Friday, March 5, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Experience of symbioting with Listening to the Grasshoppers
Listening to the Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy
Arundhati Roy
Penguin,2009
It’s difficult. It’s engrossing. It’s self-revealing and it’s stupendously mind-boggling to read a genre where you just can’t read and put it aside but you are compelled to react with the verbose pages those demand your attention rapt, multi-dimensional and reactive.
It’s been a few months I spent a symbiotic period with this book, but actually I have not come out of this very title till. With the every incident reported in news aligned to the scope of this book be it in India or abroad I immediately could relate them with the jihad of Ms Roy against the very linear power-centric liberalization along with marginalization of the sects of population in various ways, even sometimes with helplessness.
Arundhati Roy is synonymous with various impressions across the globe. Her literary achievement like a comet and then her self-chosen separation from fiction and her journey towards right-based politics, human-rights, eco-rights has evolved so many different impressions about her is exemplified by her nicely in an essay of her “I met a group of polished, nurtured ladies of Delhi society in a party a few days back. One of them told me that she was going through my account about the tribal issues and she said she actually felt bad, and then she asked me to join them with a drink. Poor tinsel girl!”
This is the problem of reading Roy that the readers are suffering for near a decade. Her every account rises from the level of soil and then deepens the forest of thoughts like the villages and fields get submerged when the dam whirls up, like the heavy army-boot-march takes away the peaceful-dreams in a sleepy town.
Continuing her consensus against the wealth-reapers, the genociders, the fundamentalists (be it market or communal) Roy appeals her readers along her very own literary excellence. Her arguments at times look cliché, her repeated strings sound monotonous but none can be ignored. Looking at the things from a distance we can see how we are getting disconnected from the fellow country-men and this divide is made may be for rule-sake, power-sake, governing-sake…and more faceted. The chapters of this anthology addresses the problems surging in Kashmir, the issue of Maoists, the communal issue of Gujrat, the issue of Nandigram, the issue of killing of Armenians in Turkey in 1915, the issue of Iraq and Afghanistan after the war operations by US and the issue of ‘democracy’ in India with emphasize on ‘strange-case’ of Afzal Guru in the parliament attack case and Mumbai terror attack. The argument of Roy about helplessness of the millions who are in the shadow (more precisely dark) of the very development are pushed to armed-liberation and its conflict with state looks much linear at times, which is contrary to her style of describing the issues. Still you may like her, you may dislike but you cannot exclude her.
In a way Roy is the member of a very niche society, where the thinkers, creative minds engage to come up as a social-consensus; like Sartre or Chomsky. And here it’s worthy to mention that in each of these cases, they participate while keeping their ‘signature’ intact, mention not Roy is very much in this league.
At the end I cannot resist myself quoting from the essay with the same title as the book:
“…Araxie Barsamian, mother of my friend David Barsamian, telling the story of what happened to her and her family. She was ten years old in 1915. She remembered the swarms of grasshoppers that arrived in her village, Dubne, which was north of the historic city Dikranagert, now Diyarbakir. The village elders were alarmed, she said, because they knew in their bones that the grasshoppers were a bad omen. They were right; the end came in a few months, when the wheat in the fields was ready for harvesting.
"When we left...(we were) 25 in the family," Araxie Barsamian says. "They took all the men folks. They asked my father, 'Where is your ammunition?' He says, 'I sold it.' So they say, 'Go get it.' So he went to the Kurd town to get it, they beat him and took all his clothes. When he came back there—this my mother tells me story—when he came back there, naked body, he went in the jail, they cut his arms...so he die in jail.
And they took all the mens in the field, they tied their hands, and they shooted, killed every one of them."”
The ones who can listen to that swarm of the grass-hoppers; this book is a must read for you. And who can’t, this can be a start for you.
Arundhati Roy
Penguin,2009
It’s difficult. It’s engrossing. It’s self-revealing and it’s stupendously mind-boggling to read a genre where you just can’t read and put it aside but you are compelled to react with the verbose pages those demand your attention rapt, multi-dimensional and reactive.
