An Application For Credit For PostColonial Literature

The course is a rigorous examination of political and social identity as seen through the prism of personal experience, and taught by the leading postcolonial theorist in the world. We examine the works of Frantz Fanon for example, a Algerian revolutionary who wrote the discourse on Algerian independence and use him to understand the role of violence in transitioning societies such as India, South Africa and Sri Lanka. We examine the results of Empire, as seen through the works of Conrad and Bronte and analyze how they create a dependent society which, when given freedom, fractures into internecine strife due to an inability to self-govern. We examine black history, through the works of Jean Rhys and Toni Morrison, and analyze what happens post-independence for oppressed communities, and the struggle to rebuild themselves, their society and their identity. These are broad topics and we examine how they interlock, create cleavages and result in how identity is formed, and how personal identity translates into a political consciousness.As to how they are relevant to an MPP degree, I find here at Harvard that many think of policy as a series of economic and theoretic prescriptions. Understanding how individuals and communities are shaped by policy is, I believe, integral to crafting humane and sustainable policies. Coming from Sri Lanka, a country to which I intend to return, and which has been shaped by war and by a colonial experience, I find it essential to take ONE course here at Harvard, which allows me to explore all these themes above and reflect on how they may shape a country.

Cry, beloved country

The City

You said: "I'll go to another city, go to another shore
find another city better than this one
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead

How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them
totally."
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighbourhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things
elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world.

Constantine P. Cavafy, translated by Edmund Keeley & Phillip Sherrard

A Bus Named Desire

What a night! North Carolina called for Barack, and Indiana with only a sliver of a margin of victory for Hillary. It has been the most astonishing of campaigns, and of primaries to date. While at many moments I have been numbed by the sheer drudgery of it all, at many other moments too I have been excited and thrilled by the prospects of change in government, of youth turning out in droves, of contests between a black man and a white woman, and most possibly of all, of hope. I started the campaign a fervent Hillary supporter, but the dial has now swung to Obama, especially after his speech on race. If he could grow up in this country, run in politics, and still give a speech like that- then that's it. And Hillary with her ridiculous proposals on a gas tax holiday, and her attempts at populism amongst working-class white voters is just alienating now. I relished the prospect of a fight for the nomination, but now I join the clamouring for her to step down, for the party to rally around Obama, for the national mood to turn towards the general election. And to many friends who have literally taken the semester off school in all but name, campaigning in rural North Carolina, in Pittsburgh, in New Hampshire, running call shops out of their garages and mobilizing the campaign; a massive congratulations for the ardour, the commitment and the belief in public service.

xobni

So I have just downloaded this app called Xobni, for those of you who are Outlook users and have clunky interfaces, (read the NY Times article on it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/technology/05xobni.html?em&ex=1210305600&en=ec7ba19942188f37&ei=5087%0A)

It tells me that my number 1 ranked most frequently emailed person is my co-chair of the Conference. The total tally? 1739 emails sent over six months over 1244 different conversations.

And you ask me why I needed a Blackberry.

let a thousand flowers bloom

Took the afternoon off with C, and we hiked through Boston, including the never-before-ventured-into Jamaica Plain. C's plan was to go to the arboretum, (a place like a topiary, aviary but focused of course on trees), and set on sprawling acreage in JP, at the heart of beautiful parkland. So in no short order, the following specimens were noted and surreptiously smelt, ; rosehips that were not yet in bloom, wisteria, seven different specimens of lilacs, elms, sassafras (which apparently goes into root beer until they discovered it could give you cancer), some japanese cherry trees, willows, violets, grape hyacinths, and of course tulips which are everywhere in bloom. C, the budding horticulturist, could identify at sight all of the above, whereas I of course, vainly ran to the copper tags and feigned knowledge.

my girl

"We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience"- The English Patient

The reading by Michael Ondaatje under the quiet cavernous New York Public Library and the discussion that followed represented a four year break in the time that I had seen him. There was an astonishing passage, hallucinatory according to one reviewer, of a boy on a horse riding through an eclipse. Though I have only read the book Divisadero once, the reading of it was like opening a wound again, the scar the memory of it.

There are many flaws with Ondaatje's style of writing, which I am not oblivious to; the inability to pitch dialogue, the inadequacy of the political and moral vision, which is found in the best of Naipaul, the perfection of every character; that is to say, a lack of mundane, annoying characteristics (no one is a habitual nose-picker in his novels) which epicizes the characters. All of that is true. But there is an unbearable compassion in his writing, a true recognition of pain, loss and betrayal, a haunting that is there in every story, and is left like the memory of lingering smoke in every reader. For the sheer humanity and understanding in his novels, for his homage to the complexity of how the past links up with the future, and the present, there is no one quite like him. And all of that is leaving aside his much feted language; quiet sentences precede quiet sentences of clarity and beauty, until in the middle of a paragraph, at the end of a sentence, there is a sudden starburst of beauty that verges on pain; because the revelation on the page is so true, so unexpected, and now, having read it, changes life so imperceptibly.

And with all of that, I am plunging into Divisadero again.

the postcolonial wretched

"Each age has its peculiar opacities and its urgent missions. The parts we play in the design and direction of historical transformations are shadowed by the contingency of events and the quality of our characters. Sometimes we break the mold; at others, our will is broken. What enables us to aspire to the fraught and fervent desire for freedom is the belief that human beings are capable of imagining what Fanon once described as a "time [that] must no longer e that of the moment or the next harvest but rather of the rest of the world",
Homi Bhabha, in his introduction to the Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon

H and K

Having just watched Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, I can safely concur with the review of an institution as august as the New York Times in saying that this, pardon the oxymoron, is an intelligent stoner raunch comedy. Kal Penn as an actor has never appealed to me: even in comic roles he seems to be constantly overacting with his timing just that little bit off, and as for well serious acting, the Namesake: enough said. John Cho is the real gem in this comedy, and I much prefer this to the Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle.

I have been putting the P-R-O back into procrastinating and need to really plow through some serious work OR ELSE- all will be doom and gloom. In a way, and I am going to regret this the moment I say it, being at a desk 24/7 does mean that one tends to get things done; especially things that one is interested in.

ice cream

long conversations with father, and things are progressing slowly but surely.

I have discovered a new, favourite ice cream: goodbye strawberry cheesecake (Haagen-Dazs), hello caramelized pear and pecan. Needless to say the corporate drones at Haagen Dazs did not come up with this winner by themselves; it was the result of a nationwide competition on flavours, and its out on limited edition.

