rajnikant

"Your needs are going to feed her needs until all there's left is a Wilson-shaped chalk outline on the floor"

I have been waiting to use that line on someone since I heard it a week ago and I busted it out today! Yay!

A discussion on Rajnikant yesterday got me thinking. Why was I, self-labelled thinking woman, professing (what was undoubtedly my father's projected) love for Rajnikant in front of a group of very attractive woman. Sometimes I feel like the unloved Southern cousin of dusky skin, and outgrown teeth and frizzy hair next to Northern women with olive skin, dark obsidian hair and a certain je ne sais quoi to them. And then just to make sure the balance is firmly tilted in my favour, I profess adoration for a certain gentleman who has most emphatically lost all his hair (and now has hair implants that lie in a hairsprayed comma over his forehead so he can dramatically flip it back- this gesture btw was during his heydays where every young man in bell bottoms grew out a comma of hair to do the same, including this author's father), is darker than night, was a bus-conductor (one step away from women's tampon dispenser) and is skinnier than a twig, subsisting on a diet entirely composed of alcohol and pattu (cow dung ash).

But! Appearances can be deceptive. For while the rest of the world may have hangups about his appearance, he certainly does not. In fact there's a whole Tamil song devoted to the way he walks (thangamahan from Baasha). There is a whole sub-industry devoted to replicating his khaki autorickshaw driver-policeman-bus conductor shirts. There's his smile, full of bad teeth, that somehow inspires wellbeing. There's above all, his confidence, his energy, his Lutheran stance of : Here I stand, I can do no other in his movies. Truth, justice and the American way! Here's to Rajnikant and many more really bad movies.

barf

Harvard-Wide Graduate Student Speed-Dating Event This event is open to the first 120 graduate students who register and make a payment. Registration opens on Sunday, Feb. 17th at 9 pm. Participants will have the opportunity to speed-date 20 individuals of the opposite sex and the opportunity to mingle with many more. This will be the first of similar events that the HGC would like to host for individuals seeking to meet other graduate students at our University. When: Friday, Feb. 22nd from 6 pm to 8 pm Where: NEWS Restaurant (South Station on Red Line); 150 Kneeland St Boston, MA 02111 RSVP: www.harvardspeeddating.comCost: 10 dollars via paypal Feel free to contact any of the four of us with any questions and/or suggestions. You may also subscribe to our listserv at http://calists.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/hgc_events

Study Questions

Printed at the back of Elimination Dance, a small book of a single poem by (who else) M. Ondaatje, which contains among other things, graphics of regions in Canada where Brian Mulroney has been burned in effigy or pissed on from a great height during a motorcade, are the following study questions. (In both English and French, as per Canada)

Study Questions
1. Does the author's fuck-you tone contribute to the theme of the poem as a whole?
2. Compare Elimination Dance with "The Rape of the Lock'-with special emphasis on the use of zeugma
3. Is the author's use of simple language a conscious attempt to mask his social agenda OR is he an unconscious victim of his own prejudices?
4. Diana Whitehouse-where are you? I knew you when I was 14 years old. I heard our name mentioned over the loudspeaker at Heathrow Airport in 1989. Please contact me c/o Brick Books, Box 38, Station B, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 4V3
5. Does the figure of the mountie in the poem function as a textual censor-sensor?
6. Is the central theme of choice an illustration of rational elitism or animistic determination?


Questionnaire d’étude

1. Est-ce que le ton ‘va-te-faire-foutre’ de l’auteur contribue au thème de ce poème?
2. Ecrivez une dissertation qui compare La Danse eliminatoire à la Boucle de Cheveux dérobée – soulignant l’usage du zeugme.
3. Croyez-vous que l’auteur se rend compte que son langage simple déguise ses perspectives socials où est-il une victim inconsciente de ses propres préjugés?
4. Diane Whitehouse- ou êtes-vous? Je vous connaissais quand j’avais 14 ans. J’ai entendu votre nom sur les haut-parleurs de l’aérogare Heathrow en 1989. Prière de me contacter a/s Brick Books, CP 38, Succursale B, London, Ontario, N6A 4V3, Canada
5. Le Personnage de la Gendarmerie royale dans le texte, agit-il en tant que censeur ou en tant que phénomène sensorial?
6. Croyez-vous que le thème du choix, sujet central du texte, fasse prevue d’un élitisme rationnel ou d’un déterminisme animiste?

