Dreams [end of 2011]

You dream of your life in waves
In
Your dreams of deaths
And
In
Your dreams of homes

And
Then you dream
And
Then you dream of dreams
As you walk down the gray aisles of your mausoleum of dreams

Your dreams change
Your life does not for you have no life without dreams

You dream
Of a wooded villa
Of a sunflower field
Of a paddy field
Of rain frozen on railway tracks
Of heat rising
Of a bunch of crows waiting on a electric wire
Of an empty stadium on a moonlit night
Of faces – sparkling and emaciated
Of bodies – scented and decaying
Of hunger – shooting
Of thirst – cracking
Of lust – animal and familial
Of shadows and shafts of light
Of closed spaces, of abandoned spaces
Of hooded faces
Of arrows, machine guns, harpoons, landmines and rocket launchers
Of funeral pyres, coffins and excavated pits
You dream
Of you chasing and being chased, in spiraling loops
Of you jumping through air and falling
Of you leading a heist
Of you managing a wild circus
Of you dancing across oceans, clouds and continents

You dream of your life in waves
In
Your dreams of deaths
And
In
Your dreams of homes

A faceless man croons in your ears:
Our planet is a stage, overflowing
You are a phantom in an endless opera
Entertaining the faraway stars, constellations and galaxies

You came lonely from a faraway mist and will certainly vanquish in that mist
In between you are torn between a billion dreams

Few Posts and Consumer Reviews relating to my Books

Posts

http://bookreviews.bookrack.in/2011/11/abyss-by-sabarna-roy_22.html
http://www.anaggh.com/2011/11/27/pentacles-abyss-by-sabarna-roy.html
http://bookreviews.bookrack.in/2011/12/pentacles-by-sabarna-roy.html
http://www.anaggh.com/2011/12/11/frosted-glass-by-sabarna-roy.html
http://bookreviews.bookrack.in/2011/11/pentacles-by-sabarna-roy.html
http://bookreviews.bookrack.in/2011/11/abyss-by-sabarna-roy.html
http://bookreviews.bookrack.in/2011/11/pentacles-by-sabarna-roy.html
http://bookreviews.bookrack.in/2011/11/abyss-by-sabarna-roy.html

Consumer Reviews

http://www.flipkart.com/books/9380154824
http://www.flipkart.com/books/9381115091
http://www.flipkart.com/books/9381115367

Kolkatadreams

http://www.kolkatadreams.com/2011/10/author-sabarna-roy-books.html

A recent interview given to iSahitya

http://isahitya.com/index.php/english-sahitya/interviews/193-talk-to-isahitya-sabarna-roy

On a few General Cricketing Matters.

1.      According to me the 3 greats of modern cricket are Sunil Manohar Gavaskar, Viv Richards and Imran Khan. They apart from playing the game to the best of their ability, have also left an indelible imprint on the game: they snatched the imagination and aesthetics of the game from the colonizer’s universe to the ghettos of the colonized and not only that, they had taken head-on the machinations of their respective national cricketing power-centers during the peak of their careers without ever caring for their own future [and in doing so changed the course of the game completely in their own countries]. My words are euphemistic to an extent, I agree, but they are true in spirit. When I was growing up I witnessed these tigers prowling on the cricket field [most of the times conjuring great battles in my soul listening to radio commentary – extremely evocative in those days] and feel very strange [almost convulsing] and implicitly life-changing sensations and emotions akin to what I undergo when I read the greatest of the novels. Mr. Gavaskar has had the greatest impact on me. I have rarely idolized anybody except this man. In many critical situations of my life I have asked myself silently: What would Mr. Gavaskar have done in such a situation; how would he have responded to the impending ambiguity that I face? Nowadays I feel sad when I find him, incipiently and tacitly, furthering the interests of the cricket establishment without cautioning the death of the game in the seductive hands of the T20 format. In that sense Imran and Viv have been very vocal; in fact, in India Bishen Singh Bedi has been very vocal too. Imran has traveled to a greater stage; I hope [I more or less believe] there is a part in his soul that genuinely bleeds for the sordid situation Pakistan is in at present and he is not just creating a crescendo to get a slice of the cake in the power corridors of Pakistan. I do not know much what Viv does nowadays. I was delighted to find him expert-commentating on TV during the recently concluded World Cup. He has mellowed, no doubt [collateral damage of being sired], but one can occasionally trace that familiar strain of the ‘King’s’ irreverence in his tone and body language.

2.      I must confess I am a great admirer of Sourav Ganguly, of his batting style as well as his leadership flair. However I believe Greg Chappel’s quotes [based on the extracts I have read in the media] about Sourav to be essentially true. In his struggle to remain captain of the Indian cricket team he jeopardized his own game. He became a prisoner of the ever-powerful-syndrome; I suspect this has something to do with his privileged upbringing. When somebody becomes more anxious to remain the captain instead of improving his own performance and aspires to manipulate the system to achieve so, it speaks equally of the system that generates such individuals as much as it speaks about the individuals. The fact is the sensation of being powerful has defocused many a great in the course of history. Yet there was something in Sourav’s cricketing personality and style of playing the game which had lent a very appealing, attractive, edgy and restless quality - very similar what a rock-star does to a song. He had the natural flair of leading greater players than him, he could bring out the best in the minions, and his instincts on the sinusoidal course of a game were brilliant.