Now if someone, why not, can make rose and almond ice-cream, and other floral/nutty combinations, my heart is theirs.

poverty

Wading through fifty United Nations cases on successful business strategies to reach the poor, from cement factories in Indonesia to pharmaceuticals in Africa, and trying very hard to suppress the faint glimmer of hope that again, letting a thousand flowers bloom might be the only way to muddle along in the process to alleviate, and END poverty. What am I going to do when I can no longer do this stuff either?

irises

Bought deep-purple irises and white stargazer lilies, the scent dense and rich and flooding my tiny room. I do so love flowers, but only very certain kinds. No daisies and gerberas, baby's breath or hyacinths or any of those bright and pretty flowers. Lilies (always stargazer, never calla and never any other colour than the funereal white) above all, bright yellow daffodils, deep red-black roses, irises always and endless lavender, and dying tulips which I think are so much more extravagant than tulips in their prime, in their overblown state, pneumatic, like Dolly Parton now and not before.

Spent last night reading from an old compilation of the New Yorker, Slight Rebellion off Madison (Salinger) and Autobiography by Fitzgerald (F. Scott). Written way back in the sixtie, I still think that Salinger is the standard to which all coming-of-age novels aspire. And my favourite of all of his work (notwithstanding the unread Hapworth 16, 1924 to be dug up from the bowels of Widener before I leave), is definitely For Esme with Love and Squalor.

It is time to look unflinchingly into the future and march forward. First, the taxes.

growing

this is how I feel today: like a grumpy polar bear ready to rumble.

The funniest thing i heard in two days was courtesy of a certain editor of an indian daily who asked me in all seriousness, "Am I a dwarf or am I a child"? I am still pondering this question now. Is there anything left to grow into?

homie is my homie

am feeling thoroughly beaten up and nauseous. I can't quite pinpoint why, but the overload of work to do seems rather monstrous, and procrastination the only way to seriously deal with it.
Hopefully the yoga class today won't turn into some crazed trampolining class with projectile missiles and I can be at peace.

Thanks to JP, I now have tickets to see... drumroll please... MICHAEL ONDAATJE AT THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY!!!!! Thank you thank you.

What else? In class with the homie today, and it came quite unbidden to me, that Christabel Lamotte in Possession must be modelled off Dorothy Sayer's letters, in the use of the witch in the turret and the madwoman in the attic and the words that burn the paper they are written on. And both, highbrow literary detective fiction stories, are not grounded in any sort of reality about love and life; instead they are fantasies, cleverly disguised as stiff-upper-lip romances. I can't quite explain it more than that. I fell in love with these books, of Ash and Christabel, of Peter and Harriet. But the real writing lies with the Virgin in the Garden, and in the letters, and they are bitter, thwarted and full of pain.

Never mind. The weekend was full of alcohol-induced reality, and I am still feeling exhausted by it all. I wish I could go somewhere, to a house by the sea, with the wind on the sand, and great grey gloomy skies, and the call of an albatross, with just my books, endless tea, and gazing through hazy windowpanes.

letters to john cournos

I am waiting in the eaves of Houghton Library, Harvard’s rare manuscript collection, to uncover eleven original letters written by Dorothy Sayers to her Russian lover, John Cournos, with whom she had a brief, intense and bitter love affair in the early 20s, just after the first war. I passed through maximum security procedures before I was allowed to enter the hallowed halls where these letters, now about a hundred years old, are housed. There is one lone scholar here, working laboriously away. We are only allowed pencils and paper, and absolutely nothing else. I feel like a scholar, and the brief honor it entails. What it would mean to be cloistered away, working quietly as though in a dream, living between worlds, and between lives, bridging histories.

The papers arrive, carefully folded into sheaves of tissue. Among them are some original photographs. The Library tells us that the records of those who view its collections are kept for a hundred years. I would like to know who else has requested these, taken it out of the quivering tissue, viewed it wonderingly. Written by quill, on plain white lined paper, now faded except for the ink which has lasted, with the dates carefully cut out.

The first letter begins like this.

“Dear John,
I’ve heard you’re married. I hope you are very very happy, with someone you can really love. I went over the rocks. As you know, I was going there rapidly, but I preferred it shouldn’t be with you, but with somebody I didn’t really care twopence for. I couldn’t have stood a catastrophe with you. It was a worse catastrophe than I intended because I went and had a young son (thank god it wasn’t a daughter) and the man’s affection couldn’t stand that strain and he chucked me and went off with someone else!”

And then later

“.. Now why in the world should you want to meet me? Last time we met, you told me with brutal frankness that you had no use for my conversation. Do you think my misfortunes will have added new lustre to my wit? If I saw you, I should probably cry, and I’ve been crying for about three years now and am heartily weary of the exercise.

And then
“I wanted to have children quite normally and ordinarily. I wanted yours, and as you repeatedly refused, I chucked the whole business. I didn’t want the Beast’s, but having got it, I felt perfectly affectionate to the Beast and would have stuck to him faithfully if he hadn’t so to speak, turned around and stamped on me”.
“I’m sorry you found our last conversation dull. It was rather too desperately exciting for me- the last whack that chucked me over the cliff. ….
“ Final problem: Tea or no tea? It’s going to hurt like hell to see you, because Judah, with all thy faults I love thee still.
So you see the lover has to be companionable, only then again, if he was too nice one would fall in love with him and that would be vile. One can’t be ecstatic about something which involves telling lies to one’s charwoman.
“It’s odd that I get on so much better with you when you aren’t there. I suppose what I had for you was one of those sorts of object hero worships and that was why all the backstairs part of the business was so completely unthinkable.”

A Postscript
“I reopen this on returning from the film of “peter Pan’ to submit to you a very serious difficulty. Supposing one is ever able to give Anthony a home or a parent or two- will it become necessary to his peace of mind to see “Peter Pan”? Will he feel a pariah if he is the only child who has never seen “Peter Pan”? Because I absolutely refuse to take him. I am quite unable to sit through a Barrie play without grinding my teeth. There is a kind of leering unwholesomeness about the Barrie mentality which makes me heave. Has any child ever been heard of that does not like Peter Pan? But- is a child who does not like “Peter Pan” a monster? I should not like to be mother to a monster. Please give me your opinion on this agitating question. “

“You broke you own image in my heart you see. You stood to me for beauty and truth, and you demanded ugliness and barrenness and it seemed now that even in doing so, you were just being. You told me over and over again “I cannot marry anyone”, “I will not be responsible for anybody’s life”, and “I will not be responsible for bringing any lives into the world”, “I do not love you”. My dear, you stripped love down to the barest and most brutal physical contact- it is nothing- any man would do for that. I said to myself: “There is nothing I can give him beyond what the finest harlot in the street could provide. Our life would be one dirty shift after the other, with nothing in it but an agony of emptiness for both of us”.
“To be just, I never meant him to be more than what he wanted to be- an episode. If it had not been for the accident of Anthony, I couldn’t have blamed him for leaving me. He is not a good man, but he never deceived me. I understood from you that you, also, only wanted to be an episode and I didn’t want you to be that. I am sorry if I mistook the things you said, they didn’t seem capable of any other interpretation but as I have been so bitterly punished by God already, need you really dance on the body?”

