Another of my attempts at verse!
Deep in the heartland,
In the forest that entraps the night
Under its leafy shade,
In the hollows beneath rocks,
In streams where the water sounds,
And my fingers in it can feel the wet,
I look for magic.
On a stage stuffed with gimmickry,
Lit bright, as nimble fingers prestidigitate,
Simulate wizardry,
In the wide open eyes
Of child and adult in me,
As my breathing pauses –
I look for magic.
In the silent sanctuary of a church,
Behind the oil lamps in a temple,
In the moonwashed smoky night of a flaming pyre,
Beneath the high eaves of ancient caves carved in love,
I seek the truth,
I burst my skin,
I look for magic.
In the house, on the street,
And on the grinding tram beneath my feet,
In the hushed halls of education,
In the warp and weft of celebration,
I look for magic
In the wrong places.
The magic is in me.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Ummm...?
"You cannot escape one infinite...by fleeing to another; you cannot escape the revelation of the identical by taking refuge in the illusion of the multiple"
Umberto Eco, Foucalt's Pendulum
Umberto Eco, Foucalt's Pendulum
A Matter of Sex
What is this obsession with sex we humans have? My question is not why we have sex, the answer to which is as obvious as the differences in gender. It concerns why we are obsessed with everything that may be directly, indirectly and remotely connected with the act of sex.
Animals (and the word encompasses all living creatures except humans and plant life) have elaborate mating rituals, often strange behaviour leading to sexual congress and the ultimate and natural need to procreate. It is normally seasonal and limited to an annual event.
We humans not only have sex all year round, anytime, anywhere, anyhow; we are also particular about discussing it in depth, displaying it, debating it, being deviant with it, desiring and denigrating it, never getting enough of it physically, mentally or spiritually; and are either apathetic or empathetic to this original requirement to reproduce our kind.
Yes, we are humans with brains that allow us to think, analyse and process information, and respond to external stimuli. And we can’t help doing so. In all honesty, this piece of writing itself is a by-product of our obsession with sex and all it means to us.
Yet, why? Why is sex is so important to us even if it has moved beyond the ultimate goal of procreation? I don’t believe there are any easy answers.
The phenomenon is not new either. Very early on in our civilisation as we know it, texts on the act of sex began to appear. Nudity portrayed in art became popular. In modern times, once photography was invented, pictorial renditions of sexual acts were commonplace. Today the bulk of the Internet’s economy is driven at a furious pace by websites offering sex.
Again, why? Because there are millions who will have their most satisfactory sex by hearing and watching images and reading text on the WWW, never really experiencing the other sensations of touch, taste and smell with anyone but themselves, and if they’re lucky a partner.
Because there are other millions who will use the portrayal of sex on the Web for titillation, and then look for opportunities to experience sex themselves. Another possible answer.
A third. Because the human imagination is a greater force than what the human mind instantly perceives from received information. The Internet’s portrayal of sex, even though many sites claim to leave nothing to the imagination, is still limited to what it can audio-visually offer the viewer. It cannot account for psychological, demographical, geographical, medical, educational, legal and social factors that will affect those who seek sex on the Internet.
It often seems that the demand for information and imagery of sex, and the accompanying facility to discuss sex issues at a common, amateur level, far outstrips the availability and supply of such services. Sex is an industry that only registers continuing growth, remaining unaffected by political, economic and social conditions. No laws or social strictures are adequate or comprehensive enough to cover the exploitation by the sex industry. Is it because millions wish to be exploited?
Valid as well as populist research on sex and its diversities receives generous funding and often ecstatic approbation. News with a sex angle to it receives intense media attention. Censorship of works of art for reasons related to sex is more common than for political reasons. In fact, politics can be deeply impacted when a sex angle comes into the frame.
Music, graphics and imagery, text, clothing and lifestyle accessories, all sell well when sex is introduced into it in one way or another. Marketing gurus infuse flavours of sex into their strategies to ensure better returns. Our obsession with sizes and shapes is undeniable. Who’s taller? Who’s bigger? Who’s longer? Who’s thicker? Who’s better? Who’s prettier? Who’s shapelier? Who’s perfect? All these seemingly innocuous questions link up in some way with sex.