Most Recent Observations

1. Former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam by commenting on the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant has clarified where he belongs. It is perverse to note that while supporting the Nuclear Power Plant he does not put forth any scientific argument of credibility or merit and in fact, he has dished out a grand rehabilitation package thereby creating more room for attendant businesses. He makes a show off of this package and justifies the Plant, retrospectively, in the light of this package. He does not address the fundamental questions relating to long-term emission / radiation hazards and dumping of nuclear waste [among many], especially, the fears and anxieties arising out of and in the backdrop of the Fukushima incident and a few significant European companies exiting this business. The resistance of the local people and the environmental activists has been traced to the ‘foreign hand’ – that is what he alleges. But my view in this case is: the former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is the ‘foreign hand’; he does not represent the concerns of the people of Kudankulam; he is the high profile representative [comprador] of big corporations.

2. The mainstream media in India does not update us on the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. Is this a deliberate move? One will doubt considering the space and airtime it gives to the Team Anna and Mr. Advani’s bogus yatra. Well one can argue its [Occupy Wall Street’s] relevance to India. I think ‘Occupy Wall Street’ in more ways than one is critically significant because of its nature: it is a political movement at its core without an aspirational and conventional political leadership – it is trying to hit at the classical motive of all big corporations in the world, which is, unhindered moneymaking by subjugating the natural resources comprehensively to its whims and fancy, by converting political systems all across the globe to its business development and marketing teams thereby ruining the planet in the short term – unrelenting economic recession and food crisis – and in the long term – ecological devastation and climate change. If the mainstream media in India can cover endlessly [at times exceedingly and using jingoistic jargon] skirmishes / infiltrations on the Indo-Pak, Indo-Chinese and Indo-Bangladesh borders [without for a moment understanding the underlying economic, territorial and long pending political disputes] why cannot it cover this movement round-the-clock and from all across the globe? Because the media [mostly] beyond a point does not want to paint a destructive image of big corporations [of which it is a part]; it plays out either its developmental image in the times of good business or its victimhood in the times of recession. The media covers the cotton theme in the Lakme Fashion Week with aplomb, but fails to tell us the story of suicide-deaths of cotton weavers with equal intensity. Will ‘Occupy Wall Street’ be a winning movement? The answer is simple – of course, not. My answer is – human greed is all pervasive and million-times more cunning than melodramatic.

3. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has shamelessly [without any visible shade of remorse] reacted to the surging food inflation. He says – food prices are increasing because there is an unprecedented rise in demand; which means, we are eating more because we can afford to eat more. This is far from true. It is an insult to the people when its leader endorses falsehood thereby erasing all hopes of economic corrections that could be made in the future to ease the burden of the people.

4. Ms. Mamata Banerjee is a specialist of somersaults, this time she did it in the name of withdrawing her support from the UPA Government at the Centre on the issue of rise in petrol prices. She is bargaining a special economic package for the state of West Bengal; the idea is noble. The package in one form or the other is on its way. But West Bengal should not rejoice which despite, all the mandatory caveats and cautions, it will. A sizeable section of the money will be siphoned out in the due process of executing capital projects to make TMC guys among the wealthiest politicians in the country [well, owner’s pride neighbour’s envy!]. Once the Left is out after 34 years what has come to light in its entirety is the holistic extent to which the Left had depraved West Bengal in this time-span – especially, in the health and education sectors. However, TMC’s response to the recent child deaths and only concentrating on the Presidency College / University to make it a clone of the Oxford University is terribly depressing to say the least.



3 Poems - 1 from a friend and 2 from her friend

Unmasked [Deepa Vanjani from Indore]

The mask I wore for you was not good enough
Though different, from the masks I put on for others –
Different masks for different situations and people
Gradually cracks appeared in it.
The gaps became wider,
From within the pains of the past could now be seen.
The ugly face behind the mask repulsed you.
You were not prepared for it.
You shrunk.
You seethed.
You hissed.
You shunned me.
And now the mask has fallen apart.
The lines on my face are clearly visible.
Deep aberrations, lacerations on the soul,
Manifested on the face.
I don’t put on masks anymore.
I have left the lacerations to bleed openly.

Illusion [Rashmi Sahi from Hong Kong]

Farce is the promise of love

Misleading is its desire.

Mirage is the call of heart

Masquerade, the emotion.

Masked are the real faces

Enveloped in passion

Veiled are the hearts

Caught in the treason.

Time [Rashmi Sahi from Hong Kong]

It’s time to move on,

Time to change the nest

Time to dry the wings

Time to fly again.

Cheetah and Blast from the Past

1.

The Immortal Cheetah

A cheetah given into leaping by nature

Leapt across swamps of grief

Crossing miles in air

Feeling the rush of wind in his eyes

He was crying – tasting the salt of his tears in his eyes and on his tongue

The indigo stars illuminating the silence of the universe with a strange tinge of blue sighed: Oh god! The cheetah is crying!

The cheetah flies in the air almost daring to cross the planet with a half-leap

Falling all of a sudden through midair as if he had crashed into an invisible cliff trapped within a canopy of clouds

Falling inside a jungle: a boiling cauldron of darkness, incessant rain and violent vegetation

The celestial bodies in the sky prayed for the cheetah – with the finest bones and flesh ever to find their unified life – to make his final motions against the entrapments of this fateful jungle

Nobody knows what happened to this cheetah

Except that we make yarns about this cheetah, who leaps inside our souls forever

2.

Jump cut – in the past – 25 years – almost – approximately – a full-moon night – after midnight – on the terrace of a G+3 newly built apartment block – on the fringes of the city violently pushing against the margins of a crumbling suburban landscape – full of dreams – a series of conquests – a bright disc of silver hanging in the sky – an elderly friend of mine and I – a telescope in between us – a gazer of stars and galaxies – well, planning to show me what is a sky and infinite continents of space – a wise man – hating my absolute love for rock music – dismissing it as ‘boyish elitism’.