“It frightens me to be so unhappy. I thought it would get better, but I think every day is worse than the last, and I’m always afraid that they’ll chuck me out of the office because I’m working so badly. And I haven’t even the last resort of doing away with myself because what would poor Anthony do then, poor thing?”

“But then, I still had some hope and some faith and desire for better things. But I swear that if you had offered me love, or even asked for love, you should have had everything. Not easily, because I did not want to commit so bitter a sin, but you never asked me to love you, never said a word to me of anything but bodily desire. ..If you remember, I offered to marry you by English law only, so that you could be free in your own country. “

“I am so terrified of emotion now, and it makes me feel so ill and work so badly that a quite business like beginning would be easiest for me.”

“Well, well, the prizes all go to the women who “play their cards well” but if they can only be won in that way, I would rather lose the game. “

reading

It was widely noted, upon the passing of Arthur C. Clarke that he was a renowned science fiction writer. The Times wrote adulatory articles amongst others, but not a single mention of the pedophilia was to be found in any respectable journal. I have many problems with Clarke as a man, but I also believe, unfortunately, that a distinction should be made between one's private life and one's public life.

Have been submerged in reading, watching, writing, and breathing in the silence. It has expanded my heart right now, like nothing else could. I live in many worlds now, in Old pre-war Britain, amongst the cobblestones of Merton and Magdalen, watching two lovers embrace,
Placetne magistra?
Placet.

And then into Trinidadian Port of Spain, watching a young boy married on the proof of a letter, at 13 to a young girl who lives with a large family, and his quest for his own identity, making signs, that say Trespassers Forbidden and watching his clumsy grabs at significance, watching what Naipaul has said, that in postcolonial societies, empire has denied humans the chance to make a real life, a significant life.

And then most favourite of all, into the early seventies, into northern California, into ranch country and seeing three people who grew up together split up after a single act of violence, watching one boy going into the gambling dens of the time, another fleeing into France to piece together another's life, and always the silence between the words.

All done listening to Tamil music from the 80s, sung by the irrepressible S.P. Balasubramaniam.

If I could preserve this moment, and more, this feeling, I really do believe that this is all I need. And that this may be all that I come to have, at least, that which is in my control.

We'll have the life we knew we would.

Spring!

The housemates are gone, the friend who came to stay is gone, and I spent the last three hours on hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor the old fashioned way after decades of band-aid swiffer use. Then the bathroom, every surface bleached and sanitized, the bathtub scrubbed with heavy-duty cleaner. Every dish in the overflowing sink washed, chucked into the dishwasher and put away; kitchen tops and stoves cleaned after two months of neglect. Then the living room, hoovering every last stray crumb, sweeping stubborn dust swirls from corners and arranging cushions. Corridors, swept, mopped and Pledge-ed. Then my room, the worst for the last. Two loads of laundry. Every book taken off the floor, recovered from under the bed, recovered from cracks between bed and wall, and bed and window, (27 in total), arranged in piles of what-to-return (read-horrendously overdue), what to (ambitiously) read, what I MUST read RIGHT NOW. After I could see the floor again, it was swept, mopped and sanitized. In a burst of overdrive, I even sanitized my chair (leave antibacterial disinfectant on leather for 3 minutes and then wipe off) and my computer screen with special cleaner. Threw away three months worth of paper and met my desk surface again. Took out the trash. Superglue-ed (which I had the foresight to buy at CVS today) a piece of my shoe that was falling off). Put the flowers in new water. Watered the long-suffering Edith (my cactus). And put my aroma therapy burner to work.

And now I am at my desk, a little bewildered at this springcleaning fit, which came and shook me like a rag, and has left me now spent, with of course, the task du jour, my dissertation to hand in a draft before the final, before the morning. Procrastination, your name is woman. To think that just last week, at precisely this time, I was at the picture above, at the Cape of Good Hope.

confusion

Epistemology and Ontology are the most basic levels at which theories can be compared, and I still, at this ripe old age, have no idea what it means. (I get teleology, ontology, and semantics all confused in my head). So I decided to write it down.

a) Epistemology: the branch of philosophy that investigates the possibility, origins, nature and extent of human knowledge.

b) Ontology: a branch of metaphysics that deals with what is being?

c) Teleology: The study of final causes, particularly in relation to design or purpose in nature

kim

When I am here, at the heart of this great college, listening to this lecture from a Parsi intellectual, about Kipling’s Kim, and he highlights a passage, that begins, “And the great fields of the Punjab rolled by”; it should smack of colonialism, written by a defender of Empire, a postulate of the white man’s burden, but here, shadowed as we are by snow, and denuded trees, with only the barest hint of Asia, carried by reminiscent travelers that wash up on our shores, it is a remnant of a future that might not yet come to pass. “I am Kim, I am Kim, I am Kim, and what is Kim?”

A Tale Of God's Will (Requiem for Katrina)

Dear Terence,

I wanted to say thank you again for taking the time out of your busy schedule, coming to Harvard and playing for a bunch of people who don’t know much about jazz, but who know a lot about work in homelessness, education, health, policy and government. We have been receiving emails all day from the proud few who stayed on to listen to your talk, about how that part of the Conference, was enough to make the whole day worthwhile. Did you know we had a team from Japan that flew in to hear you? That was the Japanese guy in the front row who asked you the first question: “How do you make jazz?”.

What you said when you talked to us was true. All you gotta do is to get one person. That’s all you have to do. Well you got more than one person buddy. You got some of the ‘right’ people, if I may say such a thing. There are requests already to know more about the Thelonius Monk Institute, from people who WORK at Harvard Business School and questions about collaboration with the institute, and even questions about Herbie Hancock!! I will pass them on in a more formal fashion, but I just wanted you to know first. (My favourite comment was from someone who said she cried during your performance, and another who said you brought a raw dose of humanity to the conference).

I can only apologize for what must have seemed like something rather unplanned, given that you’re used to high-profile events and, you came to a student run event which was just being held together at the seams. Well, even though it was student-run, it was 40% attended by professionals, and the rest were Harvard students, so at the risk of sounding arrogant, they’re people who’re going to find life a little easier, and will have a strong sense of service especially when they see people like you, playing their heart out, spreading the word about New Orleans, and talking and talking and never giving up, despite how tired or discouraged you may be. So you have made one more small step, in changing the world.

When I first saw you talk with Mitch in New Orleans way back in November, I thought to myself, this is a guy who’s got the Bill Clinton touch! He makes it seem like he’s only speaking to you, but in fact he’s speaking to a whole room. It made you suspect!! It was the first time that I formally heard of you, but then I went back and watched Spike Lee’s stuff, and there you were, at every moment, when the heart needed words that the mind could not express. And then I heard your music and I thought, whatever anyone can fake, there’s no way you can fake that.

