Etches of Light, Ink and Lead

Moving to Wordpress

2011-06-24T23:38:00.000-04:00

Recently Blogger has been giving me a lot of trouble. The email feed is not working properly and it's connection to Facebook is very unreliable. Under these circumstances, I am moving to Wordpress. The new blog will be a continuation of the old blog. While this blog will remain open for reading, there will be no more posts made here.

The address of the new blog is: http://thenothingist.wordpress.com/

Friend, if you would like to receive emails from the new blog, please sign up there because I couldn't find any email-feed option in Wordpress. The sign-up bar is on the right-hand side of the page. I hope this doesn't cause too much inconvenience.

Wishes.

Satanic Piety

2011-06-22T09:59:00.000-04:00

Six
Satanic Piety

Mrs. Rami was washing a sauce-stained shirt of Zaved. An old song seeped out from the kitchen. Its source being the twenty year old cassette player that was a token of love from Mr. Rami. Like the weirdly-bearded, paranormal Professor Humbledoor, Mrs. Rami preserved her memories elsewhere other than her head to keep her aged mind functioning properly, and sometimes, she spent her idle time scrutinizing those memories. Her kitchen utensils, her everyday clothes, her primary-secondary-complimentary-coloured potteries, her jewels were, in paranormal term, her ‘pensieves'. She used to relive those good-old days just by looking at the articles that stored the memory.

For Mrs. Rami, past had been merry and future held merrier prospects but present always turned out to be unexpected and unfortunate. Although it was the same time flowing from past to future going through present, it was perceived in three different appearances in three distinctive stages of its development.

Who should be responsible for it? Was it time or she? Mrs. Rami could never come to a conclusion. If future, in falsifiable word destiny, had everything written, then how can she be held responsible? But since it is said that one's doings influence one's destiny how can destiny be blamed alone? These are matters of discussion for scholars and philosophers who am I to think about all that - Mrs. Rami used to console her curious self. Her wrapping up of such issues was: it is not our job to question what has been given to us; we should go ahead and do what we do. Ironically, she not only did what was given to her but also fretted and fussed over it.

‘An eye for an eye,' said Amurabi, the sovereign of Babypotamia, while dictating his code of law to a six-foot scribe; but is one eye absolutely equal to another? Maybe just like our deoxyribonucleic acid, our eyes are unique. Pray, don't misunderstand Us, We are not talking about the medically bisected ‘eye'; We are discussing the eye, our sense of perception. Let me call this ‘the eye theory' and allow Me to blame it for all the wrongs and rights done today; all the wars and peace achieved; the hatred felt and love made; the anger showed and sympathy given; literally for everything that happens.

Harmony would be the only hymn honouring our harps, if all our eyes had been equal. But the idea that everybody's eyes can be equal sounds insane. The only shortcut left to the world is to destroy the eyes of everybody, to make everybody equally eyeless. In darkness we may find equality; in ignorance we may find bliss.

So, ehm, where were We? Ah, yes, Mrs. Rami and her ‘pensieves'.

Once on the eve of Exmass, the annually celebrated birthday of a healer, Mrs. Rami was gazing at a flower vase in her kitchen while the cake burned in the oven. The fire kept growing its tentacles and obscuring the kitchen with grey smoke but Mrs. Rami's stare was fixed on that reservoir of painless memories. The vase had been there on her wedding day; it had been present on the day her daughter was born; it had been there when her daughter married and it had been there when her daughter died - BOOM!!! The oven exploded and the plates on top of it were flung away. The unattended, furious fire leapt higher, touching the ceiling. Had Zaved been a little late in arriving, his Grandma would have been a roasted turkey.

Running into the kitchen with a fire extinguisher, Zaved fought the flames. Neighbours came to help. The unconscious Mrs. Rami was rescued.

Surprisingly and unknowingly, a very important thing was done through the accident. When Mrs. Rami awoke, she cheered to realize that the vase now held another new memory - the memory of her being rescued by her grandson from a kitchen-fire.

Zaved grew worried of such accidents occurring again. And so he fixed fire alarms, water sprinklers and many other safety devices in the house. He had to work extra hours for months to pay for those but he loved Mrs. Rami more dearly than he disliked car-washing or garden-cleaning or shop-keeping.

The water flowed from the tap and the old woman kept rubbing the shirt with a dirt scratcher. Zaved came in. He had been to Sakuntala and the disappointing thoughts centering his Grandma were still in his mind. "Some rice is in the kitchen, there's vegetable and chicken in the fridge," Mrs. Rami told her grandson.

She was waiting for his usual hug. But Zaved answered from his room, "Okay."

"Has anything particular happened today?" she asked aloud.