It’s been a few months I spent a symbiotic period with this book, but actually I have not come out of this very title till. With the every incident reported in news aligned to the scope of this book be it in India or abroad I immediately could relate them with the jihad of Ms Roy against the very linear power-centric liberalization along with marginalization of the sects of population in various ways, even sometimes with helplessness.
Arundhati Roy is synonymous with various impressions across the globe. Her literary achievement like a comet and then her self-chosen separation from fiction and her journey towards right-based politics, human-rights, eco-rights has evolved so many different impressions about her is exemplified by her nicely in an essay of her “I met a group of polished, nurtured ladies of Delhi society in a party a few days back. One of them told me that she was going through my account about the tribal issues and she said she actually felt bad, and then she asked me to join them with a drink. Poor tinsel girl!”
This is the problem of reading Roy that the readers are suffering for near a decade. Her every account rises from the level of soil and then deepens the forest of thoughts like the villages and fields get submerged when the dam whirls up, like the heavy army-boot-march takes away the peaceful-dreams in a sleepy town.
Continuing her consensus against the wealth-reapers, the genociders, the fundamentalists (be it market or communal) Roy appeals her readers along her very own literary excellence. Her arguments at times look cliché, her repeated strings sound monotonous but none can be ignored. Looking at the things from a distance we can see how we are getting disconnected from the fellow country-men and this divide is made may be for rule-sake, power-sake, governing-sake…and more faceted. The chapters of this anthology addresses the problems surging in Kashmir, the issue of Maoists, the communal issue of Gujrat, the issue of Nandigram, the issue of killing of Armenians in Turkey in 1915, the issue of Iraq and Afghanistan after the war operations by US and the issue of ‘democracy’ in India with emphasize on ‘strange-case’ of Afzal Guru in the parliament attack case and Mumbai terror attack. The argument of Roy about helplessness of the millions who are in the shadow (more precisely dark) of the very development are pushed to armed-liberation and its conflict with state looks much linear at times, which is contrary to her style of describing the issues. Still you may like her, you may dislike but you cannot exclude her.
In a way Roy is the member of a very niche society, where the thinkers, creative minds engage to come up as a social-consensus; like Sartre or Chomsky. And here it’s worthy to mention that in each of these cases, they participate while keeping their ‘signature’ intact, mention not Roy is very much in this league.
At the end I cannot resist myself quoting from the essay with the same title as the book:
“…Araxie Barsamian, mother of my friend David Barsamian, telling the story of what happened to her and her family. She was ten years old in 1915. She remembered the swarms of grasshoppers that arrived in her village, Dubne, which was north of the historic city Dikranagert, now Diyarbakir. The village elders were alarmed, she said, because they knew in their bones that the grasshoppers were a bad omen. They were right; the end came in a few months, when the wheat in the fields was ready for harvesting.
"When we left...(we were) 25 in the family," Araxie Barsamian says. "They took all the men folks. They asked my father, 'Where is your ammunition?' He says, 'I sold it.' So they say, 'Go get it.' So he went to the Kurd town to get it, they beat him and took all his clothes. When he came back there—this my mother tells me story—when he came back there, naked body, he went in the jail, they cut his arms...so he die in jail.
And they took all the mens in the field, they tied their hands, and they shooted, killed every one of them."”
The ones who can listen to that swarm of the grass-hoppers; this book is a must read for you. And who can’t, this can be a start for you.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Story of the 'life' called Native
I
Since my school days the stories and the incidents of voyages, travels, moving around the globe by different specieses used to facinate me a lot. It used to make me feel sad even some times that I am not among those handful human beings in this earth who first moved from Asia Minor to different destinations of civilization. Hardly I used to feel bad for them with the thought that they had to leave their homeland not by choice but for the adversity causing by the nature.
In the same way when every year around the winter my city, Kolkata used to host thousands of pinkish, brownish guests in the watertland of the zoo and others; I used to feel so unfortunate for not being able to fly over so many miles as they do from Siberia to this tropical Kolkata, the thought of compassion for these poor birds ever got suppressed with the thrill of the travel these birds do make every year.
So on the school books of history and the other sources taught me how every day every moment the civilization is sprawlling around the knowing and unknowing with the commoners around.
