On Sartorial Statement

Mahatma Gandhi's statutes are ubiquitous. They stand erect across the nook and cranny of our country. In all these statutes he stands or is seated(with the spinning wheel) with his loincloth that he wore for the last three decades of his life.

As we look at the statues we marvel at the sacrifice of this man who went to England and studied law. we memorialize this loincloth as it stands as a marker of his simplicity,honesty and integrity. Never does it come to our mind that it could be a subtle piece of now rampant exhibitionism.

Ubiquitous are the statues of B.R.Ambedkar-the architect of our constitution.In all these statues he stands erect in his dark blue suit that he wore for the last three decades of his life. He too went abroad and obtained a phd from Columbia University. He was a dalit- an untouchable.He could be in loincloth as well. In his case it is modernity,not tradition or stagnation that held sway. It is a statement of his deep yearning to get out of the plight that his destiny ordained.

But never have we disrespect Ambedkar for his suit. His position is at par with Mahatma in our collective unconscious.

This train of thought was set in motion in my mind when I recently saw( I am reading Ramachandra Guha) a very popular activist of peasant's movement in Assam who has been vocal against big river dams. He is ubiquitous courtesy local visual media and his endevour to uncover corruption in public offices. He is invariably seen in a worn out flip flop and faded trouser and shirt.

On the other hand a sitting MLA who too defends peasants rights ,conjures up cataclysmic vision in case a big dam really comes up, moves on an ultra luxury car.

What will we we make out of these? A piece of rampant exhibitionism under the auspices of local visual media? A sacrifice( in the first case) or a deep yearning to get out of one's plight that destiny has ordained?(The MLA comes from the most undeveloped part of our state)In that case how can he prevent his fellow beings from moving up to modernity with more power,more consumption and so on.

Posterity will judge all leaders on the basis of their honesty and integrity.Not on their sartorial (or vehicular) statement.

Ambedkar and Mahatma's case is a classic example.

I am sorry if my reference to these two giants in the current situation is preposterous.

On mind,God and facebook

A character in Naguib Mahfouz's 'Midaq Alley' speaks a simple truth when he says:'Man's provider is God and it is to God that any excess is due.'

So if this short piece of writing on God-debate,initiated in his own aphoristic style by Dr.Bibhash Choudhury on the pages of Facebook,is an excess material on the subject,is very much (no pun intended)due to him.

Carl Sagan has just delivered his lecture on 'The origin of the universe'.He pulls out his gold-rimmed spectacle , straightens his necktie and looks over the lectern towards the audience expectantly. Because it is question-and-answer session.There is already some commotion at the back of the auditorium.He reaches for the glass of water which was kept gingerly for him on the table by the side of the lectern.

And precisely at that point of time,an elderly lady at the front stands up whose wrinkled face mocks at the 'age-miracle' that she applies every morning(and every night too).Our commonsense tells us, precisely at this moment that 'nature never leaves a face unharmed for over half a century'.She gazes upon Sagan with her beady eyes and asks in a woman-to-man fashion:'Mr. Sagan,do you believe in God'?Sagan gulps down the remaining little water in the glass,straightens his necktie again, gazes on her in a man-to-woman fashion and retorts:'What do you mean by God, madam?'

And now the lady is at a loss.Her expression changes.She looks like a lady bats-man(woman?)whose partner at non-striker end is already half way through the wicket and shouts at her for a run.She clears her throat and speaks in a woman-to-man fashion:'By God , I mean,what do I mean...oh!..eh!'

So it follows that God does not have a clear-cut definition and confronted with a situation like the one the lady was in some moments ago, we will react the same way.It is purely subjective. Einstein went to the extent of saying that'I do not believe in a personal God'.

Since the time immemorial,God has eluded us.For some ,God is merciful,benevolent and so on.There is a tradition of defining God via negatives too. God is love.No he is not that. He is merciful.No he is not that...In Upanisadic tradition it is 'Neti,neti'. God is no-thing.

Some believe that God is the perfect and ultimate being that human mind can conceive. But how can we conceive something that we have never experienced in reality.Oops I am lost in my own verbiage.

There are some who equate God with mind.It is beyond space.And time too.The university in Guwahati occupies a definite location. It is at Jalukbari.But where is Sunday?Likewise where is our mind?Thought?(we are thinking all the time. I am thinking precisely at this moment what shall I eat for my dinner.If only I could see it!)Mere invisibility does not preclude its being.And it is beyond time too.

