Cowboys And Aliens

To begin with ‘Cowboys and Aliens’ (Jon Favreau, 2011) is as preposterous as they come. You know what it is about, cowboys and aliens, strange bedfellows. But, how will those lawless men in horses with their vintage guns and gunpowder would face the aliens with their spaceships and laser beam weapons? Why, the cowboys would steal the alien weapons to use against them. And, if this particular cowboy, more of an outlaw actually, is played by Daniel Craig, you better believe him. At one point, after falling from a plane-like alien thingy to save the girl, the Craig character says, incredulously, “We were flying! I don’t want to do that again...” and, we are expected to believe that the film is set in the years before Wright brothers were born. And, no one is scared... What heroism!

Saying this, I must admit that ‘Cowboys and Aliens’ is an enjoyable film, in the tradition of a Hollywood blockbuster summer extravaganza, a weird mix of horses and spaceships, Western and sci-fi, not that sci-fi twist is essential to the plot, but it makes the action sequences fun, and gives the special effects department some work to do. As Roger Ebert would say, it’s a MacGuffin, to keep the plot running. But, it may be interesting to note that during the time of gold rush, even an alien race had joined the prospectors... The aliens are also into kidnapping us humans, to, you already know, study us.

But, how these gunslingers and Apache Indians know all this sci-fi mumbo-jumbo? Oh, like all good Westerns, there arrives a mysterious stranger, two in this case, a wanted killer wearing an alien bracelet (Craig) and a beautiful, mysterious lady (Olivia Wilde), who, for the record, is not from the world; they arrive into the town of Absolution, run by a villainous figure Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Food, looking all old and grumpy), and all this before the alien invasion begins and, then the mechanisms of Hollywood blockbuster take over...

Mamoni Raisom Goswami

A few years ago, I attended a seminar on writing fiction. The British expert, among other things, warned us, the aspiring authors, never to repeat ourselves in writing. Western publishers don’t like repetition of words, sentences, period. I completely agree with the argument. Then I look at my literary inspirations, and they used reputations abundantly, and to such brilliant effect, especially Mamoni Raisom Goswami, my favourite author.

Mamoni Roison Goswami was my mother’s favourite writer too, and it was not only because her parental village was not far from the satra (monastery) of Goswami’s grandfather, about which she has written extensively, especially in the monumental ‘Datal Hatir Ooye khowa Howdha (The Moth-Eaten Howdah of the Tusker’). Goswami was my mother’s favourite author because she was fearless, because she wrote about places my mother would have liked to visit, but never had the chance (Vrindavan, Kashmir...), because she had a distinct voice, because how Goswami had made her personal life a site of her literary creations (‘Adhalikha Dastabez’; ‘Half-Written Manuscript’), because how she strongly felt about certain issues, women’s rights, and animal sacrifice, an issue my mother is very vocal about.

The first Mamoni Raisom Goswami piece I read was the short story ‘Sanskar’, where a rich lowercaste man sleeps with a poor uppercaste widow hoping to beget a progeny; to disastrous results. It remains one of the best stories written in Assamese. Then, I started with the novel, ‘Mamare Dhara Torowal’ (‘The Rusted Sword’), ‘Udaybhanur Charitra’ (‘The Life of Udaybhanu,’ the man who is obsessed with a woman who wears heels made of snake skin...), ‘Budhasagar, Dhushar Geisa aru Mohammad Mucha’ (The Budha Sea, Hazy Geishas and Mohammad Mucha), ‘Chinavar Srota’ (‘The Currents of Chenab’, my mother’s favourite), ‘Chinnamastar Manuhto’ (‘The Man from Chinnamasta’), ‘Dashorothir Khuj’ (‘Dashorothi's Footsteps’), ‘Nilakanthi Braja’ (‘The Blue-Necked Braja’), ‘Tej Aru Dhulire Dhusarita Prishtha’ (‘Pages Stained With Blood and Dust’)... virually all of her writings...

What makes Mamoni Raisom Goswami one of the most celebrated authors in Assam is her prose. She could make things come alive with her prose, she could make you feel the pain of her characters, make you nauseated, make you go through the experiences she had gone through. She used unusual images, images which are violent, gut-wrenching, and used them to such wonderful effect. (At the end of ‘The Man from Chinnamasta,’ the sadhu who was opposing animal sacrifice, offers himself before the mother Goddess, and as he bleeds, and as you read the sentences, you can actually see the poor man bleeding to death. Such genius...)

Yet, the literary genius of Mamoni Raisom Goswami is overshadowed by her personality, her life as it was. It was a tragic life, and she had the courage to carry the burden of the life around her (like the albatross in Coleridge’s ‘The Ancient Mariner’), and saw the world through the haze of her pain, her loss.

The real life academics, who worked in Delhi University, who, in the last few years, worked as an peace activist to find a solution to the problems of insurgency in the state, Indira Goswami, was someone else. We did not know her till very recently, till she became vocal about her causes, the ULFA issue (it is said that the self-declared commander of the outfit, Paresh Barua, would call her personally), and animal sacrifice in the famous Kamakhya temple on the Nilachal hills.

But, we knew Mamoni Raisom Goswami to the bones, and understood her pain, her loss, her sufferings, and her triumphs. And what triumphs! As a young girl, she tried to commit suicide after the death of her father. She survived the ordeal, but the incident made her more isolated from her immediate surrounding than ever. It was the time the Saraighat bridge on the river Brahmapurta was being built. There was a young engineer from south India who was working in the construction of the bridge. He was Madhaven Raisom Ayengar, her middle name. They fell in love, got married and Goswami went on to travel with her husband to various construction sites across India, which also provided fodder for her fiction. Then eighteen months later, Raisom died in an accident in Kashmir (years later, Goswami would write how she still remembered the blood-stained shirt of her husband...), and the young girl, who battled death wish all her life, was pushed to the brink. After a few years of living in depression, she was invited to do research on Ramayana in Vrindavan; this move changed her life, as she resumed her writing and also her research.

Yet, the memories of the past would haunt her, and she made these memories the foundation of her writing. Whatever she may write, whoever may be her character, there was always, Mamoni Raisom Goswami, the person, the real person.

For the world outside of Assam, she was known as Indira Goswami. She published the translations of her works in this name. In Assam, however, she would remain Mamoni Raisom Goswami, Mamoni baideu, a personality she created over the years, a personality the people of Assam embraced without question.

As we mourn her passing, it would be terrible loss to the ongoing peace talk with the ULFA, we marvel at the wondrous, courageous life she lived, and she lived it to the fullest.

Tennyson’s Ulysses said: “I have enjoyed greatly and suffered greatly. This was the life of Mamoni Raisom Goswami. Living to the fullest. In the extreme.

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Indira Goswami also known by pen name as Mamoni Raisom Goswami (14 November 1942 – 29 November 2011), popularly known as Mamoni Baideo, among the Assamese people, was an Assamese editor, poet, professor, scholar and writer.

She was the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award (1982), the Jnanpith Award (2000) and Principal Prince Claus Laureate (2008). One of the most celebrated writers of contemporary Indian literature, she was noted for her novels which include The Moth Eaten Howdah of the Tusker, Pages Stained With Blood and The Man from Chinnamasta.

She was also well known for her attempts to structure social change, both through her writings and through her role as mediator between the banned secessionist group United Liberation Front of Asom and the central government of India. Her involvement led to the formation of the People's Consultative Group, a peace committee. She refers to herself an "observer" of the ongoing peace process rather than a mediator or initiator.

Her work has been performed on stage and in film. The film Adajya is based on her novel won international awards. Words from the Mist is a film made on her life directed by Jahnu Barua.

More Here.

Other resources:
http://indiragoswami.blogspot.com/
http://www.eclecticmag.com/view_personalities.php?&per_id=80
http://www.assamtimes.org/hot-news/5668.html

RIP Ken Russell

The year was 1998. The Department of English, University of Pune had a seminar hall of its own, called Goley Hall (it’s still there), which housed, apart from the round table and chairs and sofas, a colour TV and a video player. The department also had a modest collection of video cassettes, most of these films based on classic English novels. That year D H Lawrence’s The Rainbow was in the syllabus. So, on that Saturday, we organised a double bill of two Lawrence novels in films: ‘The Rainbow’ and ‘Women in Love’ both directed by British filmmaker Ken Russell.

Most of us students who attended the screenings were from small towns, good boys and girls, who were not really open about discussing sex, let alone see it on screen, especially on a classroom environment. Ken Russell’s visualisation of D H Lawrence’s frank sexuality was something of a shock, with the men and women in the films running naked in the English countryside without any apparent reasons. When the screening ended, nobody said a word, they just got up from their seats and left the department. It was a shocking revelation.

