'more believable stories'

Mohammed Hanif in Dawn:

Trying to get my own Cairo update, I watched with concern as a barber shaved his customer while both watched Al Jazeera. A tour guide taking an American couple on Jesus Christ`s last walk on Via Dolorosa abandoned them for a bit and went into a shop to find out if Mubarak had left the country or not.

In Ramallah, the working capital of the very dysfunctional Palestinian Authority, I saw similar scenes. Cafe Lavie, one of the swish joints in town, was hosting a Spanish night. As the young kids danced the night away and middle-aged businessmen ogled them, they had one thing in common: they all insisted that Al Jazeera stay on so that they could watch the cool Cairo protesters flashing their `V` signs.

In Palestine Coffee Shop, an establishment so old and so set in its ways that it serves only coffee and nothing else, a place where old Arab men start playing cards at eight in the morning and are found taking naps before midday, customers wanted Al Jazeera on full volume.

Nobody becomes an expert on anything, let alone a political movement, by hanging out in mosques and coffee shops. I asked university students in Berziet and Nablus about why Palestinians were so interested in what was going on in Cairo. Their favourite word about the Cairo situation was `exhilarating`. They were all interested in what would happen next. They had all stayed up late to watch Mubarak speak, who, like all aging dictators, had indulged in a bit of self-pity.

Could something like this happen here, in Palestine? It was the obvious tourist question. But they were generous, as they had been asking the same question of each other.

The Metaphysical Blanket of Poppies

Either I must blog the sections of things I read online, in order to be able to retrieve things when I want, or I must return to copying out things in my notebook. What I read had to do with this question that everybody erupts with once in a while, which is: does poetry matter? For the life of me, I can't summarise what the writer said in response (which demonstrates that the 'how' is as important as the 'what').

I've been following what's happening in Egypt, hard on the heels of Tunisia, and here are a bunch of links related to poetry in the midst of the uprisings.

1. Amardeep Singh on the role of poetry in Tunisia and Egypt

"To the Tyrants of the World" was recited on the streets during the protests in Tunisia, and it is now being recited in Cairo and Alexandria by the millions who have taken to the streets to demand democratic reforms and the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. One line whose meaning comes across with unmistakable force in even this rather basic translation comes near the end: "Who grows thorns will reap wounds." [Would it be even stronger as "He who grows thorns will reap wounds"?]


2. [Via Amardeep] Elliott Colla's The Poetry of Revolt

The poetry of this revolt is not reducible to a text that can be read and translated in words, for it is also an act in and of itself. That is, the couplet-slogans being sung and chanted by protesters do more than reiterate complaints and aspirations that have been communicated in other media. This poetry has the power to express messages that could not be articulated in other forms, as well as to sharpen demands with ever keener edges.

Consider the most prominent slogan being chanted today by thousands of people in Tahrir Square: “Ish-sha‘b/yu-rîd/is-qât/in-ni-zâm.” Rendered into English, it might read, “The People want the regime to fall”—but that would not begin to translate the power this simple and complex couplet-slogan has in its context. There are real poetic reasons why this has emerged as a central slogan. For instance, unlike the more ironic—humorous or bitter—slogans, this one is sincere and states it all perfectly clearly. Likewise, the register of this couplet straddles colloquial Egyptian and standard media Arabic—and it is thus readily understandable to the massive Arab audiences who are watching and listening. And finally, like all the other couplet-slogans being shouted, this has a regular metrical and stress pattern (in this case: short-LONG, short-LONG, short-LONG, short-SHORT-LONG). While unlike most others, this particular couplet is not rhymed, it can be sung and shouted by thousands of people in a unified, clear cadence—and that seems to be a key factor in why it works so well.

The prosody of the revolt suggests that there is more at stake in these couplet-slogans than the creation and distillation of a purely semantic meaning. For one thing, the act of singing and shouting with large groups of fellow citizens has created a certain and palpable sense of community that had not existed before. And the knowledge that one belongs to a movement bound by a positive collective ethos is powerful in its own right—especially in the face of a regime that has always sought to morally denigrate all political opposition. Likewise, the act of singing invective that satirizes feared public figures has an immediate impact that cannot be cannot be explained in terms of language, for learning to laugh at one’s oppressor is a key part of unlearning fear. Indeed, witnesses to the revolt have consistently commented that in the early hours of the revolt—when invective was most ascendant—protesters began to lose their fear.