Poothathamby's Treason

“The Governor in Jaffna had two Mudaliyars by the name of Don Manuel Anthirasy and Don Lewis Poothathamby. An untoward incident in their families has been the subject of a drama. Anthirasy being taken by the beauty of Poothathamby’s wife sent word to her to pay him a private visit. In reply the lady sent a broomstick and a pair of old slippers which made Anthirasy very indignant. He waited for an Opportunity to revenge this insult. He as Co-Mudaliyar, asked Poothathamby to sign a blank paper which he did in a weak moment. Then Anthirasy wrote out a letter on this blank paper offering help to the Portuguese. Anthirasy was in high favour with the Governor and brought about a trial by night (which was against the rule) and hail Poothathamby was sentenced to death. Before any appeal could be made against the hasty sentence to the authorities in Colombo, poor Poothathamby was put to death. The Governor and Anthirasy however were at length summoned to Colombo. Anthirasy who went by land was killed by an elephant and the Governor who went by sea threw himself overboard”.

Notes on Jaffna, American Ceylon Mission Press, Tellipalai, Ceylon 1923

to jp, with love

As students of policy, we are taught to design optimal policy based on robust statistical analysis, infused with some ideals of basic human rights, equality, perhaps even democracy and social justice now and then. But we are not taught, and few of us seek, to understand the visceral impact of such policies, whether it is of foreign intervention, denial of access to housing, food, water and sanitation, the tolerance of torture and so on and so forth. We are also limited by the affluence of our surroundings, and the paucity of our own imagination, to fully experience the radical life-altering effects, or the difference between life and death, that the policies we may influence come to have. As the feminist agenda voiced nearly half a century ago, and what we have forgotten, is that the personal is the political.

Ultimately this is what the postcolonial novel, with characters engaged in conflicting internal dialogues that are writ large at the level of the nation, does. It gives a voice to those whose voices are long gone. It takes a bottom up view, and not a top-down policy view, and addresses the very real question of morality, the idea that dare not speak its name in the hallowed corridors of policy. In the end it concludes that a true resolution of what is right and wrong cannot arise out of dogmas about imperialism, religion or ethno cultural hegemony, but must arise out of an unflinching examination of the human condition and the dictates of its time. When a novel has survived this interrogation, when its reflection of its historical moment has rung true throughout the ages, then it becomes a classic, worthy of our time and study, to understand more of the great expanding mysteries of the human condition. Without this primordial knowledge, the study of policy becomes a mere exercise in academic futility.

ash wednesday

Today was Ash Wednesday, and was interesting to see those who chose to brand themselves. (Tradition demands, and as usual it is always interesting to see how tradition is followed in former colonies more than in former empires, that Catholics attend mass in the morning, at which ash is marked onto their foreheads, which should remain for a day. So more than a few people, for a secular policy school, walked around with blackened foreheads today.)

The other anecdote which I truly find eccentric, and it is not many that qualify to that aspirational label, in my books is of a corporate finance professor at MIT, whose class a good friend attends. Said professor, by name of Asquith (whose famous theory shows that stocks that are heavily shorted tend to underperform in the long run), conducts lessons from a bed. Due to back problems, the Professor cannot stand or sit for more than 5 minutes at a time, and for the past ten years, has a bed wheeled into the auditorium, from which he lectures, prone, with his head propped up on one hand, and a dutiful assistant scurries about on the blackboard behind him. To intellect, academia, and the ability to do what you want!

Heart of Darkness

Watching the returns come in yesterday was strangely disappointing. I would have had a lot more to say about politics and presidential elections way back in the day, but right now, I think that plus ca change, plus c'est le meme. Roared through Heart of Darkness yesterday and through Chinua Achebe's critical essay on same, labelled: Images of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. There is a lot that could be said about this novel (indeed what hasn't?) and I am not going to add my tuppenceworth right now. But in class this morning, with a wonderful, energetic (sometimes self-congratulatory) postcolonial theorist, I discovered this: that at the Berlin Conference in 1885, when the Congo was divided up between France, Portugal and Belgium, hosted by Bismarck, the major part of Congo, was given to King Leopold, and not to the state of Belgium. It became his own private playground, outside of any supranational power, any civil administration and any constitution. It was raped, pillaged and was a centre of slave trading. Hence the great novel, Heart of Darkness.

I apologize in advance to the readers for the next few weeks will likely be talking about certain books and literature, for this is one chance in a lifetime, for me to recover what another lost youth could have looked like.

bowel movements

Descended into the depths of an ionic/doric column encased faux roman building, otherwise known as Widener Library, to discover an old interview in a now-defunct tattered African journal, with Michael Ondaatje. One hour later, I emerged victorious and slightly dazed, for the quality of the interview, the unguarded responses, was well worth the hour spent in the bowels of Harvard Yard.

I know that (all four) readers of this blog are vividly acquainted with my obsession with Ondaatje, but perhaps not all are acquainted as well with his oeuvres, and so here is a standalone passage, from Anil's Ghost, which might hint to others, of greater works behind.

