rhapsody

There's something about Bohemian Rhapsody isn't there? I keep listening to it and its crazy operatic blend of pop, rock, classic, yearning angst, despair and manic energy and I can't get over it. It's timeless. No wonder it was voted the Nation's favourite song or something in Britain.

Absolutely plastered last night at a Diwali show. Bumped into an old RJC person outside and was in shock. Then tried to get a cab whilst drunk at 3am and it was awful. But we braved the biting winds, got home and collapsed and woke up and I vowed never to drink again.

Rhapsody on a Winter Night by T.S. Eliot

TWELVE o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street lamp sputtered,
The street lamp muttered,
The street lamp said, "Regard that woman
Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin."

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,
The street lamp said,
"Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter."
So the hand of a child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child's eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.

The lamp hummed:
"Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smoothes the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and old Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain."
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars."

The lamp said,
"Four o'clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life."

The last twist of the knife.

kennedy peace talks

I'm angry and I'm tired. I'm angry because clearly even thousands of miles away on a whole different planet you can still have fruitless discussions about Sri Lanka with educated intelligentsia and because the nature of conflict, development, human rights are still so misunderstood by those with the best of intentioned. Brings to mind something that a dear friend said recently: It's the white liberals that I hate the most. I can deal with white conservatives, because I know where they're coming from, but when the white liberals talk the talk and turn around and stab you in the back; that betrayal hurts the most.

I guess that's what I feel here. I feel so vilified by everyone. Abroad, outside, amongst Tamil friends and family, I'm always the one pushing for a moderate point of view, pushing always for the inclusion of alternative political voices into defining Tamil aspirations. Here, of all places, the debate is so limited that I end up inevitably foghorning for the LTTE because otherwise Tamil people would have no voice. Elegant variations of idealism are never realistic.

We are having peace talks every Tuesday as I am on a group project with another Sri Lankan and the title of our project is "solve the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka". He has the patience of an elephant and a frustratingly dialectical-materialist view of time, and I have all the urgency and narrow blinkeredness of a hummingbird and we are getting nowhere fast, which has sadly mirrored the history of peace talks in Sri Lanka.

Oh and I thought I would be able to escape it by coming here, but instead, it is more of the same and since I sought it out, I can't complain and yet, I do.

more

More attacks, for the first time at a tourist spot in Galle. The war is being brought down to the South, ostensibly to start a strategy of provoking communal violence in order to increase sympathy-funding, particularly by the diaspora. The NYT has a not-bad leader (compared to the tripe published by most) found here: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/18/opinion/edlanka.php

Separately there is finally, finally, a new Prize (funded by the sponsors of the Booker) for Asian writers writing in the vernacular. A long overdue prize to recognize the rich literary traditions of East Asia and the subcontinent and I look forward to the gems it will throw up (as inevitably prize-winners will get translated into English)

lanka afar

More death and destruction today with another bombing. I knew that the temporary overtures to peace were mainly just to build up/rest and change the power structure. The peace talks have supposedly been happening since March. Geneva was a total failure, surpassed only by the sheer irrelevance of nearly every member on the government team. Fasten your seatbelts, we're in for a long, bumpy ride. It's hard to get a sense from afar, given the total lack of transparent, bipartisan media reporting but the reports from the ground give some sort of sense.

Had a class on Sri Lanka today and leadership. Professor posited that it was the existence of corrupt/rent-seeking politicians in power that destroyed a developing country and only good leadership could turn the boat around. I agree with the latter, but not necessarily with the former, if that makes sense.

libraries

I hardly ever come to the main library, preferring to stay in policy school campus. But I ventured over to Widener today. It is quite extraordinary, a faux-Victorian building complete with Doric columns (on the infamous Doric columns of the age, read the Fountainhead which expresses the proper contempt for the practice of lifting wholesale Doric columns from Roman times and transplanting them to a new America) and has the most comfortable chairs and tables. In fact I would venture to say that it is exactly like in the movies. One niggling question remains; the notorious practice of each graduating student to have had sex in Widener at least once seems difficult to me, given the expansive, wide open structure of the building. It almost makes me nostalgic for the old LSE library, in the dungeons of Chancery Lane where it was rumoured that people entered (especially to the periodical sections) and were never seen again. One friend of mine went inside, fully five or six floors down in a damp section, and promptly burst into tears when at 9pm, she couldn't find her way out.

chichester psalms

A dear friend was singing in the difficult-to-get-into university choir at an old church last night, for a gala night of leonard bernstein (composer, conducter and university alumni). The leaves have started to turn and walking through cambridge is to walk through a crescendo of autumnal colours, red, oranges, deep rust, amidst falling leaves. There is talk of apple-picking next weekend and cherry blossoms in washington in the spring. Perhaps a weekend up in Maine too where the wind comes rolling in off the coasts. The choral piece was the Chichester Psalms by the eclectic Leonard Bernstein. His family were in presence at what I think last night was his sixteenth death anniversary. I had never heard it before and in the cavernous halls of the church, as the draughts whispered through the pews; it was perfect and wintry and everything I had never thought I had already imagined.

diner

The world continues to turn, imperfectly, fitfully. More strange dreams. I dreamt that my dog turned into a human being, but then it left, too.
I was told that I should attend conflict resolution workshops to learn the skill of compromise and negotiation since I clearly don't have any of those skills. The subject? A group project on "How to Solve the Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka". Well yes then. Watched Diner, a strangely satisfying movie about exactly nothing.