Child sex, geriatric sex, same sex, animal sex, sex, sex, sex. The mystery of sex. The canons of sex. The fascination of sex. The language of sex. The secrets of sex.
As I said earlier, no easy answers and far too many questions.
And the fact of the matter is, these questions will not even cast a blip on the radar of human sexual activity.
Animals (and the word encompasses all living creatures except humans and plant life) have elaborate mating rituals, often strange behaviour leading to sexual congress and the ultimate and natural need to procreate. It is normally seasonal and limited to an annual event.
We humans not only have sex all year round, anytime, anywhere, anyhow; we are also particular about discussing it in depth, displaying it, debating it, being deviant with it, desiring and denigrating it, never getting enough of it physically, mentally or spiritually; and are either apathetic or empathetic to this original requirement to reproduce our kind.
Yes, we are humans with brains that allow us to think, analyse and process information, and respond to external stimuli. And we can’t help doing so. In all honesty, this piece of writing itself is a by-product of our obsession with sex and all it means to us.
Yet, why? Why is sex is so important to us even if it has moved beyond the ultimate goal of procreation? I don’t believe there are any easy answers.
The phenomenon is not new either. Very early on in our civilisation as we know it, texts on the act of sex began to appear. Nudity portrayed in art became popular. In modern times, once photography was invented, pictorial renditions of sexual acts were commonplace. Today the bulk of the Internet’s economy is driven at a furious pace by websites offering sex.
Again, why? Because there are millions who will have their most satisfactory sex by hearing and watching images and reading text on the WWW, never really experiencing the other sensations of touch, taste and smell with anyone but themselves, and if they’re lucky a partner.
Because there are other millions who will use the portrayal of sex on the Web for titillation, and then look for opportunities to experience sex themselves. Another possible answer.
A third. Because the human imagination is a greater force than what the human mind instantly perceives from received information. The Internet’s portrayal of sex, even though many sites claim to leave nothing to the imagination, is still limited to what it can audio-visually offer the viewer. It cannot account for psychological, demographical, geographical, medical, educational, legal and social factors that will affect those who seek sex on the Internet.
It often seems that the demand for information and imagery of sex, and the accompanying facility to discuss sex issues at a common, amateur level, far outstrips the availability and supply of such services. Sex is an industry that only registers continuing growth, remaining unaffected by political, economic and social conditions. No laws or social strictures are adequate or comprehensive enough to cover the exploitation by the sex industry. Is it because millions wish to be exploited?
Valid as well as populist research on sex and its diversities receives generous funding and often ecstatic approbation. News with a sex angle to it receives intense media attention. Censorship of works of art for reasons related to sex is more common than for political reasons. In fact, politics can be deeply impacted when a sex angle comes into the frame.
Music, graphics and imagery, text, clothing and lifestyle accessories, all sell well when sex is introduced into it in one way or another. Marketing gurus infuse flavours of sex into their strategies to ensure better returns. Our obsession with sizes and shapes is undeniable. Who’s taller? Who’s bigger? Who’s longer? Who’s thicker? Who’s better? Who’s prettier? Who’s shapelier? Who’s perfect? All these seemingly innocuous questions link up in some way with sex.
Child sex, geriatric sex, same sex, animal sex, sex, sex, sex. The mystery of sex. The canons of sex. The fascination of sex. The language of sex. The secrets of sex.
As I said earlier, no easy answers and far too many questions.
And the fact of the matter is, these questions will not even cast a blip on the radar of human sexual activity.
The Woodstock Generation
I’m reading a book called No Logo written by Naomi Klein and first published in 2000. It’s been written lucidly, with great clarity and is a seminal work. She has been called “a young funky heiress to (Noam) Chomsky” and this book of hers has been termed “visionary”, “a riveting, conscientious piece of journalism and a strident call to arms”, “a bible for anti-corporate militancy” and “a powerful and passionate book”. Fortunately enough, for once the back-cover blurbs have got it right.