As for me, it was revelation indeed. I was mesmerised by the power of cinema to reveal, reveal to me experiences which I cannot experience otherwise. I cried when the Oliver Reed character died. It was perhaps the first film that fuelled my interest in sexuality studies. And, ‘Women in Love’ became a film I’d watch often in the years to come, especially certain scenes, like Glenda Jackson’s Gudrun dancing before the herd of buffaloes, Alan Bates’ Birkin running naked in the forest, the infamous wrestling between Bates and Reeds, and the last death scene. ‘Women in Love’ is one of the memorable cinematic experiences I ever had.

I thank Ken Russell for that experience.

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Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell (3 July 1927 – 27 November 2011) was an English film director, known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his flamboyant and controversial style. He attracted criticism as being obsessed with sexuality and the church. His films often dealt with the lives of famous composers or were based on other works of art which he adapted loosely. Russell began directing for the BBC, where he made creative adaptations of composers' lives which were unusual for the time. He also directed many feature films independently and for studios.

He is best known for his Oscar-winning film ‘Women in Love’ (1969), ‘The Devils’ (1971), ‘The Who's Tommy’ (1975), and the science fiction film ‘Altered States’ (1980). Classical musicians and conductors held him in high regard for his story-driven biopics of various composers, most famously Elgar, Delius, Liszt, Mahler and Tchaikovsky.

British film critic Mark Kermode, attempting to sum up the director's achievement, called Russell, "somebody who proved that British cinema didn't have to be about kitchen-sink realism—it could be every bit as flamboyant as Fellini. In the final period of his directing careers he makes what have been described as very strange experimental films such as Lion's Mouth and Revenge of the Elephant Man, and they which are considered to be as edgy and out there as some of the work he made in the 1970s".

More Here.
The Ken Russell Obit from The Guardian.

Gar firdaus, ruhe zamin ast, hamin asto, hamin asto, hamin asto
(If there is a heaven on earth, it's here, it's here, it's here)

Said Mughal emperor Jahangir, according to legends after visiting the Kashmir valley...

Grease Pole

If I remember correctly, Assamese poet Ajit Barua used this imagery to describe his life: A grease pole where you climb once and slip twice. And you continue. Eternally.

This is my life. An eternal climb on the greasy pole. On a good day I climb one step, on a bad one, I slip twice. Then the bad day passes and I climb up again, and then the bad day returns and I slip.

So, after several permutations and combinations, I’m at the same place. Neither here nor there. At the same mid-point. Always.

Why don’t I just quit. I cannot. This is the only life I know, I can live. I am scared of other imaginary lives. And I don’t have the strength or talent to stay put there and not slip. and slip I do.

This is the myth Sisyphus, the man from the Greek mythology, who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again.

I think I should listen to Camus, who wrote in his famous essay: “The struggle itself...is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

I must imagine I am happy.

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Greasy pole or grease pole refers to a pole that has been made slippery and thus difficult to grip. More specifically, it is the name of several events that involve staying on, climbing up, walking over or otherwise traversing such a pole. This kind of event exist in several variations around the world. More Here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greasy_pole

The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay by Albert Camus. It comprises about 120 pages and was published originally in 1942 in French as Le Mythe de Sisyphe; the English translation by Justin O'Brien followed in 1955. More Here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus

Sister Death

Death. According to some recent reports. suicide rates are higher among the people of alternative sexual orientation, than any other group or community, all over the world. That’s because there are hardly any support system for a young boy or girl, who upon attaining puberty, finds him/her self to be different from the others. Death becomes an easy option, an escape.

In Maharashtra, they’d say suicide rates are higher among the impoverish farmers, and they are right.

But, suicide, or death wish for that matter, is not a problem in itself. The problem lies somewhere else. Death is the solution, emphatic way of saying, enough is enough.

The problem is life. The problem is fitting in.

For me personally, I never fitted in. For a while I tried, desperately, foolishly. It was difficult. Then I gave up. Instead, I begun was assume roles. That was easy. I killed myself and hid my body and wore someone else’s face, saw someone else’s vision of life, dreamt someone else’s dream.

Today, after 35 years of loss, I look back, and realise sadly that there was indeed a solution to my problem. What I had was certain mental conditions, some “chemical locha”, as Munnabhai would say, and a few trips to a psychiatrist and a few pills would have been just fine.

But, the place I grew up, there were no psychiatrist; no awareness of mental health. When I learnt who Freud was, it was too late. I already had morphed into something else. I devoured the everything Freud and his followers, from Lacan onwards, and I understood things, conditions, but not how to find myself.

I also got the pills. But those were different pills, and helped me forget. It was all I aspired to have, forgetfulness. And it was too late.

The tragedy is not that I am still alive. The tragedy is I could not kill myself. That was the tragedy. And after so many years and so many attempts, I have stopped trying.

Blame it on Neil Gaiman.

Gaiman is a writer of graphic novels, and fantasy fiction. He wrote two of my favourite books turned into movies — ‘Caroline’ and ‘Stardust’, and how he affects me.

Currently, I am going through his ‘Sandman’ series of comics, or shall we say, Graphic novels. The series centres around a personification of Dream, as a ruler of a meta-world between earth and heaven (or silver city, or whatever). Gaiman has created a complex world of Gods, demons and superhuman being and their interaction with morals. It is all very fantastical, but very affecting, especially too me.

Now, dream has a family, four sisters and a brother, Destiny, Death, Desire, Delirium, Despair.

I am especially fascinated by death. She is so cool, not only in her attire, but also in her attitude. She makes death look so normal, so welcome.

More on Nail Gaiman here.
More on The Sandman here.

Life

On the subject of death, a few lines on life, an English transcreation of an Asomiya poem by Maheshwar Neug, entitled "Life"

The man who stood
Near the roadside, asked,
Widening his eyes:
Hey, didn’t you die
In that dark evening, last Saturday?
Everybody said you did.

Did they? Let them
Whose eyes are shadowed by death
How will they see the new-blue horizon
Away from the cool touch of the mist?
Where would they store the living death of their eyes?

I died? That’s why you just
Saw me alive, animated.

In autumn’s clouded walk the grass that wither, dry up
Haven’t you heard their dying promise:
In the wave of the song of the cuckoo
We’ll dance again, in spring?

Muse India

Time for some self-praise.

I have been very laconic about promoting my own work. I have always believed that you work should speak for itself, you don’t need to promote it.

Now, at 35, I think I was wrong. You need to market yourself. If you want to be known, that is. And, known I want to be.

So. Brace yourself for my first self-promotion.

The current issue of Muse India contains a few poems translated by, yes, your truely. The poems are by great Asomiya poem Nabakanta Barua.

I am sure my English cannot even recreate one percent of Barua's wonderful talent. Still, these poems are my tribute to the great soul. I had met him once, briefly, when he had come to the annual award ceremony to our school in Barpeta a long, long time ago, and he had given me an autograph. A memorable day of my life.

To view the poems, please visit the Muse India page. Thank you very much.

La Havre

Writes Roger Ebert:

"Le Havre" is set much farther south, in the French port city where many of the cargoes are human: illegal immigrants arriving from Africa. The police find a container filled with them, and a young boy slips under their arms and runs away. This is Idrissa (Blondin Miguel), from Gabon, solemn, shy, appealing. The cops announce a manhunt. The film's hero, Marcel Marx (Andre Wilms), is fishing near a pier and sees the boy standing waist-deep in the water, hiding, and mutely appealing to him. He returns, leaves out some food and finds the food gone the next day. And so, with no plan in mind, Marcel becomes in charge of protecting the boy from arrest.

The movie's other characters are all proletarians from a working-class neighborhood, and in Kaurismaki's somewhat sentimental view, therefore in sympathy with the little underdog and not with the police. We meet Marcel's wife, Arletty (Kati Outinen, long the director's favorite actress), who joins her husband in his scheme. Their dog, Laika, is also a great help. Marcel, probably in his 50s, is a hard-working shoeshine man who knows everyone, including a snoop, a woman grocer (Francois Monnie); a fellow Vietnamese shoeshiner, Inspector Monet (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), and a local rock singer named Little Bob (Roberto Piazza), whose act is unlike any you have ever seen.

Read the complete Review Here.

Diana

Talking about discovering something new, the other day I discovered Paul Anka, a Canadian singer I had never heard of before.

My boss lives in 1970s, and he knows everything about music of 70s. He is Queen fan, so am I, especially the two songs, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and “We Will Rock You.” That’s the reason when he suggest someone, I trust it would be good.

So far, I have heard only one song, “Diana”, and I liked it.

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Paul Albert Anka, OC (born July 30, 1941) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor.

Anka first became famous as a teen idol in the late 1950s and 1960s with hit songs like "Diana'", "Lonely Boy", and "Put Your Head on My Shoulder". He went on to write such well-known music as the theme for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and one of Tom Jones's biggest hits, "She's a Lady", and the English lyrics for Frank Sinatra's signature song, "My Way" (originally French song "Comme d'habitude").