Now Facebook.Where is it? Does it occupy a definite space?We can access it from any where we wish.Is not it like mind? Or God? We are connected through it whereas we debate its locational position. So somewhere I have found a connection between mind,God and facebook.

In the beginning I wrote 'on the pages of facebook.But facebook does not have pages in literal sense. My language has conditioned me to write that way.

Dr.Choudhury, are you listening?What do you think? Am I giving you the 'heebie- jeebies'? Ha,ha...

You can improve yourself by improving nature. This is a truism and I am sure it is an invitation to thinking.

Of late there has been much activism in regard to nature protection and some of them are politics in disguise.Many of the things that the activists of environment protection movement harp on now , were in fact articulated mainly By Schumacher(Small is beautiful) and Rachel Carson (Silent Spring)in the 70s. Earlier when there was less awareness about environment or nature, it was more or less safe. The degradation of nature and environment seems to go hand in hand with growing awareness.

Among the elite academic circle the theory of 'Ecocritism' is very much in vogue. It looks closely at the human culture-nature interaction in texts.It emphasizes the fact that nature and human are mutually influential and embodies an 'Ecological Consciousness'.

Ecofeminism which is a part of Ecocritism, if I am not mistaken , is based on the premise that the degradation and exploitation of nature and women go hand in hand. A good example may be Raj Kapoor's' Ram Teri Ganga Maili' a commercial blockbuster.Wherein the main character Ganga's(Mandakini-reminds me of Dawood) exploitation and degradation on her journey from the hills are depicted against the backdrop of the man-made pollution of the sacred river The Ganga.

The practitioners of Ecocritism argue that nature is 'naturalized' and 'femininized' with the language and value of a patriarchal world view. There is some truth in that. Notice the language Francis Bacon used in regard to nature.It may be recalled that Bacon was Attorney General of King James I ,and intimately familiar with the prosecution of witches. The metaphors that he used in the court room were used elsewhere too and particularly in regard to nature. He said that nature has to be 'hounded in her wanderings,bound into service , made a slave'. ' She was to be put in constraint' 'The aim of scientist is to torture nature's secrets from her'.

All these statements illustrate how an exploitative relationship has grown between nature and man or in broad sense human and non-human world.

Now let us come to our own Bhupen Hazarika. Do you remember his soulfully melodious song:' O' mur dharitri aai, charanate diba thai...' roughly translated it will mean:' O'my mother earth.Give shelter at your feet. We are helpless without you....I am orphan, I have no mother...so I plead you to be my mother'. The song is purportedly sung by a farmer.

The song 'naturalizes' and'feminimizes' nature and throws a searching light on the human and non-human world. The nature is bestowed with all the feminine in general and motherly attributes in particular. In fact that needs to our view of nature.

We can really improve ourselves by improving nature.

Dystopian literature and A real dystopia

The word 'Dystopia' is of Greek origin which roughly means a society that degrades into repressive and controlled state. The meaning can be extended to envisage a condition or a situation where all norms of a civilized society collapse. The opposite is 'Utopia' - an ideal situation where everything functions as it should. Hilton's 'Lost Horizon' is a case in point.

Over the last few weeks I have been engaged with Jose Saramago's 'Blindness'(Now a motion picture). This work of fiction finds a place in the list of 'Dystopian literature'

The novel unfolds dramatically. A driver waiting at the traffic lights goes blind suddenly. This is the beginning. A unnamed city is afflicted with an epidemic of blindness. It is very rapid and the authority is at a loss to to stem the tide of this seemingly unexplained epidemic. An epidemic of blindness.

The authority herd the afflicted into an abandoned mental asylum. The description of the condition of the afflicted there is just nauseating. Everything collapses. A mafia raj grows up that terrorise the blinds. Thugs control the food meant for the blind. Extortion starts , the blinds part with whatever valuable they have for a morsel. This is utter anarchy.

This is 'Dystopia' in literature. Now let us see the real 'Dystopia' that stares us.

I am sure many of you have the experience of going to the government offices for various reasons. I too have.

I have the 'priviledge' of visiting two of the most important offices in our state-the secretariat at Dispur and the DHE office at Kahilipara. I am, however, not a teacher ,not a lecturer either. My visit to these offices was by way of accompanying someone. In other words in the role of a chauffeur. And what I saw there!

