back from haiti

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

- from Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys

1 Corinthians 13:11

And so the Bible says,

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

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

llosa

From the Paris review interview with Mario Vargas Llosa,

Q: Why do you write?

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

bethlehem

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

THE SECOND COMING

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

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

And She Is Like That (aval appadithan)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bleak perhaps, but true.

two lives

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

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

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

Maldives Fish

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

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

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

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

The heart of the great enterprise

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

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

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

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

waltz with bashir

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

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

limitation

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

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

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

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

On Love

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

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

Don Juan De Marco

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

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

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

Euripides

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

Goethe

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

Mozart

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

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

Interpretation and Re-interpretation

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

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

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

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

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

mundru mokkangal

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

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

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

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

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

urdu poetry

found through another blog (Akhond of Swat). This is the first time I was introduced to Faiz Ahmed Faiz, an Urdu poet. I wish that more poems like these, from different languages and different experiences, were more easily available translated. The sheer monolithic dominance of English writing sometimes means that English-language writers end up espousing the same worldview, couched as it may be in so many different ways.

Last Night

Last night your lost memory visited my heart
as spring visits the wilderness quietly,
as the breeze echoes the silence of her footfalls
in the desert,
as peace slowly, softly descends on one's sickness

and somewhere else, he writes

I listened,

And you became, like memory,

necessary.

Conrad and Coppola

In the film Apocalypse Now, Martin Sheen and his Vietnam war platoon mates (random assortment, whatever) go up the Mekong river to find Marlon Brando/Colonel Kurtz (movie was based on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad). As they go up the river though; things happen to them; stranger and stranger things; surreal sequences with Playboy bunnies in an abandoned helicopter, corpses and villages flash-preserve, a meal at a French plantation with the logical and insane owner attendant with all culinary etiquette, a crew member that waterskis behind the patrol boat, a massacre of boat people by an American, shellling of a Vietnamese village etc.etc; and the boredom that goes on.

At the end in Heart of Darkness, the narrator (Marlow/Sheen) finally reaches Kurtz (also Kurtz) - brutal, brilliant, charismatic, contradictory, mad. Kurtz reads poetry aloud (Eliot for those of you that care), fucks native women, acts as a paramilitary, and is a deserter of sorts - a Lucifer that prefers to reign in hell, without the corresponding Miltonian incandescence.

The essence of Kurtz is emblematic of the savagery and unreason that lies at the core of human beings; that which allows them to commit evil again and again and again. This heart of darkness, is essentially, in both Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness, incomprehensible. It is never explained nor can it be. It is shown by everything that precedes the final discovery; the journey up the river ("going all the way"- Kurtz who has "gone all the way"), the journey to that beating heart of madness that is in war, whether it is Vietnam, Sri Lanka or the British empire in its colonizing brutality.

The audience's ultimate ability to understand these complex works will rest on the vastness of his or her imagination; the ability to imagine the banality of the horrors of war, the ability to imagine him or herself as capable of being perpetrator and victim. It is something I imagine, can only really be understood by all those who have felt it; and even then; not at all; - it cannot be intellectually understood; what permanent disorder really feels like; how it is to live in a state of permanent disorder and the ways in which all the small things as well as the large things, are fucked up.

high school

Listening to the old tamil songs of the 80s, a surprisingly large number of them featuring Khushboo. Debating between New York, Pondicherry and Sri Lanka; leaving behind people, starting again elsewhere, going home for Christmas to Singapore which will always be the place that I grew up.

Watched 'The Class' today (think that the French name for it sounds much better, Entre les Murs) and it was good enough. It reminds me exactly what teachers have to do every day, how terrible most teachers are, the fact that they are human too and that they exert an extraordinary amount of power over children. It's not quite fair either.

I remember the RGS days with pinafores and all. Watching Kadhal Desam when it came out; sneaking out to Bedok to watch Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (at least twice I think) with a friend; stalking boys and giggling endlessly. I remember a French teacher who made the first year of my life in Singapore bearable. I remember his kindness, wit and sincerity.

I remember shouting at him too in front of a whole class; and him calmly taking it in.

Were those the days?

Harlem Blues

My window looks out onto the Harlem projects. It is a part of New York that one rarely sees captured in film. It does not lend itself to the glowing sepia hues of steel and sepia that New York is often painted in; though it does not reside outside of Manhattan. Harlem is about as large as the rest of Manhattan is.

Imagine that; the overcrowded streets of the Financial district, the wharves and harbours of the Lower East Side, the Meatpacking district, the East and West Villages full of bankrupt boutiques and french bistros at half-price, the tony Upper East and West sides doused in privilege, neurosis and Jewishness, all hustling, jostling, competing to be heard; this is New York, no, this is New York, no this is the real New York. And yet all of them put together is not as big nor as real as Harlem.