3. Martin Espada, The Meaning of the Shovel (which I found while googling this translation* of that portion of Neruda's poem generally known as 'I Explain A Few Things', from the longer 'Spain In Our Hearts)

In the documentary film about the Lincoln Brigade called “The Good Fight,” Abe Osheroff, with characteristic honesty, wonders aloud if the fight can ever be won.  “We fought the Good Fight,” he says. “And we lost.”

I have also heard him say that we do not fight the Good Fight because we know the fight will be won. We fight the Good Fight because it is the right thing to do, because our lives will be immeasurably richer for it.

The same holds true for the poetry of the Good Fight. We write these poems because we must, regardless of consequences. We are driven to create a record of human suffering—and resistance to suffering--without the luxury of measuring our impact on the world, which cannot be weighed, measured or otherwise quantified. We do not write such poems because we necessarily believe that our side will win, and that conditions will change; we write them because there is an ethical compulsion to do so.  Whitman, again, said it: “I am the man, I suffered, I was there.”

(Hmm. Echoes of Anouilh there, no?)

4. From 'The Republic of Poetry' Martin Estrada

The Republic of Poetry

                   For Chile

 

In the republic of poetry,

a train full of poets

rolls south in the rain

as plum trees rock

and horses kick the air,

and village bands

parade down the aisle

with trumpets, with bowler hats,

followed by the president

of the republic,

shaking every hand.

 

In the republic of poetry,

monks print verses about the night

on boxes of monastery chocolate,

kitchens  in restaurants

use odes for recipes

from eel to artichoke,

and poets eat for free.

 

In the republic of poetry,

poets read to the baboons

at the zoo, and all the primates,

poets and baboons alike, scream for joy.

 

In the republic of poetry,

poets rent a helicopter

to bombard the national palace

with poems on bookmarks,

and everyone in the courtyard

rushes to grab a poem

fluttering from the sky,

blinded by weeping.

 

In the republic of poetry,

the guard at the airport

will not allow you to leave the country

until you declaim a poem for her

and she says Ah! Beautiful.

 

5.* 'I Explain A Few Things' Pablo Neruda

You will ask: And where are the lilacs?

And the metaphysical blanket of poppies?

And the rain that often struck

your words, filling them

with holes and birds? 

I am going to tell you all that is happening to me.

 

I lived in a quarter

of Madrid, with bells,

with clocks, with trees.

 

From there you could see

the lean face of Spain

like an ocean of leather.

 

                             My house was called

the house of flowers, because it was bursting

everywhere with geraniums: it was

a fine house

with dogs and children.

                             Raúl, do you remember?

Do you remember, Rafael?

                             Federico, do you remember

under the ground,

do you remember my house with balconies where

June light smothered the flowers in your mouth?

                             Brother, brother!

 

Everything

was great shouting, salty goods,

heaps of throbbing bread,

markets of my Argüelles quarter with its statue

like a pale inkwell among the haddock:

the olive oil reached the ladles,

a deep throbbing

of feet and hands filled the streets,

meters, liters, sharp

essence of life,

                   fish piled up,

pattern of roofs with cold sun where

the weathervane grows weary,

frenzied fine ivory of potatoes,

tomatoes, more tomatoes, all the way to the sea.

 

And one morning it was all burning,

and one morning the fires

came out of the earth

devouring people,

and from then on fire,

gunpowder from then on,

and from then on blood.

 

Bandits with airplanes and with Moors,

bandits with rings and duchesses,

bandits with black-robed friars blessing

came through the air to kill children,

and through the streets the blood of children

ran simply, like children’s blood.

 

Jackals that the jackal would spurn,

stones that the dry thistle would bite spitting,

vipers that vipers would abominate!

 

Facing you I have seen the blood

of Spain rise up

to drown you in a single wave

of pride and knives!

 

Treacherous

generals:

look at my dead house,

look at Spain broken;

but from each dead house comes burning metal

instead of flowers,

but from each hollow of Spain

Spain comes forth,

but from each dead child comes a gun with eyes,

but from each crime are born bullets

that will one day seek out in you

the site of the heart.

 

You will ask: why does your poetry

not speak to us of sleep, of the leaves,

of the great volcanoes of your native land?

 

Come and see the blood in the streets,

come and see

the blood in the streets,

come and see the blood

in the streets!

 

[Audio]

 

Short Thoughts on Telangana

I accompanied my friend to four interviews he conducted with people to talk about Telangana. (I see no reason to name them.)

