back from haiti

"Then I open the door and walk into their world. It is, as I always knew, made of cardboard. I have seen it before somewhere, this cardboard world where everything is coloured brown or dark red or yellow that has no light in it. As I walk along the passages I wish I could see what is behind the cardboard. They tell me that I am in England but I don't believe them. We lost our way to England. When? Where? I don't remember, but we lost it."

- from Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys

1 Corinthians 13:11

And so the Bible says,

"When I was a child, I thought like a child

But when I became a woman, I put away childish things"

llosa

From the Paris review interview with Mario Vargas Llosa,

Q: Why do you write?

Vargas Llosa: I write because I am unhappy. I write because it is a way of fighting unhappiness.

bethlehem

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

And She Is Like That (aval appadithan)

What is feminism? The term, especially in South Asia, conjures up a rabble rousing, unwashed, shrill, masses of women protesting for equal rights, enforcement of existing laws promoting equality, - protesting against religious and sexual norms that subjugate women; - protesting for pro-choice (and the ability to have a safe abortion), equality of inheritance, political representation, recognition in the eyes of the law (the police), security and safety, the right to enter the workforce at par with men (something that is lacking even in the West), the right not to be stigmatized for independent choices...

Then after this, might come a total re-conceptualization. These are after all norms that are defined by men, and by a political/social contract that privileged men and their ideas. So women are left in the position, as someone pointed out, of having to struggle for parity for laws that are inherently conceptualized by somebody else (laws both domestic and international that have all sorts of tendencies built in, not the least of which is the primary role assigned to violence).

When I was younger, my eyes would glaze over at the above litany. After all, I was a product of an affluent, seemingly-female-liberated society. Choice was available to me, in nearly all senses of the word, at face value. And then I grew up and realized the struggles that a generation prior to me had undergone, the battles left to fight, the responsibility to help those weaker than me (something which I have abrogated at the moment, to my own disappointment) - and realized how far I personally had left to go, in this struggle for 'feminism'. I used to dismiss the term, and now I feel that it has begun to define me. Even the smallest instances of hypocrisy, I re-frame now in the lens of feminism. Perhaps it is not useful to do so, probably not all the time. But the tradition and political history of feminism has made me sensitive now to perceived slights, hypocrisies, small violences.

Anyway. We are all a long way off of that. As women, we are yet to recast the world in the image of ourselves and it is enormously difficult to escape the 'lock'; to be truly original; to see the world the way we want to see it, and not in a way that we have been taught to (by men, and by other women).

And to change the perceptions of other women too. In this i am hesitant. Nobody wants to be evangelical; to proselytize; to preach from a pulpit with a bullhorn. Indeed, this method does not allow the message to get through even; all it will do is propagate dogma (which liberals are equally capable of, as anyone else). - Yet it is important to change other women too; to be role models, to live the message in everything we do, at sometimes, the cost of contentment, and happiness.

I saw this movie the other day. I don't think it is a paean to feminism; rather; there are a few scenes I especially like in it (Aval Appadithan). First, it shows the subtle effects of living in a society (where one has superficial choice, to get a job, to live independently, etc.etc., but ultimately one is at the mercy of men who are cruel, who use women for sexual pleasure, who dominate women and repress their capacity to express themselves, - a society where one has to be an extreme, one has to be contrarian in order to live at all; one is pushed to the furthest edges in order to survive (in fact, there is an entirely realistic episode where the heroine is almost overcome by exhaustion, fear, anxiety and apprehension and becomes delirious, only at the end, for the moment to end in sexual ambiguity as she is saved by a man, and she faints. Then comes a very real dialogue between 2 men, as they discuss the plight of women; pulled in one end to be dependent (on a father, on a husband, not only financially, but that the state of the family is emotionally, physically and psychologically structured as such) - and pulled in the other end by this urge to be free, to be INdependent, but what does that look like? Can one really live with a man and be independent? (A question to which there is no textbook answer). - and the man goes; this is the state of woman. It is true, and yet, what a terrible tension, a contradiction at the heart of women, to live with everyday. One way lies extreme isolation and despair, on the other end, lies subjugation. And then the final scene, where she asks another woman; (the woman who marries the man she has finally found, who she thinks she can live with, resolve this contradiction within herself, be herself AND be happy- and in the end, he abandons her because he cannot live with her cruelty to herself and the jaggedness of her dichotomies) - do you know women's liberation? And the other woman, says no. And she says, and that is why you are happy.