In 1983, he co-wrote with Michael Jackson the song "I Never Heard", which was retitled and released in 2009 under the name "This Is It". An additional song that Jackson co-wrote with Anka from this 1983 session, "Love Never Felt So Good", has since been discovered, and will be released in the near future. The song was also released by Johnny Mathis in 1984.


More Here.

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"Diana" is a song written and made famous by Paul Anka in 1957. It was inspired by a high school friend named Diana Ayoub. The original Paul Anka 1957 recording reached number one on the Billboard "Best Sellers In Stores" chart (although it climbed no higher than number 2 on Billboard's composite "Top 100" chart) and has reportedly sold over 9 million copies. "Diana" also hit number one on the R&B Best Sellers list chart.

More Here.

Morbid

Death. Death is perhaps the first and the ultimate mystery the human race is yet to unravel. Hence the fascination, since the dawn of civilisation till today. Modern science has solved the problem of birth; yet nothing can stop the inevitability of death. Everything die. It’s a simple truth. Yet, we as a race, an animal species, have failed to come to term with it. Death continues to scare us., Death is the forth Horseman of the Apocalypse, a hooded figure who caries a scythe. He’s the Grim Reaper.

I have a camaraderie with death. I don’t worry about my own death. But really, really worry about the death of other people. More than that, I really, really don’t know how to react in the face of death.

Since I deal with news, death is an every day affair, every day we carry news of someone or other dying, by various means, from suicide to road accidents, and so on. Yet, when it comes to the death of someone I know, I panic. I don’t know how to react.

How do you go to a person who has lost someone dear and tell him/her that it would be all right? Recently, one of my colleague’s husband died. The other people in the office went to visit her, to offer condolences. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Tears dishearten me. Tears unsettle me. Tears kill me.

Recently, one of my friends’ father died. I should have called him soon after. But I did not. A month of so later, he himself called. I was feeling terrible. But, he had recovered from the grief. Everyone does, sooner or later.

Now, sooner or later, it would be my turn, to mourn the death of my parents. I dread the day. But it would come one day. That’s the truth.

The first time I tried to kill myself was when I was in class six. I don’t remember the reason. But, I remember being profoundly sad. There was a sense of bleak hopelessness. But I could not do it. Everytime I think of killing myself, I remember my mother, how she would react, and I cannot do it. I cannot give her that grief. So I decided to wait till my parents are death. Then, I would be free, to end it all.

In one sense, I have not experienced death. The news always came to me second hand. I was somewhere else when my grandparents died. I haven’t seen death in close quarters.

And the person I loved most, R, I was informed about R’s death two months later. It took me more than a month to process the truth. Then I decided to wait for 20 years, for I knew, the person I loved, and who loved me, R, would be born again, somewhere, and after 20 years, would come of age. I would be 52, if I am still alive till then.

Death isn’t difficult, it’s life that is.

Gaanwala

Sometimes I feel really old when I hear a song or see a film that I had seen a long time ago, so long that I don’t even remember. Sometimes I feel like a teenager when I discover a piece of art which was always there but I did not know it existed. The second experience, whenever it happens, is exhilarating. The first experience, however, is more illuminating.

The first time I heard Kabir Suman sing, I think he was called Suman Chattopadhaya then, was in late 1990s. I shared a hostel room with a Bengali guy. See, it was so long time ago that now I don’t even remember his name; he was called some Roy or something. He was a confirmed drug addict. He taught me a lot about prescription drugs, and places in Pune where you can find them.

Anyway, he was rich. I was poor. He had a fancy music player and loads of audio cassettes; I think his father was an expert of Rabindra Sangeet. When his mother had come for a visit, she had taken us to the best Chinese restaurant in town, a place on East Street; Mainland China was yet to set shop in Pune.

Anyway, that’s when I heard Kabir Suman; I liked the masculine voice and the overtly leftist and shamelessly romantic outlook (Look at ‘Tomake Chai’, an unabashedly romantic number.). That was then, and I had forgotten all about him till I found him again a few months back; again, the 'Tomake Chai' album, and a collection of songs from one of his live shows he did a long time ago. This time I could appreciate the music better. One of them is a song called ‘Gaanola’ (Gaanwala, the one who ferries music). It’s a nice melancholy, romantic number, and Suman's voice provides an unbelievable gravitas.

There was something else. Every time I would listen to the song, I would feel I have heard the song before, no, not the same song, but a similar song. Then suddenly it hit me. Why, this is Bob Dylan’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’; this is Mr Tambourine Man in Bangla...

Then recently, someone told me that they are making a new Bangla film called ‘Ranjana Ami Ar Asbo Na’. Can you believe it? It’s one of Anjan Dutta’s popular songs, and surprise, this film is also directed by Anjan Dutta himself. Now, this Ranjana song is one of my all-time favourites. There is an old world charm to it: “Parai dhukle theng khora kare dibo, boleche parar daddara...”

“If I visit your lane, they’ve said they’d break my leg, therefore, Ranjana, I’m going another way, sings a school boy, a Muslim, who loves Ranjana, obviously a Hindu girl. Then he goes to explain how apart from his religion, he’s equally a Bangla and narrates his pangs of first love (“I don’t like the metro channel any more, feel like crying the entire night...”)

It’s a fantastic song. But, an entire film on that one song? I don’t know. I am not really kicked about seeing the film.

Anyway, I sought out the soundtrack. It contains some old Anjan Dutta numbers, remixed, re-sung — ‘Bristi,’ and the ‘Ranjana' song, of course, and also, the ‘Gaanola’ song.

Now, I am guessing that Kabir Suman recorded the song again for the film, because the voice this time is not the same that I am used to hearing... This is an older man's voice, gruff and halting, the strength and potency is there, still...

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A Google search yielded me the lyrics of the song and it’s translation, in the blog ‘Aise Hi’ by Bibhuti. I am pasted the matter below. The original post here. Thanks man!

O Gaanwala on YouTube.

Mr Tambourine Man on YouTube

Also below is the lyrics of ‘Mr Tambourine Man.’ Compare and contrast.

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O Gaanwala,
Aar ekta gaan gao...
Amar aar kothao jabar nei,
Kischu korar nei!

Cheleybelar sei -
Behala bajano lokta,
Choley gechey behala niye
Choley gechey gaan shuniye!
Ei paltano shomoy,
Firbey ki firbey ta jana nai!
O Gaanwala,
Aar ekta gaan gao...
Amar aar kothao jabar nei,
Kischu korar nei!

Koishor sesh houa,
Rong-chonge shopner din -
Choley gechey rong hairey
Choley gechey mukh firiye!
Ei thatka-bajir deshey
Shopner pakhi gulo bechey nei!
O Gaanwala,
Aar ekta gaan gao...
Amar aar kothao jabar nei,
Kischu korar nei!

Translation:

O singer
Sing one more song
I don't have anywhere to go
I don't anything to do

In childhood's
The guy who used to play violin
Went away with his violin
Went away singing song
This running time
Not sure if it would come back again

O singer
Sing one more song
I don't have anywhere to go
I don't anything to do

Teen age is over
Days of colorful dreams
Went away losing all the colors
Went away turning face
This land of deceiving
No birds of dream are surviving

O singer
Sing one more song
I don't have anywhere to go
I don't anything to do

>>>>>>>>

Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.

Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin'
I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it.

Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Though you might hear laughin', spinnin' swingin' madly across the sun
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're
Seein' that he's chasing.

Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

I've been trying to write a tribute for Bhupen Hazarika... I guess I am still in mourning, like every Assamese person is. And, I am proud to be an Assamese after how the people of Assam came to the street to bid him goodbye in his final journey.

Bhupen Mama, you are gone, but not forgotten.

My mother called on the day of his last rite, how the streets of Guwahati was filled with people. It was unprecedented. Only Bhupen Hazarika could demand such a reaction, and he did.

The Stranger's Child

"With his balance of surface glitter and steely precision, irony and deep seriousness, Alan Hollinghurst is usually seen as an heir to Henry James. But he must also have had, at some crucial formative moment, a passionate infatuation with Brideshead Revisited (a book that the narrator of his first novel describes as "deplorable"). His characters evince a recurring fixation with nice houses and their glamorous, sexy inhabitants: most notably, in the case of Nick Guest, the vaguely creepy interloper who moves into the home of a Tory MP in his Booker-winning masterpiece The Line of Beauty; but Waugh's theme and his pastoral imagery echo through all of Hollinghurst's work.

Charles Ryder's words could apply to most of his protagonists: ". . . I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city."

