Avinash Mishra: A Governing Tone of Stoic Regression
HUG ______ जो अकेला है उसे और डर दीजिए जो प्रतिबद्ध है उसे और उदासीनता दीजिए जो भूखा है उसे और नारे दीजिए जो सताया हुआ है उसे और अवसाद दीजिए जो हत्यारा है उसे और समर्थन दीजिए जो छीन सकता है उसे और ताकत दीजिए जो पिछड़ा है उसे और आरक्षण दीजिए To the solitary Give more fear To the committed Give more nonchalance To the hungry Give more slogans To the afflicted Give more ennui To the killer Give more reinforcement To the marauder Give more muscle To the backward Give more reservation Such eloquence is like gold dust shining beneath a silvery eddying river.But a most perilous eloquence.Here is a transitional move in contemporary Hindi poetry. In the times of shrill and settled regimens of social polarization, a serrated, reckless bit of aristocratic dissociation; a proud distancing that has escalating regression inbuilt into its mood and structure. What is the aesthetic problematique here? What relations of forces joust? What concealed morality is violently unearthed by effecting a satirical reversal at the end? The primordial elements in music are balefully unconcerned about human predilections. The forces of willed nature hover around: fear and indifference, pleadings and a cultivation of ennui, creaturely cruelty is soaked in the unleashing of raw power. And then a conceptual chiasmus, an intrusion of the social by naming and satirizing the one that cannot be touched in progressive circles: affirmative action and social reservation. Or is it that this ironical reversal is already thought out before the very structure of the poem is laid bare? Can social satire withstand the weight of a vital aesthetic principle? Is the force and power of a new poetic principle arriving with a terrible regressive potential—a reminder of the banality and treachery done to art in the name of social commitment in Hindi poetry writing since the 1970s, which can only be purged so violently? Who decides the limits of poetic expression? The wise, committed masters keep a leash on what can be said and what must be left untouched. And the lid is blown away by such violent satire. We are stunned by the starkness of the move. There is no metaphysical comfort in acts and conducts but rather a logical progression to the limits of all that is intrinsic and primordial. Movement I—Fear and Aloofness: जो अकेला है उसे और डर दीजिए जो प्रतिबद्ध है उसे और उदासीनता दीजिए The vision is unforgiving and hence it arrives with a possibility of transfiguring art. All pathological discharge—dismay and dread, fear and trepidation—must be thrown to the wind. A heroic egoism is at play here.By acknowledging fear as a primary motivating force man usually rationalizes his life. He takes the first step towards security. Which is another name for society. But primal forms of fear—a hunch that life is not worth living or the fear of eventual obliteration—such stirrings could elicit other emotions.If one does not come to a contractual transaction with fear, there are only two options: either give oneself willfully and masochistically to fear’s demands. Or transcend it by summoning a self conscious subjective force—“Pour on. I will endure” as Lear declared to the invading storm. Yes, testing forms of courage must be inundated with the pelting ways of pitiless fear.That is the only route by which the scale of commitment can turn minimally moral. Moral courage is a commitment that fundamentally smirks at virtue. It takes in fear differently. In the face of capricious heavenly wrath, the initial reflex reaction is bewilderment. Faced with the calamitous forces of nature perhaps, our very creaturely fibers shake to their foundation. We could transfer bewilderment into trembling, like a guilty thing surprised—as Kierkegaard guides us in Fear and Trembling. Abjectness in that case presupposes submission. The obverse is to swim along with the forces. In the face of intimidating evil an ego, a principle stands forth. The willed individual seeks vile and ingratitudinous bouts of fear so that he can summon moral courage. This way lies freedom. Solitude before all else. And solitude is the original commitment. Commitment is not an aim. It