Bhupen Hazarika: Some random thoughts

Arguably the week in which Bhupen Hazarika( I do not like the tag Dr. before his name)died is the most momentous week in the cultural history of Assam so far. Probably more has been written and talked about him during this week than in the last twenty years.

Most of them are sheer personal reminiscences of some close associates of the great singer and the composer. Insignificant details like what he ate or drank at certain places and so on dominate their musings about the legendary person . These are bound to be heading for oblivion after sometime. We do not know the names of all the soldiers in the battle of Waterloo; neither are they important for us.

But tragically there have been no serious objective evaluation of his works( I am talking of the week only) which is,I feel more important for us and the posterity.

Bhupen Hazarika occupies a unique place in our mind, at least in those who are above forty.But the young generations , specially after the advent of the news channels , tend to remember him as an old and fragile man who sang for Star Cement advertisement.His baritone voice, his lyrics and the perfect blend of harmony with which he cast his musical magic spell upon the sea of humanity who came to see him up close has become a thing of the past.

This is the time to ask ourselves: Why is he great? Why is he one and only?

I am sure many will write about it in the days ahead.

For me Bhupen Hazarika stands out on many counts. some of them, I believe are as follow:

Bhupen Hazarika is the only singer among his contemporaries who could proclaim with unshaken conviction that he is a singer. Listen to his songs:A) Mur gitor hezar shruta tumak namaskar,B)Mur gaan houk bahu ashtha hinotar biporite ek gabhir asthar gaan,C)Samuhor babe git gai gai tumak pahori golu....in all these songs he projects himself as a singer which is not found in any other singers in Assam(and maybe in India). This conviction to claim oneself as a singer and composer is not born overnight. It is a reflection of his deep and years of engagement with music.

There is not a single community or ethnic group that has not found a place in his songs.Be it a tea garden girl(Laxmi nahoi mure naam Chameli) or a Nepali milk man.

His composition embraces all the genres of Assamese music. From Kamrupi lokgit to zikir to Kawali(Samma thakile zaroor zaroor parwana bhi thakibo)to Bihu(Tuk dekhi mur gaa zin zin zaan zaan pir pir paar paar...). In that case his counterpart in literature will surely be Rabindranath Tagore.

Jyotiprasad told about Viswa Nagarik- a global citizen. We are debating Globalization now and many among us who oppose Globalization have taken the maximum benefits from Globalization itself. For them Globalization is synonymous with economics and KFC/MacDonald. But Globalization can have other facets too.Like Globalization of ideas or culture.Listen to his Moi eti zazabor(Aami ek Zazabor in Bangla)and see how wide his vision is. After Jyotiprasad , he is the only one who could transcend the barrier of domesticity and proclaim that he is or he aspires to be a global citizen.

I have listened to many Assamese songs on nature. From Jyotiprasad's Gose gose pati dile phulore sarai to Bishnu Rabha's Bilote halise dhunia podume to Dr.Nirmolprapha Bordoloi's phulore ei melate( Superably alive in Pulak Bannerjee's voice). But these songs are composed from the perspective of viewer only. Nature is just a spectacle. But listen to Bhupen Hazarika's o mur dharitri aai charanote diba thai...here he shows the best relationship between man and nature or in other words between human and non-human world. This is unique. The song was written before our big fuss over deforestation , big dam and peasants'movement. That way he anticipated the future.

A remarkable quality of Bhupen Hazarika was his restraint with which he dealt with the most sensuous. Recall his song dehor randhe randhe tulile sihoron tumar uthor porose.... and see the restraint. Today's singer would have gone into an orgy in such a situation.

Every great singer(or writer) leaves behind a tradition. Had Bhupen Hazarika not listened to Paul Robson's Old man river, he probably could not have composed his timeless song Bistirna parorore...( Unfortunately a TV journalist of the state accuses him of musical plagiarism on this ground. It shows his quality of thought!).

But Bhupen hazarika , so far , has failed to create a tradition. The young generation singers tend to model themselves after some one else rather than this great maestro.

I shall be happy if some one comes soon to sing along his tradition. I shall be happier if it happens in my lifetime.

Bhupen Hazarika , we will miss you.

Cain: A wonderful reading experience

'for oft,when on my couch I lie

in vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon the inward eye

which is the bliss of solitude...'(The Daffodils by William Wordsworth)

Memory is restorative.It restores intimacy. In fact it is only through memory that we can have access to our past.

Lately the statement has become more pronounced for me as I try to recall to my memory what actually I read in Cain, one of the masterpieces of Jose Saramago.The task is uphill and produces an uncanny feeling of disorientation.

