Gossip, Gossip, Gossip ! The Jail is Full of Gossip.
Snehangshu Kanta Acharyya [S.K. Acharyya was in prison in 1963, under the Defense of India Rules, which empowered the Government of India to imprison whoever it wanted as long as it wanted, without trial or charge. Barrister Acharyya was later the Advocate General of West Bengal. Here is a selection from his meticulously maintained diary.] ————————————– I entered the Presidency Jail at about 9 PM. After long spending time in the general lock up. I was taken to Ward No. 18 and there I found an advocate of our High Court, Kazi Mohammad Ali who was known to me for I had appeared as his senior in some cases he brought to me. Apart from Kazi, there were two New Zealanders who were kept there as under-trials having involved in some smuggling cases. I was surprised to find two other detainees, members of the C.P. I., who were in the same ward as me though sleeping on the floor and staying downstairs in Ward 17 but without the privilege of being in Division I. After my arrival, I talked through the door which separated the next ward on the western side where all other detainees of the C.P.I. were lodged. When I saw these two detainees in my ward, I got the first hint of the division which had broken out openly in the C.P.I. which was reflected inside the jails as well. ******************** The evening was the dullest part of the day. Lights were bad, making serious reading an impossibility. The greatest irritation was that the lights were not turned off at night and as I had this habit of sleeping in the dark, the bright lights made sleeping a near impossibility. The convicts somehow managed by playing cards and then take a few puffs of ‘ganja.’ But for time hangs heavily. I felt that it would have been better to have been in the thick of it and suffered than to have been in the fringe doing no good either to my family or to the movement. Anyway, this has cured me of vacillation. ****************** There was an announcement by the Jail authorities that persons donating blood will have remission of their sentences. This was greeted by continuous boos and howls. Some of our ‘Faltus’ commented that blood would be sold by authorities and not used for poor patients needing it. One of the prisoners told me that he had witnessed a strange sight: one night he saw in Kidderpore a lorry pick up some destitute and he joined them too. They were brought into a hospital having a blood back and all these persons were forced into a room and blood extracted. Some were paid paltry sums and after a heavily sugared cup of tea they were brought back in the lorry and left at Kiddepore again, but in a different route and were shooed off. ******************* The Librarian came and I returned all the books which I had taken, except for Agni Bina by Kazi Nazrul Islam. I somehow feel too overwhelmed to read novels, so I had selected some old Bengali dramas to renew my long lost memory. God alone knows when the books send by my wife will be ‘cleared’ by the Intelligence Branch for delivery to me. ********************* When I was in Conakry last October , I saw the prized representatives of the countries ruled by lesser Nehrus. All these representatives are typical boot-lickers of different Metropolitan Powers and are inordinately fond of European ways! ********************** Gossip, gossip gossip. The jail is full of gossip. What goes on in different wards. Yesterday, the P.D Act boys asked whether I shall be freed today. They had heard it in the office. I told them that my fate is not to be guessed by any jail officer. One new chap who has come along, has been, it seems, deliberately planted amongst us. The jails in India are run by convicts….The faltus do our work, bring food and also keep watch on us and on each other. ******************* The latrines are just too awful and I never go anywhere near these, unless I am literally forced to go. The bath, or the reservoir is full of cockroaches and insects floating about on the surface and the dropping of the birds and lots of feathers. The room or the ward is dirty, the roof is full of soot which descend on us quite often. The food, as I have said, is muck. The British had treated Indians as animals and convicted prisoner is certainly a creature below an animal and therefore this utter disregard to human desires or even human squeamishness. The Congress government and its champion Nehru, being a Harrow boy, has the identical mental attitude towards sub-human Indians, in general, and inhuman prisoners in particular, and have, therefore, kept the British system intact. ******************** There was a sudden visit by the Jailer and his deputy to carry on a search of our bed, body and boxes. Then suddenly the Jailer asked me if I had bought four exercise books for writing and have asked for two more. I said that it was so. He wanted to see my writings for censoring. I told him that I shall not give them to him under any condition. These writings were my own thoughts put to paper. I would like to see the rules which state that he could see them. I am of the opinion that there were none. But in case there were indeed such rules, I shall burn my writing rather than allow any ugly and mentally deficient stooges of Nehru look into them. He told me that I had better talk to the Superintendent. I shall take this matter up, I replied, to the Home Department or to the High Court if necessary. Anyway, I have started another book with only cryptic notes, in case my writings have to be destroyed. ********************** While I was writing a series of terrible shrieks came out
