Gather the pieces

 An excerpt from ‘Let us talk about privilege’

A country that was colonised for 100 years and more, yes we have the right to talk about privilege. But first we have to make sure that amongst us there is nobody who has more right than us to talk about privilege.

Let us remove the Dalits and the Adivasis from this gathering. What do they know of privilege? It is we, and only we, who have grabbed whatever privilege was available to us, from here and there, stuffed it in our mouths, chewed it slowly, gobbled it up and digested it. Only we have the strength now, to talk about anything, and if today’s topic is privilege, then so be it.

We have the words, and we have the art. To convince anyone about what requires no convincing at all. To talk about things that are obvious a bit more so that we can procrastinate on the acting part a bit more.

There comes a time in human life, when all talk seems to only be adding to the chaos and bitterness. The above excerpt is from what one would like to say about privilege. The topic was chosen as there is no human whose voice is being heard, who can claim that there has been privilege of some sort in his/her case that their voice is being heard. It is an example of a paradoxical argument where within the argument lies a fact that destroys the argument. In that case, one can invoke anger or sarcasm from within oneself, to keep talking about it as else the paradox in the argument would kill it the moment it begins.

We all keep thinking or talking of starting all over again. With Covid-19, such talk is heard often, let us start all over again. What we fail to understand is it is near impossible to do so – scientifically and even in terms of human abilities. On the other hand, if a society really wants to begin again, every member or group of the society has to begin again at exactly the same point in time.

If we see the divisions in the society right now, some say it is split the society right down the middle (as in the case of the US) – though it is a contestable thought. Even in the US, it seems like the society has been split right down the middle only for the right wing—as for the liberals or democrats it is more like every individual is speaking in a different voice. But if we assume it is split into two groups, then how can both the groups want to go back and start from a clean state at the same time? Indeed the spilt itself comes from the fact that one of the groups is satisfied with things as they are and the other group wants a change.  And so the analogy of two persons trying to move a sofa out of a room with one trying to keep moving it back to the room and the other moving it out of the room due to a communication gap,  comes alive here.

But, why in this case is the liberal getting more tired, frustrated, while the right wing seems to come across smug and united?

Well, it is because they are – smug and united. And we are scattered and blown into pieces.

I began this article with an excerpt from ‘Let’s talk about privilege’. The tone of the excerpt is of someone who understands that most people talking about privilege in today’s world are the privileged themselves. What comes across from the author is a sense of moral high ground. It is a dangerous ground to be on, fellow liberals, let us come off it immediately.

Though identity politics is an important part of our politics, we cannot be in silos anymore. Our struggles are the same, no matter which country we come from and having an understanding of what is going on in the world is imperative for us to speak in one voice.

Naked without the mask

  

My understanding of history and the present tells me that if a nation-state perpetuates a crime against any section of the society, it is also bequeathing pain and suffering to the generations to come after it.

Guilt, shame, anger and grief linger on for years to come. Any nation state that wants a brighter future for its progeny must pause and atone for its past, if it has any vision for a better future.

So far, this has not happened anywhere in the world. Germany in the West and Japan in the East are probably the only nation states that have time and again confronted their past sins and expressed remorse for it.

There is a powerful philosophical concept in the East called ‘karma’ which time and again the pop-culture blurts out without understanding that it is a very real thing. Karma will follow you like the albatross in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Why is it that each time the society moves on as if nothing really happened in the past, the ghosts come calling?

All the drugs have been illegalised and its use has been made criminal, but one drug has escaped the dragnet of the keepers of the universe and that is Power.

High on this drug, the worst crimes in the world have been committed and the garb of civilisation is not good enough to hide the raw dastardliness of this drug. You may have elections, you may have democracy, but till this narcotic is illegalised and its users are thrown into the deepest, darkest prisons, nothing will change.

Why is it that we love to pick out a tyrant and vilify all that he/she has done long after eliminating the tyrant? Because while the tyrant is in power, the people are in the grasp of its strong narcotic effects and cannot see what is going on. Unless the people get out of this haze, and understand that we do not need to be drugged all the time to perform our acts, we are not going to be able to destroy the tyrant as he/she lives.

We are all addicts.