The last person we spoke to talked about touring all the districts and speaking with all kinds of people. I asked whether landlords, tenant-farmers, labourers and the landless in Telangana were united in their demand for a separate state and whether there really was no conflict of interest apparent to them. I was told in reply, that the people said, ‘Just let’s get these Andhra landlords out of here and we’ll take care of the Telangana ones afterwards.’

I don’t even know where to begin: is this a unified perspective? How many people would one need to speak to before a different opinion emerged? And if they did, would it be reported faithfully? Is there a qualitative difference between exploitation by Andhra landlords and Telangana landlords? (Our exploiters are better than yours.) Were people really willing to gloss over internal differences in the belief that a new state would somehow successfully address all these questions later?


**

One question that no one in favour of statehood for Telangana has managed to answer is, if it does happen, then what? By what methods will injustices be redressed, and will they only become possible after statehood? And specifically, on whose behalf are people speaking and why do they all appear to be long-time buddies if they really speak for many, many different kinds of views and people? (Which is to say, for a movement that claims to be diverse, why does its vocal component seem so uniform?)


I am suspicious of this tendency to say, ‘let’s get statehood first, and then let’s deal with other things later.’ What happens when that later comes? Whose opinions do you suppose will really be taken on board?

**

I am also suspicious of anything that causes people to feel fervour. All this fighting for a cause, all this shivery sense of being caught up in making history.

One of the people we spoke to said, protest is performance.

Apropos of which, one person reacting to my column said I had trivialised the whole issue, talking about the Complaints Choir. I don’t see that at all.

On the same day that my column on Telangana appeared, The Hindu carried a news report of a three hour long play that was in the form of a court hearing, where Telangana was filing for divorce from Andhra. At the end of the play, Telangana is granted divorce it seeks.

I don’t see why a complaints choir can’t be as political a piece of art as that play. It might not be as palatable to the pro-Telangana section, but I’ve been told there aren’t nearly enough voices being heard (in journals and opinion-making circles, I mean) on keeping status quo.

(Not that a complaints choir would automatically be anti-Telangana; in fact I’m a little surprised that it was read that way.)

**

I grew up in Hyderabad. If anything, I should consider myself a Telangani, because if I belong anywhere, it is here. I have felt the change in the composition of the city, mourned the loss of its Deccani speech more commonly heard in my childhood than it is now; the more leisurely pace of life; what I think nostalgically of as its cosmopolitanism.

I am also aware that such a nostalgia-driven view amounts to less than nothing as a political argument for statehood. Cultural identity is a problematic thing. In the last few weeks, I have wondered whether Telangana, with its cultural uniqueness argument, is most like Mumbai or Tibet: does it want to expel those it sees as not belonging to it, so that its unique identity (whatever that is) is preserved; or is it like Tibet, being flooded with outsiders and being homogenised in an demonstration of cultural hegemony?

It’s a flawed comparison, I see that. But I’m just trying to use it as a frame within which to try and articulate this bugbear of cultural identity. I think I’ll stick with aphorisms.

**

One really disturbing development is the presence of police and militia in the city. Most of it is around the Osmania University, but even on the roads, outside the houses of ministers and near the offices of political parties, I can't remember when there were so many men with guns and so much barbed wire.

I find the argument made by the state, that their presence is necessary on campus because the Maoists have 'infiltrated' the student body, specious and self-serving.

What I find even more disturbing is that civil society doesn't seem to care about what happens on campus or on the roads, so long as it doesn't disturb their daily lives.

**
This is not all but this is as much as I’m going to say on the subject.

Beginning with the protest and ending with the loo

I returned from the protest late last night. In Hyderabad, it was a bit of a damp squib, because the more prominent members of the art and intellectual community had registered their protest a day earlier. There was no press, no large gathering, no slogan shouting; no one, in fact, to witness or report that this was one more city that had ranged itself firmly on the side of Chandra Mohan.

But for the dozen or so of us who did turn up, there was enough to discuss. We agreed that 14th May was not the ‘real’ protest; that something more had to happen to make our voices heard.