Receiving no answer, she dipped the shirt in the bucket of water and gave it a final rub. She then stood up and took along with her the wet clothes ready to move on to the next level of the laundry process. On her way to the verandah she peeped into Zaved's room and saw him immersed in a book. She went into the verandah and started hanging the clothes one by one on the wire Zaved had fixed her there. "Aren't you hungry Zaved?" she asked.

There was no answer. It felt slightly unusual to Mrs. Rami that her grandson was not answering her. She finished putting up the clothes on the wire. The sun was at its height ready to start baking the linens. Mrs. Rami entered Zaved's room. "What has happened?" she asked again.

Zaved replied, "Nothing, this is too good a book."

Mrs. Rami concluded this was another of those beguiling books which would keep Zaved glued for a few days, away from her. As she turned to go, Zaved asked, "Why did you keep me away from my father?"

This was as unexpected as to Mrs. Rami present always was. She looked at Zaved, tongue-tied with no answer. Zaved looked at her furrowed face and she looked down at the floor, her head bowing down with the weight of the question. "Grandma if it bothers you, then I don't want it answered. It's okay. Let me go and get my food. What vegetable did you cook?" he asked, changing the topic.

Zaved stood up and hugged his grandma. Walking into the dining room, he first drank a glass of water and moved towards the refrigerator. "Who put that in your head?" came Mrs. Rami's question.

"O, no. nobody..."

"Don't lie to me. It must have been your father. I always knew he would start instigating you against me from the day you would meet him. I always knew he was full of wicked intentions. I always knew -"

"Grandma, enough! He DIDN'T say it, okay? Don't blame him. Blame me. I felt it - just felt it," Zaved said.

"O, so he even taught you what to say when I ask you..."

"Grandma, I have said it already - he DIDN'T tell me anything. Don't stretch the matter. If you don't want to say it - fine. Keep it that way. I'll never talk about it again."

"But he will keep pestering you to ask me, won't he?"

Zaved was annoyed and took long steps towards the garden. He aimed to walk out without another word, fearing an argument might make his grandma ill though something in Zaved now told him that there definitely was something wrong with his Grandma.

"Where are you going? To him? To you father?"

Zaved didn't answer. "Ask your good father to tell you about his first marriage and his first child. Ask him to narrate his life with your mother," she spoke louder and there was anger in those words.

Zaved stopped in his tracks. Another marriage? A child? Was she making it up? I need to go and meet Shakuntala first - he thought and stormed out of the house, not wishing to hear anything more from his Grandma.

***

Monsoon, the season of dry dreams and wet reality, spread its wings like an ambitious eagle over the mutinous Chapa, aiming to soothe the bleeding wounds with celestial rain, planning to sympathize with the crucified parrot by shedding tear drops from heaven. A poet looked up at the unkempt spongy clouds through his window. To the butcher sitting by the road these clouds appeared like twisted bacons. The bus driver saw the clouds and cursed them. The young girl, in whom hormones bubbled, opened the window and felt the cold wind touch her undeveloped breast. The woman, whose husband was outside, spread her prayer rug and sat down to pray for her husband's safety: Hallah, may Angelfarishtas guard him and reach him home; the mother-in-law in the other room remained unconscious of what was happening - it didn't matter; even if the building submerged, she wouldn't leave the room because this is where she had lived all her life and this is where she would prefer to die whether by drowning or by burning. Umbrellas opened among the passersby on the road. Housewives appeared on top of the roofs. They were taking the hung-out clothes back inside the house - the sun had betrayed them; it was going to rain but the clothes didn't need another bath. Their daughters helped them and their sons teased them - snatching a saree and putting it on the wire again or tickling their sisters. The rickshaw-wallahs hailed the sudden uproar of clouds. If it rained they would earn a few more pennies than on regular days. The poet came away from the window and sat down to write:

I stand in a city
Shedding heavy rain drops
I stand in a town
Sheltering dewy tear drops
To convey its agony and
The infinite injustice done
Raindrops are teardrops
Teardrops its rain

A cawing crow passed by the window of the poet. A tear drop fell from heaven into the mucky alley. The child, on whose eyelid it fell, was startled and then raised his hand for more and uttered unfathomable baby words - tai ang mang. And it rained.

Qalboishakhi, the queen of storms in her wrath, sped through Chapa. She competed with the hurrying buses and the rocketing cars. She rummaged stations and made impossible for anybody to reach their destinations. The Chappan buildings adamantly stood as obstacles in her way. They had connived to beat her in the race. Qalboishakhi pushed through gaps and avoided hurdles, she struggled to win over man-made wonders. She shook trees and broke branches. She pushed some billboards out of her way. She tore some electric wires and caused a fire. She turned a man's umbrella inside out. She struggled to win but there were so many boulders on her path that she couldn't gather enough momentum to overthrow each. She lost it. She was beaten by structures and mechanics.