Bleak perhaps, but true.

two lives

In another life, I talked to school principals about libraries, talked to publishers about bilingual publications, talked to contractors about foundations and the ratio of cement to sand in a sand-strapped economy, talked to academics about identity, talked to filmmakers about what is home, talked to soldiers about poverty, talked to Buddhist monks about child psychology.

In this life, my life is punctuated by watching Covert Affairs, about a Jo Malone perfume-wearing covert agent who had a steamy affair in Sri Lanka that she can't get over, directed by Tim Matheson who I used to avidly watch in Sri Lanka when he was in the West Wing, - and think that it's good television, go to work in a glass tomb sealed off from reality, navigate the crowds of midtown in order to consume more, not less, and repeat the cycle endlessly.

I am sure there is cause for deep despair somewhere in here. But I cannot sadly say that have the faith and optimism needed to live the first life well, only the cynicism and weariness to live the second.

Maldives Fish

The Maldives is mystifying. Away from the resorts priced at USD 1000 a night with sharks running wild under glass shower floors, there is a country that is deeply dysfunctional underneath the surface of wealth and affluence. (and wealthy it is; the capital Male has no beggars, no rickshaws - only airconditioned cabs, and no filth, shanty towns, no visible signs of poverty even though tourists rarely come to Male).

And yet, the divorce rate is 80% in this Muslim country that is drifting towards fundamentalism (with a lot of young men leaving to train in Pakistani Lashkar camps); health outcomes are poor due to a lack of freshwater and vegetables, political repression is high with torture victims everywhere, patriarchal domination and sexual abuse (somehow the two seem to be always connected) and a stagnating economy due to the deterioration of the fishing sector and a lack of labour discipline leading to low diversification in the economy.

And as the Country Manager of a large bank here mentioned, there is no alcohol sold here, so life is very difficult and sometimes we have to go to the resorts to get a drink, otherwise we cannot survive. (no prizes for guessing which country he was a national of; hint; it starts with sri).

It would be nice for a SAARC country with the highest development outcomes and indicators, to be on an upward trend of progress. But even here, in this country of 300,000 scattered over 1200 islands, - our manifest destiny makes itself apparent.

The heart of the great enterprise

Like (http://incharacter.org/review/good-writers-bad-men-does-it-matter/) I also had to stop reading Patrick French's biography of Naipaul midway through. Somehow the disheartening ruthlessness and solipsism of Naipaul, (what I think of as the absolute moral failure at the heart of the great enterprise) - was a deterrent.

And yet, we are used after all, to hubris, crisis, moral failing, regret and then death (the Hamletian historical dialectic). One can argue that it is the honesty of these writers, the courage to confront (but not to overcome) the worst in themselves, that lends itself to the shock of recognition on their pages that readers experience.

And yet, is it possible to believe that man is essentially a heroic figure; that his redeeming qualities and actions will in the end, produce a life (i.e. a human condition) in which not only the best in him triumphs, but that the best results for all those around him are also produced?

This is why those who peddle hope and change are so compelling; they offer for a moment, a vision of the future that is different from the past, and even though it never materializes, not in one generation or one thousand generations, yet, we fall for it, over and over again.

waltz with bashir

I watched Waltz with Bashir last night; a truly exceptional film. It sounds cliched, but is nevertheless true: I wish that I could make every policymaker and every general watch this film. It's animated; but it is nothing like any cartoon or graphic movie one has ever watched; the colours, mood and etchings in the picturization are remarkable; as is the story, the music, the narrative and the flights of fantasy. One particularly haunting image remains; that of the dead soldiers in the water, opening their eyes, coming alive, walking out of the water naked, to the shore, putting on their clothes and walking back into the town and into their lives. It is a fantastical interlude, but truly exceptional. And the last haunting truth; I won't spoil it for people who have not watched it, but exceptional. It shows the massacres happening, and more than actual footage, the cartoon feature at this point is astounding.

As for the politics of the film; I am leaving aside the politics for the pundits to argue; whether the Israeli Defense Forces were accurately portrayed, whether it lets the Christian Phalangists off too easy, or the Palestinians; honestly it doesn't matter who the fuck is right, when all these people have died.

limitation

"Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of god."

At the beginning of the year this year, as the clock tipped into a new decade, I thought about the 300,000 or so refugees that were still languishing in camps in Sri Lanka. What did they do wrong? Why were their lives like that and my life so different? Would things ever change for them? Or would they always live in an unchanging matrix of repression, poverty and pain? Even amidst that squalor, was it still possible to find joy in life? Through children, parents, lovers and friends? And what of the thousand other injuries and indignities that become normalized in those camps?