I found that the meeting had set off several thoughts in my mind, which I’m sharing here. For a start, one of the people there yesterday was a teacher, and an external examiner at the offending exhibition. She was in a better position to tell us what had happened there. And though it was clear that the attack was cynical and planned (how on earth were the cops so readily available? Don’t they know they’re supposed to arrive only once everything has been done with? They upheld this tradition at Khairlanji, at every riot in the last few decades. Now they’re ready and waiting?) – and though it was clear the attack was planned, she felt that the real reason Chandra Mohan should have been let off was because he was a student, only learning, not in a position to take responsibility for what he had done, because he did not mean to offend.

I emphatically disagree. I think that if his painting – whatever it was (I’ve read descriptions of a cross with a commode under the painting) offended, the problem is with the person who got offended and not with him. While it’s true that it was an internal assessment and that this Jain person had no business there, I think that even had this been a public exhibition, and the painting was deemed by some viewer to be offensive, it is her job to say why it was offensive and to engage with the whole issue of offence instead of putting the whole thing under the rubric of ‘religious sentiment’. I mean, I could say that depicting Krishna in a bilious shade of blue offends my sensibilities because I dislike blue skin. I could pass off prejudice as offence. But would anyone support me?

While watching the news last night, I saw one woman saying that ‘religious sensibilities cannot be offended’. I wondered if she had seen the painting at all, or could even describe it by hearsay. (Of course she couldn’t).

Now, for all the people whose sentiments are offended, I would suggest that the prurience of their imagination in which they construct the offending work – in the absence of having actually seen it – far exceeds the alleged offensiveness of any work actually produced or viewed. Let’s assume that there’s a painting of a cross with a commode. Or a goddess being violated by a linga. If these paintings offend, it is not because they are offensive in themselves – Indians routinely worship the linga, which is supposed to be joined to the antaryoni. We get an inside view, so to speak). If they offend, it is because it requires the viewer to accommodate an idea that is so revolutionary that it cannot be easily accepted: the sex in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the language of Ulysses; the idea that the son of God would want to imagine living an ordinary life, in The Last Temptation of Christ; issues of caste in Samskara…the list is endless.

When we were discussing what we ought to do to show our support for Chandra Mohan at the meeting last evening, I suggested that one of the long-term things we ought to do was have discussions around what it means to offend: what offends and how? Show films that have been banned; read from books, plays, songs that sent ripples of indignation through entire populations. In fact, offend again and again, as often as possible and wherever you can. Create a hydra-headed monster.

Show re-runs of saas-bahu serials, I said to myself. What could be more offensive to good taste than the regressive attitudes depicted in these serials, where women are chattels and incubators, and the men are promiscuous and hypocritical. Children watch these serials with their parents. Is no one worried?

In Luis Buñuel’s The Phantom of Liberty, people sit at a table strewn with magazines and chat while they crap, but go to the loo to eat in extreme, silent privacy. This is shocking and, no doubt to Mr. Jain will be extremely offensive. But the power of a simple reversal such as Buñuel frequently employed, lay precisely in questioning the sanctity that we assign to some acts and the profanity we assign to others.

In the extremely Brahminical villages that my grandparents used to live in some decades ago, the houses ran the length of a street; rooms led to other rooms and there were many unexplored and exciting nooks. But if you wanted to go to the loo, you had to hike right to the other end of the house, where you would find one tiny, dingy (and smelly) room lit at night with a zero watt bulb, usually red in colour. There, you did you business and did not refer to it under any circumstances. Someone in the infrared areas of our varna spectrum came and shovelled the products of your body away and you were peaceful the knowledge of your purity. If there was a way to hang up your soul on the way to the loo, in one of those convenient rooms along the way, so that it was completely uncontaminated by contact with the body that insisted on producing filth, it had not yet been invented.

For that generation, our bathroom in Hyderabad was shocking enough. Someone actually takes pleasure in this unspeakable room? But – but – that means that bathing, sitting on the pot and reading a magazine…all of these things are ok, even (swoon) great?

Tied up intimately with the idea of offence is the idea of taboo. If something is forbidden, then bringing that out into the open causes offence. Of late, in our country, religion is the ultimate taboo. Which is why, how Rakhi Sawant decorates her bathroom becomes a matter of public debate. No one considers the offence they caused to Rakhi Sawant by making public her very private space and what she chooses to do with or in it.

But those who take offence easily would die before they admit that these events give them nourishment. What would happen in a world where nothing and nobody slapped their delicate sensibilities awake? I suspect it gives them a sense of involvement that is as false as it is exciting. What we need to do is dull those sensibilities and provide them with an excess of offending material so that ennui is inevitable.