Thousands of miles away Himaloy, the mountainous elder brother, stood waiting for his hasty sister to arrive. But nobody came. Qalboishakhi had died during the journey. Chapa couldn't offer her much place to flow through. Chapa had strangled her. Chapa had choked her to death. Qalboishakhi was buried in the streets of Chapa under the shrill din of whistles, the hubbub of the markets, the clamour of the machines and the hullaballoo of the offspring.

But... yes... for one last time, gathering her courage and might Qalboishakhi rose from her grave.

She pushed a car and threw a rickshaw away. She spiraled into the sky forming a vortex of clouds. The dark clouds blanketing Chapa started gathering around Qalboishakhi. The furious Qalboishakhi in her attempt for revenge used all her strength to unify the clouds and a tunnel, from hell to Chapa, was formed. She then fell to the street, sinking into death waiting to be resurrected with better powers. The panicky clouds holding tight onto each other looked surprised. The onlookers below looked at them amazed. With the great white sky was in the backdrop, the black clouds had formed an immeasurable pipe. People were clicking pictures. A moment's pause, then, in a swift show and in a swishy style through the winding channel zoomed out... Shoytan.

The mass terrified by his gait and horrified by his stature ran helter-skelter. Bang - he split open a car, Swush - he flung a bike, Wham - he punched a building. The woman in the car broke her neck and the man on the bike lost his head. The building came crumbling down, tumbling over a stream of frightened people. Shoytan turned into a moth and then into a dragonfly. Not satisfied with the size he transformed himself into a fly and flew away from the spot.

The guilty clouds fled too and the sun appeared grim. The news channels reported that Qalboishakhi had caused this havoc. A few said they saw a hideous man punching and banging cars and buildings. But those witnesses weren't taken seriously. It was suggested that they visit the paramedic and then the psychologist asap.

Relatives of the dead arrived. Owners of the billboards arrived. Gloom scarred every mind. Prime Minister Gout told the press, "This is just another natural disaster. I am glad it wasn't like Qatrina, the empress of Qalboishakhi which ruined Pampamerica some days ago."

***

The yellow bar-striped fly hovered on a lonely ground. It was away from the commotion. There was nobody around. Slowly, its hands grew, its legs grew, its head bulged out. The fresh weight brought it down to the green grassed floor. It writhed and wriggled until it gained its intended features. It was a man again. It was Shoytan in one of his manifold manifestations.

There was no light in his eyes. The sockets were hollow - preserving darkness. His ear was short and had no lobe. The crooked nose protruded out of the face like a fishing hook. The colour of his lips was pale yellow and he had no tongue. Every word he uttered sounded like words coming out of a deep cave in echoes. His teeth were sharp and pointed. On his hip he carried bottles full of sap from the tree of diabolical knowledge. His hair, like Gireek monsters, was awful - thin, crawly snakes covered his head, dangling down. He took one step, checking if the transformation had worked correctly. Yes, it had worked perfectly. Genius! He started walking in his elegant style. When he walked out of the field, he hadn't realized that he had left a trail behind him. His steps were the dark marks on the grass. Wherever he had stepped he had murdered. After going a few more yards, he abruptly turned and looked for foot prints. But his foot made no mark on the concrete floor. He beamed and then walked back to the field. He saw a boy bending down and checking his dark foot-print - the burnt grass. Shoytan stared at the boy intently and that did the trick.

Suddenly the boy looked up and checked his pockets. Remembering that he was supposed to beat a boy for stealing his toy, he ran. Shoytan with a wave of his hand burnt the whole field. He then opened his zip with a zap and stood there urinating on the blackened grass. In a couple of minutes the field would become infertile and would lose even the capacity of growing grass anymore...

I am darkness. I am hopelessness. I am evil. I am well known because no religion has disowned me - I am Lucysfur for some, Shoytan for some and Rakhos for others. But personally, I prefer Satan because it sounds sophisticated and can convey my sneaky, deceptive attitude through its disyllabic pronunciation.

Names aside, I have been accomplishing impossible missions since the creation of Adom, the foremost clay doll. I mean, come on, it was definitely more than a knight's valour to stand up and say, I was superior to Adom, that I would not bow to what is baser than me, though these challenging missions have churned and wrenched my heart out of my body. And I have become a heartless, empty rib-caged beast who can be easily overlooked.

Since a long time now, I have been carrying out missions that have nothing to do with me and in no way profitable to me. What have these tough missions of showing arrogance and proclaiming superiority given me? Nothing. Nothing except ill-fame, ill-popularity and ill reputation.