I am from Sri Lanka. You may not have heard of it, but in Dec 2006, a tsunami came and washed away 60,000 people. And I was there right afterwards, and I stayed for 2 years, and I saw the things that I saw again this past November in New Orleans, and I was so surprised because I thought, this is the United States! There’s no way that this could happen in the United States? I thought it only happened in countries like mine, where the rich were so rich and everyone else was so poor, and when all their uninsured homes got flooded away, the government let five star hotels buy beachfront properties, instead of giving it to fishermen who’d lived there, right next to the sea, for generations. And no amount of money from abroad was enough to compensate for the failures of the government and the sense of abandonment.


But it happens everywhere. I’m still trying to record it down, to remember it as honestly as it happened. Which brings me to my last point. I have always wanted to be a writer. Whether I will have the courage to pursue the truth of that journey is another story. But listening to your music, which so exactly charted the journey of my heart and soul those two years, I was silent. Because you are a true artist, and I can’t even imagine how difficult it must have been to compose something that you can only see with your eyes closed. I don’t have the words to really say what I want to express, but I found a truth in your music that I rarely find in art. And I can only imagine how exhausting and difficult it must be to relive that every time you perform. So finally, for the dedication and perseverance that you give to your art and your music, I commend you, as someone who dares to hope to follow in your footsteps. What you are able to do with your music, and the commitment to New Orleans that you have which is evident in what you speak, is true example to me, when I get discouraged about my own country, and about my lack of courage to follow my heart.

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

Itinerantly yours,

In the film Ordinary People (set to a single piece of music that plays repeatedly and is its only source of continuity, Pachelbel's Canon), Timothy Hutton says "You can't break the ball. Can't break the floor. Can't break anything in a bowling alley. And that's what I like about bowling alleys. Can't even break the record".

What is this world we live in now? Are those of us who truly cannot stay wedded to anything, who burn with the desire to be relevant, but who have a heightened capacity to enjoy the quotidian, perpetually unfulfilled? Incapable of generating interactions that culminate in stability? Icarus drowning? I don't know. All I know is that this itinerant lifestyle shows that there is a tunnel at the end of every light.

This is what comes of having far too much time on one's hand, watching more House, My So-Called Life and Big Shots all in one day. As CNS says "How can you possibly have such good taste in literature but such masala taste in films?"!

shattered glass

more shattered glass pasta, and I'm really not feeling well at the moment.
Here is an excerpt, shamelessly stolen from another blog, but extraordinarily prescient, for the newest reader of my blog, JP.

back then, knowing myself beloved, exuberant in your presence, I was the flowering tree: daily transforming, girl-child to tree, careless of blossoms, daily unleafed, daily budding, lavish with words, immoderate in joy, a willing daphne, bride of the king's son.

banana bread

To combat the blues of starting school TOMORROW at 9am, and the blues of having to write a paper before then, (why oh why do I procrastinate until the very last minute?!) I instead, decided to bake banana bread after attending a wine and cheese party with great great food, great Clare Valley wine from Australia, great Stiltons and Roqueforts, great asparagus steamed with olive oil, great apricot and almond tart, great blueberries, walnuts and goats cheese. Totally stuffed at around 7pm, instead of dinner, the house decided to bake trader joe's banana bread ($1.99, what's up sister!!!) and now, an hour later, halfway through, I'm blissed out and panicking simultaneously. I wonder if my strategy of taking time off this semester is really going to materialize. Well one can hope, one can dream! Here is a tried and tested banana bread recipe from CNS

ripe bananas
walnuts
dessicated coconut
some flour, eggs, muscovado sugar and olive oil
bake and eat.

glass

Back to beantown after a lovely interlude in Asheville and then New York where it seems more than likely I will end up post graduation, quite clueless though. The train back sped through Connecticut and Rhode Island, places where some memories of youth and a summer still remain. Back in Beantown, I was too tired to do anything but watch nonstop House. Saturday dawned bright and early and I spring cleaned, did loads of laundry, mopped the floors, went over to a new bride's house to carpet the bed with rose petals before her arrival, more grocery shopping at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, Blockbuster, came back, talked on the phone, made molten lava cake (alas, out of a mix), and spaghetti with beef, tomatoes, peppers and an entire red onion coz I'm that kind of gal, and goat's cheese and now its only 6pm and onto the last paper I have to write before back to watching House, Superbad and The Crying Game. Oh yes and I broke the bottle of pasta sauce inside the bag, scooped up the remainder into a bowl, and cooked the beef with it, not realizing there were glass shards in it, which I am now discovering while I eat. A few have escaped.

carolina girl

to a lovely carolina girl, who took me in, showed me her birthplace, welcomed me in her family, opened her heart, and got married to another wonderful (of all things), Australian yesterday at a beautiful intimate ceremony with a female pastor, the crackle of a a real fireplace, and snow on the pines outside. From shopping to her wedding dress, to helping her make the final selection on the ring, and even (!) tying a sari for the night itself for myself, and reading I carry your heart at the ceremony, this is to the pottster!

The Light on The Hill

"We have a great objective - the light on the hill - which we aim to reach by working the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand. If it were not for that, the Labour movement would not be worth fighting for.

If the movement can make someone more comfortable, give to some father or mother a greater feeling of security for their children, a feeling that if a depression comes there will be work, that the government is striving its hardest to do its best, then the Labour movement will be completely justified. "

The above is an excerpt from the 1949 speech by Australian Prime Minister Ben Chifley and is regarded as one the seminal moments in Australian politics. (it IS australian politics after all). An otherwise unremarkable phraseology, but notable because it is going to be quoted in a good friend's wedding ceremony, as a couple's joint identification with the best of the spirit of service.

middle east peace crisis

Its a Saturday morning. Woke up at 4am to write a strategy memo, a journal memo and then head to a breakfast meeting at 7am where I met a wonderful individual who is among many things, a renowned journalist, a law professor, a managing partner at a venture philanthropy firm, a chairman of the board of several nonprofits, a White House Fellow, Supreme Court justice clerk. A fascinating meeting on the negotiations on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the energy crisis of the 70s ensued. Then a full day of negotiations workshops ensued, with us simulating a Middle East oil crisis. We are in the 12th hour of negotiations and it has been incredibly frustrating...

tyger

On reflection 2007 was an okay year, but not a vintage year. I don't know what the prognosis for 2008 is, but it seems a little scary.

So I went and bought a cactus. Despite my best efforts, I am sure it will survive.

And then, there is this from Salman Rushdie: "Writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things – childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves – that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.”

Finally, why does every Economist article about the LTTE quote Blake?

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

1794

back in beantown

Back in boston after a gruelling 30 hour journey. Why is the east coast so far away from Asia?Things of note: of course theheadlines in Frankfurt, Singapore and the US was the Obama win in Iowa, and what looks like a New Hampshire win, after which he'll be unstoppable to the primaries. I've always been hesitant about endorsing Obama, because it seems so unlikely but that is not reason enough. An email I wrote six months ago when I had the chance to meet him for an all-too-brief but incandescent second, says this: This man will be president, I just don't know when.