A night redefined!

We smoked hard. We smoked hard – only nicotine fellas! We discussed Dakghar. We recited Wasteland. Death was looming large on our sub-conscious.

Then he asked me to take a drooling walk to the phallic instrument chilling in the night – his love and work of love.

“Boy you could look at the moon both ends from! This end from it looks like a shining piece of nut. And this end from it blazes on you like a scorching sun … So you see; there is nothing right or wrong!”

I asked parched in smoke, “Is there no perfect way of life on earth? Ideals to follow? Creating and adding on to the civilization of men? No right and wrong! Live like dogs, do we?”

He whispered in my ears, “You hate dogs, don’t you? There are ways. There are no ways still. A creative man must learn to suffer multiple takes on life. A creative man must strive for his absolute solitude to unburden his load on us. He walks through the world but returns to his cave. Your cave is this universe of galaxies, constellations and pacing heavenly bodies. You are a banished soul attempting to be a part of this colossal space. Don’t you feel like that? How tiny you are, my boy!”

We fell silent for a long time – looking at the sky – and then we fell asleep! Dreaming: this sleep will take us away …

2 Observations [Predictions]

I want to make 2 observations:

1. The disconnect between urban, semi-urban, mofusil settlements, villages and forests has attained a critical mass in India that is likely to result in a series of violent civil-war like situation in the next 5 years. This disconnect primarily relates to wide disparity of economic opportunities, concentration of private wealth and assets and access to natural resources across sections. It is essentially a fallout of rapidly shifting of national economy from communal and traditional food production to laying integral focus on industrialization and high-technology services following [actually succumbing to] the vested interests pursued by the large commercial corporations of a economically globalized world [where political systems whether democratic or otherwise are more or less subservient to the commercial interests of large corporations]. The central and the state governments are coercively pushing forward a development agenda based on mass-scale industrialization, urbanization and converting all kinds of labour into technology driven manufacturing. As such, the urban localities are directly eating up vast volumes of resources leaving very little for others. So the urban areas are extending into farmlands and farmlands into forests. This is of course creating terrific levels of human migration [which goes incipient most of the times] and irreversible destruction of ecology. Most importantly these speculated civil wars spread across regions within forests, at the fringes of forests and towns and affluent centers of metropolitan cities are likely to be sporadic, very violent, sustained yet non-cohesive giving one an impression of mindless rioting, looting and arson as they would lack any comprehensive political leadership [I’m not taking cue from the recent London riots because they were not civil wars by any stretch of imagination]. The State and the mainstream media would be as insensitive as ever – religiously upholding the sacred nature of our Constitution and Parliament – to these perpetrators of mob violence. They would treat it as a law and order crisis and thus react with greater degrees of security intervention: the States’ Police and the Armed Forces will start killing increasing number of Indian citizens in due course. Acute hunger and impoverishment coupled with years and years of neglect relating to identity crisis of people living in Kashmir and the Northeast and that of the minorities and the perennially disadvantaged [Dalits etc] would land us into a spiraling darkness of mayhem and chaos. However what this would end up underlining emphatically is questioning of the very tenets and assumptions of: Nationhood, Political Democracy and the belief that Institutionalization of all functions can deliver equitable and just results for people at large and organization of operations at a magnum scale. We must ponder: whether we want things to become so big and so overpowering as to make us feel helpless in negotiating its consequences in the long run; is the idea of living collaboratively in stateless communities an idea worth pursuing; is an economy based on barter of goods and services considering survival requirements a more balanced and holistic economy compared to a currency economy … well, there are many things likewise to ponder! If our contemplation remotely convinces us that these ideas could be worth dying for [I actually mean worth living for in spite of the embedded consciousness in the human animal that makes this strange animal continuously susceptible to exploring newer and meaner power structures in the name of ideas and having accepted this anthropological truth one can only understand the true nature of this rebellion is against your own natural self]; the larger question would still remain: how and where do we start; how do we negotiate with the accumulators and multipliers of assets and lobbies of unassailable power in ensuring our way to leading a contended, small, zero-development life. Or, is it because we know subconsciously that choosing such a path might make us tread the harshest of harsh, scorching by-lanes and labyrinths that Michael K had traversed [I recommend a reading of J.M.Coetze’s Life and Times of Michael K] that we are convinced a spectacle of fire and violence is a better choice to put an end to oneself if not the man-made power structures and towers constructed in the name of humanity!