is a resolve to shun all that is available. And such are the times that every bit of our existence is being made available—primarily radicalism. Social commitment, as and within available forms of solidarities, is only worth relinquishing. There is no benediction. Commitment is pure phlegm. The rigour of nonchalance is a punishing form of commitment. The power of aloofness is not disinterestedness, but its obverse. Detachment could give you poise but it could also give you an original form of irresponsibility which is vital for cultivating commitment. Indifference and recklessness make one fearless. Fearless to the routine forms of corporatism and other specializations of partiality. “L’art, mes enfants, c’est d’tre absolument soi-meme,” wrote Paul Verlaine. By “absolument soi-meme” he meant the transcendent subjectivity, not the ego. The absolute self in poetry is what creates and responds to rhyme and meter, the sensual and the expressive. Only the poet himself: as a reckless classical aesthetic principle, as a detached vocation, is the only one who is able to shun all tailor made sources of busy involvement.His objective ego is yet not systematized into prejudgment and prescription. This mood, such startling militancy, is transitional in Hindi poetry of our times. Movement II—Slogans and Ennui: जो भूखा है उसे और नारे दीजिए जो सताया हुआ है उसे और अवसाद दीजिए The first inklings of irony. Sloganeering is a travesty of solidarity. It is an egotistic move, a daily routine. The slogan, in its originary intention, is supposed to be a memorable motto. The slogan’s power is in its repetitive force. It could be chant in a clan-ceremony or a war cry of militia. There is a rhetorical nature (the form) and a unified purpose (the social expression) to every slogan. In earlier times they were utilized primarily as passwords to insure proper recognition of individuals at night or in the confusion of battles. Progressive
‘Your Life Is Writing. So, Write.’
Andre Gorz ______________ Here is a short section from the open letter of love and despair written by renowned French philosopher André Gorz to his British-born wife, Doreen. (later published as Letter to D. A Love Story). Among other things, Gorz happens to be the founding father of green politics in France. But few had ever before heard of the self-effacing, beautiful woman Gorz met by chance at a card game in Switzerland some 60 years ago and who became his wife and professional partner – without whom, wrote the anti-capitalist thinker, his lifetime’s work would ‘lose its sense and importance’. But it was her tragic illness that led both of them to their deaths. Their bodies were discovered on 24 September side by side in the bedroom of their 19th-century house in the village of Vosnon, near Troyes. They had committed suicide together two days earlier by lethal injection. On the table beside them were piles of letters they had written explaining their act to officials and friends. There were detailed instructions for their cremation. Their ashes were scattered in the gardens of their home. Gorz concludes his letter with these haunting words: “You’ve just turned 82. You’re still beautiful, graceful and desirable. We’ve lived together now for 58 years and l love you more than ever. Lately. I’ve fallen in love with you all over again and I once more feel a gnawing emptiness inside that can only be filled when your body is pressed against mine. At night I sometimes see the figure of a man, on an empty road in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. I am that man. It’s you the hearse is taking away. I don’t want to be there for your cremation; I don’t want to be given an urn with your ashes in it. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing, ‘Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr’* and I wake up. I check your breathing, my hand brushes over you. Neither of us wants to outlive the other. We’ve often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we’d like’ to spend it together. 