Drunk on this power reflected from our narcissistic leaders and nationalist emotions, we were sure hurtling into a kind of order that is achieved by annihilating all anarchists. As far as I see, this would have continued, had the world not been forced into putting the brakes on it, by a microscopic being, which we do not even yet know the origins of.

So here we are now, with so many people in power, a pressing concern for today’s world is a lack of leadership. During this time of ‘war’ and that too with an ‘invisible’ enemy, how naked do these narcissistic personas appear! All those who supported these men in power have no option but to wear masks and stay at home. Because all they want is for this invisible enemy to go away so that they can go back to the drama that they were enacting.

It’s been five months now and the virus is showing no signs of having left the scene. How do we claim the new world order that was on the horizon — an order that would have allowed us to break free of the shackles of history or even come out of our addictions?

Consider this: There is no way that physical distancing; washing hands or wearing masks is going to rid us or our malady. What if the only way out is to change?

Destruction of the existing order has always been a painful process for humans. But, the pandemic has shown us that something's are beyond our control. If the pre-pandemic era was what you would call normal, then please let us not get a new normal.

Not the last word

 Finding a balance is the most important thing in continuing a conversation. No open letter can be the last word on anything. You are leaving behind a world that is diverse and real, and for that we thank you. However, as a rebuttal or to carry forward this conversation, I have an open letter to write to you. I want to ask you who is your letter addressed to? I am presuming it is to the intolerant, who you find these days in the left side of the political spectrum. My theory is any intolerant being cannot make claim to even an iota of the space on the left.

And then if you look around you, yes it might be tough to find even a handful who are the space you claim to represent. But that is just the lonely truth of our times. The left or even the seeming of left was categorically discouraged, maligned, crushed, shot at sight, removed, so that this fascinating juggernaut of neoliberalism can have a smooth path to roll along.

In that scenario, how do you expect to find allies? Instead of trying to come down from your ivory towers to understand what happened to the people on the left, you accuse us of being intolerant — you the vanguards of all that is liberal. You truly are the vanguards, and I understand that you are feeling frustrated right now. But, aren’t we all? And as more learned and wiser members of our tribe, why did your open letter shut all doors of understanding at our faces, I wonder.

We had a similar moment, not too long ago, in this country too. It started with the MeToo movement, and the old-school, most venerable gender activists of our time came to a conflict with the new feminists. It did not end well, let me assure you, but as it happens with all families, conflicts are not talked/thrashed out and things go on, as families are just tied to each other.

That is the worst part about families. Nobody ever burns the bridges, unless he/she is ready to be all alone in this wide, wide world. As if being alone were the worst thing that could happen to a person. We attach much importance to being self-made, to individualistic pursuits, and yet, being alone scares us the most. So that there is the inherent paradox that the generation of today was born and raised in. And hence, it would be necessary to unlearn some of the things that you have learnt in your time to understand what is happening with the people right now. For the younger people it should be easier to unlearn things, but sadly it is not, because they do not want to. Well, why would you want to? When you are having the best of both worlds? You can sit pretty, while you call out privilege, without maybe even moving more than one finger, all the while completely oblivious to the position of privilege you are talking from. And you have a ready audience  that  you believe is a loyal one too.

Having said that, the BLM protests all across the US, had absolutely nothing to do with the matters you raise in your letter. So why choose a time, when links are drawn to the movement, which has given the whole world some hope at a time, when it was all but fading away?

This too, I must say India had a tryst with, before the coronavirus hit. There was nothing to counter the force of the protests that were growing all across the country against one more discriminatory acts in the series of such by the present ruling dispensation of the country. Finally, it was not about if not them, who. It was only a question of are YOU going to listen to us or not? The answer was loud and clear – not only are they not going to listen to us, but any attempt at opening our mouths, so much as to breathe, might be curtailed in a if-need-be bloody manner.

So the battle-lines are clearly drawn in India. We know we are up against criminal bullies. And from India, I want to give you a heads-up: Organise against the real bullies, if you did indeed mean all that you have been saying all this while.

Tell us, how many died

 Talk about the dead

Come on, talk about them

Scared of death, are you?

Liars.

You don’t seem scared at all

In fact, your leery eyes as they peer into the edges of death say quite a different tale

Lusting after death, are you?