"Of course Hollinghurst's enchanted garden is quite unlike any other seen in English literature: gay sex pastoral, it might be called, whether the unapologetically explicit action takes place in gated Notting Hill gardens, London clubs or the summery English countryside. His captivating new book – his first since The Line of Beauty seven years ago – is a country house novel that begins in a garden, in the late summer of 1913. In an inversion of the Brideshead theme, the outsider, the stranger's child, is an aristocrat visiting a middle-class home and seducing the family in it – the Sawles of Two Acres, a pleasant Victorian villa in Stanmore Hill, in the outer suburbs of London. (Later on, the Sawles invade his much grander home and repay the favour.)

"He is Cecil Valance, a mediocre Georgian poet of broad sexual tastes, who, in the course of his short visit, drinks too much, stays up all night, worships the dawn, repeatedly ravishes the love-struck younger son of the house (his Cambridge friend George), roughly kisses the daughter Daphne by the rockery, and then writes a poem praising these "Two blessed acres of English ground".

When Cecil dies during the war, the poem is extolled by Churchill, as Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier" was, and becomes famous as an evocation of a country on the brink of a great change: "A first-rate example of the second-rate poet who enters into common consciousness more deeply than many great masters," as one character puts it.

Read the full review of The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst by Theo Tait HERE.

History Repeating Part IV

History Repeats Itself In A Flat World Where Currency Value Is The Holy Grail: Understanding The World Here And Now

6. The American State And Neo-Imperialism

The servants may change, the master remains the same. And the masters react badly when their authority is challenged. What did America do after it came to be the sole super power? It tried very hard to maintain this power. One way of doing this was to interfere the running of other nations and states, especially those nations and states from which American can benefit. American is at loggerheads with the dictatorship in Cuba, or more recently in Venezuela, not because it cares about these nations, but because these nations pose threat to the American free market policy. Venezuela has fuel oil, but it does not want to do business the way American wants it to. The gulf war was fought not to restore Kuwait as a nation, but to save American oil business. Same is the case with the current crisis in the Middle East.

Masters need slaves to do their dirty works. In British India, the Indian population was taught English not to enlighten them but to make them work for the empire. Hence, Indian workers were sent to Africa to build railroads, to Mauritius to harvest poppy. African slaves were brought to American to work in the cotton fields.
The same thing is happening with the business of outsourcing. This is less about quality and ability, as we would like to think, but more about cheap labour. America is asking Indian to work for them not because Indians are better workers, but because they are cheap.

It’s a win-win situation because, in the bargain, India gets the riches too. But at what cost? For one thing, America would not acknowledge this work force. That is why a call centre employee offering services to American is asked to assume an American identity, complete with an American name and American accent. What does this mean in the context of the indigenous identity?

The traditional idea of imperialism needs colonies outside the empire. In neo-imperialism, this colony has become virtual, and it works slyly. Neo-imperialism works in the guise of something else. America waged war in Afghanistan against the Taliban on humanitarian grounds. It killed Saddam Hussain because he was a bad guy. But who gave American the power that they can go to any nation and decide what they can do? No one. It seized the power itself, like imperialism does.

7. Rupee, Dollar, Dirham, Euro And The Protest Against Money

It is said that greed is the root of all evil. This is what happened in the context of the current global meltdown. Economy rising up and going down is not a new phenomenon. It’s an accepted fact. In the recent memory, this happened soon after the dot-com boom. The internet arrived, and everyone jumped the bandwagon. Soon, the boom bust, and only those companies who were the fittest survived.

This time however, the players in the economy did not calculate the risk, and it grew out of proportion. After the economy went virtual in a flat world where the sensex in the stock market ruled the roost, where money became more accessible and more widespread, and became a commodity in itself (earlier money was used to buy and sell other products; it was a mode of exchange. Now, money became the product itself; one could buy and sell money), banks become the powerful entities, and they decided to make and break the rules according to their own conveniences. It was capitalism at its height, which demands that the state’s interference in economy should be minimum or nil. Without the state’s interference, in the United States, the banks started to sell money, more money than they owned. These numbers looked good on paper. But when this money was expected to perform its traditional duties, to buy tangible products, like a home, or a car, it could not, and the banks collapsed. But, as we all know, banks do not own money. Citizens keep their money in the bank for safekeeping, for future. And when the banks went down, it took along the people’s money, leaving an entire section of population poorer than ever.

This is the side-effect of capitalism. When it works, it works for everyone. And when it fails, it’s the working class, the labour force that has to pay the price. After Lehman Brothers went down and global meltdown begun in 2008, it was the common man who paid the price. (How India survived the meltdown? Though there has been cost-cutting in the industries which has direct connection to the US economy, Indian economy more or less came unscathed, as opposed to what the industry would make us believe, from the recession because despite the free economy after 1991, the banks in India are still under tight control of the state; which according to the Tatas and the Ambanis and the ICICI, HDFC banks may not be a desirable situation, but it saved the middle class Indians losing their hard earned money, as their counterparts in US and Europe did.)

After years of suffering, when the common men lose everything they had, their savings, their jobs, their houses, their future, how they are supposed to react?
Marx would tell us: “Revolution.” We have the history of Russia, Cuba, China (?). But, Marx is dead, so is Che Guevara. And, we don’t want socialism, for, we want our individual freedom as well, which socialism denies to a certain extent, we want our fancy iPads, and our Facebooks, and our ability to spend money. Yet, we don’t want banks to decide our fate. What would we do?
Occupy.

Is ‘Occupy Wall Street’ is a revolution in the offing, or it’s just an angry reaction which will eventually die down?

But first, what is this occupy movement? Simply, it is the public reaction, a non-violent, civil disobedience protest to the late-2000s financial crisis and the subprime mortgage crisis in the US, which first begun in September 17, 2011.
It started in New York City and San Francisco with Occupy Wall Street and Occupy San Francisco and is primarily directed against social and economic inequality. By October 9, Occupy protests had taken place or were ongoing in over 95 cities across 82 countries and over 600 communities in the United States. As of November 4 the Meet-up page "Occupy Together" listed "Occupy" communities in 2,464 towns and cities worldwide.

Initiated by the Canadian activist group Adbusters, the movement is partly inspired by the Arab Spring, especially Cairo's Tahrir Square protests, and the Spanish Indignant. Occupy protests take their name from Occupy Wall Street, and commonly use the slogan “We are the 99, and organise through websites such as "Occupy Together". The protests, which have been described as a "democratic awakening," are difficult to distill to a few demands.

Indeed, the movement has gone further to create a diverse, multi-media culture of art production and distribution, which is being archived and gathered by institutions such as the Smithsonian Museum of American History and New York Historical Society. The purpose of much of the art produced is to visually impact the mainstream through imagery to create solidarity and unity among the 99%.
On 19 October 2011, Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, described the protests as "a warning for all those who are in charge of the processes of governance."

8. Our Money, Their Money, Everyone’s Money

Why money is important? Why the US is important? These two are not really a different thing, since post-WWII, the US has been described as the place where one can make money. If Last Vegas is the casino of the US, the US is the casino of the world. People from all over the world started migrating to the US following WWII, and the trend continues. Till recently, the US also encouraged these migrations, because more people means more labour, more industries, more money. Following the IT revolution, when the world was flattened, these migrations turned into a global phenomenon, where other countries, especially the developing once (the third world), tried to accommodate the American model in the context of their own economy, hence, the rise of outsourcing industry. The American capitalism had sprouted roots in all over the world. This was American imperialism. So, when the dollar value went down, it took along with it the other currencies, for example, the Indian rupee. If American economy collapses, its ripples would be felt in India too, and strongly, not only in the Information Technology industry, and in the BPO industry, but also in all walks of life, for, with being a monetary and political power, the United States, over the years, has also become the arbitrator of the widespread public taste.

Thus, the mainstream culture the world over as we know today is the American culture. That’s why Hollywood movies are so popular, because they are more accessible, so is Hip-hop music or Lady Gaga, wireless internet, live-in relationships, easy divorces, the examples are endless. That’s why a young gay man in India, without being aware of the history of the own existence, dream of marrying a male partner as they have done in the US. We follow the US, the world does. Our money follows the US money. Our wellbeing follows the wellbeing of the United States. Hence, the fear. We are not worried about the fall of United States. We are worried that this fall will take us along with it.

And, right now, we do not have an alternative model to rely our fate on. There’s no Robin Hood, no Hitler, no Gandhi, no Lenin, no Castro, no Mao; the nationalist insurgency movements are dead or dying, and they are not the ideal alternatives anyway.

(The author of this piece has copied liberally from Wikipedia.org entries to make himself clear)

Further Reading

Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. 1992.
Friedman, Thomas L. The World is Flat. 2005.
Levitt, Steven D & Stephen J Dubner. Freakonomics. New Delhi: Penguin. 2006
Sen, Amartya, The Argumentative Indian. New Delhi: Penguin. 2005.
Nilekani, Nandan, Imaging India: Ideas for the New Century. New Delhi: Allen Lane. 2008.

