Showing posts with label self. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self. Show all posts

Saturday, June 24, 2023

On writing

There is little that I have posted on my blog over some time. At least as compared to what I used to post over a decade ago. There was a lot of reflection on everyday life and I could see a lot of value in that. I was writing about my experiences of teaching, of talking to students, colleagues, rambles, discussions - basically recording the sociality of my everyday life, until one day when everything came back to eat me. I realised that the personal blog could become so political, and deeply affect so many people. And it is since then I moderated, censored heavily what this space could carry. Over the last few years, I have taken to old form of writing - in notebooks, diaries - for several reasons. The blog become too formal a space because it was indexed into many formal portals. Secondly, it gained the burden of being too correct and responsible. Thirdly, denser ideas did not find time and space to be elaborated and hence never got posted. Numerous half written posts exist on my draft-list and remain to be completed. Post covid -  a period of recuperation from the deep mental agony of the lockdown - has been a time of little enthusiasm. Could it be the effect of the vaccine that our brains work at half enthusiasm levels, or was it merely my own struggles to mend the complexities of my social life that held me back? I do not know. The diary notes have been ways of purging half cooked emotions into the notebook - something that this blog could hold before. At 37, can I afford to express myself as confused as before, as insecure as I was in my 20s? I think as we grow old, we produce new insecurities, new confusions. I have clarified a lot of my life-questions, however, I still remain clueless about what happens next, where to bend this journey in a meaningful way, and what risks could that have? Would there be a way of coming back, and should one even care?

I took a big step of finding myself a studio space soon after the lockdown was over. 'A room of one's own' - as Virginia Woolf would have phrased. Here, I come to be in the silence of my inner mind, be away from the gaze of my biological family, produce my own sociality, and experiment the rules of domesticity at my own terms. My studio is frugal and filled with curiosities of my own. A lot of times, this space allows me to think of the questions I theorised in the 2010 research fellowship on domesticity I submitted at Kamla Raheja Institute of Architecture. Here, I live the concepts of "dwelling" that Heidegger once wrote about, or imagine being Kafka's non-descript animal from 'The Burrow'.  What could this space become - a garden, a library, a bedroom, a studio, a laboratory, a museum, a hostel... Yet, it doesnot take away my loneliness completely.  I have realised that loneliness is a deeply personal thing. There could be a loneliness that is simply external which one feels in the absence of people. However, this loneliness that I experience is deeply internal, that doesnot quench on finding space or people. How could these two forms of loneliness be connected? It is in the answering of this, that perhaps dwelling becomes home. 

They say that reading is central to writing. And hence, I try to read. But reading is not merely textual. Reading is visual, aural, verbal, tactile and deeply sensorial. Sometimes I wonder how so much has already been said. Lately, I have found descriptions laborious. I have struggled not only to reproduce an event in text, but also to consume a representative text. Sometimes, these descriptions are extremely complex and at other times, they are very thin. How does one maintain just the right tension between these two extremes. It is here that I have felt my urge for poetry in text. Texts do not appeal to me unless they are poetic enough - that they have to work through all properties of a musical composition - of tempo, lyricality, rhythm and beats. Such production of text takes time. These texts have the possibility of offering way more in too less - like concentrates. They work with a measure of abstraction that can afford interpretive multiplicity. It is this quality that allows text to become deeper, and wider. How then, are classic writers able to produce so much writing? I think waiting is central to writing. Just like waiting is important for any other thing. Waiting makes one feel that they are immobile, unproductive, stationary, still. Such a feeling can make one so weak, and insecure. However, waiting could bring more assurance, clarity, poise and profoundness to one's work. Waiting fertilizes ruminations. It is in waiting that readings get ruminated to fertilize into cultural matter.

However, today, I felt that writing about my lack of writing could be an opportunity to lay out my own doubts. Perhaps that could allow me a platter to pick a direction, however weak it may appear, to lead into. The past months have been particularly disappointing for difficult weather - in all respects. Firstly the summers of Mumbai are not temperate enough for any creative work. Secondly, I kept away from travel in the hope of, and in preparation of an international travel to Lagos, Nigeria. Unfortunately, this didnot work out. This lost opportunity to travel for research to Lagos, Nigeria left a momentary, yet deep hole in my trajectory... something that could have allowed me a new vantage point to look at the world, and the self. For all the effort and resources that went in, it felt like losing the game after the hardest attempt. The feeling of futility and failure worsens in an already existing space and situation of loneliness. Opportunities come and go, although, how does one work through the intermediate period of waiting. How does one comprehend the failure of that one clear ray of hope that appeared amidst all other confusion? It is against this backdrop, that I feel the pain of not being able to accomplish the Lagos trip. Researchers put together papers for conference or publications through their exposures they strive, struggle and scavenge from various sources. The lost opportunity for travel is a lost opportunity for writing too. 

Encouragement is essential - for any activity we do. Encouragement is an assurance for continuing what we do, it is borrowed faith for the work of cultural practice. In the capitalistic world, encouragement also comes from the flow of consistent work. In other words, the continued demand for your thoughts is a form of assurance for you to keep working. It is a strange model of patronage. How does one assure such kind of demand for one's work? The extent of dissatisfaction increases when one has supposedly enhanced one's skill substantially but is not acknowledged or asked to lend that skill enough. There is an ecology through which cultural production takes place. Could the lack of encouragement hint at a rupture of this ecology? How does one balance criticality and encouragement for one's work. This would call for an engaged network of friends who are interested in your work, and what you do, how you do. It takes so much time to cultivate friends. The fear of investment of time into making friends was one of the key reasons I decided to move back to India. Moreso, I have stayed in the city because it is a familiar territory. The recent years have had me run into circumstances when these equations seemed to get recalibrated, even if in appearance. Can deep friendships simply disappear? Can old friends vanish quickly? 

Many such experiences have made me estranged, that have caused a profound ambiguity in my skill. I am hoping to reassure myself in the coming days to get back to writing more, doing more, in general being more positive and productive. This would call for a disciplining and grooving deeper into work, that doesn't seem like work? Let's see. 

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Insomnia

Tonight I have a kind of sleeplessness that occurs no due to enough rest, but due to being overworked. Imagine a machine that has run continuously for hours, more than it could, being productive, and ended gaining so much momentum that it begins to resist it's own retirement. It is that kind of sleeplessness that I am experiencing tonight. A mind that has suddenly become physically restless because of the mental activity. It is some sort of impregnation, like a consuming thought that continues to grow once it has taken to inception. 

I feel tonight the push from my mind to work out the thought through the body which is tired to an extent that while it appreciates the mind's work, it doesn't want to move itself physically. How do you think an active mind and a worked up body coexist with each other? That is the kind of sleeplessness I feel tonight.

Saturday, November 28, 2020

Questions on the Nature of Truth

1.

I am often being told that I am too sensitive, someone who is far too easily affected by what people say.  How does one measure the limits of being sensitive? Isn't sensitivity desirable to be able to become perceptive, responsive, careful, empathetic, and so on? Aren't these values expected out of all human beings. To be human, they say, is to be alive with all your senses, and be able to relate and empathize with feelings and sensations of other human beings so as to become graceful and wholehearted. Do we not need to be sensitive in order to make ourselves large hearted to be able to contain a large amount of experiences, and allow thus, for different forms of lives and their ideas to exist. Is being sensitive not merely being more and more human? 


2.

Implied in their comment is that I dwell on people's comments far too seriously. Often, they mean to suggest that there is no need to pay so much attention to what people say, and that one must not take what is subjected to oneself so quickly. And that makes me wonder if anything that people say could be true? If there is almost nothing that people tell us that can be kept close, what is the purpose of speaking? I could understand that truth is provisional, and that truth is constructed for the moment, and that truth has a function of allowing something to exist in the here and now. 


3.

