Sunday, March 27, 2011
"Blowin' in the wind"
The humidity in Chennai saps all your energy reserves. At least that is so in my case. After all the pending chores are done, you are left with just enough energy to let your limbic responses take over: eat, sleep, or mindlessly watch television. I have yet to get used to the weather in Chennai and it has been a good eight years now.
I was galvanized into the thinking mode when I hit on the carnage in Libya ,via the BBC.
America has really overstepped the boundaries with this one. What justification for the air strikes? What makes one country think it has the right to interfere in another's internal affairs? Let us not forget the West has vested interest in oil in the Middle East region, so has the rest of the world in lesser or greater, did I say greater? I am sorry. How can any country have a need greater than the United States of America? We all need the Middle East to be stable so we can have cheap, or reasonably priced oil. Oil makes the world go round. We are all well aware of where we will be without oil. Therefore the neurosis about Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen et al. I don't buy the talk on Democracy. That is just a front. India is guilty of selfish interests too. We support Libya for the very same reason and more. We here are afraid of the Islamic backlash. So we bend backwards to accommodate anything that will otherwise bring about a bloodbath. The unrest in Bahrain alerts the Emirates who stand in danger of losing their fiefdoms. Does the West have any plan about Libya after Gadaffi? Do they really think they can do a Saddam on him?
What if the Al Qaeda moves in quietly in the ensuing chaos? Al Qaeda, I read somewhere, can never be eradicated, as it it is in the minds of people.It is not just a physical presence. In effect, therefore, America is making it easy for Al Qaeda in Libya.
BBC had a program about warlike nations and this was in the context of America's attack on Iraq. The analysis said that young nations were always flexing their muscles for a fight, and aggression came naturally to them. Maybe. America as a nation is almost ridiculously young and therefore we can forgive its trespasses as normal rites of passage.But what of France and Germany? They who pride themselves on a millenia of history and culture should know better.
Now with Wikileaks washing global laundry in public, we know how interfering "interfering" can be and worse, immoral.
It leaves one with a strong feeling of disgust at human greed. The elections are just around the corner and I personally feel that casting my vote is like whistling in the wind.
"The Answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind..."
"...How many ears must one man have,
Before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind"
Freewheeling Bob Dylan
I was galvanized into the thinking mode when I hit on the carnage in Libya ,via the BBC.
America has really overstepped the boundaries with this one. What justification for the air strikes? What makes one country think it has the right to interfere in another's internal affairs? Let us not forget the West has vested interest in oil in the Middle East region, so has the rest of the world in lesser or greater, did I say greater? I am sorry. How can any country have a need greater than the United States of America? We all need the Middle East to be stable so we can have cheap, or reasonably priced oil. Oil makes the world go round. We are all well aware of where we will be without oil. Therefore the neurosis about Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen et al. I don't buy the talk on Democracy. That is just a front. India is guilty of selfish interests too. We support Libya for the very same reason and more. We here are afraid of the Islamic backlash. So we bend backwards to accommodate anything that will otherwise bring about a bloodbath. The unrest in Bahrain alerts the Emirates who stand in danger of losing their fiefdoms. Does the West have any plan about Libya after Gadaffi? Do they really think they can do a Saddam on him?
What if the Al Qaeda moves in quietly in the ensuing chaos? Al Qaeda, I read somewhere, can never be eradicated, as it it is in the minds of people.It is not just a physical presence. In effect, therefore, America is making it easy for Al Qaeda in Libya.
BBC had a program about warlike nations and this was in the context of America's attack on Iraq. The analysis said that young nations were always flexing their muscles for a fight, and aggression came naturally to them. Maybe. America as a nation is almost ridiculously young and therefore we can forgive its trespasses as normal rites of passage.But what of France and Germany? They who pride themselves on a millenia of history and culture should know better.
Now with Wikileaks washing global laundry in public, we know how interfering "interfering" can be and worse, immoral.