II
During my course of growing up my grandma, my Didu was a source of soroow in sub-concious ever, whom I never could overcome. My didu left her country with her five children alone during a fierce riot over her motherland. Her language her behaviour ressemble all of Bangladesh those are quite different from it's counter part in India where she had to migrate, notably didu never said Bangladesh to refer her motherland but she says Purba Pakistan(East Pakistan). Her invisible presence across territories made a permanent impression on my mind that the travels, the relocations people do'nt make out of choice in a 'natural process' rather by facing an intollerable inconvinient situation is just like getting victimised by a deep crime. The number of incidents I came to know ranging from absolute past to very recent where someone rather anyone, any species was dislocated I could listen to the lamentations deep in their heart that somehow similar to my beloved Didu and her love and longing for her country,do remind me of the lady who had to leave her land forever during a communal riot in 1963 in East Pakistan.
The way I used to curse those Khan Sena (I suppose the military troupe under someone Mr. Khan) who made that riot in Dhaka in 1963; the same way I got angry over Daddy Bush when the image of Oil-spilled seagull in the region of Gulf hit the newspaper front page.
III
Unfortunately human being grows up with their ability of understanding that makes him/her confront lot more incoceivable facts and truths. And in the due course my life in a megacity taught me to overlook lot of things those are not supposed to be of my 'interest'. My interest of 'development'. Development of the self and around who are in the same plain,aka class-interest. The concept of plain is ambiguous and confusing.
In my city there were huge number of people who had to come, work, earn and go back to some unknown stations. I knew that it is the normal procedure of civilization since the concept of city introduced. It barely had any impact on me; for me it was a normal process where they had no choice but to come and go and come in an endless loop till they upgrade to become city dweller.
My recent life to a distant city made me to think about it. Made me think that why people from adjacent states are coming to my new city and working or trying to get a work by living here in a bunker sort of an accomodation. Here I also come across people from my native state and the whole country. My new city used to be a quite hill station decade back who experienced tremendous development with unimaginable demographic change in the course of it's development. The city sky is leased to the high rises and the gardens in obliviation. The city has lost more than fifty lakes in last ten years and going to get five hundred new shopping-malls in next five years.
IV
I do answer my own question in silence to myself. Millions are coming to this city and all others to have a little share of life, a basic indignified life away from family, native and may be from 'life' itself. I get support in the issue of upgradation of 'life' through being a city dweller from the 'Home-Minister' of my sovreign country whose constitution takes the responsibility of safety and ensures prospect of life for its population across the map. In his own words Mr Chidambaram wants more than eighty percent of Indains to live in the cities.
But how? My experience over the years along the newspaper headlines reminds me of Tehry, of Narmada and of inumerable cases of urbanization, dams, industries, mines, ports, roads and all for the sake of people and especially for the sake development. My experience of meeting so many migrants from so many places to this city and my native one talks about a gradual insecurity and scarcity of life-elements in their natives, located in my country.
Unfortunately development is happening with all it's colours. And may be with a policy of 'Strategic Dislocation'.
V
The way used to hate the Khan Sena that forced my loely Didu unsettle her life in her own country, my heart urges to hate 'this' system in a same way.
And deep within my heart as a member of a continuously migrating civilization I do hate them all who are directing my fellow neighbors in this planet to dislocate to different destinations or extincting them for the sake of nation or corporation.
Not only I, actually we all hate you all Mr Chidambaram,Mr Daddy Bush,Mr Son Bush, Mr Khan and so all.
Since my school days the stories and the incidents of voyages, travels, moving around the globe by different specieses used to facinate me a lot. It used to make me feel sad even some times that I am not among those handful human beings in this earth who first moved from Asia Minor to different destinations of civilization. Hardly I used to feel bad for them with the thought that they had to leave their homeland not by choice but for the adversity causing by the nature.
In the same way when every year around the winter my city, Kolkata used to host thousands of pinkish, brownish guests in the watertland of the zoo and others; I used to feel so unfortunate for not being able to fly over so many miles as they do from Siberia to this tropical Kolkata, the thought of compassion for these poor birds ever got suppressed with the thrill of the travel these birds do make every year.
So on the school books of history and the other sources taught me how every day every moment the civilization is sprawlling around the knowing and unknowing with the commoners around.