On another note, my family and I met a budding author with a book to be published in April 2008, called Love Marriage about diaspora Lankan tamils. I will wait for the book to write comments.

Was met at the airport by C who had received Cold Comfort Farm from me for his birthday and was still laughing a week later to the irritation of his spouse. Its always good to have friends. Crashed into bed after such such travel, (excerpt from nytimes.com on skymall: " Also, you will find the SKYMALL CATALOG, from which you may order a product called “Poop Freeze,” described as a spray refrigerant that “chills animal waste to -62°F, creating an outer ‘crust’ that enables you to quickly place in a bag and dispose.” Feel free to spend the remainder of the flight trying to process this information.). It was however mitigated by Singapore Airlines, in homage to racial harmony screened marudhamalai an absolutely abysmal Tamil film saved only by starring arjun. (At moments like this, I am hugely impressed with Singapore politics).

Woke up this morning at 630am, spent a few hours jobless, chatting on the phone. Then went to the supermarket for some MAJOR shopping. A 166 dollars later, I was cooking black bean chicken with sugarsnap peas and green peppers, lemon roasted beans, red onions with walnuts and jasmine rice. Opened a bottle of bordeaux, promptly downed a glass, chomped away watching A Preacher's Wife and now I am heading to bed and its only 2pm. Still have a infrastructure paper to write on British Water, and a memo for class tomorrow, but slowly slowly does it. Oh bed!!

Live Life

On this eve of another end to a semester, I am reminded of what happened exactly a year ago, in one particular class, in its last lecture. All are direct quotes

There are three conceptions of an "economist" self.

a) The Developing Country is my White Man's Burden (i am solving their poverty)

b) I am a Greek/Arthurian hero: A Dragon Slayer (slaying poverty)

c) I am a Nietzchean Hero: Self-Expression (solving poverty is about me)

whatever it is, I cannot be your therapist. But here it is; make your mark. Leave a Legacy. And live life as an epic adventure.

paralysis

A Call to Action for all friends and and even former acquaintances:


I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MY LIFE.

Business School vs. Policy School

A Day In The Life Of

A Business School Student (quotes taken from the business school website)

5:40am: Alarm goes off. I quickly debate whether I should call my trainer, Joe at Shad Gym and tell him I can't make it.

8:39:50am- The doors close, silence falls, and class begins at 8:40am on the dot

10:00am: I go to the gift store (the Coop) to see if they have screen protectors for my new high tech cell phone

11:40am: I feel actual angst over whether to join the sushi or the pasta line. Oh the decisions we MBA students must make!

1:00pm: Yay! Its a two case day, which means naptime. Sleep is precious!

3:00pm: Back in my cosy corner room, I check email- no urgent communication with potential employers. I will try to get through the LCA ase before 4pm when Tony Robbins speaks in Burden.

4:00pm: Like the Swiss Railway system, the Tony Robbins presentation starts on time. Before I know it, he has us hugging, jumping, yelling and cheering. An hour well spent.

7:30pm: I head across campus and reach the Grille at Spangler within three minutes. The food is great! Jenny, one of the friendly chefs, humourously greets me in Chinese and prepares my usual meal.

8:50pm: It has been a full day. I shower and look over my notes for tomorrow.

A Public Policy School Student (taken from anecdotal and personal experience)

5:40am: Go to sleep. Wake up five minutes later after a nightmare about a monstrous p value and thank god I have three more hours of sleep. What's Shad?

8:39:50am: I conduct a cost benefit analysis of waking up and conclude costs outweigh benefits.

10:15am: Slide into seat, five minutes late for class. Wince in pain upon remembering that I didn't do the reading on detainee interrogation in Guantanamo bay today. Open Facebook. Raise hand in class to talk about how a democracy cannot support capital punishment instead.

11:40am: Consider buying lunch, but remember I'm broke. Instead I hover near the table outside Executive Education classroom, trying to pounce on pastries and fruit when no one is looking.

1:00pm: Spend ten extra minutes getting to class because of traffic jam on Littauer Steps. Democratic Caucus students and Republican Caucus students are going at it on Huckabee. Stop by cafeteria anyway due to excess acid from excess coffee. Dry Chicken Wrap or Wet Chicken Salad Wrap? Dry.

3:00pm: Back in my cozy Forum couch, I check email. No communication with potential employers. I will try to get through my first reading of the day before 4pm when some motivational speaker guy talks about stuff across the river. Free coffee there.

4:00pm. Like Amtrak, I show up 20 minutes late to the speaker as my cheap shoes can't handle the ice, only to realize that I would rather shoot myself in the head than work in the private sector.

7:30pm. I read some blogs. Then I start a response paper due at 9pm on human rights in Iraq.

8:50pm: Start reading 200 pages and plot downfall of nemeses before heading to the computer lab to print out work. Thwarted by a group of ping pong enthusiasts in Taubman. End up at 11pm in Tommy Doyle's after the the third cost benefit analysis of the day leads me to join in.

May we

live in interesting times.

I think I can safely say that there have been ups, there have been downs, but there's never been steady and that I have always lived, in interesting times.

More interaction with men who call me ma'am (in an 'un-old' way).

The question was posed today: What would you do if you have 2 million dollars to spend in New Orleans post-Katrina? Would it go to housing, or charter schools, or primary care for the uninsured, or at-risk youth programs, or job regeneration programs, or small business incubation?

My answer: I would spend 2 million dollars, finding out what the people of New Orleans wanted, from top to bottom, across racial lines and across class lines. Not what we think they need, but what their demand is, which is entirely different. Then I would see where those demands are aligned, and then I would be able to map potential coalitions and get a consensus around a plan of recovery, and especially from getting some of that 180 billion dollars assigned to Gulf Coast recovery.

On another note, more talking about fantasy/extremist ideology: The heart has been fed on fantasies, the heart has grown brutal from its fare. Its so dangerous and so compelling to accept some kind of all or nothing in life.

And the last note: I have made a major discovery about myself: I would be rather happy than be accomplished.

hubris

my fatal flaw is I am a sucker for men who can reproduce dialogue like this in email banter/verbal conversation/non-verbal cues.

Jules: And what's Fonzie like? Come on, Yolanda! What's Fonzie like?
Yolanda: Cool?
Jules: What?
Yolanda: He's cool
Jules: Correctamundo! And that's what we're gonna be. We're gonna be cool.

Pulp Fiction

And ma'am. I'm a sucker for any man who calls me "ma'am". As in "Yes, ma'am".

minus 8 degrees celsius

I am officially gloved, booted, mufflered, hatted, pouffy-coated and jobless.

bachelorette

Let me say that, having seen a male stripper now, taking everything off, that it just was not appealing in any way. On a second note, bachelorette parties down South are an entirely different event from the tamer "hen" parties of England and elsewhere. There was nothing remotely "hennish" about this one, replete with bridal veils, tiaras, sashes and sceptres and a whole lotta alcohol, pole dancing and a mechanical bull (don't even ask). And not to mention the private stripper. A whole new educational frontier was busted. I, in true fashion, was hovering near the bathroom, ready to lock myself in should this person even come 1 metre near my vicinity. Oh dear.