It leaves one with a strong feeling of disgust at human greed. The elections are just around the corner and I personally feel that casting my vote is like whistling in the wind.
"The Answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind..."
"...How many ears must one man have,
Before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind"
Freewheeling Bob Dylan
Sunday, March 20, 2011
"What The Thunder Said"
Japan still figures very strongly in the peripheries of my thought. The arbitrariness of life--- it could have been us in India, more specifically Chennai, as it lies on the shore. In minutes, this city would be just a memory and the people, "six feet under." The utter annihilation of the Sendai tsunami underlines how precarious our existence on this planet is. We are all living literally and metaphorically, on the "Ring of Fire." Personally, I think it is good to be reminded ,of the transitory nature of our life, every now and then. It helps to clear the fog, and get our priorities clear.The fact we will all one day be "...rolled around earth's diurnal course/With rocks and stones and trees.",(Wordsworth) is hugely sobering. What better way to go, than be taken into what brought us forth?
This is a fragile planet, and a very young one. We are probably witnessing the rites of passage towards Earth's maturity. Please remember, the continents once were drifting, and this mass we are on, this huge subcontinent, the Indian plate, is supposed to have pushed up the Himalayas when it did a head on collision with the Eurasian plate. What a stupefying fact by any definition!
It came upon me one summer when we were holidaying in Kausani,a remote little hamlet at the very foothills of the Himalayas, home to the great Hindi litterateur Jayashankar Prasad. Standing on the patio of our rented cottage we had a breathtaking view of Trishool and Nanda Devi, and the glistening Pindar glacier . The air had just cleared after a thunderstorm and it seemed as if I could reach out and touch the towering peaks. To think this was the result of an arbitrary happening! If the collision had not happened we would not have had the majesty of the Himalayas. A very unsettling thought. Even in the brutal heat of North Indian summer Kausani remained cool and balmy. The towering snow covered peaks and the frozen Pindar that fed Ganga, Yamuna ,Sindhu and the Brahmaputra gleamed commandingly from afar, making one very much aware of our infinitely tiny presence in the scheme of things.
Yet we dare to dream big. That is good, because only then we can achieve. But it does not stop there. Being what we are,being so full of pride and arrogance in self, we dare to assume that we can control Nature. The "Hubris" the Greeks so tellingly illustrated in their tragedies, is all about overstepping of boundaries. We have not only overstepped, I am afraid, we have forgotten that there were any boundaries at all. What boundaries? This planet, this solar system, this universe itself is seen as part of the happy hunting grounds of humans. Sans respect, sans reverence.
They were right, Sophocles, Euripedes, in trying to get our attention to the enormity of this irreverence. They illustrated it with the horror of Medea feeding Jason with the flesh of his children, the arrogance of Oedipus leading him unknowingly to take his mother as his wife.... instances that relate going against the natural order because of extreme ego.
We are doing just that to this planet of ours. Our "hubris" encompasses every aspect of life. Nuclear power for one is a standing example. Never mind the terrifying facts of radiation in case of accidents... but then we make provisions for accidents and say "we are prepared" but are we really? In our wonderfully resourceful way we have plan A, plan B, plan C... and so on in case of catastrophes and such irritating happenings that slow us in our "progress". Except when it happens, it is the innocent who suffer , the innocent who die.
Many in Japan ask "Is this the big one?" Who knows? Does anybody know? Can anyone predict?
Let us then accept that we need help, we need faith not just in ourselves, but in something more, maybe in Nature all around us. Respect for the powerful statement that Nature can make, vanquishing in seconds millenia of informed human efforts.
I do not know much about Gods, but I think that the river
Is a strong brown God --- sullen, untamed and intractable
Patient to some degree…...
The problem once solved, the brown God is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in the cities --- ever…...
"Dry Salvages" (Four Quartets) T.S.Eliot
This is a fragile planet, and a very young one. We are probably witnessing the rites of passage towards Earth's maturity. Please remember, the continents once were drifting, and this mass we are on, this huge subcontinent, the Indian plate, is supposed to have pushed up the Himalayas when it did a head on collision with the Eurasian plate. What a stupefying fact by any definition!