II
During my course of growing up my grandma, my Didu was a source of soroow in sub-concious ever, whom I never could overcome. My didu left her country with her five children alone during a fierce riot over her motherland. Her language her behaviour ressemble all of Bangladesh those are quite different from it's counter part in India where she had to migrate, notably didu never said Bangladesh to refer her motherland but she says Purba Pakistan(East Pakistan). Her invisible presence across territories made a permanent impression on my mind that the travels, the relocations people do'nt make out of choice in a 'natural process' rather by facing an intollerable inconvinient situation is just like getting victimised by a deep crime. The number of incidents I came to know ranging from absolute past to very recent where someone rather anyone, any species was dislocated I could listen to the lamentations deep in their heart that somehow similar to my beloved Didu and her love and longing for her country,do remind me of the lady who had to leave her land forever during a communal riot in 1963 in East Pakistan.
The way I used to curse those Khan Sena (I suppose the military troupe under someone Mr. Khan) who made that riot in Dhaka in 1963; the same way I got angry over Daddy Bush when the image of Oil-spilled seagull in the region of Gulf hit the newspaper front page.
III
Unfortunately human being grows up with their ability of understanding that makes him/her confront lot more incoceivable facts and truths. And in the due course my life in a megacity taught me to overlook lot of things those are not supposed to be of my 'interest'. My interest of 'development'. Development of the self and around who are in the same plain,aka class-interest. The concept of plain is ambiguous and confusing.
In my city there were huge number of people who had to come, work, earn and go back to some unknown stations. I knew that it is the normal procedure of civilization since the concept of city introduced. It barely had any impact on me; for me it was a normal process where they had no choice but to come and go and come in an endless loop till they upgrade to become city dweller.
My recent life to a distant city made me to think about it. Made me think that why people from adjacent states are coming to my new city and working or trying to get a work by living here in a bunker sort of an accomodation. Here I also come across people from my native state and the whole country. My new city used to be a quite hill station decade back who experienced tremendous development with unimaginable demographic change in the course of it's development. The city sky is leased to the high rises and the gardens in obliviation. The city has lost more than fifty lakes in last ten years and going to get five hundred new shopping-malls in next five years.
IV
I do answer my own question in silence to myself. Millions are coming to this city and all others to have a little share of life, a basic indignified life away from family, native and may be from 'life' itself. I get support in the issue of upgradation of 'life' through being a city dweller from the 'Home-Minister' of my sovreign country whose constitution takes the responsibility of safety and ensures prospect of life for its population across the map. In his own words Mr Chidambaram wants more than eighty percent of Indains to live in the cities.
But how? My experience over the years along the newspaper headlines reminds me of Tehry, of Narmada and of inumerable cases of urbanization, dams, industries, mines, ports, roads and all for the sake of people and especially for the sake development. My experience of meeting so many migrants from so many places to this city and my native one talks about a gradual insecurity and scarcity of life-elements in their natives, located in my country.
Unfortunately development is happening with all it's colours. And may be with a policy of 'Strategic Dislocation'.
V
The way used to hate the Khan Sena that forced my loely Didu unsettle her life in her own country, my heart urges to hate 'this' system in a same way.
And deep within my heart as a member of a continuously migrating civilization I do hate them all who are directing my fellow neighbors in this planet to dislocate to different destinations or extincting them for the sake of nation or corporation.
Not only I, actually we all hate you all Mr Chidambaram,Mr Daddy Bush,Mr Son Bush, Mr Khan and so all.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Travelouge: City of Joy to City of Tech
Technology and joy are nohow competititors rather technology serves in cases to bring joy. It's bringing joy for whom and how is something highly debatable and discomforting, so I prefer to skip all these hurdles rather let's celebrate the evolution of a poor mamma's chap to a self-sufficient white-collared guy.
It's a demand of livelyhood that initiated the sprawling of human race from one place to another. All the civilization and uncounted memorable event took place in history for the simple reason that human race and all the other species are not able to find the needs of their life at a single place. I don't believe leaving the city Kolkata or the state West Bengal is at all a phenomenon to remember but it is significant for everyone as an individual.