2. Globally in the next 5 years we will find a substantive reversal of technological interventions. Technology until now has been earning its maximum revenues from: gadgetry [evolving and satisfying intense consumerist aspirations] and warfare. It is prolonging life spans at one end whereas helping conduct our businesses and transactions much faster [the speed is enhancing every passing year] leaving us with unending pools of time. We are a baffled and bewildered lot as we do not know what we should do with such large gaps in time. What was the time taken to seduce a woman in the 2nd decade of the eighteenth century? What was the time taken to seduce a woman in the 2nd decade of the nineteenth century? And, now? Well, the 3 figures would seem to be in geometric progression in a telescopic descending order. That tells us something; simply put the fun of an exploit is gone. So we get very easily bored. [I recommend a reading of Milan Kundera’s Slowness in this connection]. You can decimate a country by directing missiles from 2000 miles away – well, that is another big contribution of technology. But to win a war comprehensively you need to win in a land battle that requires raw courage, organization, planning and sheer mental strength – some things which are clearly not derivatives of technology. Afghanistan and Iraq are cases in point. I am inclined to believe long life spans with loads of idle-time on hand can actually lead to a very different kind of violence arising out of relentless boredom. An understanding is slowly descending about the farcical nature of extending life on expensive, invasive and exclusive life support systems. Technology has also altered the appreciation of the natural sciences which is nothing but your unending conversations with the silence of the universe [there was a time when pursuing astrophysics was sexier than becoming a computer engineer; it soon got changed; the process is likely to be reverted although interventions of the industry may not allow such a move so easily]. The split between technology and science is being gradually understood in a more explicit manner. Technology is no longer innovation [at its core an audacious defiance of nature] of goods and materials based on the principles of natural science; it is something much more colossal: it has become a way of life – it panders to the whole idea of modernity [hyper-cool; monstrously big beaming an image of power and success; integrating – making distances look shorter and thus deriving an unimaginable control of transport; simulating pace; reducing costs and thus becoming more and more profitable in commerce]. It took many, many, and many … yes, many years for our brains to evolve to create the kinds of art and literature we have made over the years. But the news is: our brains have started evolving very differently now in this world of digitization and we are soon on the verge of losing critical anthropological traits of identity – handwriting per se!

4 Concerning Issues

4 issues for concern:

1. Mr. Narendra Modi will go on a fast starting 17 September for 3 days. He wants to build a stronger and unified [the words used are peaceful and harmonious] Gujarat / India; integrating people of all communities and shades. This must be one of the most obscene jokes that can actually make you cry! The Supreme Court [SC] is becoming very popular of late because of its activism in the corruption cases, which are essentially corporate crimes of a monumental magnitude. While the SC cannot be faulted on technical merits in the Gujarat case – relegating the lower court in Gujarat to decide on dispute of facts – however one ponders whether going by the background and climate of the events under question it should have worded and safeguarded its judgment in a manner so as to insulate it from being manipulated and misused by the political masters in furthering their personal agendas – Mr. Modi is not fighting for the BJP at this moment; he is fighting within the BJP for his space to become its nominated PM candidate in the national elections of 2014.

2. Listening to the interviews given by Mr. Anna Hazare to NDTV, CNN-IBN and TIMESNOW I get a feeling he is much smarter than what he sounded between and during the 2 fasts conducted at Delhi recently. There is a group working with and behind him invisibly who are aware that with the irreversible fall of the Parliamentary Left there is a space that requires filling: the space belonging to the anti-right [anti-Congress and anti-BJP to be specific]. As such this group is fast extending its articulation to multifarious subjects apart from the Janpal Lok Pal Bill, which has been their principal talking point until now. If they tend to be aspirational, which they seem to be at the moment, they are likely to switch over to a structured political formation from their NGO style of operation and hit the roof to enter the political system. While NGOs can aspire to get issue-based funding, a political formation requires substantial amounts of money on a sustained basis to win elections to be of some relevance. Who will fund them and why?

3. Ms. Mamata Banerjee clearly runs a party made up of goons. That is the story unfolding in Bengal for the moment. It is not in her capacity to control this mess. She will be heard making a few loud sound bytes against her own party men and women; very soon she will switch over to a mode of ignorance to be followed by a mode of denial. The Left in Bengal [I mean whatever is left of them] is only shouting from rooftops against TMC’s atrocities against their party cadres and forceful shutting down of their offices. Nobody is listening to them, actually they are not interested and in many a case people are happy that the arrogant Left is getting a good thrashing and being roughed up so ruthlessly. What is absolutely missing the Left by zillions of miles is: they have to go back to the ways of painstakingly organizing economic movements, social movements and political movements from the grassroots to be able to reengineer their organization. To me the Left, which actually believes the madness of the TMC will automatically usher them in a resounding comeback victory after 5 years in spite of its tired [almost extinct] leadership and uninspiring cadres, can never make a meaningful come back.

4. Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar is a strange phenomenon, well rather a strange oratorical fashion icon. He is deeply entrenched inside the capillaries of a centre-right political party and yet he mouths uproariously all kinds of leftist and at times ultra-leftist talks. Talking, of course, one has to admit he does it quite well. But the point is very few political personalities exhibit this dichotomous [what kind of a jerk can imagine that words like ‘dichotomous’ are only known to a breed named Stephanians!!] proclivity so effectively. Strangely he is never slapped with charges of sedition or abetting militancy / extremism!

An Open Letter to Americans by Nadim Asrar

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/nadimasrar/2942/62696/an-open-letter-to-americans-on-a-decade-of-911.html

Irom Sharmila by Rajdeep Sardesai

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/rajdeepsardesai/1/62692/iroms-cause-is-riskier-to-support-annas-is-safe.html

New Book - Abyss

http://books.rediff.com/book/abyss//ISBN:9789381115367/96860049

Press Release

http://mycubiclespace.com/mcs/classifieds/view.do?type_id=10&id=9164

On Karl Marx and Inside a Bazaar

1.