But then, what does it mean to live a truthful life? It is similar to asking if reflections are true? Do we exist only in our reflections? And if we agree that reflection is not our body, rather an image, then what is the purpose of reflection? Is the nature of truth same as the nature of reflection? Does truth lie outside the body? And if it does, then how is it possible to inhabit it? Does truth then become a mask? If it is a mask, doesn't it become paradoxical to be called truth, for is not the function of mask to merely hide. And by this line of thinking, one begs the question whether truth is a form of concealment? Is truth the mask of lie itself? Could truth simply be a form of lie? Do we only live in shades of lies? 


4.

Is lie a sociological necessity, and the manner in which we come to terms with everyday world? And does truth then become one of the functions of lies? Does it make truth the worst, or best form of lie? Is truth meant to be forgotten? Or does truth lose its truthfulness over time, and keep turning itself into a lie? Can the realization of truth be harmful for one's being? Is that why people transact through pretense? What is the social life of truth? How does it contribute towards becoming human? If there is any connection between truth and sensitivity (and thereby being human), how does one establish this relationship? Is being human far too ambitious a value to be chased? Is sensitivity only some perverted form of value to be mobilised for social transaction? 

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

The Scattered Present

In the past few months, I have probably upset so many people around me, close, not so close, for reasons known or unknown, for aspects valid or invalid. My silences, utterances, all have failed me, all worked against my intentions. Neither did my actions bring me peace, nor did they resolve my dissatisfactions. Everything seemed to entangle more than before with every succeeding day. One problem resolved into another. How does one make sense of the situation, I don't know?

I shouldn't get into describing these events. The blog may have no longer remained a space for speaking aloud. I had always thought of it as a personal diary, but what a fallacy it was! Someone has said very aptly, that we all write to be read by someone. I wrote primarily to record, out of instinct, for myself, as much to be read, of course by someone. To be sure, this "someone" was an evolving version of the self, more than any other. Anyway, social media's publicness often leads you to strange forms of repression through self censorship, and as I write this, I am already worried of so many (mis) interpretations it might pose for some. But one is not ill-intended, as often construed of products and producers of social media when they go against an opinion or person. I don't even know how, and if I must begin to even elaborate it, because it will complicate so many problem-ridden affairs that pushed me to an outpour.

These days, I wonder how, if I were to, begin to resolve problems one by one; set equations straight again, rejoin cracking ends, crease crumpled edges, rework relationships...the imaginary dialogues roll in the head, and suddenly in a flash of negativity, things fall apart. I laugh at myself to the extent of disarray that I myself seem to have created, through my own distancing. But this moving away from things, was perhaps only to come closer to myself. Have I been so wrong that I can not enter myself even in bypassing the other? Or had I gotten too close to someone to make it too difficult for them to lose me? And could this conscious process of movement towards the self be labelled as "ego"?

I wondered for a long time on what is identity without ego, and how does one claim agency without having a sense of identity? Often, ego is seen in a pejorative way. But can a historically identity-striken person give up the pursuit of self definition when he/she achieves enough clarity to discern the feeling of right from wrong? How does one resist power that possibly could overrun certain unexplored dimensions of a productive ego? Such questions still seek their root, their location, for it is the place which will help address the means through which reconciliation may be sought out. Which hidden repressions have played out in the past to ruffle so much, so rapidly? Are these just circumstances that have conspired a difficult environment? How can so many forces and energies go wrong at the same time that they seem to make a world so disharmonious?

How would things change? Does one need to work on them, or wait for time to heal? If only I could foresee, I could make an intervention. I am tied into the existing circumstantial pattern that holds me back from taking new steps towards repair. What if situations worsen in my intervention, what if experiments fail, what if I lose more? Perhaps these need psychological attention? I remain unsure.

Friday, June 08, 2018

Forecast

The weather this morning was rather strange. The sky was meekly overcast with light grey clouds. Not full enough to saturate they confused whether to wet the space or not. They wept without conviction dampening the already humid space. Bulky with water, the air trapped within the earth and the clouds wouldn't move unless you did. The trees were still. Noises on the street dampened. A stable body perspired, a moving body felt cold. The sun was present in the evaporating heat and fuzzy light. The holes from the clouds framed the remains of a clear sky.

The roads were unusually choked for the morning. The air filled with cement dust of the ongoing metro construction settled slowly on the bathed pores of the body sitting against the bus window producing a surface of irritation. The bus felt full inspite of a handful passengers. One felt constricted inspite of being in release. A strange weariness crept in discouraging the promise of the day ahead.

Unclear of intent, an uneasiness began to carve space by involuntarily clearing people on the way. A sharp annoyance made way through a body coated with the confused condition of the weather. Nothing spoken, yet everything expressed and subject to a universal space that perhaps accommodated so many more morning irritations. The sky continues to be daubed by grey clouds. Trees droop in still air. We all wait for movement.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

What is a home?

I realised today how I have come to reserve my entire life to my bag pack that I carry everyday, everywhere, most of the times. My bag has the ingredients that make my world. It contains my laptop, its related accessories, a little stationery pouch, some note books to write, basic amenities like my medicines, cards, keys, etc. One section of my bag is merely reserved for lunch boxes that my mother prepares for my day. On some days, that section remains empty. The other things I need are stuffed in my pockets - my vollet, kerchief, and mobile. What else do I need over the day? Practically nothing. I can perhaps live by this set of things.

As I come back from work, I recluse into my room. Still in my own virtual world of people and material accessed through my mobile or laptop, I don't feel the need to make any contact to the physical reality of my home. i exhaust myself of this virtual Life and eventually go to sleep. Nothing more. Nothing less. This has been my everyday over the last four years. 

The place where I stay - my parent's place - is hardly a true reflection of me - in any way. I store my parapharnelia there - the objects that I have created over my lifetime, and the objects that I have meaningfully collected over the thirty two years of my life. Those remain closed in boxes, baggages or cabinets. They come out when I am digging into memories of my own. My surrounding physical space - my room - is not me. I cannot claim ownership over anything that's built in this house. I don't live by my rules here. These rules are those of my parents. What time to get up, to eat, to behave - literally everything. I am a constructed body in my house. A body that conveniences my parents' existence. I do not write this with any ill feeling. I write this towards the understanding of what we come to be. How we come to become what we do. I write this to suggest that human condition which we perhaps try to escape while still being within it.

And here my wise, bold friends would suggest me to snap out in order to find a space of my own...a space that can become the physical expression of my psychological inner being. And to that, it takes so much mental effort, for I will need to fight the cultural codes that make up the social structure here. I have tried it in the past. It's easy to think of living alone by yourself, however, it lands you then into a strange circle of loneliness...slowly making you  into an  island. To make one's own microcosm against the expectational environment of those closest to you must require some amount of courage and clarity. I am not sure if I have it yet.

But we all live in these weird in-between environments of the negotiated self. Some of us realize and stay back to observe. Some of us act to experiment, exercise and experience that (desired) change. I meant to also suggest how the mind thinks within certain frameworks in such places like an others' home. A house that you have grown up in but is no longer yours. A house which makes you feel an other even if it accommodated your growing body. A space that changes its meaning with your own inner self realization. A place which tells a story that shall no longer represent that way in which you would want yourself to be identified. A house that no longer reflects the values that you have come to live your own life by. What kind of expressions do these homes become then - discordant, disconnected, strange environments that have mashed up their expressions into diverse ideologies that remain insular to each other. What heterotopias are these?

I am able to write this post from home because I am completely alone today - and I do not have the pressure to behave in any particular way, or abide by a time schedule (even at home). And this is not to say that there's a fixed time schedule to my life. But we all know that domestic life is that of a routine which is set by hundreds of other parameters. In the social context we live in here, it will be the morning chores that have to be attuned to the maids, the sweepers, the news paper wallahs, the hundred incidental things that keep your house going! These are needlessly further entangled into rules that every household sets for itself. And your life ends up getting inscribed in these impositions leaving you with no time to get deeper into your thought pools.

How does home happen? When does it happen? A home will also not happen being alone. And a home with people will always be these negotiations. How does one reconcile? How does one be?

Tuesday, September 05, 2017

Quip

I am perhaps not as interesting as a person, as in text.