Cain is the story of Cain , the son of Adam and Eve(Saramogo never uses upper case letters for proper names)who killed his brother Abel. It deals with many of the moral and logical sequitures

born out of whims and caprices of an arbitrary, authoritarian and patriarchal God.For Saramago, God is always an illogical entity. So in way the book forms part of his long argument with God and origin of Christianity that he set out in 'Gospel according to Jesus Christ'.

At first glance the book seems to be like satire of the old testament. Let me give you an example of the subtlety of the satire:'Seth,their(Adam and Eve's)third child, will only come into the world one hundred and thirty years later,not because his mother's womb required that amount of time to complete the fabrication of a new descendant , but because the gonads of father and mother,the testets and ovaries respectively,had taken more than a century to mature and to develop sufficient generative power'.

But Saramago's satire transcends the conventional limits and gimmickry(our own poor Sashi Tharoor and The Great Indian Novel )and lends a new dimension to the entire book.

For me Cain is a single voice open to interpretation on three levels:

A)Wandering of a condemned man. For Cain is condemned because he killed his brother.And God willed that he had to live a live of fugitive.The root cause is God because God favored Abel at the cost of Cain and produced jealousy.Mark Cain's defiance when he said to God:'Am I my brother's keeper ?'He further said to god that God is the one who pronounced the sentence and 'I merely carried out the execution'. Mark again what Cain said to God:'It's simple enough,I killed Abel(bold is mine) because I could n't kill you,so,in intent you are dead too.' Like a road fiction(On the road, Savage Detectives) all the incidents in the book take place when Cain is on the move from one place to another.In one sense Cain is Saramago -a writer with roving eyes who see the conflation of time past, present and future.

B) Conflict between Cain and God.Through out the book Cain questions God. It is through Cain's eye we can construct an old, fool,illogical God who is ruthless and indifferent to our pain and anxiety.When God tells Cain that he is the sovereign lord of all things, Cain replies:'but not of me and my freedom'.That way the book deals with free will and predestination. One important aspect of the book is a sorry portrayal of God that emerges out of Cain's action and arguements particulary during the great flood.

C) The book throws considerable light on the history of Christianity and its illogical foundation.The story is taken from the old testament and in the process brings to light many lacunae the testament carries within it.

Cain raises many questions,answers none.Maybe it is not Saramago's aim too.The story is couched in modern idioms. For instance the angel fails to come on time for a fault on his 'right wing'.God is busy checking the 'hydraulic system of the earth'.

What struck me most is the concept time that Saramago has employed in unfolding the whole story. It is in perfect conformity with modern concept of time that new physics enunciates and which defies the concept-'the arrow of time'.In the book, past , present and future intermingle that becomes 'subjective present'. For Saramago, at least in Cain , the future is as irrevocable as past.

At the start of my essay I have hinted at the memory as an instrument of knowledge. But memory ,at times , can be treacherous. I might have omitted some important aspects of the book. But I am certain of one thing: It is a wonderful reading experience that I have in recent times.

NEW (YELLOW) JOURNALISM

'But where is the lady that stood aside in gypsy-hat,and touched the wheel-spoke with her badine? O Reader, that lady that touched the wheel-spoke was the queen of France!'

'Midnight clangs from all the city-steeples;one precious hour has been spent so;most mortals are asleep.'

These two lines are quoted from Thomas Carlyle's 'The French Revolution (1837). This is in fact a tiny excerpt from a long passage that describes the flight of the infamous queen Marie-Antionette with her children and of course with her equally infamous husband Louis xvi.

When you read the lines do you feel it is written by a historian? I am sure you never. Because in 'The French Revolution, Carlyle writes more like a novelist than a historian. 'The French Revolution' is often held up as a classic example to highlight the cross-fertilization between the novel and historiography in late nineteenth century before a truly scientific historical method was born.

Lately Carlyle's 'The French Revolution ' keeps coming back to my mind when I tend to do a little introspection into the state of affairs of journalism-both print and visual-in our state. Every so often I delve into the issue, I come out convinced that the seeds of what 'new journalism' that we expose ourselves to day in and and day out contained in Carlyle. It is without doubt that Carlyle engaged himself with the documents of The French Revolution like a historian; but he 'dramatized and synthesized' these like a moralizing novelist.We must not forget that literature too started with journalism and the history is replete with examples to that effect. How can a simple journalistic narrative become a great novel? The answer is Marquez's 'The Story of a ship wrecked sailor'.