Files do not move unless the palms are greased.Files vanish into thin air. And reappears like a vision of God the moment a ten rupee note is given for 'Chai-pani'. Violently qualified college teachers engaged in producing 'Humnan Resources' stand at the table of petty officials obsequesly. There is a so called officer at the secretariat(from secretarial service) who has earned notoriety for invariably taking money from college teachers.
No decent urinal. No decent place to seat. Or for a cup of tea. Red -stained walls spiced with limes like an abstract painting.

This is real 'Dystopia'

I understand we cannot dream of a 'Utopia'; but we can improve the situation we are in. We do not believe in immortality.But we can believe in the immortality of good deeds. Many college lecturers are in facebook. Some of them are my fast friends. I hope you all are listening!

'You and me towards a jouney of light'-let us begin it from there!

I sincerely tender my apology before the 'immortal' soul of Saramago( May his soul rest in peace!)for dragging him in the context of these petty officials.

On Karl Marx

Please notice the brilliant use of epigrams and aphorisms in the following statements:

1) The workers have no country.
2)The prolearians have nothing to lose but their chains.
3)Religion is the opium of the people.
4)From each according to his abilities,to each according to his needs.
5) The dictatorship of the proletariat.
6)Workers of all country,unite.

By this time , I am sure, you have come to realise that all these statements are the inventions of Karl Marx, the Revolutionary philosopher.

But you are wrong.

Karl Marx was a pass muster in borrowing the sayings of others and using them as his own. In fact many of his essays were ghosted by Engels.
He was a journalist(and a poet too)and knew that unless he writes in pithy sentences(even if they are stolen from others), his entire ideas would fall into oblivion.

Now let us know who coined those statements serially that pass for Max's:

1)Marat
2)Marat
3)Heine
4)Louis Blanc
5)Blanqui
6)Karl Schapper

More on Marx later.

On Health

3 things cannot be defined satisfactorily. Life, death and marriage oops?+@*$ Health.

No biology textbook can define life to the satisfaction of all. You have a life and for that matter I too have a life. The mango tree by the side of my bedroom the boughs of which were trimmed today has a life. The cute lap-dog that my landowner calls Miki and my son has grown fond of, has a life. But are they all alike? Is not it different from consciousness? Self-awareness or a consciousness that is conscious?

When the doctor and lawyer argue on death, you can sense neither of them understands the true nature of it. Is it the stop of heart-beat? or cessation of brain-function?Does consciousness survive death?

These are some of the questions that we cannot get out of our mind.

Finally Health( I shall come to marriage later on).

What is health? Is it merely absence of illness?

An emphatic No!

Health is that quality of our being that enables us to live 'in harmony with environment'.

I may have a robust health ( in traditional sense) and may look like Amir Khan or John Abraham. But if I cannot behave well with you, with my family,my neighbors, if I am intolerant of others' opinions, if I am not amenable to the idea of re-writing the Encyclopedia Britannica every day and so on. Then I am not a healthy person. However least my medical expenses might be!
This follows that health is a holistic concept. And modern medicine with so much reductionist attitude is incompatible with this idea.

If interested I suggest you read Fritjof Capra's 'Uncommon Wisdom'.

On Women(2)

The ancient Indian attitude to women had always been paradoxical. On one hand she is held in high esteem and worshiped as Goddess, on the other she is disparaged as a slave. I am , however, concerned with the former.

Today I want to share with you a poetic passage from the Mahabharata which A.L.Basham has quoted in his celebrated book 'The Wonder that was India'. The passage extolled women in general and wife in particular. Besides you can sense how important the passage is for conjugal life.

Please read on:

'The wife is half the man,
the best of friends,
the root of three ends of life,
and of all that will help him in the other world.

with wife a man does mighty deeds...
With a wife a man finds courage.
A wife is the safest refuge...

'A man aflame with sorrow in his soul,
or sick with disease, finds comfort in his wife,
As a man parched with heat
finds relief in water.
......
'For woman is the everlasting field,
in which the self is born.

To be continued...

On Women

Women's Studies is an emerging area in humanities and social sciences. It is an interdisciplinary course that focuses on the roles, experiences, and achievements of women in society.

However, it is premised on the notion of gender asymmetry. When enlarged upon it simply means that women are always at the periphery, suffer from inequalities and occupied a subservient position in relation to man.

There is no argument in that notion as it is amply borne out by newspaper and television reportings of,particularly in India, dowry deaths, honour killings,amniocentesis , rape and so on.

But we must not lose sight of the fact that women are life-givers.Women not only give birth;but also provide nourishment to the newborns. And about India whatever you rightly say , the opposite is also true.