On the other note, I am absolutely beat and it is the weariness that sleep just isn't going to solve and one which needs 2-3 weeks in a coma. Thank god that is only ten days away for I really have reached the end of my tether.

NB. Should any of my friends organize a stripper for me in any occasion, I will suffer permanent trauma.

om shanti om

Mayhem. Utter mayhem. Is what happens when four subcontinent born graduate students decide to see a 10pm show of Om Shanti Om in Times Square New York. One of these people should have been safely back in Boston a long time ago instead of hanging out in New York inviting disaster. More mayhem when the only people in the theatre are these self-same four people and hooliganism begins by shouting: TAKE YOUR SHIRT OFF SHAH RUKH!!!! to see his six pack and dancing in the aisles to the songs and the women come onscreen and the boys faint. An utter nonsensical farce which had us falling off our chairs laughing at Quick Gun Murugan and Shah Rukh Khan going "Yenna!!!" at every possible random moment in time. Mayhem exacerbated by going out drinking at the end of the movie from 2am to 6am at a college undergraduate bar where the main song of the night is Sweet Child of Mine (my ex ringtone) and the lingua franca a bizarre mix of Bengali-Tamil-Hindi-English. Nail in the coffin is when Boston-bound subcontinental individual goes from bar to train with no sleep and from train to class where quite promptly her body shuts down. Utter mayhem. And now I have work coming out of every orifice.

enchanted

just came back from watching Enchanted and couldn't help but make an enthusiastic plug for it! It's an absurd confection, which bizarrely reminded me of Bollywood (especially a song and dance routine in Central Park with ensemble choreographed dances and all), and the manichean view of good and evil and love and happily ever after and surprisingly, or not so surprisingly for one who is a Bollywood fan, it worked rather well, with James Marsden, Patrick Dempsey (who does rather well) and Susan Sarandon. It was one of a few movies, where the mainly adult audience clapped, enchanted, at the end.

a day in the life of

The day started off with a negotiations case on the Good Friday Agreements in Northern Ireland between the Ulster unionists, the Taoiseach Prime Minister, Blair and of course the republicans and Sinn Fein. The important thing I learned from that, as I look towards my own country so fractured and bloodied, was that the negotiated agreement/settlement is only the beginning and that negotiations can never produce social justice and that 99% of an agreement in its implementation. At best, it can be a functioning machinery, an explication of a commitment to a Road Map, a la Camp David. Finally, one cannot include every party, but marginalizing the smaller parties radicalizes their responses- in Northern Ireland it led to more bombings, but one that was surprisingly condemned and not condoned by Sinn Fein. I think I finally understand the bare bones of the Irish Peace Process, though I am still unclear as to why Britain wants to be unified with Northern Ireland. It makes me wonder what I am doing with my life when all these battles are yet to be fought and won, in our generation.

Next I talked to C, who has the flu, before he flies out to DC for final round interviews. C is a prime example of one who crossed the aisle, working with both the Carter Institute and IRI and now viewed with suspicion by all myopic Dcites.

Next I changed my flight to come back home early and had a meeting to craft our negotiation exercise on two “stan” countries that have a water conflict and are bombing the hell out of each other.

Then I had a meeting about the conference and our 22 panels and shaping them into tracks of giving, institutions, governance, services and innovation. (I know how innovative). We might bring in jazz musicians from New Orleans to play some compositions about the storm.

Next I had class on valuing a Brazilian state owned power distribution company and how the bankers (as usual) wanted to value it as low as possible (as they were representing international bidders) and the crazy assumptions on the discounted cash flow models they were using. Thank god I am no longer doing that every day of my life.

Next I had a meeting with my thesis advisor. We are writing a group thesis with ACCION, the largest microfinance provider in terms of asset valuation, about formulating a new code of conduct for equity investments in international MFIs. We think we might be able to travel to Paris in January for “research”. AHAHHAHAA.

Next I had office hours and tutored students on foreign exchange and forward contracts. I didn’t realize I actually knew something about this until I realized everyone else knew less than me.

Then I went to trade class, looking at free trade agreements and the cotton case brought by Brazil against the US to the WTO dispute settlement system. Suffice it to say that as usual I did none of the reading and was at sea, so finished reading about Northern Ireland.

Next I met with my co chair on our conference in our weekly meeting. We talked about creating a blog on our site for incubating future enterprises as well as further tired ideas.

After that with my team from MIT, two doctoral students in mechanical engineering and I are involved in a business plan to provide advertising/media access to rural villages for our developmental entrepreneurship class.

Then a brief pitstop at the gym while dwelling on how four days of food at New Orleans can seem like heaven with hell to pay for. Watched a James Bond movie onscreen. Bumped into a whole lot of people and found that one friend was dating another friend. OMG!

Then out for dinner and drinks with the crew who I haven’t seen for a WHOLE week since I’ve been in New Orleans. Besides catching up with the usual gossip, I think we crafted an idea for me to do a reading and research study next semester instead of a class on doing a negotiation analysis of why the Sri Lanka negotiation talks failed (and will fail).

Then back home, thinking that I had a few minutes to throw laundry and whizz around cleaning the room, but instead my room mate had broken up with her boyfriend so 2 hours went into a post-mortem. Suffice it to say that I have become a pro at all of this.

Finally, catching up on email at 1am, researching flights to Asheville, NC for a wedding in january, changing my flight to go back home to Singapore early, calling Singapore and Oz, and waiting to put my laundry into the dryer so I can legitimately fall into a dead faint.

NB. This is just for my records and for posterity, for it to feel like that my day wasn't entirely taken up by pace, but by substance too and that the incessant activity might have actually been productive, and not just a submission to the tyranny of the urgent.

New Orleans

2 years later and still the neighbourhoods of New Orleans are ravaged, prey to the same government paralysis, infrastructure breakdown and inertia that characterized the post-tsunami aftermath. And yet there is an extraordinary resilience and spirit to the people here who lost everything, from the Fats Domino, to Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu who had to get on a boat and rescue people from stranded rooftops when his state system broke down. The great debates of Katrina revolve around racial inequality and extreme poverty, that the storm (as it is referred to around here) flashlighted. (There are t-shirts here with the following headline: FEMA’s Evacuation Warning: Run Bitch, Run).

The rest of the US may have forgotten two years later, exactly how and why the levees broke, and why there is an extraordinary amount of buck-passing aroundabouts here, but the people of New Orleans themselves haven’t forgotten. The jazz is still here, whether at Preservation Hall, or elsewhere and this is of course the home of Buddy Bolden, subject of a novella by Ondaatje called Coming through Slaughter.