Distressed as I am, there is no vent for my pent up emotions. Whom should I visit to ventilate my constrained anger and frustration? And on the other hand who has been actually profited by my misconduct? Who has been actually praised for my misdemeanor? Gawd, yes Gawd. For all the bad that I do, people seek His shelter. I have increased His popularity. Because I am bad, they can draw a line of difference and call Gawd good. As more people flood the temples, mosques and churches, my power diminishes. Nowadays, even my follower curses me as I trick him into following my orders. This never used to happen before. They had a well organized religion some years ago, which worshipped me for my service to Gawd. Aye, I serve Gawd for I am still His creation and He kept me alive. But now the number of my followers decreases each day. Little groups here and there still pray to me. But what can I do? I am a good-power-less, bad-power-full gawd.

No good ever comes out of me. That's just the way I am. My followers pray to me so that I keep them in good health. They follow my constitution so that they can lead a good life. But I end up giving them a bad life, whereas they find serenity of heart and sanity of mind when they pray to Gawd. Maybe this is why my followers are slowly floating away from me. And yet this is a part of my service to Gawd.

Curse my luck! I am just another unlucky creation, destined to destroy what Gawd builds and ironically end up helping him create more. Shame on myself! How have I become the guinea pig of experiments for Gawd? Doesn't it appear to you that I materialize in every religion with the same attributes? Don't you think then, that I am the archenemy of every gawd who is believed to be ruling the universe?

Fools, all of you are fools. I have one master and one enemy and it is the same one. The world has just one Gawd, my one foe, my one ruler, named differently. Stupid mortals!

The difference in the name has been created for me so that I can make use of my venomous tongue to poison your conscience and influence you. Gawd inspires but I, the great Satan, manipulate.

Today, I come as a man, tomorrow I shall be a child and the day after you shall find me nowhere - I am that illusive. I can whisper lies into your ear and you will feel no presence of a mouth. I can show you believable signs of Gawd but you will find no difference. If I had no purpose at all would I grow such powers?

And what am I here for? What does Chapa need me for? They need a little of my cunning to make things better as Qalboishakhi had rightfully told me. Now she is dead, and no one is a witness to her act of summoning me. But who has killed her?

Let's not walk further on the fringes of the mysterious nucleus, Gawd. Let's just say I came to have things done in a different way than what people expect. I am come all the way from the kingdom called Pampamerica in my cloud chariot. I have come in the form of a delegate from Pampamerica.

Destructive Construction

2011-06-21T10:22:00.000-04:00

Five
Destructive Construction

Long, long time ago, in a far, far away kingdom, when women were generously endowed with the grey matter and men lacked it, there were a king and a queen. The king had his self-defined method of imparting justice which was exceptionally unjust in nature, that is, for him the plaintiff and the defendant stood on the same ground. Although it may sound fair and square to anybody now, when the execution of this fair judgment is witnessed, thatbody may have to rethink the issue. So this king, in accord to his belief, reasoned that the plaintiff and the defendant were equally responsible for the case that was being contested. He, therefore, bestowed his justice on both sides which, by virtue of the rotten luck of the plaintiff and the defendant, turned out to be death all the time.

Anybody who visited the king's court for justice received a death sentence the next day via e-mail. And the computer in front would burst, bursting the death sentence holder to pieces. Nothing to be puzzled about; computers and laptops at that point of time meant magic mirrors.

Justice used to be delivered thus - swiftly and safely without the need for an executioner with a black mask. And this use of magic mirrors was one major reason why Merlin, the technological wizard with his Ageold Goofy Policies and Verbosely Gabbing Ability, was a favourite of this unjustly just king.

The subjects of the king were scared of his judgment and trembled like meowing pussy cats even at the soft mention of his majesty's name. Thereafter, not surprisingly, the complaints decreased. The kingdom was becoming complaint-less, problem-less, plaintiff-less. Nobody went to the court begging for justice because the price was death only. The man who was robbed never said a word about it. What would happen if he went to the king? The next day he would become chunks of cold meat. So he rather tried to find a sporty pleasure in being robbed and sometimes the thrill of being punched on the nose or being manhandled at private places, as a perk. After all, a few muggings a month wouldn't take his life. It won't even create an economic burden if he saved up the donations that are to be given to the poor and in its stead gave it to the muggers. Besides, if he just allowed those brutish dacoits to rob him, they wouldn't beat him or kill him, whereas the king was definite to legally murder him.

Despite the reality being such, the pompous king lived a proud life under the delusion that his subjects were leading happy-ever-after lives and that he was the most judicious king in the history of fairytales. The queen, nonetheless, sitting quietly in her garden, worried that her counterpart lacked what she had in abundance; she knew all too well and lamented all too much over the fact that the king lacked the grey matter or the pink stuff or for that matter, whatever name you call it.