Today I want to paint a different picture of women's status in ancient India. And it is bound to 'shake us aware like a blow on the skull'.

Here is Gargi- a woman scholar of vedic India.She is in 'arguing combat' with formidable Yajnavalkya.She challenges Yajnavalkya in front of the learned Brahmins to answer her questions. She says:'If he (Yajnavalkya) is able to answer those questions of mine,then none of you can ever defeat him in expounding the nature of God'. How bold she is! And her intellectual prowess! She is convinced her questions are the most insightful. And mind the rhetoric in which her questions are couched:' Yajanvalkya, I have two questions for you.Like the ruler of Videha or kashi , coming from a heroic line, who strings his unstrung bow, takes in hand two penetrating arrows and approaches the enemy, so do I approach you with two questions , which you must answer.'

Maitreyi,Yajnavalkya's wife raised profoundly philosophical question:' shall I achieve immortality if the whole earth, full of wealth were to belong to me'?When Yajnavalkya answered in the negative, she remarked:'What shall I do with that by which I do not become immortal'?

Women depicted in epics,classical tales and in recorded history, do not always conform to the tender and peace-loving imagae that is often assigend to women.

Draupadi speaks to a reluctant Yudhistra with an exhortation to fight:'For a woman to advise a man like you/is almost an insult. Yet my deep troubles compel me to overstep the limit of womanly conduct/make me speak up'.

To be continued...

A Tribute to Jose Saramago

Jose Saramago is dead. Dead with him is an era.

His narrative, very often, was an exploration of the possibility of fiction. If there was a global novelist, it was surely Saramogo. He wrote in Portuguese;but his works are being translated into several languages.

Saramago's 'The Gospel according to Jesus Christ' raised many a hackles for its bold treatment of Christ and Christianity. He posits Christ along the fault line between devil and God. His Christ is a man of flesh and blood just like you and me. Thus he challenged hagiographic biography and attempts to instill heterodoxy into the framework of organized Christianity.And raises questions about orality and texuality. His treatment of the relation between Jesus and Mary Magdalene is human and morally outrageous. I have liked this book more than Kazhanjaki's 'The last temptation'.

'The Double' is branded as an existential novel in which the protagonist meets his own lookalike. They are so alike that their voices too are same. The story unfolds with many twists and turns and opens before us a surreal world.

'The History of the siege of Lisbon' will surely interests those who are passionate about alternative history. The story involves about a proofreader's mistake , his effort to rewrite the siege of Lisbon and in the process he writes his own love story.

Most profound is his 'Death in intervals'. A novel suffused with magic realism. On the first day of the year in an unnamed country no body dies. It is a bizarre situation. If there is no death, there is no resurrection, if there is no resurrection, there is no Christianity...no one buys insurance,hospitals are full...people are in 'suspended life' or in 'arrested death'.The novel shows how important the death is for us. Also raises question:Is temporality a necessary condition for existence? He equates death with God...like God death is omnipresent(I may die now while writing this). Most interestingly he personifies death as a mysteriously clad woman.
I will not go any further lest your curiosity cools. Just read it.

In the hurly-burly of our collective lives, his death went unnoticed. No Assamese paper mentioned( I will be happy if I am proved wrong) his death even in the last page.(And also no Assamese news channesl who extol one special Assamese as 'thinker' (Chintabid) who was caught red handed while stealing materials for a school level textbook on environmental sciences).

I feel all genuine literature should aspire to the condition of the narrative that Saramago ushered in.

I think I can not expect a second Saramago in this life.

The File On MB

An unknown teacher of English from a provincial town in Assam has been shot into 'eminence' for all the wrong reasons.

Marshaling all the hate-words under his command , he has constructed a vituperative edifice of his observations on the Assamese community. Prima facie it reads like a 'drain inspector's report'.

Maybe he is under the delusion that falsehood mongering is edifying.

Now the big question:howshall we react?Shall we burn him at the stake?

The answer is simple: No/Never.

Conceding the' epistemological fragility' of knowledge, we feel that knowledge largely comes through a dialectical process. Instead of 'blowing hot and cold',we must erect our counter arguments and thereby hammer home the fact that we are not as black as we are painted.