The thing I like about this place is the type of conversation I can have. Yesterday it went from indifference curves and compensating variation to the use of market facilities in managing emergency responses to experiential education within a traditional curriculum (and how a student, an ex-teacher got his children to translate hip-hop into normal English) to leadership and the MBTI and Dead Poet's Society to more on Rawls and all in a day.

sch

Slammed again as usual, overloaded. I wake up, eyes reddened, stagger zombie-like to school, during class I do work for other classes and get through the crazy email load, and then stagger onto more classes. The work accumulates, as do the people which is good. the south asian diaspora here is quite hilarious. there is one nepali guy, one bangladeshi, one sri lankan (me), two Indians and about fifty million Pakistanis. Apparently the composition and political bent of business school and policy students reflects the presidential administration in power at any given time.

I did want to blog about something interesting, but I have completely forgotten what it is. Dinner at a friend's house, and it was nice, lovely, perfect to drink wine and talk about Rawls and this is why I had come to graduate school

on history

"We need history, but not the way a spoiled loafer in the garden of knowledge needs it" Nietzsche

"To understand nationalism as an historical reality, it is essential to step outside the history that nationalism gives itself"- Sudipta Kaviraj

mfa

Well the week has finally found down, an interminably long one that had a first major assignment due. Total classes missed: 5 this week as well (and I was trying to be good too!) but a friend was in town, and so ended up inevitably going out and drinking a lot (which was a lot of fun) and trying to regression-analyze growth variables and write about utilitarianism and Bayesian probability. Sometimes being in school is good and sometimes , well, it plain sucks. I'm always exhausted, running hard to stay in the same spot, not researching or doing the things I wanted to do by coming here and in general just being perpetually rushed. But anyway.

Friend and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston which has quite a few good pieces and is not just a token museum in a small city as I imagined it would be. It also happened to be the first Friday of the month, and so Bombay Sapphire was sponsoring a social gathering in the Old Master's wing, and so under Renaissance pictures of bleeding Christs, we drank gin martinis.

another week

So another week draws to a close and a new one begins. It's October 1st today. Did you know that? I don't know what happened to the time. This weekend also marks the first weekend that I am fully set up. It took far longer than it expected. I'm behind by oh, about a thousand pages or so, but somehow, listening to Chet Baker right now, it all seems rather far away. Falling ill really did give me the opportunity to stop for a bit. I'm not sad or anything, but everything seems so impossible at the moment. Just how, everything is going to work out in the future, seems quite impossible and a true state of happiness seems so distant. I wonder how we all get there, sometime.

ill

Lately, I have been discovering that as I consume more alcohol I am starting to do sillier things than I would do normally, last night being a chief example. I'm trying not to cross a line, but these lines are drawn in the sand sometimes anyway. I'm also really ill at the moment and this has got to stop and so i am not going to any parties tonight which will mean that I will be at home on a saturday night and as my room mate said, that does not make me the reject of the K school.

tired...

Had the longest lunch and lobster rolls with a North Carolinan/Australian women just jabbering on about the impossibility of the work load, everything we've overextended ourselves with, men, Sri Lanka and the identity, what in the world are we going to do with ourselves when we grow up, fear of failure, ethics classes and their abysmal structure, Hausmann the Dream, and all other sorts of things. I overslept today and missed yet another class (total so far in two weeks; five- I think I hold the record or something).

Had a fellowship meeting last night where an ex Harvard MBA alum came to talk on the importance of the role of the COO in nonprofit groups and the traditional tensions between the visionary founder and the COO/implementer. It was kind of interesting, but very US-centric as these things are. And then a couple of friends and I decided that it was the night for brandy, so we holed up in Casablanca and drank Glenfiddich, Glenmorangie and some VSOP Armagnac. And then I sauntered home and had a house pow-wow on men and how many physicians it takes per 100,000 people to not make a difference anymore in life expectancy and Denzel Washington, who as y'all know, is so FINE.

I am exhausted.

work

So. I went out for dinner last night and tonight with someone I shouldn't have gone out to dinner with, but oh well, disaster here I come. You and I, are ships that collide in the night. Up till 4am last night writing a paper on bioethics, specifically the ethics regarding stem-cell research and embryonic transactions (covering cloning as well as IVF treatment). Then up till 2am tonight graphing regressions and fitted lines on life expectancy and mortality rates and all that biz. Met an Uzbek who hates Karimov (what's new). And another Singaporean guy who was simply lovely. And now I'm tired and pondering my life. Had an interesting class today on leadership and the delivery of political goods essential to the functioning life of a newly transitioned democratic country (assuming no conflict)- comprising economic opportunity, political opportunity, the arteries of commerce, empowerment of civil society, rule of law, and 3 others, which I can't remember. And then the Defense Minister from India was in town and some questions on the violence in Sri Lanka and India's role in mediation was asked and he said: " We respect the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka and want the LTTE to give up violence and come to the table. We have learned from our bitter experiences in the 80s.". Spent the weekend U-hauling furniture from different parts of Boston off craigslist- finally it is all complete and the house is a home. Had an interview on Friday, which I bombed too, on corporate social responsibility and corporations as development agents; opportunities and development needs. He assumed I was familiar with the literature, well, sadly, I wanted to tell him, I have spent the last 2 years in Sri Lanka or thereabouts and it is not quite on the radar there.