Enthused by the responsible royal blood that flowed through her arteries, the queen secretly arranged for an underground court and attended the hearings of multi-hued cases: sexual harassment cases, assassination cases, physical abuse cases, shop-lifting cases, raid cases, embryocide cases, business backstabbing cases, husband-wife cock-fight cases and so on. Seated on the throne of people's hearts, the queen imparted justice based on facts and figures and reason and was hailed as the wisest person alive in the kingdom. Her underground police, whom she named ‘DarkKnights' carried out her judgments; when need arose death sentences were carried out at the dead of the night and convicts were transported out of the country inside wine barrels and exiled for as long as days and nights endure.

The happy-go-lucky king, returning everyday from his empty court room, found his queen busy like a bumble-bee with old and thick books of law, as if she were sucking the juiciest nectar out of those books. The king was hardly attended anymore. When the queen was confronted, she answered, "Honey, I am enlightening myself reading those books."

The suspicious king remained quiet but assigned Merlin to snoop around and uncover the secrets behind the queen's sudden urge for enlightenment. Merlin found out about the hush-hush court by hacking the queen's laptop one night. He went through all the case files and produced HandmadePaper printouts of them in the court the next day. With his suspicion confirmed, the king was utterly upset. How could his love carry out this clandestine judgment without his approval? How dare she betray his trust?

Not long after, the court physician, during a daily-diagnosis of the king, found out that struck by anxiety, the king's risk of a heart attack was now higher than ever. Immediately, the king was prescribed to go for a vacation. The prescription written on a papyrus-parchment was received with kind consideration and the patient kingly travelled to Undaman, an island with some stereotypically romantic coconut trees but without any cartoony chirpy crabs.

The depressed king relaxed and reflected on what had happened. Amidst the sitar, ektara and apish hips-hops dancers, he immersed in thoughts of his queen. The king loved his queen. He couldn't imagine his chestnut bed without her wild stare. He couldn't imagine his candlelit bedroom without her velvet hair. But then again, he needed to impart justice. He needed to punish the queen for betraying him.

How can I punish her? - the king underwent schizophrenia - Am I not responsible as well? Don't the plaintiff and the defendant stand on the same ground? Don't I deserve to be punished too? On the verge of a philosophicallyemotional meltdown, the king decided that those thick grim-covered books were responsible for the queen's treachery. Enlightened women, he hypothesized, were springs of disappointment.

So on returning from Undaman the king wiped out the queen's library with Merlin's help and warned the weeping queen never to try fooling him again. Merlin brought the king disastrous news the following day. Merlin had hacked into some foreign magic mirrors with his newly learnt skill and had discovered that the neighbouring nations were following those impertinent books in their courts to give out justice as well. The king was infuriated. He couldn't believe his eyes as he read through the HandmadePaper printouts. I am going to kill them all - erupted a loud vow.

War after war was raised against nations that had done the king no wrong. Missiles after missiles were launched against people whom the king didn't know. The king had become a battle machine, sparked by the books of law to create lawlessness. It went on. There was nothing that could stand in his way. At such a dire time, the peace-loving queen developed an idea - indeed a very astute one.

She invited the king to her palace, the magnificent Batashmahal with thousands of windows allowing the trespassing of the winds of the unhygienic holy river Gayanges. His war-lusty majesty couldn't deny the queen's ardent invitation for love that had become so strange to him in those faraway lands where he just fought and fought, toiled and boiled in the heat of blood and bodies.

The king came one evening with his ruby encrusted sword and decorated horse. Desire for war exalted in his eyes and ravaged were his arms. The queen kissed him and the soft touch of those fleshy petals seemed to calm the beast within. The king felt he was a warrior and this was his gift.

Drinks from highlands, Chappan dishes fluttered in the room, in the hands of several colourfully-robbed slaves. Dosas, Samosas, Pakoras, ChickenTanduri, Beefhari-kari, palang-paneer, pulao, farcee-biryani, mutton-paneer, mator-paneer, delphi ka laddu, sandesh, payesh, sehwai, paratha, chapatti, dahi, anda-bhaji, gazar ka halwa, puri, jalaybi, cham-cham, amitti, chicken roast, kalia, kofta, rezala, korma, kebab, chughlai, dopayaza, fish fry, hilsha, rui, jorda, firni, kheer, malaikari, mussallam, pitha... it was an exhaustive menu.

The queen sat opposite the king, seeing him eat hungrily. After the dessert had been served, there came a long train of acrobats who entertained the king with their perilous fireworks and meandering bellies. As the king puffed at hookah, they finished their boogie-woogie. The king stood up and was about to leave. But the queen detained him saying, "Something big is in store for you, sweetheart."

As the queen's three successive claps rang through the hall, at last, the purpose of the invitation - the real gift came, which was to change the tides of time; this very gift was the queen's thought-out clever plan. The red muslin, covering it, was pulled away and thirty-two pieces of crystal pawns, kings, queens, bishops, knights and castles standing on a black and white checkered board, appeared in front of the king. "What are these trifling toys for?" the king asked in surprise.