It came upon me one summer when we were holidaying in Kausani,a remote little hamlet at the very foothills of the Himalayas, home to the great Hindi litterateur Jayashankar Prasad. Standing on the patio of our rented cottage we had a breathtaking view of Trishool and Nanda Devi, and the glistening Pindar glacier . The air had just cleared after a thunderstorm and it seemed as if I could reach out and touch the towering peaks. To think this was the result of an arbitrary happening! If the collision had not happened we would not have had the majesty of the Himalayas. A very unsettling thought. Even in the brutal heat of North Indian summer Kausani remained cool and balmy. The towering snow covered peaks and the frozen Pindar that fed Ganga, Yamuna ,Sindhu and the Brahmaputra gleamed commandingly from afar, making one very much aware of our infinitely tiny presence in the scheme of things.
Yet we dare to dream big. That is good, because only then we can achieve. But it does not stop there. Being what we are,being so full of pride and arrogance in self, we dare to assume that we can control Nature. The "Hubris" the Greeks so tellingly illustrated in their tragedies, is all about overstepping of boundaries. We have not only overstepped, I am afraid, we have forgotten that there were any boundaries at all. What boundaries? This planet, this solar system, this universe itself is seen as part of the happy hunting grounds of humans. Sans respect, sans reverence.
They were right, Sophocles, Euripedes, in trying to get our attention to the enormity of this irreverence. They illustrated it with the horror of Medea feeding Jason with the flesh of his children, the arrogance of Oedipus leading him unknowingly to take his mother as his wife.... instances that relate going against the natural order because of extreme ego.
We are doing just that to this planet of ours. Our "hubris" encompasses every aspect of life. Nuclear power for one is a standing example. Never mind the terrifying facts of radiation in case of accidents... but then we make provisions for accidents and say "we are prepared" but are we really? In our wonderfully resourceful way we have plan A, plan B, plan C... and so on in case of catastrophes and such irritating happenings that slow us in our "progress". Except when it happens, it is the innocent who suffer , the innocent who die.
Many in Japan ask "Is this the big one?" Who knows? Does anybody know? Can anyone predict?
Let us then accept that we need help, we need faith not just in ourselves, but in something more, maybe in Nature all around us. Respect for the powerful statement that Nature can make, vanquishing in seconds millenia of informed human efforts.
I do not know much about Gods, but I think that the river
Is a strong brown God --- sullen, untamed and intractable
Patient to some degree…...
The problem once solved, the brown God is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in the cities --- ever…...
"Dry Salvages" (Four Quartets) T.S.Eliot
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Ozymandias
It just burst upon me in the course of my work. I was working on editing an update of wills. Yes, as in bequeathing to one's children or surviving spouse. Never had much respect for it anyway, as I have seen it bring out the worst in humans---the way money always does.
But this is ridiculous I thought, looking at what I was reading. It seemed like an obsessive compulsive disorder, this wanting to ensure from beyond the grave that the money made during lifetimes, went to the "right" person. OCD sanctioned and blessed by "law abiding" civic societies, ensuring the dead person, or the man/woman who will soon be dead, that their hard earned money will only go where they want it to go.
Fair enough, in that we all salt our savings away so we can give something of it to our children or our surviving better halves. A natural sentiment. Beyond this anything else seems just plain laughable. Such is human vanity. The "roof and crown of creation"-- that we think we are-- even death cannot part us from our money.Therefore the detailed , yes, dismally detailed wills.
To what purpose? Let the Great Wave be our teacher. No, not the one that Hokusai painted. I am talking about the Sendai tsunami that swept and ravaged Japan on Friday the 11th of March 2011. "In one fell swoo
p'' everyone was just swept away, and for those who remain --of what use is their little stash in such a situation? In minutes a very advanced society was left torn and ravaged. Lost families and loved ones, houses swept away, the threat of nuclear radiation, when existence is threatened of what use is money? It does well to remember that Japan is a nation that has risen proudly --samurai like-- from the ashes of Nagasaki and Hiroshima -- a horror that was deliberately manufactured, never mind the justification of it. But this was Nature in all her raging fury and is impossible to predict or be prepared for.