Whenever Karl Marx talked of progressive development he actually referred to industrialization, rapid urbanization and agriculture gradually feeding into the requirements of an industrialized world although under the leadership of the proletariat post-revolution during the evolution of the socialist phase. He also envisioned socialism paving way for a communist world order eventually where nation-states would cease to exist and communes and cooperatives would abound. He could not visualize the gainful investments the capitalist and imperialist world would do to counter the threat of socialist revolutions and other related economic and cultural movements world-wide on a sustainable basis, which continues till this day. The problem is: Karl Marx overestimated the power of industrialization on human development (in fact, he failed to see industries as the single largest causative factor of human underdevelopment in the years to come); he was happy once the means of production changed hands from a few rich capitalists to the large masses of the poor proletariat. Karl Marx here made the same mistake regarding the power of numbers as the proponents of democracy do instead of challenging the basic concept. The twentieth century has experienced the power of industries: they almost converted themselves into empires and thereby controlling the millions of lives of people in every possible way through modern institutions and appropriating every shade and shadow of our lives in economic and financial terms and brought the ecological fabric to near ruin. The fact is the very nature of an industry is such that it has to be run by extremely individualistic ruthless creative and economic gaming. Industry cannot operate like a cooperative or a government department. In fact in an industrialized world everything exists to support industry and not otherwise. I do not think Karl Marx foresaw this (his diagnosis of capitalism bringing the world to an end was restricted to capitalists being in control of industries in place of the proletariat) and his principles of socialism melting into communism were unrealistic until and unless of course the concepts of industrialization and urbanization themselves were challenged.

Yet at about the same time (or, period) two litterateurs – Tolstoy and Rabindranath – were vehement in their concerns against the burgeoning of an industrial world order. Tolstoy very clearly denounced the laying of railway lines in Russia (in Anna Karenina) and predicted thereby the plundering of the farmlands and faster transportation (or, loot) of food and grains from villages to the growing cities and causing middlemen to rise in between impoverishing the farmers (the producers) and causing crisis of food-stock in the villages where the grains were cultivated in the first place.

Rabindranath conceptually had gone ahead: he had attacked the western idea of nation-state consistently.

2.

I was in a bazaar a few nights back. It was raining. I was looking for a shop, which in my memory existed at the northern end of a labyrinth dotted on its flanks by millions of similar dimly lit shops selling all kinds of items. There were many such labyrinths in this bazaar. I had to move past wet bodies circuitously saving my head and eyes from umbrellas getting in the way. Sometimes I felt I was in a wrong labyrinth or entering the right labyrinth from the wrong end and forgetting the direction of my traverse midway. After two hours of trudging through slushy mud and filth and my head feeling heavy with the beatings of rain drops – thick columns – I doubted whether I was in the right bazaar or it existed in another city somewhere in another time and which did not exist anymore. And when I was speculating whether I should make an exit from this bazaar where I was in and if yes, from where so; this guy appeared before me – disheveled, worn out, drenched, emaciated and in tattered clothes. From his eyes I knew, I knew him. He looked at me intensely almost bafflingly puzzling with a strain of a fleeting smile on its greenish irises. When I was trying to pull myself out of his magnetic gaze he spoke out coolly: Sandy you seem to have made improvements to your life. Yes, I can see that. But man, I am contracted not to die as I have people to take care of.

On Gabbar Singh and Education

1.

One of the most enduring dialogues of Hindi cinema is: Jo dar gaya woh mar gaya! Meaning – One who gives in to fear is dead! It was mouthed by a jungle baddie, wild-eyed heartless bandit, Gabbar Singh. Gabbar, as a word always reminded me of another Hindi word: gubbara, meaning – balloon! How many balloons of ruthless toxins would have made one Gabbar – is anybody’s guess. Gabbar was in direct conflict with an upper-class landlord also perceived by his villagers as their sole protector against the merciless ploys of Gabbar taxing them perpetually on their farm yields (thus confronting the landlord economically because the ownership of the farmlands must be with the Thakur – the landlord). Ironically, this landlord is also a senior policeman of an emerging Republic constitutionally mandated to do away with the zamindari system and more significantly this Thakur having lost both his hands to Gabbar’s gut-wrenching violence employs two urban, fearless, extremely good-looking, sexy criminals in his personal war against Gabbar Singh. Well, we all know the story for we have seen the film many, many times over. What I like to ponder is Gabbar’s unique identification of fear as a thin dividing line between what we experience as life (as in existing) and our mental speculation of what death is or can be (which among the ravines where Gabbar lived with his gang facing the ravages of nature first-hand can be almost equivalent to actual dying).

2.
Modern urban education is increasingly driven by moronic aspirations of the school and college owners, book publishers, teachers, accessory manufacturers, training centers and an unimaginative bureaucracy and groups of educationists drawing up syllabus and curriculum on various Boards all designed to kill contemplation and thinking capabilities of students and learners at an early age. The problem is: How to produce non-thinkers out of guys who get helluva of marks (let’s say something like 98.3%)? Education has gradually converted itself to a viable industry by replicating the texture and cascading sequence of manufacturing units as we find elsewhere that is of a fully-integrated main plant surrounded by ancillaries both online as well as offline. A post-modern nation-state to thrive requires a bunch of people who know a lot and can store monumental quantum of data and thus is so blocked with loads of information and computational skills that thoughts are mortified to enter such constricted minds. Thoughts – that can move and break planets – require leisure, enjoyment, happiness and harmony as an ambience to the process and pursuits of learning. Loading a child with a mammoth syllabus annihilates the process of learning but is extremely good for business for as learning becomes more and more and more difficult you will pay more and more and more to get it (remember diamonds). More importantly the goal of education in a post-modern nation-state is much more than inculcation of learning (what you read and write) but to instill a value (as in frenzied hammering of an iron-nail to a soft piece of timber) among its recipients that competition under the most difficult of circumstances is almost akin to essential survival. Since in the process one makes competition all-pervasive (one is always and constantly fighting against the other and also at one level against oneself) one implicitly starts believing in the omnipotence and utilitarian values of war and even concludes: there can be no life without war. Collaboration soon becomes a bad idea. A post-modern nation-state wants this and the masters of the Corporations who run the show in absentia just love to see their foot-soldiers being manufactured in laboratories who embrace Shakespeare, Trigonometry, Laws of Motion, Periodic Table, Genetics, Rabindranath, mysteries of the Mughal Empire, Charter of the United Nations and Topo-sheets (readers may like to refer to the ICSE Syllabus for Class X which is nothing short of being offensive and rude to the idea of being humane) with the same comfort as dirty clothes take to the jostling ugly vortices of moving water inside the cavity of a washing machine.