I think that until one loses someone, to death, like that; a parent, a sibling, a child, a lover, a friend; one would never really know what loss is. And to confront that kind of permanent loss; especially if taken before their time; taken against their will, - is incomprehensible. The human mind is so limited in its scope, so fragile in its build; that to accept this kind of loss; to accommodate it, is to experience a fundamentally changed vision of the world; it will never be the same again.

So, instead of the almost trivial daily mundanities that fill up our lives; I wish that we, that I, could concentrate on what truly matters; and shed the faded skin of what actually makes up daily life.

On Love

I had meant to post this up on Valentine's day, but believe it or not, I was in a city which people think defines love (and really no city defines love more or less than any other city, let alone Paris), where it rained, and hailed, and the wind blew, and we were hungry, cold and shivering - but none of us could ever complain for we were all contented, happy and sated.

“There are four questions of value in life... What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.”

Don Juan De Marco

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” Mother Teresa

"Him that I love, I wish to be free -- even from me."

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"He is not a lover who does not love forever."

Euripides

"To be loved for what one is, is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him, their own selves, their version of him."

Goethe

"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius."

Mozart

"You learn to like someone when you find out what makes them laugh, but you can never truly love someone until you find out what makes them cry." ~Author Unknown

"Like everybody who is not in love, he thought one chose the person to be loved after endless deliberations and on the basis of particular qualities or advantages." ~Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past: Cities of the Plain, 1922

Interpretation and Re-interpretation

Not to sound like a sociology/anthropology dissertation, but it is interesting how in one generation; just one generation we can go from one end of the spectrum to the other as Sri Lankan Tamils. 50 years ago, these were our cultural markers: educated and erudite, wealthy, respectable, extremely close-knit and communal, strongly allied to place, a strong sense of genealogy and ancestry, cultured in the arts, principled and disciplined, quiet, hard-working, conformist, risk-averse, homogeneous above all.

And today? Well today we can look at the list below to see what has happened. We are dislocated and displaced, traumatized, afraid, betrayed and betraying, isolated, selfish, politically expedient, purposely ignorant, our political leaders self-assassinated, psychologically dysfunctional and above all, paralyzed. In fact, as someone said, Sri Lankan Tamils don't miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

• Tamil refugees and asylum seekers - trauma, on welfare, un-assimilated, poverty, dislocation, family dysfunction
• Tamil diaspora in the West - Youth are in gangs, disenfranchised, violent or espousing violence
• Wealthy Tamil diaspora in the West - despair, sense of failure (in comparison to all of the others, nothing)
• Tamil refugees in camps in India: in an open prison, disease, near-starvation, poverty,security issues and family dysfunction
• Tamil Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) in camps in Sri Lanka: disease, starvation, major security issues, extreme poverty
• Child Soldier Rehabilitation: Issues regarding re-integration into society, lack of education, psychological dysfunction
• Former LTTE combatants : see above
• Tamils living in Northeastern Sri Lanka: a sense of living in occupied territory, poverty, lack of leadership, politically fragmented, with no leverage whatsoever.

(Apologies for the glibness of the above - it is meant to be stylized)

As Arundhati Roy said in "The God of Small Things", things can change in a day. And an entire civilization can be gone with the wind.

mundru mokkangal

The greatest thing you will ever learn, is to love, and to be loved.

What is life, but love in all its thousand manifestations?

Having watched 3 idiots twice (which is well on its way to becoming the biggest blockbuster in all of Indian film history - kind of like Y Tu Mama Tambien for Mexico, which I also watched in the same time period - an interesting juxtaposition on youth) - I can only say that it was tremendously heartening to see what one barely dared to believe; that it was okay, nay, it was NECESSARY to live life on one's own terms - to follow what was right for only you and for no one else, to not bow to meaningless conventions, while still finding a place within this society, with the courage to remain misunderstood, and the ability to form one's own happiness.

This attitude is never gotten easily; as one character says, it took me 2 broken legs to stand on my own two feet. This attitude was hard to get. You keep your job, and I'll keep my attitude.

I wish that it was; that it was easier to obtain and maintain this attitude in the face of overwhelming pressures; that the voice of originality, curiosity, wonder and joy prevalent in early childhood, was easily adhered to during adolescence and early adulthood. It is not easy to bend life towards one's own terms. But I am increasingly convinced that no other life is possible or desirable; in fact, that any other life, would be a poor imitation, a mockery of the gift of life itself. It may have taken me one harrowing year to realize even the faintest intimations of this attitude, but I certainly hope it stays; for the world seems so wonderful when one has it, and so bleak, without it.