History Repeating Part III

History Repeats Itself In A Flat World Where Currency Value Is The Holy Grail: Understanding The World Here And Now

5. The Borders Of The Flat World

In the book, ‘The World is Flat,’ Thomas L Friedman explains how he came upon the idea of a flat world while in India, visiting the Infosys office in Bangalore. Friedman draws a parallel between his journeys to the real India to Christopher Columbus’s journey to the New World in 1492. The contemporary geography believed that the world was flat and if someone dared to sail the ocean, he’d come to a point where he’d just fall off the Earth’s boundary. Columbus’s plan was not to find this boundary, but to find India, the mythical land gold and spices, where everything was exotic. He set sail, endured unimaginable hardship and finally found land, in what is now modern Honduras. What did he do? He immediately claimed ownership of the land under the name of the queen of Spain, and made the local inhabitants slaves, to mine gold for him. In time, his discovery became the turning point of world history. Columbus not only proved that the world was round, he also paved way for how the political and economic future of the world.

What Friedman saw in the Infosys office was a revelation. The information technology company, which offers assorted services to the American economy while being in India, connecting the world via videoconferencing in the flat-screen monitors, defines the very essence of globalisation. Writes Friedman: “… “So this is our conference room, probably the largest screen in Asia-this is forty digital screens [put together],” (Nandan) Nilekani explained proudly, pointing to the biggest flat-screen TV I had ever seen. Infosys, he said, can hold a virtual meeting of the key players from its entire global supply chain for any project at any time on that supersize screen. So their American designers could be on the screen speaking with their Indian software writers and their Asian manufacturers all at once. “We could be sitting here, somebody from New York, London, Boston, San Francisco, all live. And maybe the implementation is in Singapore, so the Singapore person could also be live here . . . That’s globalization,” said Nilekani. Above the screen there were eight clocks that pretty well summed up the Infosys workday: 24/7/365. The clocks were labeled US West, US East, GMT, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia. “Outsourcing is just one dimension of a much more fundamental thing happening today in the world,” Nilekani explained.”

Friedman argues, the way Columbus proved that the world is round, his visit to India, his understanding of how technology has brought the world closer, made him believe that the world is flat, It’s now a global village. Writer Friedman: “We were sitting on the couch outside of Nilekani’s office, waiting for the TV crew to set up its cameras. At one point, summing up the implications of all this, Nilekani uttered a phrase that rang in my ear. He said to me, “Tom, the playing field is being leveled.” He meant that countries like India are now able to compete for global knowledge work as never before-and that America had better get ready for this. America was going to be challenged, but, he insisted, the challenge would be good for America because we are always at our best when we are being challenged. As I left the Infosys campus that evening and bounced along the road back to Bangalore, I kept chewing on that phrase: “The playing field is being leveled.” What Nandan is saying, I thought, is that the playing field is being flattened… Flattened? Flattened? My God, he’s telling me the world is flat!”

In the context of technology and economy, it’s a great achievement, Friedman agrees, but what about politics and culture? How this flat world will also work better for the terrorists, the fundamentalist forces? How the local identities would survive? If Indians turn to pseudo Americans to provide services in return of money, what happens to the local, indigenous identity?

Friendman’s worried are different. He worries about the survival and security of the American state and what the American state represents. But, in India, our worries are different. Things have changed so fast in India in the last 20 years or so, that it’s almost impossible to take stock of these changes while still being inside it.
In 1977, Coca Cola wanted to start business in India. But the then government did not allow it because according to reports the aerated drink was not healthy enough. Post 1991, Coca Cola is common in India, health be damned. This is globalisation. The fashion that is popular in New York is equally popular in Mumbai, and Chandigadh, and Jhumri Talayya. Today, every Indian city has a KFC, Pizza Hut, McDonald (It sells McAloo for us Indians…).

A Hollywood movie is released in India before it is released in, well, Hollywood. And Indian? They are everywhere. There were times when an Indian in the US was a taxi driver, or on occasions, a mild-mannered doctor or a second rate teacher. Now, Indians are everywhere, and not only in information technology. Mumbai’s Frieda Pinto is now a first-rate Hollywood heroine. Even Bipasha Basu is doing a Hollywood film. We shed tears when Michael Jackson dies, when Steve Jobs dies. We obsess over iPhone, iPad even when Apple never really tried to sell its products in India. While India remains a favoured tourist destination, Indians travel around the world, with confidence and ease. Each Indian today is a global citizen; well connected via their mobile phones and Facebook and Skype and what not.

What all these mean to the larger Indian identity of nationhood? What it means to the larger Indian way of life? The so called “Indian culture” is a complicated entity, it’s all pervasive, it encompasses all, and moulds everything to suit its purpose. In India, history does not repeat itself; it’s the same history since time immemorial, which has adapted itself with the passing of time.

Yet post-1991, things have changed in India, especially in the context of the individual Indian identity. For long, the individual Indian identity was linked inexorably with the larger community, social structure. With economic independence, an Indian individual now can be his/he own self; he can now spend a large sum of money on a fancy mobile phone without feeling in any qualms, he is no longer forced to perform the family duties, he can now find his own marriage partner, or seek the help of the website to do so. As he starts earning early in life, it gives him the freedom to leave the confines of his parental home, and find a place of his own in the world.

In his book, ‘The Argumentative Indian’ (2005), economist Amartya Sen writes: “What exactly is globalization? A diverse basket of global interactions are put under this broad heading, varying from the expansion of cultural influences across border to the enlargement of economic and business relations throughout the world. It is often argued that globalization is the new folly. Is that a plausible diagnosis? I would argue that globalization, in its basic form, is neither particularly new, nor in general a folly. It is through global movement of ideas, people, goods and technology that the different regions of the world have tended, in general, to benefit from progress and development occurring in other regions.”

In essence, Sen is saying the same thing Friendman said, the world is flattening. There are no longer the bounds, every nation has its opportunities, every individual have its chances. Globalization is the extension of the great American Dream; you will get what you want if you work hard. Globalisation proffers socio-political equality beyond the ranges of tradition categories of caste, class, race and religion. You will be given your fair chance if you can contribute to the economy. In one sense, it’s is what Marx envisioned, a classless society. The irony is, at the centre of this classless, progressive world view lies the exchange of money. And, the money wants to be controlled, dominated.

(The author of this piece has copied liberally from Wikipedia.org entries to make himself clear)

History Repeating Part II

History Repeats Itself In A Flat World Where Currency Value Is The Holy Grail: Understanding The World Here And Now

4. Again, History Repeats Itself

It is now an acceptable fact that human being, the homo sapiens, first came to existence somewhere in the African deserts. However, it is in the Middle East, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, that human civilization took shape, and thousands of years later, the same site remains the centre of the world crisis. This is the region from where the so called Aryans came to India, and later, the Mughals, and the Parsis. This is the place where the written language was invented, where algebra was invented. This is the place where Abraham came to settle down, where Zarathustra gave the world the first religion with a single God, Ahura Mazda, where Christ was born, where Mohammed untied the warring Arab tribes under the tenants of Islam, where the Holy War of Crusade was fought for centuries. This is where the world’s largest reserve of petroleum was unearthed. This is where Islamic fundamentalism came to flower. This is where Osama bin Laden hatched his plan to change the world.

This is the story of the struggle between the East and the West. Following Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the new world, merchants and mercenaries traversed the world looking for the precious merchandise, spice from India, gold from South America, diamond from the mines of African. The East provided the raw material for the comforts of the Western world. The slaves served the master. As time passed, this transaction of commodities changed, but the structure remained the same. Following industrial revolution in England, the textile mills in Liverpool thrived on the cotton exported from India, and Indigo exported from India, French cooks discovered the art of making chocolates from the cocoa exported from Brazil.
As the World War II changed the political equation of the world, the United States of America came to the limelight and in the next 50 years or so it established itself as the new superpower, a status that once belonged to the British Empire, before that Constantinople, before the Roma, before that Athens, before that Babylon… What worked in favour of America?

The war that they never fought. It’s is ironic that a devastating war catapulted the nation into the great height and now, 50 years, perhaps, it would be a series of war that will herald its end. America entered the world in the last few months, much after it had paralysed that glory that once was Europe, and it effectively ended the war, using two atom bombs, destroying two historical cities no less, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Following the war, someone who could pose a threat to American’s growing power was the former USSR; so ensued the years of cold war, which ended with the disintegration of the former Soviet Union. 1991. It was an important year, not just for world history, but for India especially. This was the year, USSR collapsed. It was the final nail on the coffin of the future of communism as we knew it. And, this was the year, when Manmohan Singh, the current Prime Minister of India, acting as finance minister, opened the door for consumerism in India. Remo Fernandez sung, ‘Yehi hai right choice, baby’ in an ad for Pepsi, and America had won the war.