21 March – 6 June 2006.” __________________________________________ An earlier section, here: *** After two or three years living in exile like this, life took a turn for the better. I was hired by L’Express. The research material you’d compiled had been a real asset in landing the job. I remember exactly how it happened. L’Express had become a daily designed to support Pierre Mendes France’s electoral campaign of 1955-56. When the paper went back to being a weekly again, the journalists on the daily, of which I was one, were told they’d be sacked unless they could prove themselves in the first issues of the new format. I remember writing a feature on peaceful coexistence, quoting a speech of Eisenhower’s from three years earlier outlining all that brought the American and Soviet peoples together. At the time no one had bylines at L’Express. JJSS, as we called Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, cited mine as a perfect example of the kind of thing he was looking for and ended on this note: ‘Here’s a person who knows the value of solid source material’. We acquired, you and I, a reputation for being inseparable, ‘obsessionally concerned for each other’, Jean Daniel would later write. I managed to finish the Essay in the course of those same weeks and a few days later we found a small rundown apartment in the rue du Bac at an amazingly low price. All we’d hoped for was about to happen. I’ve described elsewhere the reception Sartre gave the staggering mass of pages I foisted on him. I realized then what I’d known from the start: that manuscript was never going to find a publisher, even if Sartre recommended it (‘You over-estimate my power,’ he said). You saw how badly I took it, then the way I blindly refused to come to terms with the problem: I began writing a devastating attack on myself that was to become the start of a new book. I wondered how you could bear the fact that work I’d subordinated everything else to for as long as you’d known me had ended in failure. And here I was, trying to get over it by launching myself head first into a new venture that was going to monopolise me for God knows how long. But you didn’t seem worried or even annoyed. ‘Your life is writing. So, write,’ you said again. As though your vocation was to comfort me in mine. Our life changed. People flocked to our little apartment. You had your regular friends who’d drop in at the end of the day for a whisky. You organised dinners or lunches several times a week. We lived at the centre of the universe. For us, the distinction between contacts, information-gatherers and friends became blurred. Branko, a Yugoslav diplomat, was all those things at once. He started out as the head of the Yugoslav Information Centre in the avenue de l’Opera and ended up as first secretary at the embassy. Thanks to Branko, we met certain French and foreign intellectuals who were dominant figures in the postwar period. You had your own circle, your own life, even while you were completely involved in mine. At our first New Year’s Eve with ‘Castor’, Sartre and the Temps modernes ‘family’, Sartre set about seducing you with earnest intensity and the jubilation shone on his face when you responded with the breezy irreverence you reserved for the great of this world. I don’t know whether it was on that occasion or later that one of Sartre’s friends put me seriously on my guard: ‘My dear G., watch out. Your wife’s more beautiful than ever. If I decide to go after her, I’ll be ir-re-sis-tible.’ It was in the rue du Bac that you really came into your own. You traded that sweet little English voice
Luminous, A Fleck O’ Caress
Dipanwita Sarkar _________________ One yellow, tri-cornered fruit. and contaminated all evenings. your garland-chandan on my palm, cherished melodies, eddies dragging like ma’s breasts…over the close-fisted yamuna, through paradise-thickets, pray, who had let them in! to their coition i stand more luminous, a fleck o’ caress. Two i be a point. clasp i a point. throbbing firefly i clutch that pious godly-feet on my breast and my tongue exposed, laugh out hoary. mattress and swimming glide in unison by the oars of dimming light. dawning night now side-sleep, now turn over tummy-hunched. come let us commence afresh at midnight. Three whirlwind, whirlwind, whirlwind, on the trail frenzied finger like lance