Monday, February 29, 2016

The Practice of Learning

Every Friday at SEA, we hold an "Assembly" where we discuss current issues with the entire school. The topic is generally chosen a week in advance and two or more people are appointed to frame the context of the discussion. Often, readings are circulated - including articles, news, essays or other material in public domain. Students are expected to participate and respond to the issue at hand. Yesterday, we were to discuss Dr. B R Ambedkar's "Annihilation of Caste", written as a paper in 1944, however never presented. Students were not prepared (much like always), for they had not read the book or looked topically upon the subject. The dissatisfaction of the faculty rose to an extent that it ended up in setting up rules for compulsory readings as well as summary-writing for everyone, per week, for a session that was otherwise more voluntary and discursive in nature.

Pro-active students opposed, and debated the imposition. These were also students who were more attuned to current political affairs, were good in verbal and written expression, well trained in English. Amidst a gathering of about 80 students, the number of these students could be counted on fingertips. It was strange to see these students talking for the rest, loud and clear, while others seemed to have already submitted to both - either the opinion of their vocal counterparts or to the faculty who had just announced a strong imposition. Their eyes down, faces with blank expression or even the self imposed silence was worth observation.

Let me make the situation more vivid - the faculty's intrusion of this silence didn't seem appropriate, for it made him more and more agitated. Struggling to understand and at the same time remain with the students' restraint, he kept making allegations and suggestions: "Why don't you all read? Can you not read 20 pages in a week? You can certainly write 5000 words in 10 days. You people do not have any capacity to sit for one hour in a place and read. Do you realise that you all can not read any thing beyond fiction? (shouting) You have to make it a practice to read..."

Perhaps the students did not register the essence of any of his questions. Instead, the faculty's rising voice, as well as temper created an environment of intimidation. It did not allow the students to reflect and speak out, but silenced them further. Rather, his laments were received as instructions - "you have to read, you have to write, you have to increase your stamina to absorb..." Any rebuttal or attempt to argue personal difficulties by the student would have been engulfed in his anger and thrown back at him/her. It happened - when the so called vocal group refuted to the idea of writing, they faced strong back lash. Eventually the faculty realised this perhaps, and in wanting to cool down, began to divert the discussion into a more productive one - engaging the students in the kind of topics they would indeed like to discuss over the coming 10 weeks, ascertaining students who would head the seminars for SEA Assemblies.

Yet, I had an intrusion within the above drama - much earlier, trying to open up a dialogue (otherwise SEA Assemblies turn out to be monologues, with only the faculty speaking). I strongly believe that one can not begin to absorb instructions unless a prior experience has deeply affected, influenced and motivated a certain necessity for one to open oneself up to a particular kind of knowledge.  For example, unless one has personally experienced discrimination of any kind (body, gender, caste, class, etc.), he/she may not be able to relate to the discussion on minority politics or other-ing. Unless one has faced adversity, one may not realise how deeply economics is related to one's outlook (socio-economics) of everyday actions. Most middle class students, like I was, are fairly insular to these debates. They are socio-culturally trained and coated in a thick layer of perceived moral values which become the default mechanisms through which they rationalise actions in their life. Ready social acceptance of such acts within their own circles reinforces their conviction in these values, and prevent them from either interrogating the validity of their ways of seeing, or even allowing them to step in another's shoes to look the situation differently. There are no stakes involved, and such kind of moral coding also sets up their (unquestioned) ambitions - fairly linear with narrow ideas of a "successful" life.

While I would like to keep the frustration with the narrow moralities of the middle class lingering at the background of this writing (and not keeping myself out of this category, but looking at it from a skeptical lens), I would go back to the classroom, to put myself in the shoes of these 18/19-year olds by diving back into my own history.

I have to confess that I am still not very well versed with history, politics or political history. I was just a bit more averse and worse to these subjects when I was 18 myself. I had no idea about the world, no interest in global politics, no awareness about everyday happenings in the country or city. I could not stand news channels - for me they were monotonous speeches which I could not take in. I would listen to them with a deaf ear. I could register nothing, for I had no background of history to pose it against. Further, I wasn't able to relate to it and make it amenable for my own life in any way. I would ponder, for instance - How was the news affecting me? How was I a participant in the global affairs? What could I have possibly done for the world? Am I even important? These questions, in hindsight, had dual tendencies - on one hand, they repelled me from engaging in current affairs, but on the other hand, they kept getting stronger in opposition to what was going on around me - I was constructing a giant wall (of questions).

The fear of being ridiculed on my unawareness of basic facts kept me back from discussing my personal ambiguities with any one else - precisely that what can I do for the world? The question of one's relationship to the world (one's  "immediate" environment) is a deep one - for one is constantly trying to find methods to interpret, engage and connect to reality around them. However, instead of enabling learners with methods, questions like the above are often posed with more rhetorics. To look at my own situation back then might help relating to the students here (for they seem to have gone through the same education system). As a sufficiently bright student, I couldn't retain facts in my head for nuts. I couldn't remember capitals of countries, geographies of countries, leaders of the world, years in which events occurred, and so on. If one told me poetries and metaphors, I could build ideas upon them; but facts seemed utterly useless - they did not have any potential expandability, they did not offer any food for thought. Rather, one had to mobilise facts to make them useful. My inability to throw facts within a given discussion kept be back from even participating in any. I had not lived the facts in the first place, and since I had not experienced them, I wasn't ever able to trust their validity. After all, it wasn't as if history just had facts, but also that facts themselves had histories.

Memorising facts, or even concepts in the manner of facts (think of how we were taught Newton's laws of motion, or Einstein's laws of relativity, or theorems in mathematics) seemed important. These would enable one to participate in discussions. I tried hard - but much like a weak bond, I could never retain facts and information in my head. Memorising is a method that I attribute to a middle class pedagogy. The thrust of such pedagogy is to prepare pupils for the purpose of passing examinations. In this view, to remember is almost sacred. But the logic of remembering is almost never elaborated or discussed.

History is not a science after all, although historiography is. But while the "rationality" of science can be experienced universally, the "causality" in history is an act of individual experience and interpretation. I clearly remember the extent to which teaching in my environment was focused on "how to memorise". We were prescribed several methods to memorise -- "speak loudly so that you can hear your own words", "write the answer 3 times - two times by copying and the third time without seeing it", "get up early in the morning and read when your mind is fresh", "focus in silence, two hours everyday, keep reading". These unsolicited (or sometimes asked) advices were constantly received from parents, elders, teachers, and every person who was apparently involved or concerned about education. However, the concern of education was easily and often lost to the idea of scoring more marks - for that's how you could prove "good" education. This is precisely what my childhood was like, and I tried all of the above methods of memorising blindly, for I wanted to be a good student. It helped topically and momentarily, but as time passed, all things painstakingly memorised were forgotten and left behind, just to create fresh mental space for new stock coming ahead.

In the process of memorising, emphasis was on digesting the answer, not savouring it. (Do you remember the Digests you read from in school days?). Education unfortunately has been made functional by our system, moreso by our teachers. But in this process, what I had almost lost was my love for language. Years of practising memorising techniques had failed me in language - both English, Hindi and my mother tongue, for it was about knowing the arrangement of words and not their meaning...I couldn't ever connect to history because there were far too many conceptual terms that I could never go beyond. Terms like "reform", "revolution", "renaissance", "movement" - and hundreds - those that I had only understood in the context of science, did not make any sense in history. In addition, remembering names, dates, events and places took a toll on me. After all, I had no historical experience of any of them...I couldn't have articulated this problem back then, and even if I did, I wouldn't have possibly bothered to ask anyone - I don't think I related in an intellectual way to any one in my childhood (if one was to accept that there is an intellectual in the young mind). Since the emphasis was on how much the mind could retain, the method one adopted was mugging up. If one didn't mug up, one couldn't champion the normative social discussions, or the race for being a "good student".