Before I am off the rail too much , let me come to the point.

I have referred to Carlyle and his book just to show how 'new journalism' has internalized the style and technique of fiction writers.

Tom Wolfe enumerates certain techniques that 'new journalism' has borrowed from fiction writing:

A)Telling the story(Remember everything in news is story now)through scenes rather than summary.

B)Presenting events from the point of view of a particular rather than from some impersonal perspective.

C)Preferring dialogue to reported speech.

D)Incorporating the kind of detail about people's appearance,clothes,possessions , body language, etc that act as indices of class ,character,status and social milieu in the realistic novel.(The Art Of Fiction by David Lodge,Penguin)

O' my esteemed reader just see if you find all these elements in today's news in particular and in journalism in general!

But why all these elements became necessary? Also with this question is bound up the inevitability of 'yellow journalism'.

These elements generate excitement, intensity,sympathy(often misplaced) and emotive power that orthodox reporting fails. These elements inform all the aspects of 'Yellow journalism' too,however, the single- track- aim of 'Yellow Journalism' is character assassination.

In recent days our state has witnessed a storm of a sort involving two television channels. Their verbal fisticuffs have shown how journalism has become self-reflexive. Journalism referring back to itself.For a channel a particular individual is a genius.Whereas for the other an impostor.A magnificent fraudster.One lauds him and blares out he is a victim of 'yellow journalism'.

One of these channels must be right and in a round about way it has admitted that 'yellow journalism' does exist.

Carlyle,Tom Wolf,New Journalism,journalistic fisticuffs-a concoction. Is this short piece of writing referring back to itself?

THREE CHEERS FOR DOUBT

Marxist viewpoint posits a perfectible human nature when he says that one should doubt everything. In fact it is doubt toward received knowledge that has played the most important role in the history of knowledge(wisdom?) production.

We all know about the philosopher Pyrroh of Elis(C.360-270 BC), the founder of what subsequently was known as Pyrrhonism-philosophic doubt; skepticism. He is credited with arguing that happiness comes from suspending judgement because certainty of knowledge is impossible. He lived for 90 years ;but did not write a single word. It is because he lived by his philosophy. He believed that nothing is fit to be immortalized in ink. Maybe since you cannot have the final word on the matter.

Let me introduce you to an anecdote involving Pyrroh.

Once in an afternoon Anaxarchus of Abdera, also a philosopher fell into a ditch. Precisely at the same time Pyrroh went past him with no effort to rescue him. But later on Anaxarchus was taken out of the ditch and every one blamed Pyrroh for his indifference. Do you know what Pyrroh said in his own defense? 'I am not sure Anaxarchus would be better off in the ditch or out of it'! He said. Annaxarchus himself was extremely impressed by Pyrrho's sangfroid.

Sextus Empiricus was a philosopher and a physician. He has written on Pyrrhonism and his chief argument is that skepticism has beneficial effect on the practitioner'by giving him tranquility of the soul'. (There was no dizepam or alprozolam that time for him to prescribe).

Now let us come to our own Socrates. He said:'All I know is that I know nothing' . Sanches( A Portuguese philosopher)on the other hand said:'I don't even know if I knew nothing'.

In case of Socrates he doubts his own knowledge. And in case of Sanches he doubts his own doubt. The height of one's doubt.

It is said earlier that doubt has continually produced knowledge. Those among us who who are cocksure(and hen sure) about their views and opinions, will do well to remember Socrates,Sanches and Pyrroh at regular intervals.

BEYOND LANGUAGE

The state of being and its description in words are two different things. For instance: sadness. It is an experience. But how will you describe it? Can it be described as accurately as you have felt?Are the sadness you feel and the sadness I am feeling at the moment are same?

Fernando Pessoa (The Book Of Disquiet)rightly says that most literal language belongs to small children. When we are sad , tears well up in our eyes, what do we say? Pessoa says an 'idiot' says or writes:"I feel like crying'. But whereas small children will say(or write): 'I feel tears in my eyes'.It is more close to the experience the speaker has undergone.It is indeed tears that come to the eyes.Eyes become moist.They get swollen.And you really feel the tears.

All these thoughts have come rushing into me because I had similar experience a few days back. An experience where language or all the concepts of language collapse. Somewhat akin to what Gertrude Stein said on a different situation:"There was no there there.There was no then then"!