Well, this is the only part of New York I can say that I genuinely like; that feels real and not artificial; not some tourist's Sex and the City dream of what New York should be, not one giant jumble of the best restaurants, museums, clothing boutiques, coffeeshops, taxicabs, stilettos and cowl necks, not some overprocessed white existential nightmare of craving and alienation.

There is a gentle community here, still living the lingering aftereffects of poverty, history, race but also an up and coming black middle class that is proud to call Harlem its home, an everchanging tide of doormen, policewomen, laundryworkers, street cleaners that wash in from the Bronx in the mornings and leave late at night, a chain of jerk restaurants, and steak restaurants, and fried chicken joints and alcohol saloons, where the doors to doorman buildings are locked at nights and the candy is stashed away in stores behind bulletproof glass, and where the stench of alcohol always lingers, and where one tries not to make eye contact much when walking down the street. There is the constant Black-Latino tension too, but an uneasy peace too, a stand against the Man, a genuine pride in being the 'other' and from having spent years in the ghetto. Here, old street cleaners yell after young men "pull up your pants, chile", as if they were their own, and mothers fuss over young women not their own, and almost everybody is ready to spend hours discussing Obama, NYPD and where to go to get your hair done, and who is banging who.

And sometimes, when the sun is late to set, and Central Park at the foot of Harlem begins to glow, out come the deck chairs and the barbecue grills, and the children play basketball late into the night, and the mothers and young men huddle around stone tables, a continuous sea of voices rising, punctuated by stops and starts and exclamations, guffawing, and the rap music and the hip hop continues late into the night, and despite the rising unemployment, and the rising drug and alcohol abuse, and the constant stress of never having enough, the moment is enough, until the next day when you do it all again.

Wherever one may go in Manhattan, stale, rich, declining; Harlem remains unique, defiant and strangely authentic, in this New York at the end of its Gatsby years.

Breaking Loose

As children we start off spontaneous, idealistic, hopeful, young, believing in ourselves and thinking that we will live forever. Then we go to school and meet other children, other parents, teachers, principals, - and the introduction into the world as we know it. I had always thought education and true learning was to teach people to rid themselves of prejudice, liberate themselves from dogma, propel them to take leaps of faith, experiments with life, - to push the envelope in every way, to never accept the status quo.

But it makes everyone else feel better when you turn out just like them, make the same choices, the same compromises, - the same inability to risk, lose, become faithless, and stop really loving other people, humanity as a whole excluding your family and those that you care about in your daily life.

Why do we make these compromises, out of fear or love? Why do we diminish ourselves? Why are we so afraid of our full capacities? To think, feel, really look at ourselves without fear or favour?

Why is the human race only one tenth of what it can be, most of the time?

Because sometimes, it takes only an instant to remember what we can be like; from the small things to the large things; the human capacity to dream, to leap, to fall, for 'the heart to break loose on the wind'.

back to bach

It seems I brought the weather back from Chicago; it is bitterly cold, windy and rainy in New York. Spent the day rushing from puddle to puddle, shoes soaked, jeans soaked and starting to freeze (ahh the feeling of stiff, mud-frozen jeans next to skin), hair - well why go into the hair.

Finally back at home, curled up with green tea and chocolate chip cookies (yes, it has been that kind of a day), listening to Bach in the silence. "Bach thinks in music. Music thinks in Bach. God expresses himself through Bach" said Coetzee.

How can pure sound evoke feeling, memory, sadness and hope? And how can certain human beings be so gifted, so as to create sounds, a series of sounds, rising, falling, loudly, softly, stealthily, surprisingly. A quiet crescendo, in Bach, of the same series of repeating notes can turn such a surprising corner and fall dramatically into an abyss - and the sense of falling is so acute and terrifying and wonderful all at the same time. And 'the shock of recognition' when one does not know what comes next, what corner lies ahead, but when it does, one knows that it was ever meant to be so.

Any world that can produce this is wonderful, even as it maybe simultaneously unexpected, terrible and haunting. Because still, as Nietzsche said, "We have art, so we shall not be destroyed by truth".

Cities and Oceans

I should be working; I really should; after posting the list below of all the things I have to do in an effort to get me motivated; guns blazing with barrels on all fronts.

Rather I would sit in this cafe on this cold Chicago day, with the wind blowing outside; wrapped up and warm, eating a lemon poppy seed muffin, with strong coffee coursing through my veins, reading two books in front of me; Invisible Cities and the Broken Palmyrah, oceans apart and yet, does not the Atlantic meet the Pacific, the Pacific the Indian and the Indian the Atlantic again; and when these oceans meet, does not the wind blow differently, and the land rise spectacularly, and the water throb strangely?

Oceans apart and yet, I read Calvino again and dream of other cities and the city that I carry within me, wherever I go, though it breaks my heart again and again.

"it is pointless trying to decide whether Zenobia is to be classified among happy cities or among the unhappy. It makes no sense to divide cities into these two species, but rather into another two: those that through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it."

and earlier

"Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices' accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one".