However, that language could play an important role in deciphering knowledge was never acknowledged or even understood. I often accepted words without getting deeper into their meaning, usage or etymology. When I had nothing to associate the words (and their meanings) to my everyday life, I would just remember them as new words. I would refer to the dictionary, but it was a cumbersome affair, and interrupted far too much in the flow of reading or learning. I still could not situate a word in the context of the paragraph. Sometimes, I also associated a deviated charge to the word's actual meaning. I carried this on until much later when I was introduced to a book on vocabulary (Word Power Made Easy, by Norman Lewis) by my cousin, who identified my leanings to writing. It was this book that initiated in me a slow process of revisiting my entire education. While I moved forward with vocabulary and word-building, I kept going backward to reclaim all my time and knowledge lost in mugging up some of the most beautiful concepts, writings and ideas in humanity.

Yet, I was not prepared to take in history and politics because they seemed to be embroiled within each other so strongly that I felt intimidated. One had to know so much more to understand a single ongoing act of politics. To an extent, I was losing patience in going through tons of information. Every act had a long history, every history was deeply entrenched in ideologies and every ideology had several perspectives. This multiplicity of history, yet again was interesting, but kept me from sharpening my focus and thereby my position for any event at hand. It took great amount of  courage to fight the world who judged me (and perhaps still do) for not knowing a lot of things (facts/ideas/concepts). Such judgements can be demoralising and discouraging, but one has to still put in effort to be able to make it relevant for oneself, after which one is ready to have one's own reading of history.

I pulled this conversations back to history because we were talking about "Annihilation of Caste" - the designated reading that spurred this post. I am not sure if we are going to talk about it any longer. I read through the first few pages of the book which archives the undelivered lecture. It is interesting to read several succeeding prefaces by Ambedkar himself, emphasizing upon the multiple times the book has been published after its first print. Also, it was extremely fascinating to go through the letters that Ambedkar exchanged with the organizing committee - the inclusion of those letters conveyed a certain kind of immediacy, and made the reading more engaging and involving. I couldn't read through it further because of lack of time, but it is surely going to be on my reading list soon.

I would now like to divert this discussion to some points that this writing (which I have been writing over two days) made me think this morning. In writing the details of this incident, I have opened up to myself the self-initiated enterprise of learning. It is important to identify the processes and the methods in which one is able to learn, rather teach oneself. The question of "how do I learn" is an important one to ask. The emphasis on the 'I' is to draw attention to the subjectivities involved in the process of learning. Not that no one knows about it. But perhaps this aspect often slips off our mind. Moreso, in mass education, these subjectivities of learning are bound to be overlooked, hence lost.

Self-learning can reclaim the pleasure of savouring education. Self-learning involves much effort in identifying one's peculiar methods of accessing knowledge. Learning is thus a practice that one has to constantly undertake. The practice of learning shall open oneself to one's own interests, desires and disposition. This may help in constructing more confident and secure individuals, contrary to the ones that mass education systems produces.


(Perhaps the last two paragraphs are not exactly the way I wanted to bend this discussion. However, I will take the liberty of this blog as an experimental writing space to let out this work in public domain, and perhaps get more feedback to prepare a refined discussion)




Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Untitled

Have you every imagined how freesprited little children are? They do not have any biases, fears, inhibitions. They are confident, in taking their actions. Undisturbed by the impositions of right or wrong, they are assertive in most things they do. Little things make them happy. They find ways of keeping themselves engaged and busy in the world. The entire world is, for them. And the entire world for them is something to be engaged with, amenable and understandable like a toy. It is to taste, hear and smell, feel, see and play!

We kill it all in bringing them up - all sense of freedom, confidence, liberty, free thinking, curiosity - almost everything. Constantly subjecting them to fit the social codes of moral, behaviour, gender, sexuality, hierarchy, and everything controls being alive. We trap it, and then ask these very grown ups to fight for it. It's a shame.

I have many examples to demonstrate - those from my own family, things that I encounter everyday. Thoughts that are extremely sexist, conservative, bigoted - words from a family that thinks that it is progressive. The more I live in my home, the more I cringe - it is not the place. It is no longer my place.

Family is a disastrous institution - one that is busily knitting a trap, filtering all kinds of true expression, unwilling to accept dissent (seen as disrespect) and forever offering you an illusion of security. This security makes you weaker day by day, unfit to face the real world independently, failing you within a nest of bourgeoisie moral standards that prevent you from looking a world beyond the individual needs. The ambitions of a middle class family are so narrow that they may suffocate you for dreaming grand.

Yet they take pride in your so called ambition, the moral high order you set for yourself. A family in the contemporary conservative india is a failed institution. It produces babies and detaches it from all the values one is born with - those that essentially define one's ego. Those that need to be respected in an individual, those that make one an "individual". The family demands to fit into the social order, consume and succumb to a hierarchy. It kills babies, by killing its values. They dont bring up individuals, they kill them. They kill them to produce social robots - those that will forever feed into the never ending insecurities of their very own survival - survival of the body, their stinking morals and their long bygone outdated ethics.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Untitled

I have been writing, just not on the blog. I have been noting in my notebooks, tonnes of notes from things I hear from colleagues, friends. I have been recording conversations - many that need to be transcribed. I have been drawing, ideas that can be hopefully executed. I have been photographing, images that need to be spoken about. I have been thinking, of themes that need to be elaborated. I have been documenting, projects that need to be curated and exhibited. I have been reading, works that need reflection. I have been listening, lectures that can be archived.

How, in the midst of so much activity can one find any time to put things down in coherent manner on a blog. This place requires serious updation with all of the above, and I just have to find a strategy to make it happen. Perhaps in the coming weeks, I could put together something that is worthwhile - something that I will like to come back to in future and read again, smile, and applaud myself! 

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

An incomplete crisis

I spend
long hours
staring at blank air
eyes that see
a different world
transport me into 
the world of the other
where i am not i
yet i cannot see myself
still blinded
not able to find
not able to see
who am i
events take place
in the reality of that non world
which others can't see
it smells and feels the same though
one thing leads to the other
the space of that world
keeps getting deeper
deeper as i think more
deeper as i craft more
yet not taking shape
the more it grows
the more shapeless it becomes

---

from diary
16/3/2014

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Theories & Manifestoes

I am thinking things in a manner quite dense, in a way that can not be written in hurried posts. Most of the times, I refrain from posting things unless I have found an entry point into a discussion. You form opinions on things all the time, but hold them back for the lack of a "proof" or an instance strong enough to validate your theoretical analysis of it. Views on the society, family, individuals, education, behaviours, disciplines, and so on build up all the time in the head. A critical mind takes enough time to probe these opinions carefully such that they can be defended to the challenges that can be directly or distantly anticipated. Much time then goes into developing an argument to fend the allegations rather than working up towards building your own theory.

Manifestoes, unlike theories, have the liberty to be ruthless. They donot have the burden of being politically correct. They themselves chart a new politics. Manifestoes are often clear stances that people take on things, and are irreverent towards balancing out things. It is not the intent of manifestoes to keep everyone happy. Theories on the other hand, must work in multiple, or ambitiously, every context. Theories and manifestoes both give rise to each other. Nevertheless, the real world keeps theories within bounds, in a sort of confinement - making it realize its own limits. Manifestoes are often products of gut feeling and brought out with an air of assertion, where it assumes indifference to other critical discourses that may try to poke holes in their intent. 

From my above understanding, I am not a person who perhaps seems to attempt a manifesto. I am not necessarily assertive, or affirmative enough to force down a singular way of doing things. Being a skeptic, a person who not only doubts everyone, but even the self all the time, I can hardly adopt the mode of proposing ideas in the manner of manifestoes. I am a theorist - in disposition as well as training. I have many theoretical ideas waiting to find their archives -- as my advisor at Yale would often say. "Some people come to the program [MED] with an identified archive which they try to theorise, while others come with theoretical ideas and find material to substantiate them, eventually making their own archives." I clearly fell in the category of the latter. 

It is thus that I began to maintain a 'Book of Ideas'. My book of ideas contains formulations of the world that may be ill-informed. There are times when I have felt wise about holding release of a thought until the time many other dimensions of a situation / person / object /activity is revealed to me in an unexpected manner. There are other times when I have cringed for not being affirmative enough to present my ideas strongly for the insecurity of the lack of information. What seems to shape my skepticism is this perceived sense of ill-information. In this line of thought, it may not be wise to write anything at all until you have almost lived your entire life. Is there any way of understanding life, and aspects of life that you want to decipher while you are still living? Any theory thus, is always in evolution, for it is written as "in process". 