The course I enrolled for my graduations that was a "secure" stream which awarded me a job where I can evolve as a better technological labour over some fishy(!) binary codes. But that security was suddenly(not actually) withdrawn because of some people made money from money over a non-existent good(being economical!! bear it) in Uncle Sam's own land. So after a long wait for a year I got the time of 12 days for my shopping and packing, I got first the oppertunity to onboard a flight and with the falling sunlight throught the glittering clouds I left my city and so many more.
The welcome to a new place such as Bangalore was amazing, swift arrival over the runway(Kolkata's one is just like the suburb roads around it!!) and then a gradual entry to a one way city (by means of traffic) which has enormous number of towers and blocks and parks and crosses and definitely at least one IT company at your doorstep.
The people who has a notion that Mr. Infosys Narayanmurthy is just such a great man in the history of Bangalore they should come and visit some of old original Bangalorians who chants the golden period of the city when there was peace and green.Huh!
Actually the city was a small one with a limited capacities and now it is compelled to grow in the hellis(villages)
around to get over burdedned with trillions lines of coders,testers and so on. This city has its most population(lift of 3 millions in last ten years) dedicated for a blind-folded routine that starts at 7-00 in the morning and ends at 8-00 in the evening in weekdays and reverse in the weekends. The people the values and the life everything is so much outsourced here I am still in search of something that is original .But this city is just awesome in it's cosmopolitonity (may be it's a compulsion because the fight of survivility initiates a bond among the competitiors and makes a good oppertunity to the free-market no doubt).
I can't resist myself to mention that the first rented flat where I was living had one guy from Chennai two from Hyderabad Two from UP one from Delhi One from Bihar one from Tripura and do count me. As a matter of fact we kept the name of the flat "India".
Transition is something inevitable and experiencing that with full swing is synonymous of living a life.
There is no point of surviving a life, let's live it as good as possible. And I am doing that with rasam, sambar, fruit juices and obviously beer. Cheers.
It's a demand of livelyhood that initiated the sprawling of human race from one place to another. All the civilization and uncounted memorable event took place in history for the simple reason that human race and all the other species are not able to find the needs of their life at a single place. I don't believe leaving the city Kolkata or the state West Bengal is at all a phenomenon to remember but it is significant for everyone as an individual.
The course I enrolled for my graduations that was a "secure" stream which awarded me a job where I can evolve as a better technological labour over some fishy(!) binary codes. But that security was suddenly(not actually) withdrawn because of some people made money from money over a non-existent good(being economical!! bear it) in Uncle Sam's own land. So after a long wait for a year I got the time of 12 days for my shopping and packing, I got first the oppertunity to onboard a flight and with the falling sunlight throught the glittering clouds I left my city and so many more.
The welcome to a new place such as Bangalore was amazing, swift arrival over the runway(Kolkata's one is just like the suburb roads around it!!) and then a gradual entry to a one way city (by means of traffic) which has enormous number of towers and blocks and parks and crosses and definitely at least one IT company at your doorstep.
The people who has a notion that Mr. Infosys Narayanmurthy is just such a great man in the history of Bangalore they should come and visit some of old original Bangalorians who chants the golden period of the city when there was peace and green.Huh!
Actually the city was a small one with a limited capacities and now it is compelled to grow in the hellis(villages)
around to get over burdedned with trillions lines of coders,testers and so on. This city has its most population(lift of 3 millions in last ten years) dedicated for a blind-folded routine that starts at 7-00 in the morning and ends at 8-00 in the evening in weekdays and reverse in the weekends. The people the values and the life everything is so much outsourced here I am still in search of something that is original .But this city is just awesome in it's cosmopolitonity (may be it's a compulsion because the fight of survivility initiates a bond among the competitiors and makes a good oppertunity to the free-market no doubt).
I can't resist myself to mention that the first rented flat where I was living had one guy from Chennai two from Hyderabad Two from UP one from Delhi One from Bihar one from Tripura and do count me. As a matter of fact we kept the name of the flat "India".
Transition is something inevitable and experiencing that with full swing is synonymous of living a life.
There is no point of surviving a life, let's live it as good as possible. And I am doing that with rasam, sambar, fruit juices and obviously beer. Cheers.
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