On Literature and Secularism.

1. Good quality literature – fiction, non-fiction, poetry – is rarely prescriptive in nature. Good writers eternally engage themselves in puncturing the cloud – amorphous, ambivalent, existential – with the flaming yearning to view what lies beneath and beyond. The truth is the cloud remains dimensionless and there are infinite clouds within the cloud. Yet literature in a deterministic manner explores and exposes – unlike theology or political doctrine – the ethic of existence (without moralizing or passing strictures or judgments) as bestowed upon us by nature. I will explain. We know Anna Karenina does not end with the death of Anna on the railway tracks. It ends with the birth of Levin’s and Kitty’s child and Levin’s understanding of what he should do in life to sustain a bundle of life with whom he shares that almost strange and mysterious connection that exists between the creator and the created. I have read these 50 / 60 pages many, many times and they have in a sense made me realize the ethic (no, not responsibility) of a parent to his or her child. It is very different from a Parenting Manual, my dears! Rabindranath’s Dakghar and Raktakarabi simmer with complex ethical questions of life, existence, death and statehood.
2. Secularism is a religion too. It is a product of modernity based on industrial economics and hegemony of nation-state founded on the key principles of capitalism and free-market economy. Pamuk’s Snow reveals this fact like no other book. Secularism is very different from other religions in the sense that while other organized religions try to lay down moral codes of conduct for people secularism lays down its moral code of conduct for a nation-state. Strictly, while secular states might exist secular individuals cannot for it was not meant for them. I must add here to avoid misunderstanding: I’m an atheist and not a follower of any religion including secularism for I’m not a nation-state. Yet I’ve craved all my life for a god to keep faith to tide over my tormenting moments of despair and desolation although it has never shown its face to me. It is not as if I’m a radical because of which I’m an atheist. In fact in my early childhood I conducted a crude experiment of holding my fear against a curse directed towards me by a family elder. This made me realize: God does not exist but Evil does for I had committed something purely devilish to have attracted such a curse in the first place!

7 Questions and Answers

Q: What are the greatest inventions of mankind?

A: Time and words; history would be very different without these two.

Q: How do you differentiate between man and animals?

A: Man can imagine death and home, which clearly animals cannot. What would life be without the imagination of death! What would life in the wilderness be without the imagination of home!

Q: What is the most difficult thing to imagine?

A: Nothingness! Like how was it when the universe started.

Q: Which is the fiercest form of love?

A: Between a parent and a child. However in the end all love is moderate. When one understands it one is bestowed with a unique solitude for a sighting of a sky without the mediation of dreams can connect your soul with the greatest motions of the universe.

Q: Are we experiencing the last stages of the human civilization?

A: Yes we are. There cannot be a probabilistic answer for it will mean nothing. Man has embarked on a full scale war in every sphere – political, economic and religious. It is highly beneficial to a set of people who matter. The deterministic answer is – it is embedded in man’s consciousness to destroy because of its unrelenting desire to accumulate and acquire (or, let’s say create and recreate).

Q: Can fear of god and healing touch of love reverse the war mongering trend of the human race?

A: Of course not! On the contrary god and love are good enough reasons to go to an endless war.

Q: What is then the greatest learning of all?

A: That nothing would matter; to you or anybody else – whether you did x or y or –x or zz or abc! We are bodies in essence to be vanquished in the long run! But if you wanted to quit – not will against body (that is killing yourself) but your body against your own body (as in running away) – you will be tracked and quarantined and treated like you would do to an alien.

On Sourav Ganguly

I am a great admirer of Sourav Ganguly for the attitude he has imparted to the Indian Cricket Team. I was very sad when his cricketing career was almost forcefully truncated by the powers that be and later at the humiliation he had to face during the recently concluded IPL auction. Now he is back at IPL IV in the Pune Warriors outfit as a replacement to Ashish Nehera! Did he have to go this far to play the game? Is it because of the money? Is it because of pride? Is it because of unrelenting passion for the game? Or, is it because the dugout is an easy conduit for a player (with aspirations to control the future of the game) to the lobbies that decide the faces for powerful positions in the State Associations, later in the BCCI and far later in the ICC? If Dada says he is doing this to prove himself he is doing great injustice to his own body of work and his millions of admirers.