I am very upset that i have not read a book in over 3 weeks.

hmmm

Another day has vanished quickly. Of note was that today someone played a joke and told me that Morgan Freeman was attending the Kennedy School on the MC MPA program. And then I turned around and I saw him!!! Only later on did I realize that it was a joke and in fact it was his unconscious twin and stuff. This guy must really enjoy a lot of glory by association or something.

I have an interview on Friday. It's for a part-time nonprofit consulting job. I haven't had an interview for like a million (read four) years! This is crazy. And someone hounded me today to organize a social enterprise conference which I succumbed to because he was so persistent. SERIOUSLY. I am so behind with work, with novels, with friends, and what the hell am I doing signing up left right and center, and whoring my email address? What I really miss at the moment is just random boring stuff from Sri Lanka. I fantasized in the cold today walking to school, of turning a corner and seeing a coconut stand or a cow or a trishaw driver.

I need to get a grip.

ethics

I had Ethics yesterday. The professor is a crone, who was around dictating the Bible to Johann Gutenberg. The topic was basically the limits of free speech under the American constitution. She's a professor of philosophy by the way.

"So what happens if I say: go fuck yourself? Oh wait, that doesn't mean anything anymore right? What if I say "Go SUCK yourself" Or tell you that you're a motherfuckin' ass-licker? What if I go around sticking my middle finger up at everyone (and she proceeded to do exactly that).

I could only watch, while a line from Bogart kept reverberating in my head.

"You've got class, kid. With a capital K".

God bless America.

classes

It's like barely the second week of full-on classes and I'm already overwhelmed. I've had no time to email any friends properly or call anyone. The emergency calls keep on coming though: a new baby being born, a cousin asking about the death of his father, a sister stuck in Nepal. That's about it on the personal side.

Having never lived with a dishwasher, I keep loading my clothes in the laundry with DISHWASHER detergent. I only found out today that it was not meant to be so. I keep meeting the random-est people ever. I have no time for the friends that I HAVE made. There's endless reading (like 300 pages EVERY day) and the homework tide has started to turn. It's not difficult (yet) but just time-consuming. I am still sleeping on a mattress on the floor (a vast improvement from the actual floor itself) because I haven't had time to fix the bed. Or a bookcase. Two UPS boxes are over the Atlantic somewhere. My room looks like a nuclear bomb went off on it. So what did I do? Instead of addressing any or all of the above problems, I ended up having a random lunch with some guys today, then going shopping and blowing 300 dollars on clothes, then watching 3 episodes of Grey's Anatomy, then chatting with room-mates about boys, then thinking about business school applications, then just stoning for an even longer time. Thusly, 10 hours passes by. and I have to wake up at 7am tomorrow.

I've already started skipping classes and definitely am nowhere yet on the homework pile but the good thing is that I actually don't care about grades here. Anyway, this is a short dispatch from the front. talk soon,

the cod

I'm in Cape Cod at this absolutely swish place, I haven't had such luxury in a VERY long time. It's a scholar's retreat and really started off with a bang. So many people here have done such amazing things, but it seems like this gang is really special and really humble. You can already see a marked difference between the public service crowd and the business school crowd. The business school crowd is sharper, ruthless, and focused. The public service crowd is happy, warm and all over the place.

We had to do two case studies this afternoon, talking about the ethics of leadership. I had to re-read Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail and it was really rather moving. I quote below...

"I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other Southern States. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have eheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governot Barnett dripeed with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of compacency to the bright hills of creative protest?".... Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection".

Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Stilt Fishermen

Stilt Fishermen by me.

Seer fish affixed in a constellation
Mouths agape, hung trembling as
Rubies grew in Indra's net. Eyes of coconut milk
What did they see?

Blood glinted in the blueness of dawn
Uneven jakwood stick as the axis of stars
Splinters smoothed by the
Burnish of sun-blackened skin
Perched eagle-like, still above
While the waters roiled

The eye gazed unseeing
Then a swift jerk, a twist
And milk flooded more eyes
And jewels crashed and bled
Indra surveyed the world
What did he see?

As the vision faded
And the rubies grew
In the silence of a Galle dawn.

"Hinduism and Buddhism give life to the idea of Indra's Net. In the heaven of Indra, a vast net or web of silken strands spans across space infinitely in every direction. Every intersection of gossamer thread hosts a shining luminous pearl or multifaceted jewel. The surface of every jewel completely reflects every other, and the net as a whole. Likewise, each reflected jewel in itself reflects every other, that reflects every other, that reflects every other, without end, as mirrors to infinity." By Wikipedia