Following the cold war, in USSR, greater political and social freedoms, instituted by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, created an atmosphere of open criticism of the communist regime. The dramatic drop of the price of oil in 1985 and 1986, and consequent lack of foreign exchange reserves in following years to purchase grain profoundly influenced actions of the Soviet leadership. Several Soviet Socialist Republics began resisting central control, and increasing democratization led to a weakening of the central government. The USSR’s trade gap progressively emptied the coffers of the union, leading to eventual bankruptcy. The Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin seized power in the aftermath of a failed coup that had attempted to topple reform-minded Gorbachev.
The same year was the year of the economic liberalisation in India. After Independence in 1947, India adhered to socialist policies. In the 1980s, Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao initiated some reforms. In 1991, after India faced a balance of payments crisis, it had to pledge 67 tons of gold to Union Bank of Switzerland and Bank of England as part of a bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In addition, IMF required India to undertake a series of structural economic reforms. As a result of this requirement, the government of Narasimha Rao and his finance minister Manmohan Singh started breakthrough reforms, although they did not implement many of the reforms IMF wanted. The new neo-liberal policies included opening for international trade and investment, deregulation, initiation of privatization, tax reforms, and inflation-controlling measures. The overall direction of liberalisation has since remained the same, irrespective of the ruling party, although no party has yet tried to take on powerful lobbies such as the trade unions and farmers, or contentious issues such as reforming labour laws and reducing agricultural subsidies. The main objective of the government was to transform the economic system from socialism to capitalism so as to achieve high economic growth and industrialize the nation for the well-being of Indian citizens. Today, India is mainly characterized as a market economy.

It’s the same old history, wearing a different garb. It always been the fight for resources, from the time of hunting gathering, till today, the powerful ones will have more than the powerless ones. Darwin was right: Survival of the fittest. The hyena will get its share only after the lion has finished eating. Like the people from a community or a nation divided into categories for various reasons (… for look, the ‘chinkis’ from the north east; for skin colour, brown Indians, black Africans; for birth, Brahmins, sudras, for wealth, the zamindars, the landless farmers), the countries are categorised: first world (United States), second world (Europe), third world (the rest of the world). Though, as economists would make us believe that these divisions are arrived at to monitor the economy of the world, the implication is widespread. It is understood that the first world has the first right to resources, and only the leftover will be given to the remaining worlds. So, no matter what, petrol is still cheaper in the United States than anywhere else in the world. A few years ago, the then US President George W Bush said that the world is going to impending food crisis because people from countries like India and China have started to eat more. French Queen Marie Antoinette, who, after learning that the protesting peasants were so poor that they have no bread to eat, said, let them eat cake, was not alone. It’s the story of the civilization. Karl Marx was right. In the perfect capitalist model, the rich will grow richer, the poor poorer.

It’s the same old story. In the Middle Ages, Christian fanatics fought the Holy War against the Islamic warlords for the land. The main motivation of the Crusade, to take back the birth place of Christ, was just a ruse. The main motive was to occupy the land. That’s where the wealth was. The war raged on. When Hitler came to power following Germany’s debacle in World War I, what he needed most was money. Germany did not have the money. Money was with the wealthy Jews, and the Jews did not have any allegiance with the German nation; they were the nomads since the time of the Old Testament, the Promised Land never delivered. So, we come to anti-Semitic war.
The commodity changes, the war remain the same. Now, we are back in the Middle East, and now, it’s the war for the oil. In the recent history, two American presidents waged war in the middle east, the Gulf War during the time of the father and the war against Terror, more specifically, war against Saddam Husain during the time of the son. Why? Because the Bush family owns oil fields in the state of Texas. Because Middle East had threatened to take over the business of oil in its own hands. A few years ago, there were reports that scientists have discovered a huge oil reserve under the snows of Alaska. But, the US won’t extract the oil till the current oil reserve in Middle East is exhausted. You know why.

Then there is the issue of the Gods. Starting from the war of Kurukshetra and the war in Illiam to the fall of the Mayan civilization, to the fall of the Roman Empire to the Crusade, to the World War II to the current battle against terror, all have been fought in the name of the Gods. The Gods instigated the war (Krishna asked Arjuna to fight, the Olympian Gods were actively involved in the fight between Achilles and Hector), inspired the war (between the Spartan and the Persian empire; the rising Christian sect against the Pagan nature worshippers, the stronger Christian communities against the Moslems), and finally, became the very reason for war (Jihad, in today’s current and complicated form).

But, we know the gods are just an excuse. The real motive is something else. The real motive is power, resources, wealth, domination, whatever you may call it, whatever way you may explain it, it comes down to those crisp papers, currency notes, money. As Liza Minnelli sung in ‘Cabaret’, “Money makes the world go round, world go round.”

(The author of this piece has copied liberally from Wikipedia.org entries to make himself clear)

History Repeating Part I

History Repeats Itself In A Flat World Where Currency Value Is The Holy Grail: Understanding The World Here And Now

1. History Repeats Itself

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce,” wrote Karl Marx. A decade into the twenty-first century, we are in the middle of the history repeating itself, of course, as farce, which we have sold as a grand tragedy, and it is called “Recession,” or a fancier, "Global Meltdown."

It is a philosophical idea that argues that similar historical occurrences can be observers in each era, each epoch of human history. Essentially, things remain the same, only the look changes. The structure of power may change, but power itself as the factor that decides the turn of history, remains the same. Friedrich Nietzsche talked about the doctrine of eternal recurrence. There are other who oppose the metaphysical interplay of the Nietzschean interpretation, and say that “historical recurrences” take place due to ascertainable circumstances and chains of causality.
That explains why every great civilization reaches its zenith at one point of its history and then begins to disintegrate. There’s Mayan civilization, the Egyptians, the Romans, the British Empire (at one point it was said that the sun of the empire never sets). Going by this logic, we can fairly assume that the American civilization as the centre of the world as we know today is going to disintegrate, and perhaps the process has already started. Perhaps a future historian will study the Decline and Fall of the American Empire and ascertain September 11, 2001 as the date when it all started. While the current scenario would make us believe that if the American falls, it would be the end of the world, a true believer of history would say that it is not so. There is another nation in the wings to take up the mantle (or the burden) to be the centre of the universe. But this honour would not come easily. There will be battles to be fought. There will be blood.

2. Or, History Ends

In his epoch-making book, ‘The End of History and the Last Man (1992), Francis Fukuyama, argues that the advent of Western liberal democracy may signal the end point of humanity’s socio-cultural evolution and the final form of human government.
He wrote: “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

In his theory, Fukuyama followed Alexandre Kojève, who argued that the progress of history must lead toward the establishment of a “universal and homogenous” state, most likely incorporating elements of liberal or social democracy.
When Fukuyama wrote the book, Communism had seen its final defeat after USSR disintegrated (China was a different story alltogether), and the American model of Capitalist Democracy was hailed as the future of the world. Following the fall of the twin-towers, however, things have changed considerably. The globe has become flat, and at the same time it has become more polarised, more intolerant more volatile. While socialism is given a grand burial, capitalism went through a series of facelifts. It’s not about production anymore. Money becomes a commodity in itself, and the banks become the arbitrators of power; so when a bank collapses, the world economy takes a tumble. And fossil fuel is the new gold, or diamond, or any other treasure you like.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which a group of terrorists, purportedly masterminded by Osama bin Laden, hijacked airplanes and flew them into various targets in the United States, The End of History was cited by some commentators as a symbol of the supposed naiveté and undue optimism of the Western world during the 1990s, in thinking that the end of the Cold War also represented the end of major global conflict. In the weeks after the attacks, Fareed Zakaria called the events "the end of the end of history," while George Will wrote that history had “returned from vacation.”

We take Fukuyama’s argument with a pinch of salt. Marx said that capitalism will lead to the rise of the proletarian and then to a classless society. It did. But it did not work. Till today, democracy is the less evil of all political systems, but there is no saying that it would last. It would not. Yet, we do not know what will replace it. And, there's is Marx. Though, there has been attempts to kill and bury Marx as an obsolete, impractical dreams, Maxism, in its pure, distilled form, continues to haunt our understanding of the world. For, one thing, we cannot understand capitalism without the help of Marx; and despite the obvious failure of translating his theories into practice, it is the only ideology that can explain what is going on in the world right now — why everyone is hankering after money and why money has become the commodity in itself.

3. And, What If The World Ends

The ‘End of History' theory reminds us of the ‘end of the world’ theories. Hindu philosophy reminds us that everything that has a beginning must have an end. The Earth came into existence at some point of time, so one day it must go back to oblivion. Scientists and environmentalist say that the Earth’s resources are not everlasting. One day, these resources will end and everything will be over. We have stored everything that we know and we need in those computer hard drives. What would happen if one day all sources of electricity dry up and we cannot log onto our computers. We’d head back to Stone Age.