"These are not as silly as other toys are. They abide by certain laws," the queen answered.

The mention of law made the king angry. "Are you playing pranks with me again? Is there another secret court being held somewhere?" he asked.

"Nay, my king, I haven't been to any court - neither yours nor mine. Where can I find solutions when my books have been burnt?"

"Aye, it was burnt for good reason. Now explain me, what is this play thing?" the king said, throwing a breath of relief.

"These, your majesty, are soldiers, queens, kings, knights, bishops and castles," she answered.

"Is it a game?" the king questioned.

"Yes, yes it is a game."

"Explain me how you play this," the king ordered and sat down in front of the board.

The regal features had snatched his attention and he was in love with the beauty of those pieces curved by the best craftsman in the kingdom. The diverse stones inside the crystal pieces emitted a magical aura, as if precious stones had been trapped in ice.

The queen started, "The board, your honour, is the world which has been divided into two kingdoms -one for the white skin and one for the black skin; the West and the East. You have to choose a side and defeat the opposition, fighting valiant battles of mind. You can't crush any of these pieces by breaking the laws, but by working within the lawful world of this board you have to beat them. You have to trap them in the loopholes of laws. In this game, your majesty, law will be beaten by law; justice shall kill justice.

Out there, under the sun, you have destroyed several kingdoms but could you destroy the idea of law from the minds of the people? They still dream of a lawful ruler reigning over them someday. It is unworldly to think that law can be washed away by annihilating people who dream of it. It is a lie that you can clean out law by being outside it; law has to be corrupted from within and when law fails to satisfy the people, they shall forget it. This, my dear king, is a game that will teach you how to use law against law, how to be corrupt lawfully and how to make law your weapon in constructing a lawless world."

Excited by the idea the king smiled and said, "Teach me, teach me this game."

"The queen is the most powerful piece and can move in any direction, any number of steps. Her movement is like the rays of a star. The castle is second in power and can move only horizontally in any direction, any number of steps. His movement is like the cross. Then there's the bishop who can only move diagonally in any direction, any number of steps. His movement is like an arrow. The knight can move two steps horizontally to any direction and then one step to the right or left horizontally. His movement is like L. The pawn which is the weakest in the beginning but strongest in the end, can move only one step forward at a time.

Each of these pieces can kill the opponent by moving over to the opponent's position but you must be careful otherwise you may be killed in the next move. And there is one exception: while every other piece kills on their respective paths, the pawn kills diagonally. Lastly, the king, which is you your honour, can move one step in any direction. He too has movement like a star but a star that spreads shorter rays."

Did the queen intentionally keep me so feeble? Did she intentionally keep herself so strong? Did her womanly self-centeredness and superiority complex act behind making me a less bright star? Did the ignorant, arrogant puppy think that I am too foolish to realize her indirect insult? The king's muscles clenched. But soon he was carried away by the next volley of the queen's words, "Your majesty, you must be worrying about your powers. But don't you see you are the one controlling all of them? And more importantly why should you join the battle? You should keep ordering and shielding yourself from attacks by smartly using the other pieces."

"You make me look like a coward and a loser," the king retorted.

"Nay, my king, I keep you safe. You will never be killed in this game. You will be checked by the opposition but never killed. When you have been checked and you have nowhere to go, the game will end but you will not die. Every piece is mortal here but you, my honour, is the immortal star."

The queen had planned it in the most cunning way. She knew about the king's weaknesses like she knew the designs of her ornaments. And her obsequious tone flattered the king, tempted him of immortality.

She then declared, "And this game came unto me while staring at a piece of impeccably white and hole-dotted cheese and so I present to you this game of CHESSsss," her voice trailed away.

The king surrendered to the rules of the game, accepted it as it was. "Will we play right now?" he asked, energized like a neighing pony ready to go to battle.

"Yes, sure, if you wish to," the answer came.

Which mortal would hold the elixir of life and still refuse to drink it?

The king, led by his greed for power, desire for immortality and lust for war, started playing. His opposition was a white man from a neighbouring white-land, ruling and ordering the white pieces. Day and night the king played. But he won not a single battle.

More players were brought from the white lands. When one player became tired another came. The white players played in shifts. But the king was tireless and kept waging war after war against the whites. He never went to a physical, gun-ship-canon-sword battle again. He was too consumed in chess. The words of his queen had bewitched him - law is corrupted from within; law can be defeated from within. Even when his death drew near, the king played on till his last breath. But his score remained zero till the end of his life; the queen had made sure of it by creating a shrewd law for the white players: the white player had the right to play first. And moreover, the men of that age lacked the pink stuff.