That Titillating Object of Capital: Reading the new Airtel advertisement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9BlI9nhqTE Manash Bhattacharjee The new Airtel advertisement, which shows the relationship between a man and a woman where the woman plays the boss in office as and the wife at home, has provoked interest and discussion in the social sphere and the media. Two broad positions have emerged from the discussions. One view looks at the advertisement as a progressive innovation on gender roles, where the man soberly accepts the wife’s dictates as boss in office, while the boss also takes care to cajole her husband with her culinary skills at home. The other, critical but straightforwardly feminist, view is that despite the transformed power equation in office, the gender stereotype is restored by the wife cooking for the husband after work. Both views overlook the complete nexus of titillation the advertisement holds out to the consumer as much as they gloss over a fine reading of the advertisement itself. Reading an ad, like reading a film, involves a detailed and close insight into the political codes of the audio-visual medium. An ad, after all, is propaganda for a product, which in turn is a product of the larger capitalist machine that produces the circulation of such a promotional art. The reading of the ad film will aim to dismantle this (superficially) coherent object of titillation. Placing the Titillating Object: It is important to first re-cover the language of the ad to see through it. The ad begins with a scene in a corporate office, where a woman boss tells her two male team members that includes her husband, a particular work is urgent and needs to be finished within the day. The husband, addressing her by name, tries telling her it isn’t possible. But she insists with a touch of apology, the work simply has to be delivered. This sets up the tensed atmosphere for what follows. As the woman leaves office, she checks with her husband engrossed in the work she has assigned him. There is a resigned look on the husband’s face as the woman enquires about the work at hand. While leaving, she tells him to call her if he needs help. On her way back, the woman calls the man from her car, this time addressing her husband by name, asking him what he would like for dinner. The expression on the woman’s face suggests that the husband has given an indifferent reply. Next, she is shown at home, in casual clothes, raking her mind for the perfect cuisine to prepare for dinner. The husband receives her call at work, asking him to come home, to which the man gently indulges in mock play telling the wife his boss has given him work to finish, and disconnects the phone. But the man immediately receives a video call where the wife shows him the delicacies awaiting him at the dinner table. She teasingly asks him to tell the boss that his wife is calling him back home. The man teases back, prodding her to tell the boss herself. There is a smile of reconciliation on the man’s face and the wife ends the call by once again insisting he return soon and that she is waiting for him. The temptations for the man are in place. The fruits of a good day’s work await him. He has satisfied his boss at the workplace the way a child satisfies his teacher at school, and has suitably earned the right to enjoy his reward. The coquettish boss-cum-wife and the aromatic dinner at home are equally inviting. They are also charged with erotic content. Wife and dinner are both appetising signals sent through the smartphone. The man at work, having served the conditions of corporate urgency well, is now being asked to return home and feast on his fantasies. The fantasies have been laid out before him. The woman has changed her role from boss to wife. This double role play keeps the man on his toes. The work and pleasure principles have been evenly distributed to keep the client’s ego balanced and satisfied. Economy of the Titillating Object: It is an incredibly neat ad, with both the man and the woman playing their roles in tune with the smooth background score. There is a delectable transition from workplace to home space, and the new-age couple fits hand-in-glove into the larger bourgeois dream of a perfectly run nuclear family. Their personal dreams merge with the capitalist dream and both worlds are happy together. Within this rosy scenario, smartphone smartly inserts its presence and completes the picture. Unlike the feminist complaint, the woman is at the top of the power equation, both in office as well as at home. Just because the wife cooks for the husband, the gender stereotype doesn’t fall into place. The gender equation between the woman and the man has to be understood within the new, advertised economy of their relationship. Just as the woman, as the suave and persuasive boss in office, holds control over the man’s productive capabilities, as the inviting wife who calls him for the dinner she has herself prepared, she holds equally supreme control over the man’s libidinal proclivity. The woman, enjoying power in the smart move to reverse gender roles, is the very symbol of capitalism in this newly erected capitalist economy of the ad. She alone owns the power to dictate, control and lure the subject of labour, the man’s labour power. She alone owns the power to dictate, control and lure the subject of desire, the man’s libidinal power. So what if she cooks for the man? Capitalism can cook for you to extract the necessary amount of your labour power, and to lure the excess of your libidinal power. Capitalism can cook for you to suck your blood. If the idea of labour is a norm in the capitalist economy, any form of desire (for food and sex) is the excess, the exception that needs to be tamed, controlled and dissipated within the
‘What! Nothing more?’
Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky [Quite early in life Stepnyak began secretly to sow the sentiments of democracy among the peasants in the Russian countryside. His teaching did not long remain a secret, and in 1874 he was arrested. Stepnyak went to the Balkans and joined the rising against the Turks in Bosnia in 1876, and used that experience to write a manual on guerrilla warfare. He also joined Errico Malatesta in his small rebellion in the Italian province of Benevento in 1877. Returning to Russia in 1878, he joined Zemlya i volya (Land and Liberty). On August 4, 1878, he assassinated General Nikolai Mezentsov, the chief of Gendarme corps, the head of the country’s secret police with a dagger in the streets of St Petersburg. Here is a short excerpt from his book Underground Russia ] ————————————————————– I should like now to say a few words respecting the other section of Russian society, which, owing to my position, I frequented much more; I mean the students, not yet enrolled among the conspirators-for those already in the ranks it would be impossible to say too much. Had I not the evidence of my own eyes, I should have difficulty in believing that in the same city, within so short a distance, such striking contrasts could exist as are presented between the peaceful middle classes and the Russian young men. I will merely relate what I have seen and heard. Civil courage, in which the maturer portion of Russian society is entirely wanting, is only to be found among the young. It is strange, but it is perfectly true. Here is a notorious fact, which for many days was in every mouth In the Academy of Medicine, one of the students, a Viscount,’ as they called him, took it into his head to start a collection for a crown of flowers to be placed upon the coffin of the dead Emperor. This proposal was received in utter silence. The Viscount flung five roubles into his bat, and then went about from one to another. Nobody gave him even a kopeck. ‘But, gentlemen,’ asked the Viscount, what shall we do then!’ ‘Attend Professor Mergeevski’s lecture,’ said a voice among the students. But he would not give in, and continued to go about pestering everybody. At last he succeeded in finding somebody who put two more roubles into his hat. The lecture of Professor Mergeevski being over, the Viscount went about again and urged them to subscribe. But he obtained nothing more. But what shall we do, then, gentlemen?’ he cried in despair. ‘Attend the lecture of Professor-’ I do not recollect the name. This second lecture passed off. Then the Viscount resolved to put his companions in a fix. Throwing the money upon the table, be exclaimed: ‘What shall I do with this money?’ ‘Give it to the prisoners,’ replied a voice among the throng, which everybody present echoed. The Viscount and his companion hurried away in a fury. One of the students then arose, took the money which remained upon the table, and no one doubted that the famous seven roubles were sent to those who were entitled to them. The same day the students of the Academy collected fifty roubles for ‘the prisoners.’ This happened some days after the event of March 13, when the whole population was delirious with terror. In the other higher schools the conduct of the throng was similar, but not identical; for only those who were in Russia at that time can understand what courage was required to act as the students of, the Academy of Medicine acted. What is so striking in the life of the great mass of the Russian students, is the slight account taken a personal interests connected with their profession, their future, etc., and even of the pleasures which are said to grace the morning of life.’ It would seem as though the Russian students cared only for intellectual interests. Their sympathy with the Revolution is immense, universal, almost undivided. They give their last farthing for the Narodnaia Volia and for the Red Cross; that is, for the prisoners and exiles. All take an active part in the Organisation of concerts and balls, in order to obtain, by the sale of tickets, some few roubles to assist the revolution. Many endure hunger and cold in order to give their mite to the ‘cause.’ I leave known whole Communes which lived upon nothing but bread and soup, so as to give all their savings to the Revolution. The Revolution may be said to be the principal and absorbing interest of these young men, and it should be borne in mind that when arrests, trials, executions happen, they lose the privilege of continuing their studies. They meet in little parties in their rooms, and there, around the samovar, whisper, discuss, and communicate to each other their views and their feelings of indignation, of horror, and of admiration, and thus their revolutionary fervour increases, and is strengthened. That is the time to see them; their faces become anxious and serious, exactly like those of elderly men. They grasp with avidity at everything, at every trifle connected with the revolutionary world. The rapidity with which everything now of this kind spreads throughout the entire city is incredible. The telegraph, which the Government has in its bands, cannot vie with the legs of the Nihilists. Somebody is arrested, perhaps. The very next day the melancholy news is disseminated throughout the whole of St. Petersburg. Somebody has arrived; someone else is making disclosures; a third, on the other hand, maintains an exemplary firmness towards the police; all this is known immediately and everywhere. It need scarcely be added that, animated by such feelings, these young men are always ready to render every kind of service to the Revolutionists without giving a thought to the danger they may run. And with what ardour, with what solicitude they act! But I must finish. I have not the slightest pretension to depict the young men of Russia as they are; it would be a task much above my