What shall be then, a skeptic's diary? What form does skepticism take in language? A skeptic poses questions, hardly answers. At once, it seems utterly paradoxical for a skeptic to present his/her ideas - because on the one hand they are are quite unsure, and thus also incomplete. Incomplete and unsure ideas are always discarded by others. In modern culture, incompleteness does not hold much value. I think that manifestoes are forms of incomplete theories. Unsure incomplete theories which are hardened with a tact of indifference and defensive affirmation. Can manifestoes then be looked at with a skeptic eye? Or should a skeptic be writing manifestoes in order to escape being crumbled under criticism?

A blog is a soft space for such discussion to be voiced. However, many a times on reading my earlier posts, I have found some writings to be extremely potent. Yet, they never gain the status of seriousness because after all, they are on a blog - moreso a personal blog that is perhaps merely impressionistic? Such considerations bring us to question the agency of a personal blog. In recent times, we have seen enough examples of instrumental action channeled through online media portals. It may be worthwhile to understand how seriously do people take writings on blogs? In the course of my writing, I realised the title and content of this blog raises these questions quite succinctly. 'Dagagiri' (you may read about its etymology through the link on the sidebar) almost announces its content as a gentle manifesto. 'A gentle manifesto' sounds comforting, bringing in measured assertion with a pinch of self-skepticism.

In this spirit, I shall find time to note down some thoughts over coming time...perhaps...if they remain in my head long enough.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

The Lust for Internet

There is a lot in the head that is not coming out. Perhaps that has been articulated in the head, but has not made its way to the blog. Not made to the eyes of so many people ready, and waiting to judge, help, ask, rip, challenge, debate and suggest - none for which I am either prepared or willing. Because for some reason, i believe i will not be able to express, or reveal. Because for some reason, I am not prepared to debate, justify, rationalize...

I often end up thinking that (my) thoughts are so volatile. Sometimes, in my head, they are explosive and soothing at the same time. Explosive because they may appear to be morally outrageous if expressed, and soothing because they have taken some form through a known language within the head, that gives a sense of peace to the restless mind. They are almost like letters ready to be despatched, but stationed in the head. What happens when letters already written to someone lie waiting long, and perhaps never get a chance to travel to whom they are addressed to? What, in this sense, happens to letters in the head that are not despatched out for long? 

Tremendous amount of energy is required to translate the raw explosive thoughts that occur / get formulated in the mind, into the language of diplomacy so that that they hurt no one, they are well taken and create the right impact in the reality of the world. Such energy is something that I don't want to yet put in. The real world almost always demands to sugar coat your thoughts. You can not express criticism freely, for it would mean you have to be ready to accept it freely too. The fear of hurting forces me to be silent on most occassions. 

The amount of stalking by people on the internet unimaginable. Gone are the days when one could be a stranger on / to the internet. The internet, once allowed me to talk to myself. The internet was a place to escape, wander and get lost into. Today it has become a destination! It has strangely become a place where both - becoming anonymous and becoming popular plays out at the same time, creating a situation of crisis. Being pulled by such opposing thoughts, any idea of identity is splintered, scattered. In such a situation, what does one post on this blog?

I am becoming increasingly insecure of consequences of being stalked. It is irritating when people who have not known you for long enough try to figure you out and pass on an opinion. When people don't know you, they interpret your actions and words very differently, sometimes unnecessarily complicating it. The attention that your words and actions attract on the internet is again, encouraging and alarming. Encouraging because you are prompted to put more out there, because it brings you popularity, but alarming because you make yourself more available to be misinterpreted.

What do people, who otherwise do not have the outreach, but the belief that they are competent, do? The internet shall always remain then a brothel of sorts, where lust is mistaken for love. It is a lust for asserting presence through and in the immaterial world. We, who exist on the internet, strive for making our presence prominent in the virtual. Our own virtual constructs soon shall encompass us by becoming bigger than our very reality. These make us comparable to the powerful, to the frequently demanded, and fill in a gap that we have ourselves imagined within us. Indeed, it has to be the imagined that has to fill up the virtual. 

I realize I am getting theoretical to an extent that only I understand my words and statements. It would be good, perhaps to quickly list the things I wanted to write about, did last week and so on.

--

I attended two talks last week, one by Sanjay Mohe at KRVIA and the other by Henry Jenkins at the Godrej Culture Lab in Vikroli. Both talks were great. I didnot take notes. I am sure these will be available on their respective websites. I might talk about them sometime, when I have researched more, and feel appropriate to cite them. Meanwhile, I must close this post. I don't know if this writing is making sense at all!

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Prelude to subsequent posts

I believe I haven't written for weeks together. That is not to suggest that I don't have any thing to write about. Infact, of all times, I have the most to write now - about the activities at School of EA, learning from CAMP and a numerous other discussions I have been having with many colleagues. I no longer like to have posts here as babbles (yet this may turn out to be one). I have realized the political instrumentality of the (this) blog. Some time ago, I was pondering on how this writing space has grown publicly. The more one comes into the public eye, the more the openness of one's thoughts shrinks. One has to constantly be careful of what one is throwing out in such open space, which once used to be a naiive, innocent diary which recorded all events of one's life. The internet has created this as a new form of public space that begins to take the characteristic of a real public dialogue. I can relate to Rohan Shivkumar when some time ago, his blog became a dumpyard for his material from being an active blog buzzing with ideas. Originally, Rohan's blogspace used to thrive with posts, ideas, critical thoughts and discussions. At a certain point, people seem to have become too sentimental about what was being written about on that blog, after which Rohan took a detour. After all, the last thing a writer (or thinker) wants to battle is unnecessary politics.

Today, Rohan's blog is merely a dump of pictures from his travels, with occasional captions. I must recall that there has been so much I have learnt from his writing which was only accessible to me through his blog. I have repeatedly found myself citing him in all my significant theses - be it my undergraduate thesis, my fellowship thesis or even my masters thesis. I find it surprising how all of my three research projects borrow from his ideas - those that passionately came across in his blogposts. He no longer writes such posts on his blog.

I used to record the inner happenings of Academy on this blog. My friends used to ask me - 'how do you write critically about a place you yourself work in?' Thinking to this question, I feel the management of Academy was not concerned, neither active on the internet. That is how perhaps, I was able to sustain my writing. The other thing could have been that they were far too involved in the larger level politics to care for my critique on their working. But all these factors helped my reflections then. Today, I can no longer have that freedom because the new school I work in has people who are quite active on the web world, who are constantly on the internet reading who is doing what.

I can no longer be open in the same way as before, as this will lead to the death of my own thoughts. Yes, this is indeed a self-censorship, and I am sure this repression will come out in ways unknown. This blog, as I have perhaps mentioned a lot of times before, has been a space where I have tried to purge my emotions through writing. Now I have taken a lot of my writing back to the good old form of manual diary writing - just to mitigate the reaction of my repressed energy. Seemingly this blog has become popular in its own way. This makes me very conscious while writing. I know people are reading. I know people are waiting for next posts, even if they don't really reply on posts here.

But to come back to the numerous things I wanted to write - I will be writing about my engagement with CAMP's exhibitions across India. I must say that there indeed were many novel things I got to learn about myself in the past three months. Secondly, I wanted to revisit the issue of 'general knowledge' that I have commented in the past on this blog with relation to the visit of a journalist at SEA. Thirdly, working with artists for the past three months, I have been wanting to critically look at the ways in which art and architecture interact with each other in India. This reflection perhaps particularly stems from my work with Ashok Sukumaran, who studied architecture, but now practices as an artist. The question of interaction between art and architecture in our country needs to be investigated, for it has remained for long with me, and I have not had the time to thread examples together. I must be doing some serious work on this aspect. I also wanted to record my thoughts on the Dharavi Biennale that happened two weeks ago in the city. Just last week, I also attended Steven Holl's talk at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, where he spoke about his projects as well as ran quickly through his selected proposal for the extension of the museum's north block.