We went to a jazz club, owned by the legendary Antoinette Doe (an ex-Ikette with Tina and Ike Turner). Her husband, K-Doe was a one hit wonder way back in the 60s I think, and then turned to drink and died shortly afterwards. She had a life-size wax replica made of K-Doe her husband, clothed him in his trademark red velvet jacket and white crisp cravat, and put him in a wheelchair and takes him everywhere she goes, in a black hearse. They dine together at respectable places and the waiters serve him as though he was real and all of New Orleans knows about it. Can I tell you that this is who I want to be in my old age (and have every likelihood of becoming?!) We also went to Dooky Chase, an old establishment of around 50 years, home to the plotting of the early civil rights movement and the early jazz musicians. Ray Charles was served there!.

I also met John Thompson at a dinner. John spent 18 years on death row, with one capital punishment sentence and 49 years of another life sentence, for two murder counts. After 18 years, DNA found him to be wrongfully convicted on both counts and he was released. He has now founded Resurrection After Exoneration, a transitional home for ex cons and exonerees, to overcome the pull of recidivism and start a new life. A sweet black man, he had spent most of his life to date in jail. 40 days after he got out, he got married to a) over come deprivation!!! (in his own words) and b) lock himself into a life so he wouldn't feel the urge of "institutionalization". He went through seven execution dates, and always got a stay of execution at the last minute. He was led to the chair seven times, and thought he was going to die seven times. How does one come out of that alive? with hope and strength and conviction? How does one overcome the fact that 18 years of one's life are spent in a prison cell? I don't know but John is testament to hope not in institutions, but in human beings. He was convicted at the age of 22, when he was involved in drug dealing and had sold the murder victim coke right before someone killed her. As he said: that judge could have slapped ten life sentences on me and I wasn't going to open my mouth. i was a black man with an all white jury in Louisiana in the 80s. They could have blamed Kennedy's assassination on me. What a travesty of injustice.

Such is New Orleans, this crazy beautiful city of brokenness and abandonment, energy, resilience and spirit. Katrina was a storm that exposed race, poverty, corruption and inequality to America, and the City will never be the same again. As one person put it, this was one of the last strongholds for black power in America and now its gone, to be replaced by Martin Luther King's white power structure.

neruda

Poetry by Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age,
Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense
pure wisdom,
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadows perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

indian clerk

After a particularly drunken rout last night, I could not emerge from my bed, as each memory came back with startling, unwelcome clarity. So, I turned to The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt. The writing was not good, particularly as it was an American voice trying to write in a British voice about a Tamil man, a century ago. Quite a feat of ventriloquism for anyone to pull off and sadly the writer was not up to the task. It has decent passages though, but rather too much descriptive detail of homosexual acts for my taste, jarring as it is interspersed in a story about an aging Cambridge don. But there is a good tone of sadness which is sustained in parts.

I also watched American Gangster a movie that aspires to greatness but does not quite reach it, let down by the lack of urgency in the narrative, the lack of exploration of right and wrong. Finally, Denzel Washington makes drug trafficking look far too attractive, and that edge of menace which was there in Training Day was missing here. And Russell Crowe, actually looked like a sweet cop, as opposed to a thuggish one. It was worth the watch though.

end

The phone began ringing off the hook yesterday as soon as I got up. Condolences, sharing, grief, worry, uncertainty from the relatives all across the world. Another key leader dead. Just one more to add to the thousands. When will it all end?

ideology

I found this on another blog, but it is acutely so.

“It doesn’t do to dwell in fantasy, which is not the same as imagination. Imagination is the power to reshape reality, to find hope where there appears to be only despair. Imagination creates signs that speak of the future and bring it closer. Fantasy is in some ways its opposite. It is a form of despair that flees from reality rather than seeking to reshape it.

‘We had fed the heart on fantasies, the heart’s grown brutal from the fare”.- W.B. Yeats

This is true of all ideology.

I don't want to know you because you may destabilize my world.

change

I feel like hiding under my desk again. Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme. (The more things change, the more they stay the same). Why do we pretend it's any different?

more

Looking over this blog recently, it looks like I have been incredibly self-absorbed, which really is not true! I came to a school of politics and think I have blogged less about politics than any other time in my life. Perhaps because I finally realize that it is true, erase all names! erase all nations! Power is the same everywhere and everywhere has the same problems with it, and every side is the same side. The anarchist is the only principled one.

Other than that, I have been watching Sports Night (when in life-related doubt, watch Sorkin) and it is his first work and it is rawer than his other work but it still shows brilliance, sentiment of the best kind and intelligence and I'll take that these days in whatever form I can get!

But the problems of the world do concern me. It just seems, so overwhelming. We flit here from event to event from The Humanitarian Crisis in Darfur to The Role of Government in Capital Markets to Natalie Portman talking about Increasing Access to Microfinance (not kidding) to Celebrate Hillary's (the Clinton I mean) 60th Birthday to Renaming the Surge in Iraq. I know I sound stupid, but I have lost the ability to translate my horror and outrage at tyranny, war, poverty and disease and all I have at that thought is a bone-deep weariness.

The guy sleeping above me (I live on the first floor of a 3 storey house) snores really loud and I can hear it through my ceiling. He doesn't seem to be getting any more action though. Small mercies.

roses

I bought red red roses on sale, because they were dying. Showy large blooms, petals blackened with age, a dozen of them are sitting in a glass of water and they look wonderful, past their youth, one last hurrah. Am debating seriously a doctorate. Oh God.

w bankers

In a Q and A with the Guardian, Douglas Copeland is asked what makes you depressed, and his answer is Boring people who have money.

Here is my theory about bankers and consultants (and of course all my friends are excused here as am I, having been one of these people and contemplating returning to the profession).

These people have too much money and too little time. They are by definition risk-averse, and also less motivated by social causes. They also have few interests outside of work besides purchasing larger homes and more luxurious holidays. (In fact, all that bankers do besides talk about work is to talk about their holidays in which they sleep besides the pool in some exotic location). Finally, and worst of all, their thinking is limited, box-like because that is how they are trained to think. By rejoining these professions, I would be losing everything that is unique about myself, or that forms a self-identity.

Sigh. If only choices were as simple as the above. Went to a reception last night at the Massachussetts State House (yes, the building of the golden dome for those who have watched the Departed) and it was bland and boring, so I got drunk on the free wine. Thrashed out in a drunken state the night prior, a memo on private operators of public infrastructure, which was rather a decent effort.

Am flirting briefly with the idea of doing a doctorate in English. Please someone, hammer some sense into my head before I become TOTALLY un-employable.

choices

On the whole job nightmare, I was talking with H.
" So I want to work for a nonprofit, preferably Teachers without Borders but I can't afford to pay off my loans on a salary of X, and so my plan is to write a best selling novel by May, get a massive advance and do that. After all, B and D spent their summers writing their novels. D's book is a horror story with a moral overtone, and B's book is autobiographical. How hard can it be? Then I can go to Cuba and teach salsa dancing which is what I really want to do".