piercings .does vagina mean birth then? knowing this import, this cataclysm my wench life rambles. and she becomes ma, my birth as ma. such a lotus-hatch floods in a tri-embrace Four on plaits mine i have fettered him, you know? by the neighboring shadows of the bamboo-grove have i enchained him. like the din of my dense forest leaves, he glows in drums and chimes. adorned as kuhu-moni I shall send him off to a wedge of swans. the colour of water, through his dip-dip-dip ululates the day. incarnadine in the hues of phag-sindoor, the harikirtan sways and sways .the sharp nails and tooth his rai-besh unfurl. his… Five now, with rai-kamala’s body let me a trestle build. weave a merry-coronal of sondol-buds. on her distracted chins his play, and in her riotous-bacchanalian ripples try your luck in plucking foliage verdant, what else! reap with care and in the late-night drip-pond melds she her odorous-thighs. atop an aqueous-pungent kalmi-tip stands probed a birthing-portal. drifting drifting drifting in some long-ago washed-away time, to a dream of snakes-encoupled i awaken *** উজ্জ্বল এক স্পর্শবিন্দু এক হলুদ তিনকোনা ফল | আর এঁটো সমস্ত বিকেল, তোমাদের মালাচন্দন আমার হাতের তালুতে, রাখা গান, ছলাৎ-ছলাৎ মায়ের বুকের মত…হাতে রাখা যমুনা এবং নিধুবনের দরজা খুলে ঢুকতে দিয়েছে কারা | আমি ওদের সংগমের কাছে আরও উজ্জ্বল এক স্পর্শবিন্দু দুই বিন্দু হই | বিন্দু ধরি | জোনাকি দপদপ আমি শ্রীচরণকমলখানি বুকে নিই ও জিভ বার করে হাসি | বিছানা ও সাঁতার একযোগে বইতে থাকে টিমটিমে বাতির দাঁড় | ভোর হওয়া রাত তুমি এবার কাট হও, উপুড় হও, এসো আবার মাঝরাত থেকে শুরু করি | তিন ঘূর্ণি ঘূর্ণি ঘূর্ণি পথে এলোমেলোভাবে আঙুল বর্শার মত বিঁধেছে | যোনি মানে জন্ম তবে ? এই অর্থ ও অনর্থ বুঝে আমার মাগিজন্ম কাটে | আর সে হয় মা… মা জন্ম আমার | এমন পদ্ম মুখ ভেসে যায়ে ত্রিবেনী-সংগমে | চার বিনুনিতে তাকে বেঁধেছি জানো ? বাঁশঝাড়ের ছায়ার পাশে তাকে বেঁধেছি | সে আমার ঘন বন পাতার শব্দের মত খোলে ও মাদলে রূপ খোলে | কুহুমনি বেশে তাকে পাঠাব রাজহংসীর দলে | জলের রং তার স্নানে স্নানে উলু হয় দিন | রাঙা ফাগের শাঁখ সিঁদুরের পালায় হরিকীর্তন দোলে আর দোলে | নখে ও দাঁতের ধরে আমি চিনে ফেলি রাইবেশ | তার… পাঁচ এবে রাই-কমলার দেহ নিয়ে একটা সাঁকো গড়ি | গড়ি সে সোদল ফুলের মালা | আনমনা চিবুক তার খেলা তার মদিল মদিল ঢেউ নিয়ে তুমি শাঁকপাতা তল আর কি | বসে বসে বাছো আর সে শেষ রাত্রির টুপটাপ জলে মেশাক উরুগন্ধ, আঠালো ঝাঁঝালো কলমিডগার ওপর গেঁথে গেছে এক জন্মদ্বার | ভেসে গেছে কোন অবেলায় যেতে যেতে যেতে আমি জোড় লাগা সাপের স্বপ্নে জেগে উঠি ____________________________ adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Chora Bato: None of the Pathways in Darjeeling is Straight
Parimal Bhattacharya _____________________ In Tenesse Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, the heroine takes rides on a streetcar line named Desire to come to the city center. In New Orleans, there really was a line by that name. If a tramway in a US city could be named Desire, then the taxi route to the hill town of Darjeeling could very well be named Longing. To understand this, one must go to Chowkbazaar on a dim, foggy afternoon. There one would see the battered Mahindra and Land Rover service jeeps waiting in front of the police outpost, below Golghar restaurant, and would hear the impatient cries of drivers and their assistants – Silgarhi-Silgarhi-Silgarhi Kharsang-Kharsang-Kharsang Last Turn! Last Turn! Last turn. After this, darkness would fall, no vehicle would ply on hill roads. Darjeeling would be completely cut off at night from the rest of the world. During my years of exile there, every time I heard the anxious calls of these men, I felt a sudden tug at my heart. Their litanies were blended with the muezzin’s call for evening prayer that rose from Butcherbustee below and filled me with a deep longing. One of my colleagues had an 8-year old son who suffered from asthmatic fits. These came unannounced, and he had to be immediately shifted to lower altitude as there was no other remedy. The jeep drivers’ calls would cast a shadow on the nervous father’s face. Another colleague, who had an odd sense of humour, would respond by singing aloud a Tagore song – Orey ay, amay niye jabi ke re bela sesher sesh kheyay Orey ay, diner seshe… ‘Oh come! Who’ll carry me in the last ferry at the day’s end…’ – the lyric says something like this, and then: ‘For whom the daylight has died but the lamp of the night has not been lit, it is he who is sitting at the pier.’ The light of the day would really die for us with the ardent cries of last-turn drivers, the lamp of the night would not be lit, we would plod on to go and sit at the pier…I mean, at one of the many pubs in town. I have heard anxious footsteps of village folk who had come to town on various work, and were hurrying to catch the last-turn service jeeps. With nightfall, not only would Darjeeling be cut off from the plains, but the settlements scattered all over the hills, too, would shrink into tiny islands in a dark ocean, the mountains would return to the priemeval times. The darkness would slowly curdle over the jeep stand, the calls would become mystical and indistinct: Kalempoong-Kalempoong-Kalempoong! Lebong-Lebong-Lebong! Kharsang-Kharsang-Kharsang! Last turn! Last turn! A keen ear could pick out in these slurred utterances roots of original Lepcha place names that the jeep drivers unknowingly evoked. Thus, Kurseong became Kharsang, Lebong Alebong, and Darjeeling became Dorhzeling. In Lepcha language, each of these words has a meaning: Kharsang means the land of white orchids (alternately, the star at dawn), Ale-bong is a tongue-shaped spur, and Kalempoong is ‘the ridge where we play’. In fact, many peaks, rivers, gorges and plateaus in these hills still bear Lepcha names whose sounds have been twisted in other tongues. Thus, Peshok comes from pazok, which means forest; Mirik from mir-yok, ‘a place burnt by fire’; Phalut from Fak-lut, or ‘the denuded peak’; and Senchal comes from shin-shel-lo, which means cloud-capped hill. These bear testimony to the fact that the Lepchas were the original inhabitants of Darjeeling hills. This is also acknowledged in British official documents. When the king of Sikkim gifted the East India Company the 24 miles long and 6 miles wide Darjeeling hill tract, so that they could build a sanatorium there, it was inhabited by the Lepcha tribe. But that shouldn’t stop us from taking a critical look at the image of pristine wooded mountains sparsely dotted with a few Lepcha dwellings before the British set foot here. The object of seeing, and showing, Darjeeling hills as an almost uninhabited place was two-fold: one economic, the other cultural. For the tenancy of this hill tract, the Company had agreed to pay the king an annual grant of three thousand rupees (the amount was later doubled). Lack of human habitation and, consequently, limited scope for revenue collection would have meant that the gift was rather profitable for the Sikkimese monarch. And then there was the colonial mindset at work behind the notion that Darjeeling was ‘discovered’ by the British. This led to the fabrication of a nostalgic home town on foreign soil, upon exotic Himalayan terrain. # The fabrication progressed through the 19th century on war footing; a military officer was appointed for this. In 1835, after the East India Company obtained Darjeeling hills as a gift, it sent Colonel Lloyd and Dr Chapman, the surgeon of the Governor General, to sojourn there and find out whether its environment and climate were suitable for a sanatorium. They stayed there for eight months, from November 1836 to January the next year, in a wattled hut that they built for themselves. Based on their report, Darjeeling Association was formed in Calcutta with a brief to set up a town in the mountains. The years 1838-39 were a period of intense activity in Darjeeling. Jungles were cleared and plots of flattened land were distributed among members of the association. Also, and what was of crucial importance, the construction of a bridle path to Darjeeling via Punkhabari began. The Darjeeling Family Hotel was set up; a colony came up with about a dozen cottages. St. Andrew’s Church was built in 1843; the Loreto Convent was established four years later. In the lower part of the settlement, not yet a town, dwellings of coolies and menials, most of them from the plains, were coming up now as a large native labour force was sine qua non for the comforts of sahibs and memsahibs. This led to the growth of