Outside the board of chess, the queen was made the official head of the kingdom and she ruled it brilliantly like her logical predecessors while her husband kept racking his brain in some yellowish tent flagging a scarlet banner. The amiable nations sent the queen a new set of law books. Merlin was hanged to death for his impudent magic mirror works. Led by stubbornness the king played chess all his life and left the mortal planet dissatisfied; his thirst for victory was never quenched. When the king died, the citizens felt relieved. But the queen in grief of her lover's death, died too.

She was buried in a magnificent tomb in Blanka, another island beside Undaman. At her feet lies the king's tomb.

THAT is the extravagantly exaggerated history of the origin of chess stated by the famed photographer plus archeologist plus scientist plus historian plus mathematician plus writer plus many other things, Rajesh De Chapa Rashid, in his bestseller, phenomenal book, Origin of Species of Games in South-Chapa. He became a heartthrob overnight causing devastating heart attacks throughout the length and breadth of the country. Grandmasters of chess killed themselves in shame and their wives wailed over their dead bodies. These wives could come up with no clever plan to stop the suicidal attempts of their husbands since times had changed; now women lacked the pink stuff while men had it in abundance.

As for Rashid, he even went to the limit of naming the king - Rayvana, a demigawd and the queen - Rayvana's wife. What an attention-seeking, clever crow!

People who adored Rayvana jumped into the Bay of Chapa and drowned themselves. They had never imagined that the truth would be as deathly bitter as this. Women who worshipped Rayvana hanged themselves on banana trees and landed uninjured. Rashid appeared on the television and announced that his narration of this figment of history was an assumption only; anybody could choose to disbelieve it and form an acceptable version. But who listened; anything published by the mass media is bound to be the truth, that's what the people believed. So they cried and died; so some priests, members of the Rayvanaism religion, declared death penalty against the hiding Rashid; so the hiding Rashid went into deeper hiding and at a point left the country, after having arranged the exit ticket by sending a free copy of his book to Chief Advisor Gout.

Blinded by power Gout failed to see that his legitimate position was of an advisor and not of a person taking care of chased authors and that his duty was not in doing anything besides granting a safe passage for a new leader in the country. Gout, indeed, preferred to act more like the prime minster of Chapa because he had never been and never would be sitting on this powerful position ever again.

***

Chief advisor, sorry, Prime Minister Gout gazed at the cover illustration of the book Rashid had gifted him. It was a cartoon sketch. A Meeklymouse with a human head and the head was of Rashid's. Strangely, this Meeklymouse had many hands like Makalo, another of those countless Gawddesses, and on each hand it carried instruments of different games - bat, ball, racket... In fact, maybe it was pointless to call this cartoon Meeklymouse because it hardly resembled any of Meeklymouse's features.

"I don't understand why Rashid had to name the king Rayvana. There are thousands of other names. Why couldn't he just choose another name? It could have been Hubuchondro, Indronil or even Gopalchondro," Gout sighed to himself.

One of Gout's subordinate advisors, beg-your-pardon, ministers by the name Arthritis rushed into the room. Arthritis was one of those nine wise ministers who helped Prime Minister Gout make decisions. Economy and commerce of Chapa were dealt with by Arthritis, a vampire, not a human being.

In the words of his contemporaries, Arthritis was a refined vampire because he didn't suck blood out of people's body; he sucked money out of people's blood. He coldly taxed the citizens in every way possible. From a toilet paper to a toothpick - nothing was tax free. But once when questions arose as to what happened to the taxes taxed, Arthritis had taken refuge in darkness. He retreated into his shadow land. And the brave man who had asked the question had turned up dead after a few days with marks of two canines on his neck.

Arthritis, the vampire, invested the collected taxes on his own luxurious apartment and aerodynamic cars. He used it to buy hot women with hotter blood and then suck the juice out of them after midnight. These dead bodies were never discovered. And Arthritis was known as a harmless, half-human vampire.

Entering the office, Arthritis said, "Good morning, Gout."

"Bad morning! I have a headache. Tell my PA to cancel all the appointments," nagged the fat-bottomed Prime Minister, bobbing his head sideways.

"Headache? At such a time? Come on, you know the country is in a turmoil. Democracy has failed them and some journalists have taken the liberty to call this situation Democrazy. Angry mobs are destroying police stations. Conspirators are conspiring to run cross through our hearts. And you say you have a headache? Listen, we all have headaches. Let's get over with it together," Arthritis said, sympathizing.

"Arthritis I can't bear this any more. We are not supposed to be ruling the country. We are supposed to babysit the country for a short period of time before it is handed over to its rightful father or mother. Babysitters can't be parents. We have become puppets. We have lost our selves and individuality. Had we been in the place of those unfortunate citizens, we would know how it feels," Gout gave up.

"How does it feel?" Arthritis asked.