A few questions relating to Osama bin Laden’s death

1. Osama bin Laden is believed to have been employed by the CIA during the 1980s with direct financial, tactical, strategic and physical support of all kinds to create an army of men to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (which itself was illegal, inhuman, unethical and unjust). Political Islam took shape to provide bonding cover to men recruited in this war apart from the financial support their families received to give up their men for this war. There is documented evidence to support these claims. Yet the USA administration has never for once apologized to the world at large for nurturing this man and making him capable of what he was to do in the later years against their interests when they turned the heat on him. Why?
2. Can one employ the best Chartered Accountants in the world with an objective to understand the amount of revenues earned by the American, English, French, Australian and German military engineering, equipment supplying and contracting companies directly and indirectly after 9/11 in the name of providing security to its own people, going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq to decimate the causative factors of international modern terrorism and later to rebuild and reconstruct these countries from a heap of rubbles that they had been converted into during the war because the governments of these first world countries continuously exaggerated threats of terrorism and terrorists to hysteric levels?
3. It is being informed that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay had leaked the details of Osama bin Laden’s courier to his abode at Abottabad. Could this be a ploy to re-legitimize the concept and style of Guantanamo Bay?
4. The technology, reach, manpower, money, manipulative skills and collaboration that are available with the USA in its war on terror is so huge that it is practically impossible to gauge their length and breadth. Yet it takes so many years to find an ageing and ailing fugitive. Doesn’t it sound a bit strange? Immediately after the death of Osama bin Laden there have been painstaking announcements made by the American dignitaries of state that one should not underestimate the avenging capabilities of Al Qaida and how much of a potential threat to the world could such efforts be. This was as if to remind us that we should not ask them to stop their wars and war-games relating to counter-terrorism now that Osama bin Laden is dead. No?
5. Is there any court of law in any country (modern or despotic) that has established the crimes of Osama bin Laden? (Lest somebody should believe I am a fan of Osama bin Laden I must clarify that I believe he has been given an image so powerful that there is always an inclination to relate to him outside the domain of reality like you would treat mythical heroes and villains. I am more inclined to believe: he and his cohorts as a team form one head of a two-headed serpent – one head feeding on the other. The other head belongs to his creator and masters and their cohorts.)
6. Don’t we do away with all our civilization traits when we celebrate and delightfully glee at somebody’s death by murder even if he is allegedly the biggest criminal on earth?
7. The timing of the killing (initiating the presidential election campaign in the USA) and its style and later the flip-flop clarifications including the haste with which the DNA matching and the funeral were conducted are bound to raise uncomfortable questions for the USA. How many deaths would Osama have to die in the long run? Who will wear the face of Osama in future? 
8. The modern world has spun a tragic helix comprising conflicting strains of wars and terrorism. The foot soldiers on both sides continue to die at each others hands while the top brass espouses causes and trades with the existence of life on earth. Is there a way out?

On Democracy

Was at a friend’s place a few days back. Booze, smoke, small talk, big talk, bragging, failed attempts at groping in the dark, loud gulps of laughter at atrocious sms jokes – symptoms of an upwardly mobile class (nouveau rich which is mostly rich on hired money, inherited money and stolen money) – were floating dense in the air. I get bored with people too soon. So I was concentrating on cutlets and fries – well done and well made.

Suddenly a discussion erupted on the Bengal elections. People were clearly taking bipolar stands. I was asked about my views. Frankly I didn’t want to talk. Unrelenting silence coupled with endless munching of snacks in these circles is perceived as snobbish display of greed. So I thought I must break my silence. What I ended up speaking was not something that I intended to blabber here. My endless speech went thus:

“I’m not a great votary of democracy. I find in its original idea an attempt to fog the powerful behind a veil of large institutions – parliaments, courts, universities, police, publishing houses, rights groups and museums etc. Democracy is good at furthering and legitimizing industrial, technological and consumerist wars and associated interests. In a way both feed on each other to a great extent in a classical sense. In fact democracy is a good cause to bomb sovereign nations. Democracy requires people to be interlinked and integrated among and between nation states. This is brilliant from the point of view of accessing labour and consumer markets. Democracy takes away governments out of the ambit of people by assigning supreme power to the state of law as against state of nature. People vote between given choices and they think they are electing MPs and MLAs whereas all of us know it is not what we think. Elections increasingly are like mega-carnivals and create tremendous opportunities for business and wheeling-dealing. The political left and right both believe in parliamentary democracy! Large corporations and commercial interests have taken over every aspect of our lives in modern times: very subtly and at times grossly they select the leaders for us who will be beneficial to them but not us who have been rendered absolutely powerless by the might of statehood. So it really does not matter to us who comes to power.”

I was rebuked: “Stop lecturing us! Will you? If you have anything to say about the Bengal elections, puke!”

I continued pretty shamelessly devouring a bouquet of fish fingers: “The CPI (M) has been blocking policies (many a time rightly so) at the Parliament, which in essence they have been following in the WB and Kerala Assemblies. Why this conflict? Simple silly, because when you are in power you hobnob with the powerful and when you are not you can run into long intellectual discourse (like what I am doing now). Tell me: how many economic movements has the CPI (M) organized or stood by in the last 30 years? Contrarily they have thwarted all rebellion of the industrial workers, peasants, the dispossessed and the students in the last 3 decades in Bengal. Like the Congress they have appeased the more backward sections of the religious minorities. They definitely redistributed land (doing away with the ruthless and embedded zamindars and almost erasing the landless) but ended up controlling the peasants with small land holdings like feudal lords would treat the landless. People who are ideologically against SEZs should not be grabbing land cheap from farmers on behalf of large corporations. They should not be in hands-in-gloves with the building mafia. They should not be interfering in our personal lives as if we were in a concentration camp. But if you do not do these things you do not earn pennies and amass power worth enough to participate and win in elections. The TMC is a rudderless pathetic hate machine; its sole agenda is to dislodge the Left Front; they have no belief structure or vision for the state. They will do anything to win and then ruin by repeating the worst practices of the Left Front with enhanced efficiency. The Congress is eyeing an opportunity to throw out the Left Front based on the general perception that Mamata Banerjee after all is an honest anti-establishment leader who is capable of bringing imaginative changes to WB politics (she is the failing Railway Minister at the Center notwithstanding!!!). The Congress I believe has plans to make life as difficult as possible for the TMC if the TMC-Congress wrests power. In such a situation the TMC will eventually be removed with the Congress gradually climbing up the ladder of power. The Maoists seemingly want a new regime to regroup and remobilize in the intervening period. As such their close proximity with the TMC can be explained. But the Maoists will receive improved sodomy at the hands of the TMC-Congress when compared against what they have received from the CPI (M). Another thing: see the display of wealth and manpower that the Left Front used to exhibit a few years back has shifted to the TMC-Congress today including the quantum of  employed lumpens. I’ve seen North Indian traders in Kolkata voting for the BJP in Union Elections whereas they voted for the Left Front in Assembly Elections. Strange, no? But today they want a change. People who are positioning today as protectors of farm land would in due course of time, if they come to power, become the greatest land-grabbers; there is no doubt about that. In case of the Left, people have already experienced such turnaround. So you see I do not have a clear-cut choice. Hence I do not have a place in your democracy.”

