patriarchy and sexism because they're cool and radical while also being painfully politically correct at least within academic institutions (a male professor could most likely be thrown out for saying that middle-class women should do something else other than shopping or spending their time bleating and complaining while proclaiming they're proud feminists). This is what the females miss - seeing the individuals and seeing the specifics and seeing what is dislocated between even their own talk while writing papers and what they do in their real lives, although they refuse to see what the average middle-class female is like, and they refuse to acknowledge that females have as much of a hand in the social injustices as much as the men. So they neither acknowledge the average when that upsets their apple-cart and neither acknowledge the individual and specific encounters when that jars their pre-conceived prejudices. Add to this that they've never in their entire lives come across a man with a mind and the courage and who has the ability to call a chalk a chalk (or a spade a spade), and so many of them lead lonely and depressed and angry and sad and sick lives.

To see these females from middle-class backgrounds who are educated and living cushy lives while facing absolutely no exploitation and no subjugation bandy around these terms even when they are talking of themselves and other women much like themselves used to make me wonder whether they were blind or just stupid or just creepily insane. "Frankly...I don’t give a damn" (yes, I rather like this liner). I try to see less and less and hear less and less of these types. These same females who talk about media oppression, the right to one’s body, the androcentric norms which define beauty, the right to express their sexuality and the rest will dress up when they please, use expensive make-up like proficient models when they so wish and bare their cleavage too when they so feel like it or look and sound like unhappy, vituperative angry hags or just pompous pontificators on patriarchy all the time in public, and the double-standards never seem to end, and then they say that I’m the one with a problem (and I have absolutely no issues with dressing up or using make-up or wearing heels or looking like a grumpy aunt – it’s a matter related to the ‘why’ would I do what I do and to see as well one is able, and since I laugh at the whole deal of ‘feminism’, it seems awful to their ears and they say that I should learn to agree to disagree; but why indeed does one have to be a feminist to be aware of structural inequalities or be sensitive to human beings who haven’t gotten a fair deal in life? - No answer to that one, of course. I seem to come across as being disagreeable and most improper. But then this post isn’t about feminism really; it's just about to-be-PhDs and doctorates with degrees and other types of females I've come across the most in these years).

I can’t say too many pleasant things about average males but I’ve seen myself as being pretty much the average person most my life, and I am female going by my sex – so that makes me an average female on almost every count but one, and that makes all the difference. I can’t say that I feel any sense of companionship or any fondness or any sense of kinship for the females I’ve seen and spent most of my time with, here in this town and that too some of these are females who have read more than a fair bit and are in institutions of higher education and who believe that they are doing useful things and advancing knowledge, and they think that they know much about the world and about themselves, and more than the ‘average’ person. Well, they make me sick and tired - the lot of females that I've had to be with for more than most of my time here, in social situations. So personally, I'm much better off having conversations with the couple of rare humans and beings who come across as being human and real, and make me feel human. There will be a second part for this post maybe after a suitable intermission. This was just to give an overview of some of the different kinds of clowns and jokers that I’ve seen much too often in this university town and in my social circles….

A sudden musing on (the English) language

Language is a strange and curious affair. I sometimes still get confused whether it is a tangible or intangible part of culture; I can’t make up my mind. Using language well can be compared to much. It can be like a dance, like a blend of dance moves mixed with precision movements drawn from the martial arts. It can be a war of legs, as in the tango. It can be the casual, almost limpid, lazy movements of a person with a sense of perfect rhythm, dancing to some music playing on the radio while doing this and that and the other. It can be like a body cutting through air and water and executing a breathtaking dive…it can be a painting or a picture capturing more than a thousand words, bringing to mind connected images and emotions. Used well, language transforms intangible feelings and invisible thoughts, brings back memories, gives them shape and form like a clay shaper, makes them real to the hearer or reader. It can be an audio and visual and tactile affair or just one or more. Sometimes it makes its way through and as a stream of silence. The words themselves may bring silence within the mind-space of a reader. Words may sometimes break into one's silent or noisy or chaotic or nonsensical world as well, and make strange and then abiding sense but to only the hearer. Language and writings translate words to pictures and images and thought... Language lets, it seems almost banal and terribly trite to mention, humans communicate.