Decades ago when I was doing my Bachelors in Eng. Lit. We did a Shelley poem called Ozymandias.The pertinent lines run thus
"...And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: 10
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".
Percy Bysshe Shelley :Ozymandias
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
The veil
Yesterday I saw a very disturbing news item on the Internet. It was about France imposing the ban on burquas. I was shocked and disturbed to say the very least. This from France? The French consider themselves as the most civilized people in the world, and surely being civilized means ,at the very least, respecting others and their beliefs
.
So whither with all this sudden hard-line attitude? Where, oh, where are the ideals of 'Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" on which the Republic was formed? Has France forgotten that she is home to the largest concentration of Muslims in Europe? Why then did she open her arms wide and invite diversity, if only to deny immigrants the freedom of attire in accordance to their faith? Was the invite spurred on by the need to fill the void left by World War II? The disturbing question, looms waiting in the wings : Will the rest of Europe follow suit? Then, it is surely the beginning of the "Gotterdamerung."
What is the case against the veil ? That it clashes with the existing cultural mores? Then it is purely cosmetic. In which case, ergo, the Sikhs in the UK and Canada have to divest themselves of their turban, or pagdi. What will follow then does not need any explanation.
France is a secular republic.Does not secularism warrant the freedom not just to practice one's faith but also the freedom to dress in accordance with one's culture and faith? Banning the veil then is the final betrayal of a so called "secular " system.
The argument that I have heard put forth here in India against the veil is based on the assumption that it deprives women "freedom." On the contrary. I used to work with a woman who wore the burqa to work. She told me about feeling "liberated" while wearing the dress. She could go about in public places anonymously she said, not fearing comments, and other harassment that young women in public sometimes encounter."Nobody notices me", she said "and I am thankful for that." wearing the naqab gives her the freedom to go to a college albeit a segregated one, commute to work in public transport, and a host of other things without being subject to preying male eyes. "Yes, Iam very happy. I have a wonderful husband, very supportive in-laws, my sisters-in-law work in public offices, they wear the burqa as well. why do you assume that we are unhappy and unprivileged because we are not like you?" What a wonderfully relevant question I thought then, and I realize now, more than ever.
Why do we assume at all? My husband once quipped at this with: "It only makes an ass of 'u' and me!" My sentiments exactly.
Maybe , just maybe, the French President will not sign this Act, which will then remain an Act in principle only. Maybe France will attempt to think not just of itself but about the fate of Europe that is hanging in balance with this act. I love French literature, art, and yes, I love Paris ---the grande dame of all cities. I care, therefore this post.
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Janis Joplin Me and Bobby McG.
.
So whither with all this sudden hard-line attitude? Where, oh, where are the ideals of 'Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" on which the Republic was formed? Has France forgotten that she is home to the largest concentration of Muslims in Europe? Why then did she open her arms wide and invite diversity, if only to deny immigrants the freedom of attire in accordance to their faith? Was the invite spurred on by the need to fill the void left by World War II? The disturbing question, looms waiting in the wings : Will the rest of Europe follow suit? Then, it is surely the beginning of the "Gotterdamerung."
What is the case against the veil ? That it clashes with the existing cultural mores? Then it is purely cosmetic. In which case, ergo, the Sikhs in the UK and Canada have to divest themselves of their turban, or pagdi. What will follow then does not need any explanation.
France is a secular republic.Does not secularism warrant the freedom not just to practice one's faith but also the freedom to dress in accordance with one's culture and faith? Banning the veil then is the final betrayal of a so called "secular " system.