All my friends know that I was in International Hospital ( I became famous in FB.Infamous for my sympathy drive),Guwahati a few days ago following a sudden illness. A sort of gastronomical misadventure. That night when I was lying on the bed in the emergency ward mulling over the unpredictable nature of life, a beautiful nurse appeared before me like a vision of God. Her cherubic face radiated a smile that almost left me half-cured.The very next moment she brought out the syringe. I knew she meant business. She injected a dose of antibiotic in the canola. The moment she withdraw( I mean the syringe), I felt in my mouth something wavy with bitter taste. I could not sleep the whole night.I thought deeply how I could describe that experience in my mouth.I failed. Next day toward the evening I found a fitting television advertisement to describe that oral experience. I remembered man's after shave lotion Oldspice advertisement where a brawny young man in shorts wind surf and huge sea waves follow him like a hooded snake as to devour him. That is the image that truly approximates my experience that night.

I closed my eyes and realized that even a pop television image is capable of describing an experience that words fail.

........................................................................................................................................................

The International Hospital ,Guwahati is located on busy G.S. Road.I did observe the difficulty the pedestrians face in going across the road to and from the hospital. There is no pedestrian crossing.There is no traffic policing.There is heavy traffic all the time. Most of them are rogues. Our town planners have failed to notice that. Is it too beyond our language to notify that? What is this by the way? A state of being or an experience?

Literature and Rabelais

Amoz Oz writes in Hebrew. There is an essay entitled 'A modest attempt to set out a theory' in his collection of essays'Under the blazing light' translated into English by Nicholas de Lange.

As the title of the essay suggests,he makes a 'modest'attempt to define literature in a very concise manner that might serve as an entry in a short encyclopedia.

He writes:' Literature: A form of expression and communication by means of language , generally dealing with three set subjects in various contexts and combinations: 1)Sorrow or suffering.2)Protest or complaint.3) Consolations or semi-consolation or less,including submission.'

I think it is a very comprehensive definition of literature that includes almost everything.Homer and Oedipus.Dante and Don quixote. Kafka and Raskolnikov.

But when it comes to Rabelais and his 'Gargantua and Pantagruel', it refuses to fit into that definition.

Rabelais , a Renaissance man from France wrote everything that a writer can aspire to write.

His 'Gargantua and Pantagruel' contains within it--Don Quixote,Alice in wonderland,Pinchio,Gulliver's Travel and everything that Salman Rushdie and his ilk write.

It is a wonderful comic chronicle in which carnivalesque elements seamlessly blend with reality,Renaissance learning with obscene humour and takes you into a different world from which you can look at your own afresh.

It is a tale of comic chivalry that satirizes lawyers,uncouth professors, theologians, idiotic monarchs and anybody who comes in the way.

Milan Kundera is full of praise for him. In a conversation with Guy Screpetta(Encounter essays)he says:'Gargantua -Pantagruel is a novel from before novel existed.'In other words this is the first novel ever written in any language. But was Rabelais conscious that he was about to start a new genre? When he was writing 'Gargantua and Pantagruel', he was not aware that he was writing what we now call 'novel'.

Kundera further says:'...Rabelais' work contains enormous aesthetic possibilities , some of which have been realized in the novel's later evolutions and others never have been'(Encounter essays,Faber & faber,page 62).

Once Rushdie was asked what he liked most in French literature and his reply was Rabelais(and Flaubert).Because Rabelais was the pioneer ,the founding father ,the genius of the non-serious in the art of novel(Encounter Essays, page 67).

Now I cannot resist the temptation of quoting a few (humorous) lines from 'Gargantua and Pantagruel(Penguin classic,translated by M.A.Screech):

'This year there will be an eclipse of the moon on the fourth day of August.Saturn will be retrograde,venus,direct....As a result ,crabs this year will walk sideways,rope makers work backwards...'

'...when the Sun enters Cancer and other signs of the Zodiac they should watch out for the pox,cankers,hot-pisses,pimples on the groin, and so on.Nuns will find it very difficult to concieve without the ministration of a male , and hardly any virgin will lactate'.

A remarkable book.

It is not for nothing that Hazlitt says:"The name of Rabelais is a cordial for the spirits".

On Human Condition

Blank Gaze by Jose Luis Pixeto is one of the finest works of fiction that I have read in recent times.

The book is set in an obscure Portuguese village and pieces together some loosely linked stories.The characters do not stand out for their uniqueness. Rather they are very ordinary village dwellers albeit with some exceptions such as the devil and the Siamese twins joined at the tips of their little fingers and the grand old man Gabriel who has aged more than a century.

The book consists of two parts. On close reading one can discern that the second part is the retelling of the first part. A restatement of the monotonous cycle of human life.