While I will not tell you what the book is all about, the title and those quoted blurbs should give you a fair indication. I recommend you go across to your favourite bookseller and get yourself a copy. You will not regret it even if you consider yourself an extreme corporate guerrilla. What I will do is quote a sentence from the book, one of so many sentences which made a forceful impression on me.
“What struck me most was that the debate revolved entirely around the sanctity of the past, with no recognition of present-tense cultural challenges.” - Naomi Klein’s comment on the controversy surrounding Woodstock ’94, the 25th anniversary festival of the original Woodstock of 1969.
I was 12 years old when Woodstock happened a couple of continents and oceans away from India. I got to see the movie (in a censored version) about five years later. (Today I own a DVD copy of the full version known as “The Director’s Cut”). But I also know that the ‘69 Woodstock affected me quite a bit and influenced subsequent changes in my life. I recognise some of the changes and others of my peer group have their own, making it a sort of ‘psycho-communal’ sharing of a second-hand experience.
India was undergoing changes and adjustments of her own, and being the urban, educated elite that we were because of our advantageous circumstances, we could not not be affected by what was taking place in the USA. For many of us Woodstock made an immediate impact and we alienated ourselves from our own culture. For some, we learned lessons for the future which have proved right and wrong and this may have given us direction. Still others, reacted negatively to it and called it a hippie plot to dominate the world. A contradiction in terms if there ever was one!
Whatever Woodstock may have meant then, it has been for many of us a catalyst in our lives. The hippieness of that Love and Peace thing made me even more conscious and aware of my own country, its myriad peoples and culture, and the fact that the hippies were coming to my country to be enlightened, while I saw mine in their country! My becoming aware of just that one fact has influenced my life to a great extent. It has prompted me to chose my current lifestyle, my political and ideological leanings, and the sort of work that most satisfies me, an antithesis of all that young people are presently being taught at business schools in India.
But we cannot forget those who continue and choose to live in “the sanctity of the past” believing it to be the be-all and end-all of a life worth living. The repetition of history only occurs for such persons who imagine an ideal time that has passed and can never be rediscovered. They remain afraid of the present and the future because of the unknowns that hover in it and do all they can to propagate a way of thought that holds no benefit for future generations. They have not learned from the past. They only want to relive their version of it.
And that probably is also what Naomi Klein is attempting to reflect upon in her book. The branding of our lives and the “logo-isation” of it is what is being questioned. The global village has shrunk to become a single market where the cross-fertilisation of cultures has no place and everything we say, do and think is influenced directly and indirectly by aggressively marketed brands. In so doing the brands have become us and as consumers we no longer influence the brands.
I strongly recommend the following two books as additional reading for an insight into the changes since Woodstock 1969 was a happening that influenced other peoples who have Western culture thrust upon them and absorb it willingly.
§ Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Noam Chomsky, 1991-2002. First Indian edition from Etch, an imprint of Natraj Publishers, Dehra Dun.
§ Mediated: How the Media Shape Your World, Thomas De Zengotita, 2005. Bloomsbury Publishing, London.
While I will not tell you what the book is all about, the title and those quoted blurbs should give you a fair indication. I recommend you go across to your favourite bookseller and get yourself a copy. You will not regret it even if you consider yourself an extreme corporate guerrilla. What I will do is quote a sentence from the book, one of so many sentences which made a forceful impression on me.
“What struck me most was that the debate revolved entirely around the sanctity of the past, with no recognition of present-tense cultural challenges.” - Naomi Klein’s comment on the controversy surrounding Woodstock ’94, the 25th anniversary festival of the original Woodstock of 1969.
I was 12 years old when Woodstock happened a couple of continents and oceans away from India. I got to see the movie (in a censored version) about five years later. (Today I own a DVD copy of the full version known as “The Director’s Cut”). But I also know that the ‘69 Woodstock affected me quite a bit and influenced subsequent changes in my life. I recognise some of the changes and others of my peer group have their own, making it a sort of ‘psycho-communal’ sharing of a second-hand experience.
India was undergoing changes and adjustments of her own, and being the urban, educated elite that we were because of our advantageous circumstances, we could not not be affected by what was taking place in the USA. For many of us Woodstock made an immediate impact and we alienated ourselves from our own culture. For some, we learned lessons for the future which have proved right and wrong and this may have given us direction. Still others, reacted negatively to it and called it a hippie plot to dominate the world. A contradiction in terms if there ever was one!