There are more general things I used to write about before, those that still come to my mind. But I keep questioning if writing about those same things would be relevant. May be? Anyway, now that I have made an inventory for myself in the last paragraph, I should be able to make posts without much delay. With concerns that this blogspace will become more articulate, more formal over time, I am going to continue to write until the point I have faded like Rohan.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

State of Mind

These days I don't like to write. Although I think of transcribing many things that I listen in discussion that people around me engage in. I keep wondering if they are just talking something much more important than what I have (if at all) got to say. I don't think I have anything to say any more.

When I ritualistically listen to the Bollywood songs on my headphone while traveling to and back from work, I pay attention to the space they create in my head, the composition, the meaning in the composition, and make evaluations in my head about their overall effect. 

I read excerpts of my masters thesis today. Inspite of my belief that there is something significant in that idea, I was disappointed in my writing. Very few have read it. I don't ask people to read it, and yet I want it to be discussed. Who will read it, critique it, help me make it more meaningful?

I am still not able to find place in this place. This place, that is the city, the home, the new school - that which I thought to be mine. Where do  I belong? And if not here, where do I go? In this spirit, I gathered courage to talk to my parents of finding a new place, failing to receive any encouragement. 

I don't connect to anyone, I am disconnected to myself. My ideas remain in my head, they bloom and burst in my own mind - because I feel they are insignificant as compared to the ideas my peers are producing. I doubt the intangibility of ideas. What do ideas really do anyway? Where have they taken me - am I not back to pavilion? 

That day I sang for the students and felt empty. My songs were empty. As if they came from a voice outside of me. They did not transform me in any way. The students yet appreciated!

What is this state of mind? Am I experience another culture shock? And I just realized that the whole post is dotted with 'dont's'. Quite opposite to what the positivist America should have done to me. Although, it will take time, may be to realign and re establish.

Monday, October 20, 2014

Constructs of Silence

Finding your narrative to suit multiple people at the same time can sometimes jam you! What do I mean  by this?

Most of the times, when we try to be diplomatic, when talking around people having different opinions about a particular thing at hand, we search a way to speak so as to keep the interests of all parties engaged and involved with the "thing at hand". Constructing this narrative of diplomacy (or the diplomatic narrative) is a skill. In this construction - essentially a forced process - where you are constantly telling your mind what NOT to say, rather than what to say, dialogue delivery is an act of elimination. After leaving the words that you have to avoid, your speech is a piece of script that assumes a meaning that is meaningless for what you originally intended to convey. In other cases, the immense openness of this disfigured speech is back interpreted in ways that are not known to you, and become evident only when they result into something tangible - an output of an action that manifests into the physical world. 

I suck at diplomacy. And when I am direct, I am too harsh - to the extent that I may sound extremely proudy, or ignorant of others' choices. I snap quickly when I try to be too diplomatic. That is the reason why I keep my ideas to myself, and bring it out on this blog. Writing helps me to release my inner frustration. I talk more here, because I am turned to silence far too many times because of the realization that I am constantly being labelled as a conceited person, that often comes out through my strong opinions. This blog absorbs my ego, it sucks my frustration. I dont know what people make of what is being written here.

To some extent, I had become comfortable with being diplomatic in the US. I thought I would be able to carry it forward in my practice here. However, being diplomatic in India is much more difficult. This is so, because at any given time, you are necessarily dealing with far too many people, all with different streams of unorganized thought. The "unorganized" part is very important, because while talking, people dont stick to a single topic here. Instead, they talk more like Bollywood masala films - those that have a free reeling combination of drama, emotion, laughter, seriousness and such stuff, in essence a clubbing of contents from varied fields. Most people fail to realize the gravity of a topic of discussion, and stretch and smudge it into different directions. For example if someone is talking about the connectivity of places within the city through transport, several subsidiary and unimportant issues like pollution, sound, smoke, garbage and so on will find place in the narrative. And one would not know when and how a side topic becomes the centre stage of the conversation. In such a situation, one never knows how even one's diplomatic statement will unfold. The vulnerability that comes with this insecurity of how your statements will be construed and perceived crumbles me.

I am always worried about my how I am being perceived here - because more often than not, I fear that I am being misinterpreted in my actions, thoughts and words. And thus I bring it out in this space. I wonder if I am incomprehensible or people just assert their opinions onto others? In the race of being assertive, which I am told to be consistently by many by far, I start becoming defensive - because there is far too much to explain about my logic and therefore my way of looking at things. People are not interested in listening to it.

Finally, isn't much of what we are, actually what we talk? We constantly construct ourselves through our talk, the way we speak and say things in different situations. What when we are not able to talk out things? And what personality does silence construct?

Thursday, October 02, 2014

An Inventory of Change

I landed back in my city, Mumbai, about two weeks ago after spending two long years in the United States. I longed for it in ways more than one. Whenever someone would ask me what I missed about this place, I could only answer that I missed all the chaos, dust, dirt, people and mess of the city. While one may assume these to be negative values, perhaps they had taken an altogether different meaning for me, which I was able to reconcile only once I was detached from it. It had helped me to understand my place more objectively.

Re-entering one's city altogether after two years can be a phenomenal experience. Especially when it is a place like Mumbai, that has been undergoing massive infrastructural transformation, the results can be sublime - stunning and depressing at the same time. As much as people indifferently muttered to me over long calls how "nothing had really changed" in two years, the city does have new stories to tell. The geography of Mumbai, as much as that of the personal space in my home, has evidently changed. The distances and districts people travel have altered. I too, now travel to the opposite end of the city for work. People have moved places of work and residence.

I have taken a long time to even begin to write this post, for I was conscious about understanding my land through the still-fresh lens of the Western world. Therefore, I took the first week in the city to meet people and listen to their narratives, of how has the city transpired into people's lives and what has passed in the last two years. How has it affected the people I once used to stitch a sense of the city through? A mixed sense of apprehension and excitement began as soon as I had finally booked my tickets. Suddenly, all imaginations of change were soon going to become real! While many cautioned me about the troubles of the system and the hardships I would be facing once I am back, I was still eager to experience once again all things that had possibly made my life meaningful!

The feeling of the East, as compared to the West brushed on me as I landed on the Abu Dhabi Airport. While I shall not deem to elaborate upon the suffocating domed chamber of the airport, the gates through which I was to take the last flight in my long journey pleasantly irritated me. As I took position in the queue to board the Mumbai flight, I heard whispers of aging Maharashtrian parents worried of finding their way from the Mumbai Airport, they tried to make connections with others in the same flight assuring assistance. Others from the worker classes were generally confused and insecure about boarding the flight. They constantly tried to disregard the queue and barged places on the baggage checking machine belts to get their clearances early. Pushes and shouts, disapproval and disappointments, shouts and calls, sweat and waits - all had begun to preface my entry into the East.

Yet, the entry to Mumbai wasn't as worse. Mumbai had to itself a newly constructed international airport, that was the talk of not only the town, but also overseas. The airport looked stunning, and until I stepped out, I still felt being in the US - with all the glamour and glitz of the new terminal, quickly passing through the art works of artists I once attended sessions and shows of, I finally arrived in Mumbai when a new morning was yet to dawn.

--

A ready and expected announcement of Mumbai on your face is its multifoldedness. As I began to explore new friends and places that had shifted neighbourhoods, I realized how repeatedly I cut across the formal and informal environments to reach to a space that hybridly fit into an altogether hidden location. I experienced this in a gleeful visit to my new neighbour Arjun Sharma's house in Gokuldham, as well as the new School of Architecture (SEA) in Borivali, where I am now working. The approach to both these places is characterized by a landscape of tall buildings and ad hoc settlements.

Coming from a consistent formal landscape of cars and individuality, Mumbai throws you into life and activity - that which is far too close to one's body inculcating an immediate tendency to protect oneself - both physically and mentally. All spaces leak into and influence each other without permission, an aspect that has become more apparent after my cross cultural encounter. However, the speed of activities is slow, where you can actually see multiple things happening, not in a linear, or cyclic pattern, but all that the same time. I look at the roads where heavy trucks and buses, cars and rickshaws, bikes and cycles along with pedestrians and animals cross each other together at the same time. They look like a galaxy of objects suspended in space moving towards each other. 