And for that, our architects and the skilled workers will be his fraternity-the teachers.
Russell in his essay 'The Functions of a teacher'rightly points out:' The defense of the state in all civilized countries is quite as much in the hands of teachers as in those of the armed forces.'
We can go one step farther and add 'community' to the state.While mounting a counter attack( I am aware I am using the metaphors of war. Newspaper reporters have given the verdict that it is an attack against our community), we must keep in mind that we are a civilized community and civilization is more importantly 'a thing of the mind'.And if he opens the flood gates of vitriol again, we will request him as Mr. Gladstone(sometime British Prime Minister) requested from his political opponent :"...to extend to[us] that large measure of courtesy which, were [we] in his place and he in [our],we should most unhesitatingly extend to him".

Also we will ensure that nobody does nay harm to him because we are civilized and we endorse 'the kind of tolerance that springs from an endevour to understand those who are different from ourselves'.

Bihu Musings

This is my 'fortieth year to heaven'.Indeed a long enough time to do some stock-taking.During these forty years' round up of my life,three books have robustly influenced my mental world. One of them is Schumacher's 'Small is beautiful.' I draw your attention to the following lines from the book: 'The prestige carried by people in modern industrial society varies in inverse proportion to their closeness to actual productions'.

The Bihu is a festival that has evolved out of the rituals connected with 'Fertility cult'.Primarily it is a festival which is inextricably bound up with agriculture or with the people engaged in agricultural activities. In other words this festival carries within itself a world view based on an all pervading spirit in nature.
But the 'heady paroxysm of sumptuous rituals' with which the Bihu is celebrated in our city hardly contains even a trace element of that. On the contrary it is devalued, debased and highly commercialized in the hands of materialist and spiritually bankrupt(by spirituality I do not mean rituals) city dwellers.

The so called artists who blabber till the dawn breaks are miles farther from real production. The girls whose dances are sophisticatedly choreographed for public (mainly man) gaze have never seen a paddy field let alone doing chores agricultural. The farmer who toils from dawn to dusk and as a result ages prematurely, is banished from this scheme of things. And the rest snatches all the glory.

It really pains me.

Emtional distance and mobile phone

The advent of mobile phones signalize a remarkable change in our daily lives. A day without this small gadget is unthinkable.

Besides many other things, mobile phones have significantly narrowed the emotional distance of our hearts.

My family and I live apart in a distance of 120 Kms.The mobile phone that I use cannot reduce this physical distance. But emotionally I am always with them. In other words I carry my family and the dear and near ones(You are included) in my pocket. Of course metaphorically. Whenever I have the urge to talk(You are included again) to them, I fish out my mobile phone and my wish is instantly realized.(We are living in an age of instancy--instant coffee, instant noodles...right?) Be it on a busy street or in my small cozy room or during a comfort break in prolonged official meeting.

Now read the following poem by late Bireswar Baruah roughly translated by yours truly:

' Rays from the stars travel for many light- years to reach us.
I get your news from a different town.
The gap between what I get and what I do not,
seems to be a distance of light-years.'

Surely the poem talks about emotional distance in pre-mobile times.(Bireswar Baruah did not have a mobile when he wrote this I am sure).

A person like me who sleeps with the mobile phone is incapable of comprehending such a thought. And I am sure 'I am not the only one'.

Mobiles phones are bound to rob us of such transcendent poetry.

There is a grammatical convention that every verb must have a subject. Nietzsche contests this idea. He says:' a thought comes when 'it' wants to , and not when 'I want it to.'But can thought exist without a thinker?
Where does a thought originate? Obviously in my mind. But what is mind?Is it a thing? A substance?
Mind is the stuff that thoughts and dreams are made of. Mind is holistic. It does not occupy a location. Let me tell you an anecdote: A cosmonaut and a brain surgeon talk. The cosmonaut says I have traveled miles and miles in space, but I have never seen an angel or God.The brain surgeon says: I have performed hundreds of brain surgery, but I have never seen mind. So again where does mind exist?
Let me give an example: There exists a university in Guwahati and there exists a Sunday.Both are correct.But it would be meaningless to place University and Sunday alongside each other and discuss their interrelations. Again it is meaningless if I ask : What stuff is the mind made of?It is as good as asking what stuff your citizenship or Sunday are made of.
Is it a brain cell activity?( I know you are thinking now.)
To talk of mind in a place is just misconceived. It is just like light: sometimes particle(photon) and sometimes wave(Quantum).Sometimes a thought process and sometimes a neural activity.
I have a mind(or for that matter you have a mind) is a matter of faith because neither of us can see each other's.
My mind is not a chattel: it is me. It is my thoughts and experiences. So my blog is 'My mind'.

Let me conclude with the following classical statement:'...to seek self-knowledge is to embark on a journey which ...will always be incomplete.'