Whatever Woodstock may have meant then, it has been for many of us a catalyst in our lives. The hippieness of that Love and Peace thing made me even more conscious and aware of my own country, its myriad peoples and culture, and the fact that the hippies were coming to my country to be enlightened, while I saw mine in their country! My becoming aware of just that one fact has influenced my life to a great extent. It has prompted me to chose my current lifestyle, my political and ideological leanings, and the sort of work that most satisfies me, an antithesis of all that young people are presently being taught at business schools in India.
But we cannot forget those who continue and choose to live in “the sanctity of the past” believing it to be the be-all and end-all of a life worth living. The repetition of history only occurs for such persons who imagine an ideal time that has passed and can never be rediscovered. They remain afraid of the present and the future because of the unknowns that hover in it and do all they can to propagate a way of thought that holds no benefit for future generations. They have not learned from the past. They only want to relive their version of it.
And that probably is also what Naomi Klein is attempting to reflect upon in her book. The branding of our lives and the “logo-isation” of it is what is being questioned. The global village has shrunk to become a single market where the cross-fertilisation of cultures has no place and everything we say, do and think is influenced directly and indirectly by aggressively marketed brands. In so doing the brands have become us and as consumers we no longer influence the brands.
I strongly recommend the following two books as additional reading for an insight into the changes since Woodstock 1969 was a happening that influenced other peoples who have Western culture thrust upon them and absorb it willingly.
§ Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Noam Chomsky, 1991-2002. First Indian edition from Etch, an imprint of Natraj Publishers, Dehra Dun.
§ Mediated: How the Media Shape Your World, Thomas De Zengotita, 2005. Bloomsbury Publishing, London.
THINGS
This was written on the first day of this year. Yep, that's how long its been since I've posted something! So enjoy... and I hope you will do some serious thinking too.
_______ ??? _______
On New Year’s Day a TV channel is showing a re-run of that fat, ugly American’s documentary film that pays sneaky homage to outrageousness. A date in history, in its reversed US form, whose numerals share similarities with temperature measured in Fahrenheit is offered to us as a burning topic for a new year that is yet to recover from a tsunami and American colonialism in Iraq. I’m sure we can look forward to the fat man’s take on that as well.
Things are everywhere. They tempt as objects of desire; as must-haves; as odes to disposable incomes; as the fruits of a surging economy. Things are wanton in the flaunting of their beauty, their cutting-edge technology, their colours, styles and patterns. Things project the exuberance of youth; add fuel to an already overwhelming desire among the older-aged to revert to a younger time that seemed to have slipped by unnoticed, unexplored.
Things have human form too. Things that grab single, lonely people to dream of future companionship and perhaps just physical comfort currently deprived of. Beautiful young things dressed to please with their sculpted bodies, armoured in a sheen of glamour, in their minor celebrity status, wanting to be more revered occasionally than the front-page mentions.
There are things that a rare but growing section of the urban, urbane population also wants. The things that allow one to devote to a common cause; to commit to a social concern; to return to one’s roots; to nature; to life perceived as simple because it entails taking up residence in villages and farms, as compared to life in an urban setting. Things desired to help escape from other contrary things.
Things are everywhere. We wallow in their desirability; the secret promises they hold, their perceived assurances. And we create these things. Often such things beget other things, so with one thing obtained it needs to be complemented with another, requiring the support of a third, the balancing out of it with a fourth, until the breeding of want is insatiable, and prurient desire overtakes all our senses.
We want a happy new year, a prosperous new year. A new year better than the one before, better than the all that have passed. We want a new year that will give us health, wealth, love, joy, music, success. We want all we can get. Desire and its consequent fulfilment of want is of prime concern.
Perhaps, one day, a new year will come without our wanting it, or anything that is contained in it.
And that day we may also acknowledge in all honesty, the one thing we do not want, the one thing we all most want to avoid, delay, and deter; yet the one thing completely inevitable: death – is the one thing we can never do without.
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