As I met up friends after long years at the nearby Oberoi Mall in Goregaon, I realized that the building had only densified with more shops flourishing within the smallest of crevices within. In the food court crowded with people, I saw how the donut vendors, from whom we ordered a set of 6 selected sweets, handled multiple people with great ease. While he took the order from one, he took the items out for the other and pressed the button to print the bill for the third. There was no room to lose any time, passenger or money. And while he did all of this, he introduced his stuff to another recently arrived customer.

Prices of all things possible had changed - almost equalling the rates of those in the US. The train fares had changed from those being correspondingly incremental to your journey within the city, to slabs of Rs. 5, 10 or 15. I was never able to look closely to the revised fare-charts. The rate boards generally installed over the ticketing counters were all brutally torn and removed. They looked ugly. The stations themselves had been initiated into a mega transformation - those beginning to get covered in  tin vaults resting on steel structures, covering up a massive area underneath - that was once occupied by numerous stalls and enterprises now removed for purposes of expansion of the railway premises.

The scale of change reminded me of the large basilicas and churches I had freshly seen back in the West. The station at Andheri specifically baffled me, making me feel like a dwarf in its large floating belly. I was also quite surprised to look at the installation of escalators on the stations taking the passengers upstairs to the cross over bridges, almost adjoining the traditional steel staircases. They, without a doubt created awkward corners and pockets in their crooked alignments. I have always remained fascinated in this aspect of misalignments of any new additions or alterations that the public infrastructural projects in the city takes onto itself. Sharp edges, open ends suggesting continuation, as if inviting for another thingly member to join hands and extend itself remain one of the features of the procedures of misalignment and extensions.

An altogether new station has come up between Goregaon and Jogeshwari - called Oshiwara! Although it has still not been inaugurated, much work has been accomplished. While one can debate if two years, and the time it was being planned since ahead, is justifiable for a station of that scale to become operative, the physical semblance of the project on ground already makes the geography and experience of movement along that axis different.

Things which appeared to be quite simple in the US to execute or even learn seem to be a farfetched or even non existent process here. The city still presented an interesting mix of traditional and modern, in the way information is shared and kept from people who have continued to productively misuse and operate within the lack of availability of information. I had to visit the bank to merely ask if my account had turned inactive for not using it at all for the last two years. The bank had installed a new machine where account holders could automatically get their pass books updated. My brother explained to me his initial errors in inserting the wrong face of the passbook, fretting over the machine's lack of instructions, which he eventually figured out. Yet, when he encountered a failure of the registry of his card in the adjoining ATM of the same bank, he went back to check about error. The bank had no solution to his problem. When he asked if he could cancel the card, the bank had no set form, no information, in other words, no redressal system. An information that I could have easily checked online, became an affair of almost 2 hours of traveling 3 kilometers going to the bank and getting back to home.

I have not yet had the chance to travel through the Metro, which is supposed to have convenienced a lot of east-west traffic. But I did cut across the whole city driving through the Bandra-Worli Sea link late in the evening. The journey presented to me a city that had lit up quite differently than before. It revealed to me towers that were  yet waiting to surpass the tallest buildings I had once seen there. And several new projects were ready to be filled up with human life. Cranes and pulleys animated the night, and shouted at me the dream of the city. However, people were still endearing, always available for help. In the company of laughter and friends in the car, we approached our destination in the far end of the city, asking for directions to the people on the streets. And when we were lost even after feeding the address into the freshly 3G internet enabled Google Maps on the phone, our rescue remained a common friend who was just a phone call away who custom-explained the directions along with the landmarks and estimated time we would take to arrive our destination!


(The images for this post shall be posted later)

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Backstage Babbles

I have been thinking of what I have been thinking. Suddenly I have been wanting to understanding the metastructure of everything. Like the everything of everything. Or the meaning of meaning. How much can you distance yourself from yourself? How clear can clarity get? How confusing is confusion? How comforting is comfortable? The above thoughts have stuck my thoughts.

For the past one week, I have allowed myself to think and do what I want to think and do - well at least, partially. My ramble is not even as interesting as that of Deleuze. In order to escape this self convolution, I started watching things. Not reading. Watching. And I started collecting quotes from things I have been watching. Writing can be wonderful thing. But just like any other art, it has to be inspired by something. Recently I have beein thinking that although I make interesting arguments, I am not necessarily able to articulate them well. Or I may have interesting observations, but I am not able to express them so well. Thus I took a pause to re-consider my past.

Last week I made my website. I think I engaged in a creative activity after a very long time. It took me time to figure a way of presenting myself, for I have forayed into so many areas over the past that I feel bound by none. I am inherently interested in multiple things. I wonder how helpful it would be to keep it so. Vinit Nikumbh, after seeing the website, told me that "it's an interesting way to position yourself" - and I said, " I think i was trying to de-position myself!"

I have increasingly begun to cripple myself of the counter side of every thing I think. And that has been the reason for keeping away from writing for some time in the past. A lot of it is also about the state of mind. When you are happy, you feel like writing, when you are not, you dont feel like doing anything. I have a lot of time right now, but I can not take to writing, because it feels purposeless. What is the fate of this blog afterall? People read it, sometimes they relate to some stories, and write back, and then nothing happens?

This blog itself is so diverse, a life-portfolio of sorts, a back stage, a green room...My website links to this blog, with the fear if it may be misunderstood, or under-valued. Since writings here are not professional, rather rambling thoughts. There have been a lot of times when I have directed people to rambling thoughts on my blog. But how much importance would people in the profession would put on such ideas?

I will attempt to, soon put together the small list of quotes I collected over my past viewings of films in the last few days. May be I can initiate my writing habit once again. Meanwhile, I dont know how incoherent this post is. It doesnot make up for my degree in writing. Or perhaps I am just overworked with writing!

Friday, April 25, 2014

On Day-Dreaming

I still get up every morning, have my bath, and as I recite my prayers ritualistically, I stand at the window gazing at something for a long time, that turns into nothingness, eventually traversing myself into a known or unknown past or future. The word "still" is important because I have been engaging in this kind of "dreaming" since a very long time. When I was at home in Mumbai, I would stand every morning at my balcony (un)looking at the busy traffic on the road that my balcony faced and spent long time just thinking. Thinking what? Hard to describe, since these thoughts are never graspable.

Day dreaming has become a ritualistic part of my everyday - something that my mother extremely disliked when I was back home. My mother used to wait to worship the Shiva deity together with me every morning. She would push me to have a bath quickly so that I could join her simultaneously while she was still finishing her worshipping of Krishna. Thus, the worshipping of Shiva and Krishna, in her logistical line of things, would be better if completed together. My dreaming irritated her, since it delayed her flow of activities. She would frustratingly ask me what I was dreaming, and I would never be able to answer. Moreso, I wouldn't want to answer. My day-dreams were too personal to be discussed. In order to prevent her from invading further into my dream space, I would decide to hold, or discard the continuity of my thoughts and get to worshipping the Shiva deity.

She, or any one in the family for that matter could never follow why it was important for me to day-dream... In these sessions of deep dreaming, I think of many things about the past, present and future. There are moments where I transcend time magically. I "dream", rather engage in deep thought of what I have done by far, and what I need to do next and so on. A process of rationalization takes place, a conscious effort to understand the logic of decisions that I took by far. I make new promises to myself every day, and then evaluate the consequences of the actions I took based on them in the subsequent day-dreams. These moments that I spend on dreaming every morning are thus self-revealing. They are moments through which I try to find myself, project myself and thus ground myself in the present. The dreams are thus a way to understand the multi-dimensionality of the human condition.