The argument that I have heard put forth here in India against the veil is based on the assumption that it deprives women "freedom." On the contrary. I used to work with a woman who wore the burqa to work. She told me about feeling "liberated" while wearing the dress. She could go about in public places anonymously she said, not fearing comments, and other harassment that young women in public sometimes encounter."Nobody notices me", she said "and I am thankful for that." wearing the naqab gives her the freedom to go to a college albeit a segregated one, commute to work in public transport, and a host of other things without being subject to preying male eyes. "Yes, Iam very happy. I have a wonderful husband, very supportive in-laws, my sisters-in-law work in public offices, they wear the burqa as well. why do you assume that we are unhappy and unprivileged because we are not like you?" What a wonderfully relevant question I thought then, and I realize now, more than ever.
Why do we assume at all? My husband once quipped at this with: "It only makes an ass of 'u' and me!" My sentiments exactly.
Maybe , just maybe, the French President will not sign this Act, which will then remain an Act in principle only. Maybe France will attempt to think not just of itself but about the fate of Europe that is hanging in balance with this act. I love French literature, art, and yes, I love Paris ---the grande dame of all cities. I care, therefore this post.
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Janis Joplin Me and Bobby McG.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Katharsis
It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It is always so when one attends a performance in Kalakshetra. It just lifts you off the ground and sets you on another plane, in which you are in touch with another reality.
Iam talking of Dr. C.V.Chandrashekhar's dance on the birth anniversary of Rukmini Arundale at he Kalakshetra Rukmini Arangam.
This was dance in its purest form, and it helped that the dancer was in very good shape, and was also very striking to look at. What was incredible is his age. All of seventy five years, and he moved with the grace, agility and energy of a man twenty years younger.
The epiphany was to me a real life experience of Coomaraswamy's "Transformation of Art in Nature." The dance was not a "performance"; it seemed to be just an organic extension of the music.
This is not a report on the dance, but a note on how the dance affected me, and the connections that it lead me to form. I understood,sitting there in the darkened auditorium, that all theories of aesthetics were only attempts to capture and set in some sort of order the emotions that raced through one when confronted with beauty that cannot be quantified. So we struggle to weave a pattern with words to try and convey this blinding revelation of another reality. Aristotle put the feeling down as "katharsis", which very crudely put, is a purging of emotions leaving one "calm of mind, all passion spent". He almost sounds like a physician.
I do believe it is that and much, much more, a "kathahrsis " yes, but leading up to an epiphanic revelation where one is able let go of one's self.
Chandrashekhar's dance at Kalakshetra was every bit a kathartic epiphany.
We are humbled by it, and the great force that moves us.
"Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
D.H. Lawrence: Song Of A Man Who Has Come Through.
Iam talking of Dr. C.V.Chandrashekhar's dance on the birth anniversary of Rukmini Arundale at he Kalakshetra Rukmini Arangam.
This was dance in its purest form, and it helped that the dancer was in very good shape, and was also very striking to look at. What was incredible is his age. All of seventy five years, and he moved with the grace, agility and energy of a man twenty years younger.
The epiphany was to me a real life experience of Coomaraswamy's "Transformation of Art in Nature." The dance was not a "performance"; it seemed to be just an organic extension of the music.
This is not a report on the dance, but a note on how the dance affected me, and the connections that it lead me to form. I understood,sitting there in the darkened auditorium, that all theories of aesthetics were only attempts to capture and set in some sort of order the emotions that raced through one when confronted with beauty that cannot be quantified. So we struggle to weave a pattern with words to try and convey this blinding revelation of another reality. Aristotle put the feeling down as "katharsis", which very crudely put, is a purging of emotions leaving one "calm of mind, all passion spent". He almost sounds like a physician.
I do believe it is that and much, much more, a "kathahrsis " yes, but leading up to an epiphanic revelation where one is able let go of one's self.
Chandrashekhar's dance at Kalakshetra was every bit a kathartic epiphany.
We are humbled by it, and the great force that moves us.
"Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
| If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me! | ||
| If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!" |
D.H. Lawrence: Song Of A Man Who Has Come Through.
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