And sure the ravaged bodies of the poor 

Are not glamorous enough to satisfy your lust. 

Well, have I got news for you?

I do.

We do not want to go into the world of necrophilia with you,

We are mourning our dead.

Thank you. 

****

Talk about the dead

Come on, talk about them

Scared of death, are you?

Ha! 

You didn’t seem scared at all

In fact, your face glowed in the funeral pyre and your hands trembled with uncontrollable joy after the act of murder. 

I know you remember that death comes to all

Your shifty eyes reveal the truth.

Shifty.

***

Pride, where is thy victory?

 Boredom and discontent are unique to human lives. In a community-based society, these two aspects are barely felt or experienced as one is always involved in one task or the other or one conversation or the other. This society is a manner in which humans had good lives, living as close to what is natural. Pastoral, littoral lifestyles are what come to our minds when we take a nostalgic view of ideal community-based societies. These ideal communities seem to have been decimated by forces larger than them. More than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas currently and more and more are going to move in the foreseeable future, which means the ideal community-based societies, even if they exist are going to be the privilege of the few.

For the rest of the world, urban individual-based lifestyles are going to be the truth of the day. In these societies, as they evolve, the means to express boredom and discontent in manners that are aesthetic and purposeful emerge.

India is a community-based society at heart. And though our cities relentless greed is driving the people out of the villages, all we have sought to create in our cities is perpetuate the community-based life. The father of the nation said, the soul of India is in its villages. And I say, the cities of India are just soulless villages.

Every community-based lifestyle trait was dragged into the cities, by those who stood to gain from it. An example: Every time you hear someone say, “In our villages, everybody greets each other and look at city life, where even neighbours don’t know each other!” beware! Understand that this is an aspiring resident welfare association committee member speaking. It is not the wonderful camaraderie of the village that this gentleman/woman wants to drag into the urban set-up. It is the desire to know the goings-on in their locality, so that they can take ‘important’ decisions pertaining to the society, pass a judgement or two, and issue a few decrees.

Get over it guys, you have never been in a village, why pretend?

One of the main reasons we as a country pretend to be what we are not is because of deep-seated insecurity. It is a feeling all colonised nations have we tell ourselves. But that is not the case. India, you had so many problems that you needed to figure out, that long after the colonists left, you are once again left all alone with your problems and you have no idea who to blame.

The response to a 1927 book ‘Mother India’ written by American author Katherine Mayo is illustrative. We were still under British rule and the book was an argument against granting the country freedom. The book was panned from all quarters, pamphlets were written decrying the contents of the book. I am assuming, we were too weak at the time to take such harsh criticism at its face value. But it has been 93 years since then.

Are we today able to read the book without flinching? Can we look in Ms Mayo’s eyes today and proudly proclaim, “You were wrong”? I am sure we will do just that. Because that is all we have ever been interested in doing, proclaiming you were wrong to all critics, even if we have to lie for it.

All the years that preceded the independence struggle have been to instil a sense of pride in being Indian. If some flaws of the society cannot be removed, they got swept under the carpet. This kept on happening for 30-40 years. We wanted to speak out about the evils in our society but it was always easier to ignore them and feel pride in an imaginary “culture”.

Today, we are at the peak of that pride. From here, the only option for us is to fall.

Yes, it hurts to come to this realisation that we are at the end of run of pride. We are also afraid it will hamper our efforts at succeeding in our little pursuits. Some of us want to opt out from our contributions towards the false pride and take a step back now to assess our evils, etc, but boy, are we feeble! Our understanding of the rot is barely grazing the surface because for miles and miles within there is only pride and more pride.

Our forefathers have taught us well.

 

Cacophony

There is a madness in the air,

You can catch it if you step out

or stay in

It will make your head pound

And your heart numb

This madness in the air…

Some of our fellow travellers

Are shrieking and wailing

Their voices sore and eyes tired of darting but unable to stop

Others are doing self-harm

Bashing their heads against walls that are bloody, slippery

Still others have murder in their eyes

Tearing the innards out of a neighbour, or a friend

You shut the doors and the windows

And went into a corner

You ran to the great outdoors and stared at the sky

You did it all, didn’t you?

Oh, there is no escape,

There’s a madness in the air.