I know only one language not-too-terribly-badly. I very badly wish I knew Bengali just as not-too-terribly-badly. I sometimes think that I must have spent many, many, many lifetimes utterly illiterate and uneducated. This is not a disjointed thought. I feel that way because I steadily realise sometimes in gentle spasms, in blissful showers that also ache, and sometimes like a cold shock that learning even one language well, understanding it well, and using it well (by which I mean superlatively well) is given to the rarest of the rare. I know that I sometimes don’t quite understand English when I read prose or poetry. And I don’t mean abstruse or badly written material. Neither do I understand much material that is read by many in Philosophy, Sociology, Economics, Political Science, History, Psychology, and so on and on. It’s one thing to digest and then dismiss. I can’t even get over the first hurdle of actually comprehending and following what I read. I don’t quite know how I understand what I do either. I’ve tried to understand this but I don’t think I’ve gotten intellectually wiser about this.

I learnt English at a very early age, and loved the language without thinking or even knowing that I loved it. I loved language and liked using it and liked playing around with words and sentences. I liked the sound and look of words. And I read in snatches and deeply and loved that too but never thought that that reading or writing which I stayed with was something that required thought or needed any justification. By 8, I had a firm and fast friend within me who was telling me constantly and insistently that I must never forget English, and that I had to master it as well as I could. It was something rather remotely similar to walking fast. That may sound weird. But it was a matter of compensating for other stuff that I didn’t have, couldn’t master no matter how much time I was given, and couldn’t keep up with. By Class XI, I remember that I had been maintaining a steady diary and other random note-books for sudden writing urges but stories I could not write. I was not a story-teller. I sometimes started but they never quite got to the end. Some faltered mid-way. I think there are some people who are born story-writers and others who are not. Maybe it is a talent that can be honed and requires a particular hungry and insistent and imaginative mind-set but I don’t have that and didn’t have that. My muse for story-writing is either lazy or non-existent or cannot think beyond what it has seen and heard and lives with. Not a particularly imaginative nor a particularly intense nor passionate muse then, I guess. Or maybe I have a monomaniacal muse. By the time I was finally doing my Master's, I became horribly arrogant and a little too obsessed in how I expressed myself and I was the same way in college. I liked the mode of expression and paid a keen attention to how I said what I did but there was very little I think in terms of content. I simply followed my thoughts. I don’t have any of my diaries or any old writings with me but I’m sure I must have sounded just plain convoluted. I think I had the tendency of adding too much sauce as well apart from sounding unnecessarily long-winded and unwieldy.

I do know though that other authors sometimes influenced how I wrote and terribly. I don’t know whether this happens with everybody but I do know that it happened excessively with me. I was determined by the style of the author I was obsessing over through my school years and in my college years, and I know Agatha Christie, P.G.Wodehouse, Roald Dahl, and Ayn Rand come to mind particularly. Then came the horror of realizing, and at 25, and without the earlier who-cares-about-that attitude that I didn’t know grammar at all. Not only did I not know grammar but I hadn’t followed the basic principles of grammar in my prose (or in the hasty and insane fit of poetry writing that probably all Bengalis fondly go through). And that was that. I taught myself grammar frantically while teaching a bit of grammar to others, but still don’t understand very basic rules and almost nothing of punctuation.

Language is a mighty strange thing. I don’t understand semantics or semiotics or linguistics or anything of that sort. I do know that I don’t like just form without content but sometimes I can see when I read what I do that the form blesses the content with an unusual beauty and tone and an uncanny depth. The only thing I started becoming obsessive about, and with reason, is the use of particular words and knowing whether I wanted to use a particular word in a sentence. I obsess over getting sentences to mean what I want them to mean but don't always succeed. It seems like a very basic thing but I fret over it in a rather paranoid way sometimes. I started pondering more and more about how words can mean something in a general way, given the common dictionary meaning, and yet words and phrases mean something specific to the user and the reader and the hearer and the writer. Sometimes I look up the dictionary to see what very regular words mean. Sometimes I need a dictionary thrown at me. Sometimes I don't look at a dictionary even when I should. Sometimes I think one should come up with a dictionary to give meaning/define words that can mean different things to normal people and to people who might have non-normal experiences.