It follows that we all are trapped in the same human condition. Our life goes on with the same pattern, of course with variations here and there. No body can escape that condition.

Pamuk writes that a man starts to grow old when he begins to imitate his father. I can relate myself to that statement. My father had a pair of reading glasses that he used to keep in a box provided by the optician. Every morning he got up , brushed his teeth, opened the box, brought out the pair of glasses and skimmed the newspaper over a hot cup of tea.

My life too begins the same way. The Same pattern. I have a pair of reading glasses that I keep gingerly in a box provided by the optician. I get up early in the morning,brush my teeth,open the box,bring out the pair of glasses and skim the news paper over a hot cup of tea. In other words I am imitating my father.(But hey! I am still young at heart!)

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'? She too is trapped in the same human condition.

Every one is trapped in the same human condition. In our own time ,a minister or an official who has amassed astronomical wealth is not free from that either. There is no guarantee that he will not have diabetes or cancer or heart ailment. In other words he cannot achieve immortality .

Sathya Saibaba who was worshiped(he has property worth 40,000 crore rupees) as God by millions died this morning. The vital organs of his body refused to function as one day ours will do likewise. A God man for millions, alas! he could not achieve immortality.

We all are trapped in the same human condition.

Bihu Musings

The girl comes near me. The beads of perspiration trickle down her comely face , yet her indomitable spirit shows no sign of fatigue.Her gyration for the last more than fifteen minutes , to the accompaniment of a pulsating beatings of drum reminds me of the beyblade my son plays with. The boy , his muscles are taut as a bowstring, and with sinewed shape of his hand he beats at the drum with a gusto as if it were thundering at the distance. The other boy blows at the flute and his face wears a gritty expression. As I looked on, I felt the whole scene personifies energy and freedom.

Yet I fail to understand why as a community, in other spheres of life, we have failed to imbibe within us that spirit ,our Bihu stands for. Why do we need to carry the tag of being a layabout people who abhor hard labour and productive idea?

Bihu is here again to inspire us to shake of our old garb and put on new.

Let us take this Bihu spirit beyond the Bihu talis!

My dear friends wish you all a very happy Rongali Bihu!

Fast Forward History

The girl gingerly picked up the two lighters and examined them.

'Do n't you feel it? he kidded her.'The historicity'?

She said,'What is historicity'?

'When a thing has history in it.Listen one of these two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt's pocket when he was assassinated. And one was not.One has historicity...'

Thus spoke two characters in Philip K.Dick's 'The Man in the High Castle'.

Everything has a history. From a small lighter to a big nation. But what is history? A chronology of events? or much more? Presently I leave that to you!

There are two schools of thought as regards history. One school believes that history is a continuous progress. It leads us from darkness to light, to truth or optimal end.

On the other hand the other school argues that history has nothing new to discover for us.What was there to be understood and found have already been done by the long-lost civilizations and we are in fact going back to them and reconcile ourselves with the tradition.

Let me do some loud-thinking in the light of the second statement.

When Copernicus came up with the concept of helio-centric universe and elliptical orbit,did he revolutionize knowledge? A big no. Because it referred back to Platonic and Pythagorean thinking. Without the Greek atomists there would be no Marx!

Hippocratic 'Vix medicatrix naturae' is a classical statement. Do you know what does it mean? Healing power of nature. When Baba Ramdev(he has an island in Scotland!) fires salvo against(western)medicine, does he say anything new? A big no again. He simply refers back to what Hippocrates said several centuries ago. When your family doctor advises you for moderation in what you eat and drink , he simply echoes Hippocratic injunction 'Health is most likely to be found in the middle way'. Thumbing through the Encyclopedia of Folk medicine I find numerous references to Aloe Vera which was used in medicinal preparations in England and Ireland many centuries ago. When my sister goes to buy a bottle of Aloe Vera from the mega shopping mall, I just smile. She is going back to an ancient tradition.

When Joyce wrote 'Ulysses' ,he took Homeric narrative as his model. And we say it ushered in a new narrative technique? I hope many of you have read our master Lakhminath Bezbaruah's short story 'Patmugi'. How about the last lines? Are not they what the elite academics now call 'metafiction'?

The rhetoric and the rabble rousing slogans of the anti-big dam movement reminds me of Schumacher and his 'Small is beautiful' that was written in the 70s.

The list will go on. We often say that we see more than what our forefathers did. It is not without grain of truth. But we see more not because of our superior eyesight; but because we mount ourselves on their shoulders and say: 'We are taller than you."

To be continued...