I was breathless by now!

Somebody confronted me: “Hold on, hold on for a second! What are you saying – elections are no good to us; we should be returning to monarchy, autocracy and feudalism?”

Did I say: “I’m not sure: where we can go back to. I’m sure democracy serves the interests of corporations better than that of smaller communities and individuals as people. The worst part is you cannot complain because democracy has institutionalized prescriptions for every malaise, which you of course cannot access. Democracy does not do away with monarchy, autocracy and feudalism as ideas or even in practice; it refines and alters them into more ruthless institutions within the realms of statehood and the sad part is at some point in history mankind has given up the power of individuals to the idea of forming a state of law that today has rendered us utterly powerless. This process I believe has been irreversible.”

A group of guys started grunting all of a sudden; god knows why! The discussion (or rather my one-sided trumpeting) ended and we started discussing polygamy after a pee-break. Wow! I made a vow not to speak on this subject at all.

Dr. Binayak Sen

Yesterday, early afternoon, I received an sms from my sister who lives in Delhi: Supreme Court grants bail to Binayak Sen. I was at Dhanbad / Bokaro standing by River Damodar reviewing construction works of an upcoming water intake system of a steel plant. To put it simply I was delighted reading the sms; I took a break from the review and smoked 2 cigarettes back to back. I immediately shared the news with my colleagues. They were happy too. I was very worried since the day the Supreme Court had adjourned the bail hearing; the Chattisgarh government did not file their reply on time. I was very tense since yesterday morning about the outcome; we had had a brief speculative discussion about the outcome at the breakfast table where I was staying. It was a great relief to learn that the short term anxieties of Dr. Ilina Sen, Dr. Sen's 84 year old mother and his daughter had come to an end. 

3 things:

1. This intervention by the Supreme Court is likely to bring greater focus to revision of outdated sedition laws.
2. How perverse is the Chattisgarh government? Ram Jethmalani, a BJP politician and a political comrade (on a wider scale) of this government, ended up fighting Dr. Sen's case in the Supreme Court for the injustice had reached a level where even he - a seasoned and first-rate criminal lawyer that he is - could not stand its moral burden.
3. The difference between movements surrounding activists Anna Hazare and Dr. Sen is: one is conducted on a large stage almost similar to a grand concert in full view of the media and the elite while the other happens trapped inside the suffocating darkness of our jungles and tribal backyards.

Death rattle Clan

They forgot to put my body on fire

On freshly chopped logs of wood

On oil cracking and boiling

They forgot the charm of cotton ball plugs, the sight of wetted white petals of fecund flowers, the absent-minded twirl of smoke chains, incense sticks, the sonorous trail of holy hymns, crackling sounds of earthen pots and above all, the communal mourning around a corpse

Instead they hurled me down inside a pit – laboriously excavated, dark and deep

And, instantaneously covered it up with fast-setting slurry

With a sleight of hands that can be defeated only by mystic magicians at work

So, I exist there frosted miles below

From where you are waging your philosophical wars on trains against commuters struggling to reach their office on time, commissioning ecstatic cocaine soirees on yachts and rafts, executing orgies with strangers on a plane, stealing antiquity from private museums of nouveau billionaires

For you had told me once: I will blow up my life

Indoctrinating me with the scent of your body and introducing me to the nucleus of this explosive club: Death rattle Clan

What holds me here is an intricate web of undefined silence and darkness – so pure in form –

In this marsh of soil, water, plant roots and rotting flesh

You worry sometimes, don’t you; struggling in sleep:

Do I remember your face and touch as I crossed over the perimeter of life?

Do I know that your face is one among their faces?

Do I remember all their faces as distinctly as I should?

Do I remember our plot of blowing up our lives?

Might I end up sharing it with a fellow corpse?

Remembering and forgetting are complex phenomena even otherwise; more so after you’ve crossed the gate

Sometimes – nowadays – I will to laugh at our words – words crafted out of beliefs –  mostly non-beliefs – yet preached with so much intensity, precision and timing – a way of time passing for all of us at this explosive club, Death rattle Clan

Frosted Glass

A book comprising a story cycle of 14 stories and a poem cycle of 21 poems.
In the category of literature of metropolis.
Published by Frog Books (an imprint of Leadstart Publishing).
Being sold online and offline at bookstores.
The Frog Books link is at:
http://frogbooks.net/frog-books-leadstart-virgin-leaf-poolani/frosted-glass/

Pentacles

A book comprising a long story and four long narrative poems in free verse.
In the category of literature of metropolis.
Published by Frog Books (an imprint of Leadstart Publishing).
Being sold online and offline at bookstores.
The Frog Books link is at:
http://frogbooks.net/frog-books-leadstart-virgin-leaf-poolani/pentacles/