Ah. Choices.

teaching

Am bleary eyed after marking 113 finance problem sets. Its 2am and of course I left it until the last possible day before it was due. It was an interesting exercise, but if I ever mention that I ever wanted to go into teaching, somebody please do me (and the world) a favour and shoot me and leave me for dead. I NEVER want to repeat this. Having said that, there were a few bright moments. Bearing in mind that this was entirely a quantitative finance problem set, here were some smart (aleck) comments that students made and handed in! (Aside: its amazing how students get excited by tangency points i.e. every time there is a curve and a tangent to the curve, the tangency point must be the answer to every question!).

I tried but I do not understand at all what this question is talking about. Please go through this in class.

I am confused. Hence the question mark instead of an answer.

and my favourite

If only I can understand the English that is being used, I could at least make sense out of it. It sounds gibberish to me and I am not sure that I can begin to make sense of that sort of English. Thanks for your time.

the divine mr. northam

So after reading Possession and recalling that the image of Ash has become inevitably intertwined with the image of a rather ravishing Jeremy Northam playing the same in the film adaptation (particularly the description in the book of a 'feral male') I embarked upon an English period film watching phase, successively blowing through the Austen adaptations of Sense and Sensibility (rather good with the very British Emma Thompson executing repressed passion rather well) and then Emma with Paltrow (insipid and boring) and the divine Mr. Northam. (I was in a terrible Northam phase years ago after the release of the incredibly romantic sci-fi thriller Cypher and even hunted down the Golden Bowl which was ghastly. But in Emma, he is simply debonair, sweet, English and rather appealing in all the best senses of the word. If there is a classic cry of why is this actor so underused, then it is for him.

time

I shall snatch this day from the gods and damned be the consequences.

possessed

I went on strike yesterday and simply turned the alarm off and refused to go to school, cancelling at the last minute classes and meetings. It was simply imperative. I unpacked my newest sage green sheets, woven thick and warm, and unravelled my bed accordingly and when it was done, it looked like fields of rice. And I scrubbed the bathroom clean, hands and knees, and washed my hair and drowned myself in lotion and then lay on the bed and finished reading Possession, the American edition (of which must has been written about, but its true, Roland now has an "amused smile" that "arouses"- the character was deemed too unsexy for American readers and subsequently revised in the American edition). The rain pounded away, it was a dark night in Massachussetts all around and perfect for reading. Went to a party, came back drunk and continued reading. I baked brownies and the tray was left in the hall to be ravaged by passing hordes of graduate students. It was glorious (I even cleaned my shoes) though now, I am irrevocably behind.

HermitIsland, Maine

We went camping, the whole crew, C, M, B, H, A and I. S couldn't make it, but we wrote in the sand on the water against a sunset, Bite Me S and sent him the photo via my blackberry. Trekked on a trail along cliffsides and saw the sea, the Atlantic, churning against black rock and silica for two hours. Boiled lobsters on our campfire, wincing as we stuck them live and wriggling in the pot. We stood along the pot and gave them an elegy though. Then took the JD out to the sand, a few metres from our tents (I pitched a tent!) and under the moonlight, talked without agenda or burden. Slept in our tents as the Maine winds howled across the dunes. In the morning we rose to the dawn and made campfire bacon and eggs and potatoes, went shell-picking and prising barnacles off the rocks and watching them wince. Read poetry standing on top of the rocks far into the sea. And everything was right with the world. Then we piled into the car and drove back to Boston with the windows down and the song from the JC Penney Sweater Commercial on high and repeat. A brief moment, snatched from the jaws of time.

unrelated things

"And ever has it been, that love knows not its own depth, until the hour of separation", -Khalil Gibran

I was talking to C today, a person who makes the darkest day glow with laughter.
"I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to apply to all these damn corporate jobs because I feel like I should, and I have loans and debt and when I finally I get my offer letter, after having gone through anal probes and coma-inducing case interviews, I'm going to look at it and then look at my wife and she'll say "Is this what you really want to do?" and I'll die a little bit inside and take the job".

youth?

What happened to our youth? What happened to lugging around dog-eared copies of Catcher in The Rye, quoting Shakespeare, spending hours in couches in Starbucks intellectualizing poverty? What happened to the urgent necessity to enter new worlds, be disruptive forces, change an order, to be giants in a field?

losing

I just wanted to say that today (roughly) marks the end of 1 year in the States. I would like to commemorate it by listing the following things I have not lost AT ALL!

a. ATM card. (Average loss of twice a year- to three times a year).
b. Mobile Phone (average loss of also twice a year)
c. Pen (Average loss of about five times a year). I have not lost this pen AT ALL. I only own one pen so it would be a disaster if I lost it.

I have also recently acquired a blackberry. Game over.

The Journey By Mary Oliver

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save

pathetic!

back stateside and OMG as a dear friend would say. The pace has consumed me already. Still haven't unpacked, everything is in a mess, and away this weekend and another dear friend is in town tomorrow for a few days and OMG. Such is the pathetic state of affairs that I am reduced to ordering underwear online. Irretrievably sad.

perhaps all true desire is illicit

back in beantown

Back in Boston and oh so blue! The only thing that redeems it is J coming to town and R potentially getting her act together to come to town too... Otherwise it looks like a long dreary fall ahead weather wise. Class wise, I am determined to learn something, against the odds this semester so am going to focus on infrastructure, trade and the Middle East as well as a Start a Biz in a Developing Country. Its 30 celsius here so at least the weather is holding up. Feeling decidedly antisocial and not going to the usual round of parties celebrating the return of school. Oh, I'm decidedly getting older... SIGH!

enthee-yah.

So. One more day left and what are the things I am going to miss about India and not miss? Here are the moments.

Missing (terribly)
a) I never thought I would say this of all things, but I will miss the heat that sticks to you like silk, that smothers and frees.

b) The autorickshaw wallahs and the conversation about life, the movies and politics (in that order).

c) The television channels full of random masala songs of half naked women and men with brains the size of their pecs all in high-gloss high-blare fashion

d) The people, hospitality, kindness, graciousness, everything that is South Asian and Indian.

e) The food. Searing curries, larger than life organically grown vegetables (a tomato that tastes like a tomato, chicken that's been reared on whatever chickens eat in the wild)

f) Last, but not least, the head wiggle. Enough said.

Things I will safely un-miss until the next time

a) The pollution. Thought Colombo was bad but India takes it to another level.

b) Idlies. I hate the damn things and will not miss them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

c) The redefinition of customer service. You know what I mean.

d) The revolution that the human body is capable of staging in India (i.e. the various things I have fallen ill with in such an impossibly short space of time). It is amazing biologically what can happen when things go wrong with the body. Emotional angst is no comparison to physical pain.

e) the total lack of privacy.