Day-dreaming completely transforms the experience of time. It no longer follows the regulated minutes or hours of the watch. The notion of time gets re-calibrated to one's own body-clock, or even mental-clock on every such instance. The speed at which thoughts come by or the pace at which you allow them to be processed by your brain is completely controlled during these moments. I like to dwell on certain ideas that occur during this process of dreaming, while leave others for a later contemplation. In the scientific way of measuring, these durations of thoughts are never the same, they never come together. They vary in lengths, as well as their intensities. The way in which the mind regulates densities of thoughts re-orients the understanding of time.

The transitioning of the mind into the space of the dream as well as coming out of it is phenomenally difficult to track. For example, you can almost never ascertain when your gaze at a particular scene of the reality disappears into another reality. There is suddenly a reversal - a point when you are seeing outside and gradually shift to the space of the inside. It is here that you are projecting the self onto the reality that you are seeing outside. The notion of reality completely changes, or is even destroyed. In the same way, when you are being pulled out of a certain dream space, the way it blends back into reality is almost magical.

This morning when I was uninhibitedly dreaming while at my large window of the small room, I was scared for a moment. Where on one hand, I reveled my freedom to dream for as long as possible being away from home having no one to interrupt or feel frustrated over my dreaming, I also cautioned myself of its habituation, for perhaps the freedom may not last for ever. And there are many other reasons that I felt mild fear - for I may never be able to justify why it is important for me to day-dream, and yet not share it with any one else. Rather, I can not, because once I am back in the space of reality, I lose my thoughts from the dream space. My inability to retain the realities of the dream space will always hold back people from understanding the relevance of my day-dreaming. And for the functional, utilitarian world, everything gets measured through the regular tick of the clock - that which just can not encapsulate the value of my transcendental experience.

Imagine the empty parking lot you are staring from your window to transform into a playground of desires, or think of the busy street you look at from your balcony to disappear into a future of your own...These acts are extremely meditative, powerful; those which cannot be measured or understood by the rational world. Often, this rational world overlays its own logic onto the workings of the mind, sometimes discarding the validity of certain actions. The capitalistic world can be extremely rude in discarding your everyday ritualistic activity of finding yourself. It ironically makes you believe that life is not inside you, but outside. The parameters of the outside come to haunt you, to an extent that you can not even own your own dreams. And thus, for no one, can I explain why I still dream with  my eyes wide open at the beginning of every day. I wonder if my mother will understand, and will pleasantly allow me to to take my time to dream...

Sunday, February 09, 2014

On Inhabiting Language

I suddenly bounced upon a song from the film Rockstar, written by lyricist Irshad Kamil - "Jo bhi main"; the lyrics of which can be found here. The reason that got me to write this post is quite strange. In the first place, I am not a fan of loud things - loud expressions, loud aesthetics, etc. Thus, a film like Rockstar was completely outside my aesthetic purview. The songs that the film offered, therefore, were simply out of my radar of consideration. In this avoidance, I also kept away (quite naturally) from the lyrics of the songs, and the meaning behind it.

However, on reading this song and further hearing it, it makes complete sense to me today. [I must admit though that I have seen Rockstar before, and did find it more meaningful than the other films I have watched. But I was never able to connect to it fully, so I rejected it and so its music. I had not gone through the experiences depicted in that particular film and so I was naturally not able to imagine it for myself.]. Coming back, the song simply says:

Jo bhi main
Kehna chahoon
Barbad kare..
Alfaz mere

when translated, they mean:

Whatever things
I want to say, 
Get destroyed
By my own words

Listening to this song particularly now gains a lot more meaning for me, specially having written the earlier post (on not being able to put thoughts into words). In this context, the words of the song merely suggest that language is not sufficient to express all the emotions one goes through. To be more specific, communication through words may not always be effective, and as the lines above suggest, words may sometimes almost destruct the original feeling you did want to convey. In the process of verbalizing, you may actually end up ruining a thought. 

I was browsing through an article in a magazine just some time ago today where I read that the noted German philosopher Martin Heidegger once said: "We inhabit language." Heidegger's deeper philosophical intention was to question whether things (objects that belong to the physical world) came first or language? Since a "thing" doesnot exist without it being "labelled" through words of a language, we are surrounded by more language than things. In this way, we are slaves of the languages, since there probably lies no world outside of that defined by language. To put it simply, a world that can not be articulated through language may never be believed to exist. In this sense, as Heidegger puts it, we live within the world created by our language, and thus inhabit language.

We use language only to negotiate meaning. I will not take the reader through the most important linguists from Sassure to Jacques Derrida who have invested much time in explaining the world of words. But to just point things out simply, the connection between a 'word' and a 'thing' is merely a convention used for communication. For example, the fact that we call a "spoon" as "spoon" has got nothing to do with what the spoon does. That the spoon means "something that it can contain" is the meaning that is conveyed for us, to be able to communicate merely the thingli-ness of the thing called a "spoon". Thus, words merely help us to convey certain essential meanings through which we pursue life, or living. 

Having given this background, I now want to return to the song. It goes ahead:

Kabhi mujhe Lage ki jaise
Sara hi yeh jahan hai jaadu
Jo hai bhi aur Nahi bhi hai yeh
Fiza, Ghata, Hawa, Baharein
Mujhe..Kare..Ishare yeh..
Kaise..Kahoon Kahani main innki

when translated to English:

Sometimes I feel that
This whole world is magical
That is and is not
Weather, Clouds, Wind, Springs
They hint to me
How do I tell their story?

Such thought (expressed in the song) may seem quite simple, and often discarded as philosophical. On a trip to an ashram in Haridwar, I was awe-struck by the beauty of flowers in their gardens. I kept taking numerous pictures of these flowers in my digital camera. I repeatedly kept zooming into their petals, their colours, framing and re-framing them. I wasn't sure what I exactly wanted to take, why wasn't I satisfied? What was I obsessed with about them? What made me keep looking at them, capture them, what about them did I want to take back, hold back? My father simply thought I was trying to take a good picture! I told him: "One just cannot capture their beauty in a photograph!" And perhaps he understood but did not want to get into a philosophical discussion, and so he discarded saying something to the effect: "well would (it) work if you (say) so?"

But perhaps my feelings were quite similar to those expressed in the song. I was merely wondering how can one express how one feels about the beauty of the flower. Or, can the beauty of the flower be really expressed in words or captured in a photograph? We only make ourselves happy by mediating the meaning of what we feel about the flower's beauty by putting the thoughts in word. I am doing it right now while writing it. But in doing so, I am actually affirming what the first few lines of this verse say: destroying what I want to actually convey through my words.

In some ways, this does connect to my earlier post. And I have gotten myself in this difficult, quite ironical position of being in the field of 'theory' where language is my domain. In this regard, I do not know if I am expanding my world or putting it within limits of the language, bounding it myself? 

There are several examples to experience the world beyond language of words. Music is the first and most evident one - in which emotions are communicated through sounds / sound waves. Second is touch - through feeling, intimacy, and contact with another body. I have always believed that having sex must be a very powerful way of communicating - where two bodies communicate without speaking (verbalizing experiences) at all. Gestures, evidently are ways in which messages are passed on without speech. And there are countless modes that go beyond conventional spoken language. The question is how sensitive, how receptive are we to these other modes? 

I think it may not be difficult to attempt doing so. May be one way to connect to the outside world is to deeply connect to your innermost self. To find what lies "within" ourselves is almost impossible. Can we even hear our heart beat for that matter? Or can we listen to the blood running in our veins? To know the nature of the "self" is to automatically train ourselves to sensitize ourselves to the world outside. It is then when one can truly appreciate the fullness of life. Or may be I am romanticizing. It is for someone to understand. The ancient Gurukul system worked thus, in my opinion. But well, as much as I verbalize, I will be killing its meaning. Because:

Jo bhi main
Kehna chahoon
Barbad kare..
Alfaz mere

(I would have enjoyed bringing out an analysis of the composition of this song too. Rahman's music does good justice in my opinion. There are meaningless vowels that the song begins and ends with, making it pure music, no real words that denote anything, thus giving the song its true meaning. The single verse in the song almost covers everything, most importantly brings out the key question, or predicament. I could go on. But, just to say, sometimes, a seemingly insignificant Bollywood song can have deep mysteries hidden inside itself.)