Humans communicate through language, and the written or verbal way is the only way I've communicated for most of my life, and sometimes it is a beautiful and many-pronged affair….yet I sometimes can’t help wondering and furiously how we manage to communicate through language given that words, turns-of-phrases and even sentences so often have a double-meaning, triple meaning, and depend upon the mood and mentality and mind-frame of the people communicating; on what we choose to pay attention and what we choose to let pass during those moments. The common framework exists and so many layers and hidden layers and more and more emerge and wait to emerge through the dance and music of language sometimes. I can’t quite imagine a world where there is no language but and since I was suddenly exposed to the world of sci-fi literature so late in life, I came across the idea of communication in a 'language' but not in the way we generally understand it, rather late in literature. Only it neither felt like fiction nor fantasy and I didn’t understand the science behind it.

“First there was light”, was there, yes? But did the word come before or after or with the light? I have recently had wondering bouts very late in the night ‘bout the matter of language - physically alone but not exactly lonely, embalmed in a non-silence while carefully examining the red-orange glow of a cigarette, and with sometimes a half-hanging smile for company.

The golden deer....

I've been somewhat quiet here which doesn't mean I haven't written anything. I even wrote possible shortish blog-posts - only they never got around to making the final cut. During the Christmas break (last year) a song liner from a short essay kept pealing out in my head. I had last heard the song while in school (in fact that was the only time I actually heard the song, and it was a friend who knew the song and she got frequent requests from me to sing it), and had all but forgotten about it until I read the essay many years later. I found the song on youtube sometime during Christmas. I realise I fill in some of my own worders for the song. Not that I can sing it.

Maybe a proper post will be put up soon, but for now, a rather belated Happy New Year and here's the song link, which is more than a joy to hear, no matter how many times one may have heard it. A rather stubborn song, it is too.

A little gift from the river

The days I walk to the river - some days, if I remember to carry a plastic bag with me I pick up some bits of trash lying around. I picked up the habit from Joe (who'd go armed with plastic bags if he were going hiking; some stories there but another time). There's not a whole lot of it but one does find some, and it displeases me, and I like picking up the junk and dumping it while thoughts of different sorts wander around my head. Some days I've had to hurry over to the garbage bins lying next to the river trail having found and collected five cans of beer and a couple of empty bottles of whisky and rum just so that nobody imagines that I was downing all the stuff while sitting on the sandy banks of the river.

Today the wind was blowing furiously. It was a wind that was raising yellow, brown, and orange leaves into whirling dervishes. The blazing wind I thought was going to blow me off the bridge. I didn't really expect it to but just to make sure that it wouldn't, and just in case it did, I was walking near the rails. Just so that I could grab on to the rod on the rails if in case the wind got a little too playful. But it was warm too. Strangely warm for a November afternoon. And after walking around and a bit of climbing and racing down, and walking and looking all around the still overgrown banks, having a fairly huge and happy dog running towards me and barking merrily just when I was climbing up a sheer slope and all...near one section of the river where I decided to visit today, there were plastic cups and paper and stuff lying around. I scrunched up my face and went and sat near a bit of the banks for a bit. Did my usual stuff. Wrote a bit, smoked some, laughed a bit, and looked and listened. I got up after a bit, and armed with my plastic bag and another couple I found lying near the banks, I started stuffing all the plastic and paper and assortment of trash which probably was simply blown out of some open garbage bin. I had a merry time too. Walked all around, climbed up and down the banks and some of it required leaping around like a goat. I was talking out loud at some points too, and hoped that nobody was around to watch my antics. Found a discarded magazine in which I read about a young Purdue student, who started an I-Read program in Indiana schools, and it made me sigh and gulp at the same time. The magazine too went into one of the plastic bags...

But nothing compares to the delicious moment when I chanced upon a $5 bill lying there half-hidden under the carpet of leaves. I was so delighted, and I'm not quite so sure why....but it was lovely. I put that carefully in my bag, smiled widely, and surveyed my surroundings. The plastic bags of rubbish I deposited in a dumpster, and feeling quietly pleased I wondered what I would do with the completely unexpected $5 gift from the river and river banks....

On desires and on 'winning'

Painting/sketch: Rabindranath Tagore. Untitled. Downloaded.