American filmmaker Roland Emmerich has destroyed the world several times, once by ice ('The Day After Tomorrow'), later by water ('2012'). According to the ancient Mayan calendar, the world will come to an end on December 22, 2012. The Christian sect of The Seven Day Adventists believes that the world will come to an end soon, and Jesus Christ will appear again in his Second Coming. There are number of such cults, most of whom have their own dates when the world will end. Hindu mythology believes in the tenth incarnation of Lord Vishnu, called Kalki, who will break the cycle of the world and end the Kali Yug, soon.

It’s another matter whether the world will end or not, but one thing is certain that the systems through which the world operate continue to change, continue to reinvent itself, continue to find new avenues.

Yet, at the heart of it, it’s the same old story: A few men, a community, or a nation decide that they are superior to others, their culture is superior to others and it is their noble duty to convert the others to their belief system, and rule over them. The channels through which this power operates may have changed, but the idea of power remains the same.

“Jilikabo Luitore paar
Endharor bheta bhaangi Pragjyotishyate boi
Jeuti nizarare dhaar
Jilikabo Luitore paar...

“Xoto xoto bandiye, gyanare deepaliye
Jilikabo Luitore paar...

“Sahchipate bhasha dibo, chi-fung-ae asha dibo
Rong-ghore melibo duar
Xamaje xabotibo mahan manabata
Vigyane anibo jowar
Jilikabo Luitore paar...” (Asomiya transcript)
— Bhupen Hazarika

Will illuminate the banks of the river Luit
Breaking the embankment of darkness, in Pragjyotishpur flows
The waves of bright fountains

With thousands of lights, flames of knowledge
Will illuminate the banks of the river Luit

The Sanchi leaves will give us the knowledge, the chi-fung flute hope
And the Rong Ghor will open the doors for us
Society will embrace the greatness of humanity
And Science will overwhelm us.
Will illuminate the banks of the river Luit...

(Bhupen Hazarika wrote this song when the Gauhati University was established a year after the Independence. The great Jyoti Prasad Agarwala designed the main gate of the institute. Years later, the song went on to become the anthem of the North East India’s first university.)

Today, the illuminating light is doused. With the death of Bhupen Hazarika ends an age; a glorious chapter of Assamese history; Thus goes mute the vocal cord that gave us hope, gave us light even in the darkest of times...

Seeing... Part III

Why And How Seeing Is Not Just An Act Of Believing: Notes On Culture Studies In The Context Of Films As Cultural Artifacts

3. Difference Between Look And Gaze
The act of looking still retains certain amount of innocence. It’s is more filled with curiosity and less with judgement. It’s the first step. On the other hand, a gaze demands certain amount of self consciousness. Unlike looking, which is in its basic form one-sided (…you look at something and your look gives the meaning to that subject/object…This line exists because you are looking at it, and it has a meaning because you have assigned a meaning to it…), gaze becomes a two-way street, and in a more complex way.

It is a psychoanalytical term popularised by French theorist Jacques Lacan. Simply, it describes the anxious state that comes with the awareness that one can be viewed. The psychological effect, Lacan argues, is that the subject loses some sense of autonomy upon realising that he or she is a visible object. This concept is bound with his theory of the mirror stage, in which a child encountering a mirror realises that he or she has an external appearance. Later, Michel Foucault discussed gaze in the context of power relations and disciplinary mechanisms in his book ‘Discipline and Punish.’

Later, this existentialist theory came to play a dominant role in the study of cultural artifacts, especially cinema as an art form.

To begin with the gaze is characterised by who is the gazer (viewer). The spectator's gaze that of the spectator viewing the text, i.e. the reader(s) of the text. We enter the darkness of the theatre, put on the 3D glasses, and travel to the distant planet called Pandora.

Now, things begin to get complicated. We come to ‘intra-diegetic gaze’ in a text, where a character gazes upon an object or another character in the text (…In Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo,’ James Stewart spies on at Kim Novak posing as his friend’s neurotic wife gazing at the painting in the museum…), and then, the ‘extra-diegetic gaze’ where a textual character consciously addresses (looks at) the viewer, e.g. in dramaturgy, an aside to the audience; in cinema, acknowledgement of the fourth wall, the viewer (… In Woody Allen’s 'Annie Hall,' Allen directly talks to the audience… In 'The Purple Rose of Cairo,' Mia Farrow goes to a theatre and the hero of the film within the film, stops his ‘acting’ and directly addresses the woman…).

In a film, the camera's gaze is the director's gaze, which the director purportedly lends to the audience. The audience sees what the director sees, or what the director wants to show.

Now, the gaze is gendered. In the essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,’ Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of the male gaze as a feature of power asymmetry. In film, the male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man, and Mulvey argues that in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes precedence over the female gaze. That is why Bipasha Basu in a bikini.

Following Mulvey’s argument, we can argue that if there’s male gaze, there must be ‘female gaze’. If the male gaze is mostly heterosexual, then there must be ‘homo-normative gaze. Can we further subdivide it? Can there be a Dalit gaze, a Hindu gaze, a disabled gaze, a transsexual gaze?

If we go deep into understanding Lacanian gaze, we understand that the idea of gaze does not origin outside in the object of gaze, but on the mind; the gazer decides the gaze. That is why a homo-erotic reading of ‘Sholey’ can infer that Jai and Veeru were not just good friend but more than that, and the “Yeh dosti..” duet is actually a love song.

Structures do not have their inherent meaning. Its meaning arrives via representation, and a particular gaze can dismantle this representation and add a different colour to it.

(The author of this piece has copied liberally from Wikipedia.org entries to make himself clear)

Seeing... Part II

Why And How Seeing Is Not Just An Act Of Believing: Notes On Culture Studies In The Context Of Films As Cultural Artifacts

The Eyes Have It

The look is not as innocent as it seems. There is a stigma attached to it, there is a fear. There are reasons and there are beneficiaries who do not want everyone to have the abilities to look and perceive its meaning. That’s why there are censor boards. That’s why there are arbiters of morality. That’s why the laws. That’s why the taboos. That’s why the plain dos and don’ts.

Indian culture does not approve the direct look. You cannot stare at someone or something directly, especially if that someone is some way or other different from us. It’s rude. It’s violation of moral propriety. Legend has it that when the Goddess Saraswati appeared before Kalidasa to offer him a boon for his great penance, the great poet started praising the beautiful Goddess from her face and downwards; the Goddess was so angry at this crude behaviour that she cursed him to be killed by a woman. That’s because a God must be praised from the feet.

That’s why we fall at the feet of the Gods in temples. That’s why we bow before our elders. That’s why the subjects would kneel at the arrival of the king or the queen.
The prevailing culture decides what to look at and how, and how much, and who are the privileged ones. In medieval Kerala, the ministers had the rights to see or demand to see any woman’s breasts. In the 1980s, a magazine like Debonair published centerfolds of women in the nude. They don’t anymore. In the 1990s, the national television channel Doordarshan telecast adult films on Friday midnight. Pooja Bedi was criticised for appearing in a contraceptive advertisement. The last page of Pune Times printed a story about Jenifer Lopez’s million dollar buttock, with a provocative accompanying picture. Television journalist Barkha Dutt earned both fame and notoriety by covering the crucial events live, first the Kargil war, then the Mumbai terror attack.

That’s why a bride wears a veil. That’s why a Muslim woman wears Burkha, so that her face does not tempt the manfolk. That’s why celebrities wear those huge Garbo sunglasses. That’s why cars have tinted glasses. That’s why a book or a film is banned. That’s why a news story implicating an influential person is edited out. That why Bipasha Basu’s decision to wear a Bikini in a new film makes the headline. That’s why news of farmers suicides in the interior villages turn into a series of numbers; 315 deaths in two years. That’s why there are two Indias. That’s why Youtube and mobile phone that plays videos are so popular.

That’s why there is the superstition of the evil eye. That’s why looks can kill.
Thus, a look is not just seeing an object (or a subject), but a method of assessment. This assessment takes place at the individual level, at the point of view of the looker. And, this assessment is informed by this particular looker’s personal ideologies. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Each looker gives a new meaning to the object/subject looked at. That’s why meanings are constantly at war. That’s why critics hate a Salman Khan film and the audiences love it.

Yet, it’s the prevailing cultural mores that influence this assessment. These influences work stealthily, and it is very difficult to pin them down. Who decided that thin women are sexier? Who decided that fair skin is more desirable than black or brown skin? Who decided that six pocket jeans are no longer in fashion? Who decided that George Clooney is the sexiest man alive? Who decided that Kerala is God’s own country? Who decided that whiskey is rich man’s drink and rum poor man’s?
What does each of these decisions mean in the context of the prevailing culture? Whom it benefits?