He was staying at his aunt's house in Boralesgamuwa, and she and her friends were playing bridge on the long porch that surrounded the house. He came towards them carrying a lit candle, shielding the flame. He placed it on a side table a yard or so to the right of them. No one noticed this. He drifted back into the house. A few minutes later Gamini crawled on his belly with his air rifle through the grass, stalking his way from the bottom of the garden towards the house. He was wearing a small camouflage hat of leaves to disguise his presence even further. He could almost hear the four women bidding, having halfhearted conversations.

He estimated they were twenty yards away. He loaded the air rifle and positioned himself like a sniper, elbows down, legs at angles to give him balance and firmness, and fired. Nothing was hit. He reloaded and settled in to aim again. This time he hit the side table. One of the women looked up, cocking her head, but she could see nothing around her. What he wished to do was shoot out the flame of the candle with the pellet, but the next shot flew low, only a few inches above the red porch floor, and hit an ankle. At that instant, simultaneous with the gasp from Mrs. Coomaraswamy, his aunt looked up and saw him with the air rifle hugged against his cheek and shoulder, aiming right at them.

chronoschism

written about Anil's Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje,

This novel is characterized by those abrupt breaks in time, that Ursula Heisse calls , "chronoschisms", ruptures that postmodern novelists, unlike their modernist predecessors, refuse to assimilate to the "unifying time of the individual mind". That is, the politics of Sri Lanka, seem to reflect back postmodern notions of the collapse of grand narratives, the fragility and impermanence of identity, the failure of history to provide us with a coherent account of our origins, and the moral ambiguities of action and character in a world where cause and effect are endlessly complex. That nothing lasts, that granite monuments crumble, seems to drive him to value the briefest fragments of time, to respect the moment of absolute love or generosity, the flash of intuition, the graceful walk of a young woman who will not survive another day. The artist's ability to identify fragments of beauty and nobility, even in times of terror, matches the scientist's ability to identify "permanent truths, the same for Troy as for Colombo," in the mineral traces of a soil sample.

Margaret Scanlan

Whimper anew

The end of the week, to paraphrase Eliot, tapered off, not with a whimper, but with a bang, trekking out to Longwood to meet a f(r)iend from high school, (as C says, what assed-out high school did you go to anyway?! why are your high-school friends everywhere except Singapore!?) in the rain, sleet and snow and just about lost the will to live but managed to see a part of Boston that was urban and inner city, and with its own energy, optimism and problems. Missed the debate on Thursday night, but had a fascinating discussion about housing, mixed-income housing, and mixed-land use, because the problems in rebuilding is that public housing is merely a physical structure which is no doubt essential, but does not by itself solve the problems of education, health, poverty and racial inequality. Instead public housing must be thought of as a site, where other services should also be brought in by government to congregate, and must be cross-incentivized to do sol. Unfortunately it rarely does.

Then watched Juno at 3pm with friends because it was Friday and there was nothing else to do. (I also bumped into Robin Williams the night before at Red House, a charming restaurant with a crackling fireplace where copious amounts of wine was imbibed- he was battered, newly out of rehab, all hairy, but with an irrepressible twinkle in his bright eyes). I finished my case which took 9 hours of bleary-eyed work, far more than ever anticipated. And more importantly; WHO'S YOUR DADDY?!! Because I secured the redoubtable Terence Blanchard, a Grammy Award winning jazz musician to come and play at the conference, from his new Grammy-nominated trumpet album: Tales Of God's Will; A Requiem to Katrina. (http://www.terenceblanchard.com/).

Then Friday night was spent at a 5 hour dinner with M and C, getting drunker and drunker, sillier and sillier, talking about a certain very attractive lieutenant-colonel in the airforce (who does not vote, which sends C into tizzies everytime, sketches apples and trees, separately and is from a family of union members), classes, and our quadrangle of love. And we are getting ever closer to the end, at the end of the first week of class, and talk of graduation and the summer and families meeting families are in the air. In that spirit, here is a poem I have posted before...

God Abandons Antony,

When suddenly, at the midnight hour
an invisible troupe is heard passing
with exquisite music, with shouts
your fortune that fails you now, your works
that have failed, the plans of your life
that have all turned out to be illusions, do not
mourn in vain

As if long prepared, as if courageous,
bid her farewell, the Alexandria that is leaving
Above all, do not be fooled, do not tell
yourself,
it was a dream, that your ears deceived you;
do not stoop to such vain hopes.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
as it becomes you who have been worthy of
such a city,
approach the window with firm step,
and with emotion, but not
with the entreaties and complaints of the
coward,
as a last enjoyment listen to the sounds,
the exquisite instruments of the mystical
troupe,
and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are
losing.

Constantine. P. Cavafy, 1911