16th October - 11th November 2011: There are some liners from books, movies, and songs that sometimes play over in the head with greater frequency, and they keep one company even as one goes about one's daily life. Last year at some point I'd been pondering over 'if winter comes', (although I couldn't frame the thought). At some point when I was immersed in the first embalming shroud of a reluctant winter, and I was silent for the most part and doubting myself and there was nothing I could see particularly well, I felt like saying (although with far less excuse than Frank Slade), 'I'm in the dark here'. People fond of me were looking at me with not much fondness nor much hope almost like they were giving up on me, and there were some liners from Viktor Frankl's autobiography which made me say that if he could believe in his bit of hyper-reality, and in the midst of going through what he was and at Auschwitz no less before he was sent to Tϋrkheim, I had no earthly nor divine right to think I was in the dark. I couldn't really see much, and I do have myopia, and sometimes need new glasses without knowing it but along with Shaw's St. Joan I had to say within, 'By what other judgment can I judge but my own?' – although I wasn’t too sure what I was judging by my own judgment. Positive thinking however sometimes helps, even though one doesn't know why one is thinking positively but sure enough sometimes shining drops of much-needed hope come from other quarters, and also the everyday sort of joyous hope, which is just as important – and from older and younger friends. And sometimes that lit-up hope says that there are some other people too in this physically real world, others who live and smile...

Lately, it's been a defiant, accepting, disconsolate, and rather melancholic but proud liner, from the Abba song, 'The winner takes it all...' (and just that liner blaring out unless I’m actually half-listening to the song while doing other things). There's another line that sings in my head these days, Jo jeeta wohi sikander. Not entirely disconnected from the previous Abba liner. It's from a movie of the same title that I enjoyed watching in my school-days.

Is life a race or a game though where one wins or loses? It does seem to be a game sometimes, and a game where one gets to know some of the rules bit by bit, and a game that’s not particularly fair or square, and sometimes one isn’t so sure whether one is getting any better at actually playing the game. One takes a leap (of faith?) and seems to be racing through, and with smiles too, until one lands into a river instead of what one assumed would be a sand-pit. It seems peculiarly brutal too at times even if one is sometimes an observer to the brutality and the cruelty (which doesn’t always draw or let blood although that too does spill) and the banality. It seems hard and real at times especially in its drudgery, sadness, everydayness, bland normalcy, poverty and sickness (not just physical) but undeniably real in the sudden, sometimes fleeting, and somewhat translucent sense of mystery, magic, charm, laughter and serendipity. It also seems peculiarly individual, personal, private and even isolated but not-quite-so at times.

I sometimes wonder how we win or lose in life, and what determines winning or losing. Some great people say that it's the choices that define who we are, and not our abilities, and sometimes I gladly and stubbornly believe that and sometimes I can't help but raise my eyebrows to say, 'really?' And so, what if I make choices and I don't win or worse just seem to be losing time and with it the possible dreams? Who's going to say, 'well done' or 'well played'? And I do want to see the smiles, the satisfaction, and the happiness on real faces, and not just from the imaginary audiences who were once cheering me on in my head. One may raise the quiet question, 'what do you mean by winning though?' It's not unrelated, this question. Because we do say very sagely that life isn't about winning or losing but about playing well and hard and true. And it's also true that I don't want to win formal prizes at competitions, and stand on the number 1 spot for the Olympics 100 m race with Jana gana mana playing in the background. I'm not talking about winning races but I certainly strongly desire to be useful (as Janet Jeppson Asimov says) or to be of benefit (if that sounds better), before I pass off, and by playing well and hard and true and by making the choices that I make – that I won’t deny.

The root of life does seem to be '(hairy) desire'. This answer had erupted in my own head and upon a whispered question within from my fimh towards the beginning of the previous decade, ‘what is the root of life?’ I started reflecting upon the Buddha's second Noble Truth not infrequently, and only because of an essay written by Suvro da, which I read also towards the beginning of the previous decade. Desiring (or craving) for 'x', in some sense, is one of the things among other things which leads to unhappiness, dissatisfaction, pain and also possible and potential suffering but desire begets the experience of life itself. It seems almost like those self-evident things that one imagines that one always knew and one nods one's head and says 'yes, I always knew that' but it's one of those things that one wouldn't have known at all until somebody hits one with that question...'what's the root of life'? and until somebody also gently prods one to think about it, and earnestly and more than once. Desire, if one reflects upon it (and people can reflect upon it in different ways) can also be without the constant and insistent craving. I think it’s sometimes possible. And if one reflects upon life and living one can also gradually and quietly eliminate many things on the list of ‘things’ – material or non-material – that one seems to crave for or had seemed to matter with a ‘not this’, ‘not this’, ‘not this’. And if one engages in this enterprise there are certain factors that emerge:

It’s not a matter of repressing desires but it’s a matter of sifting through one’s basket of ‘desires’ and with directed help from the external world and one’s internal world.

It’s not a matter of an authoritarian stamping out of all desires.

It’s not a matter of being the fox who couldn’t get the grapes and called them ‘sour’.

And it's good to remember what Tagore, in his very matter-of-fact way points out, ‘mere renunciation of the world does not entitle one to immortality’.

Eventually, one may see what one desires - and it might not be terribly clear at the beginning - given the external world and reality as we know it and sense it, and from the deepest part of what we call a ‘self’. With that bit in place, one might think that one is enlightened with nothing really left to do. An exceptionally detached frame of mind or even an exceptionally aroused frame of mind may sometimes give rise to such a feeling. Genuine desires however are connected to one's purpose and meaning in life, and so one soon realizes that one is being an ass because one can't possibly sit and do nothing. So while the inequalities of life and the level of pain and suffering differ enormously – at the level of an individual life if one chooses to remain and participate in life as a regular human being and with certain desires and a certain attachment to the physical world still firmly in place (related to doing good/being useful/doing something beneficial/being happy and bringing some genuine happiness), the first Noble Truth sticks and makes its way felt through the second.

If one sort of even glances through some of the biographies of the great masters, one can spot a cardinal difference between the Buddha (in how he is depicted, at any rate) and the rest. The Buddha really did seem to have reached a state of 'imaginary grace' where everything and everyone counted but nothing and indeed nobody mattered (about the Buddha maybe some other day; I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, a proper scholar on the Buddha, anyway), and yet that did not stop him from doing what he had to do (although there’s a story about that). He did what he could do. He became a teacher. Life then is not just a matter involving thought, reflection, and contemplation. Human beings aren’t just ‘floating minds’. Living, no matter whether it seems and feels like a game or an illusion or even a delusion or a drama or a stage-play also involves being, acting and doing along with the connecting within.

But how much and how far does one go into seeing and experiencing and connecting within with the ‘spinning wheel of life and death and what-not’ before one stops in one’s tracks (or is made to stop in one's tracks), and says, ‘that’s all I can take, thank you, and I’ll take what comes from making my choice because this is the only choice that I can and want to make given who/what I am and have become’? For as one participates in life and plunges into one’s own consciousness, one sees the glowing bits born of one’s own experiences with life and living and the relations that remain. One is reminded for instance of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha (also read towards the beginning of the previous decade), who travels far and wide, up and down and all around all kinds of paths, engages and experiments in much in his own search for enlightenment, and then finally finds his meaning in life, in and through his son begotten of a nautch-girl. I sometimes wonder where that story could go from there. This Siddhartha already knew that the choice he was making necessarily implied that he had ‘returned’ to be attached to life, and primarily in the form of his son. And through attachment then, this Siddhartha re-joins the cycle of life, and with it all the entanglements of life. Gives reason to ponder upon the Buddha’s principle of pratityasamutpada.

Space and time do not permit me to leap along this path, and so I bring my post to an end for now while having different liners floating around while returning to doing what I can (‘because nobody else can do it’), am able to, and have to even though I don't have the sure-shot prescience to know whether I'm winning or losing or doing any good or facing and engaging with life 'zestfully and with an earthy good sense' or whether that liner from a Miss Marple book, ‘Intelligent girls are so likely to become imbecilic if they are not careful’ fits me to a T. And since one doesn't know one has to say 'it ain't over till it's over', 'where there is life there is hope and light' and also a quiet 'Jesus Christ', every now and again, and hopefully see and hold on to one’s own radiant light blazing away, which is not (thank heavens...a 'Holy Moses' would be more appropriate) a speaking bush on fire in the middle of a desert.