There is a tendency to trivialise the look, or at best, romanticise it… “Ankhohi, ankhohi mein ishara ho gaya…” sung Dev Anand in Md Rafi voice, and Geeta Dutt crooned, “Kahi pe nigahein, kahi pe Nishana…” Sri Devi’s eyes are the stuff dreams are made of.

In this post-post-modern world we live in this innocence is lost. Love at the first sight is a myth. Beauty is skin deep and the skin has been polished in the neighbourhood beauty parlour.

Now, we know there is a reason why we look at a certain things in a particular way. No object/subject has its inherent meaning. The meanings are always thrust upon, and there are always reasons for it, and there is always a beneficiary. Everything that takes place in society within the sphere of the so called culture must benefit someone or other, and it does.

In the context of the culture studies, we can term this beneficiary ‘mainstream,’ and the system ‘patriarchy.’ It is the most identifiable villain. But patriarchy moves in mysterious ways.

In the beginning was the word. In the beginning was nothing. The discipline of anthropology would tell us that nothing is natural. Everything is constructed. If we consider human beings as just another species on Earth, then, we must concede that everything we have achieved in the glorious span of human civilisation, are all unnatural, starting from wearing clothes to eating cooked food, everything. Perhaps, this ability to read and write is at the very centre of this unnaturalness.
That is why we must question why we are allowed to see certain things and banned from seeing certain things? Why we are forced to see things in a particular way? Why we are expected to arrive at given meanings? Why the culture forces us to accept beliefs, norms without question? Why the very idea of question is questioned?

Seeing...Part I

Why And How Seeing Is Not Just An Act Of Believing// Notes On Culture Studies

Is Seeing Believing?
Seeing is believing, goes the old adage. Yet, this simple act, which we perform every-day, is loaded with political and cultural meanings. What do we do when you look at someone, or something? We perceive the object before us, and arrive at a meaning which the object purportedly manifests. But, how do we know that when we arrive at the meaning, it is the inherent meaning of the object? We do not. As post-structuralism tells us, meaning of a construction is never fixed; it changes in the proc-ess of seeing.

Let’s try an example. Sometimes in 1980s. the so-called Bandit Queen Phoolan Devi, a runaway woman from a lower caste family in the Behmai village in the heart of Mad-hya Pradesh, is beaten up and then raped, for her alleged association with the bandits of the Chambal ravines. Sometimes in 1990s. A filmmaker from Mumbai makes a film, where the scene is recreated. The film is released amidst controversies, and we en-ter the darkness of a local theatre and witness the rape, shot in dark, fragmented im-ages. What’s the scene supposed to mean? Is there an inherent meaning to the scene, or the meaning is constructed by each viewer, based on his/her personal experiences?

First, let’s look at how the scene was constructed. Except for the rape victim herself, no one who participated in the actual event was alive (Phoolan Devi had shot them in full public view a few years later), when Mala Sen wrote the book, all the information the authored gathered came from second-hand sources. When Shekhar Kapur decided to make the film, he relied on Mala Sen’s information, but how he visualised the scene was his own. Then, the scene was shot of Ashok Mehta, and later edited by Renu Saluja. When the film was ready for release, it was sent to the censor board, who ob-jected to the ‘brutality’ of the scene, and demanded certain cuts. The cuts done, the film was released. The audience saw the film and was transported back to the ‘original event’ via the medium of cinema. But, how original was this representation?

Now, the audience. Would a man and a woman react similarly to the scene? Yes, we understand the injustice and crime the scene underscores, but would the intensity of reaction to this crime be same for everyone? It is doubtful.

Liberal humanism makes us believe that a work of art, and for that matter, any event, should illicit similar responses. But, is it really the case? Coming back to the scene in question, how an upper class man (who shares the same background as the perpetrator of the crime) would react? How would a Dalit woman (who shares the same back-ground as the victim) would react? You can turn to any conceivable category and ask the same question. There would be a reaction, but the reaction would be different every time.

Bhupen Hazarika, master balladeer who touched millions of hearts

GUWAHATI: Music lovers would have been denied the magic of Bhupen Hazarika's hauntingly powerful voice in songs like "Dil hoom hoom kare" and "Ganga behti ho kyun" if he had gone ahead and become a lawyer like he initially planned.

But destiny willed otherwise.

Hazarika, who died of multiple organ failure in a Mumbai hospital Saturday at age 86, was a master balladeer and touched millions with the passion of his songs.

He was one of India's oldest performing singers who entertained music lovers all over for more than seven decades - his songs are at times like letters from home, had revolutionary promises, sometimes angry, but always had that soothing touch in his baritone voice.

From Tokyo to Mumbai and Alaska to Assam, those who heard Hazarika could never ever forget his powerful renditions.

"When I go to Japan, students of music want me to sing 'Manuhe Manuhar Babe' (For Man). When I reach California people say you are our Paul (Robeson), please sing 'We are in the same boat brothers'," the legendary musician told IANS in an interview in 2006 just before a stage performance in Guwahati.

It was mid-way during that stage performance that Hazarika suffered a mild stroke and later had to undergo a bypass surgery.

But the cardiac arrest failed to deter his spirit - Bhupen Da, as he was endearingly addressed by one and all, continued singing until about two years ago when his failing health stopped him from composing new numbers.

"I always think I am young," Hazarika again told this writer while celebrating his 84th birthday last year.

"I don't feel like retiring as music has no retirement age. Throughout my life I have been trying to interpret Assam and India to the outside world through my songs," Hazarika said.

He began singing when he was just 10 years old and churned out hits after hits numbering more than 1,500 songs until his health failed about two years ago. At 13, he sang about building a new Assam and a new India - the lyrics were his own, very powerful and contemporary.

A singer, lyricist, actor, and a filmmaker, Hazarika was born in 1926 in one of Assam's remotest corners - Sadiya in the eastern district of Tinsukia. He grew up in the northern town of Tezpur and later went to Banaras Hindu University and completed his graduation and post-graduation in Political Science.

He studied with an aim to pursue a career as a lawyer in Assam, but destiny made him a mass-based singer.

In 1948, Hazarika went to the US on a scholarship to study Mass Communication at Columbia University, New York.

It was there that he got soaked in American folk music and later on that influenced him to bring in the folk elements in his songs - although he mostly sang the folk tunes of Assam.

Always adorned with the trademark Nepali cap, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award winner's passion for music was unrelenting.

Hazarika had composed soulful music for films like "Rudaali", "Saaz" and "Gajagamini".

Not just singing, Hazarika dabbled in politics as well - his remarkable popularity brought him to the Assam Legislative Assembly as an Independent member in 1967, where he was solely responsible for installing the first state owned film studio of its kind ever in Guwahati, the Jyoti Chitraban.

He again tried his hand in politics - this time as a Bharatiya Janata Party candidate for the Guwahati Lok Sabha seat in 2004. He was, however, unsuccessful and lost the election.

Hazarika's personal life is as chequered as his professional life.

For close to 40 years, Hazarika had been in a live in relationship with filmmaker Kalpana Lajmi.

Kalpana Lajmi was just 17 when she fell in love with Hazarika who was 45 at that time.

When the music maestro turned 80, he offered to marry her, but Lajmi turned down the offer saying the 'wife' tag was unnecessary to their relationship.

'Bhupso (Kalpana endearingly addressed Hazarika as Bhupso) did offer to marry me when he was around 80, but I said no,' Lajmi, told this writer in an interview.

"May be he wanted to give me the status of wife, but I was not interested. For me, the relationship, the trust and the respect that we share with each other are more important than marriage."

Lajmi, best known for her woman-oriented films like 'Rudaali', 'Daman', 'Ek Pal', 'Chingaari' and 'Darmiyaan', says she met Hazarika through her uncle.

"We lived together for the past more than 40 years, although my mother never accepted the relationship, nor did Bhupso's family members, barring Manisha (Bhupen's younger brother Jayanta's wife)."

In Lajmi's own words, Bhupen Hazarika had always been the darling of many beautiful women.

"Bhupso had a lot of beautiful women in his life," Lajmi said.

Hazarika's estranged wife Priyam is settled in Canada and their son Tej is settled in the US.

Hazarika had produced, directed, composed and sang for Assamese language films like 'Era Batar Sur' (1956), 'Shakuntala' (1960), 'Pratidhwani' (1964) and 'Lotighoti' (1967).

So was Lajmi able to make a difference in Hazarika's life and career?

"I think I'm 95 percent responsible for Bhupso's career flight. He was an intoxicant (alcoholic) and I helped him get rid of that habit."

She devoted her entire time and energy nursing him ever since he became bedridden some three years ago.

Hazarika might have passed away - but his soulful music coupled with his powerful lyrics would continue to entertain and capture the imagination of generations to come.

FROM
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Bhupen-Hazarika-master-balladeer-who-touched-millions-of-hearts/articleshow/10621627.cms

Bhupen Hazarika is dead.