"Definitely not as good as we are feeling. I mean, say for an example, what are they giving the tax for? The free schooling that they get is the worst. They get no free medicine. They don't get any assurance of their future. When they grow old they just have to live on the road if their children don't shelter them. People who meet accidents on road are not even given the basic first aid for free. Even if we argue about the present there's no good being done with the tax. Only you know what you do with it..."

Arthritis's pride and dignity was offended. "You have forgotten to drink the juice from the tree of knowledge that the Pampamerican delegate sent us."

Producing a bottle from the robe, Arthritis gave it to Gout. "Drink."

Gout drank and as the juice ran down his throat and into his stomach, his stature straightened. He became erect and the strict jaw was back in place. His dark eyeballs reflected anything other than goodness.

"What have I been rambling about? Let's get down to business," Gout declared.

Satisfied with the result of the juice Arthritis sat down in front of Gout. "The case we had filed against a man and his house - remember - okay, so that man has challenged us in the court," Arthritis said.

"Which house? Is it the building which you labeled the monument of corruption?" Gout asked.

Arthritis smirked, "Yeah that thing, standing on our way to create a broad road - at least that's what we are saying to the public."

"So, what do you plan to do?"

"I suggest we call a meeting and discuss it. But personally, I think we should forcibly order a notice to destroy it, otherwise we will never win the case; that son of a dog has all the legal documents."

Consciousness seemed to float back to Gout and he posed, "But what are we actually going to construct after bringing down this building. We don't have any plan for a road. I believe you understand that a huge loss will fall upon the owner."

Arthritis looked at the bottle again, "Maybe you should drink a little more," he pushed the bottle towards Gout and continued, "First of all, this owner slapped you once, remember? Don't you want to punish him? Retribution - that's the first thing we are doing here. Besides, Gout, we are trying to construct a lawful country and it is only possible in the way we are doing it. Sometimes, lawlessness preserves a lawful state and that's what we are doing. Don't worry, we are right. Just drink from the bottle when such dilemmas arise in you."

"Okay, I'll call everybody right now and fix the time for the conference," Gout bobbed his head.

With a furtive smile Arthritis covered his head with his dark robe. His body diminished into dark dust as it flew out of the window and disappeared.

***

The nine advisors with Prime Minister Gout as its head sat in the conference room for a round table talk. Well, round table was first introduced in Pampamerica by King Areyouthere, and the head of the pious preachers of that time felt insulted when he was asked to sit at a round table with King Areyouthere's knights as if they were equals. But to Areyouthere, the mighty, strategic, judicious, fictitious king, everyone was an equal and he stood adamantly by his logic.

However, Prime Minister Gout was no King Areyouthere and his advisors were no knights. And although the building sheltering them was egg-white in colour, its dwellers had charred hearts. Outside the conference room journalists stood, pressing their ears to the sound-proof door in hope that they would hear some secrets. Their hopes turned into impatience, then into desperation and then vanished. The meeting lasted for more than three hours.

The most active minister was Arthritis who kept bringing up topics of discussion and noted down the solutions they planned. Gout kept shifting to his confused self occasionally but he was helped by the others. Some things were decided and some remained untouched. At the end of it, Arthritis addressed the table, "So what do all of you have to say about the building we promised we would bring down?"

The others talked among themselves in whispers and whistles. Arthritis and Gout exchanged looks of approval. Then one of the ministers said, "We have already publicized that we are going to pull down that marble-concrete structure. If we don't, then we will be considered weaklings who can be stopped by the court and legal documents. Let it not be so. Let us bring it down by hook or by crook and show the country that, we are the boss, the valiant soldiers of justice."

The Sun Cloud Villa

2011-06-21T09:51:00.000-04:00

Four
The Sun Cloud Villa

"I am Zaved. You don't know me. But do you remember my father?"

"Who is your father?"

"The doctor. He took you to the hospital and brought you back here."

Shakuntala. tilting her head, placed her fingers on forehead. "Do you not remember him?" Zaved asked.

"Yes, I remember him."

"You told him about a pageless book. Is it true?"

Shakuntala stared at him impassively. "I am very curious. Maybe I am disturbing you. But all I want to know is the meaning of those words. Please tell me, what did you mean?"

"You ask a lot of questions," Shakuntala said as her stare moved away from Zaved to the cumulus clouds overhead forming a fluffy roof. The sun, on the verge of sliding off the sky, was diagonally to the right of Shakuntala and as if in a goodbye gesture before departing, it had indulged in painting the sky ruby red giving its own self the impression of a floating fountain from which reddish clouds gushed forth like foamy waters.

For Shakuntala, however, matters were less aesthetic and more pragmatic. The sun was her guardian, warming her every morning. It was the bringer of cheer in Shakuntala's modest nest. The sun, cloud and the moon, gave her dwelling a feeling of grandeur, a sense of belonging to nature. Had it not been for them, she would still be a girl from the gutter inhabiting huge, circular, concrete pipes with rats and shunned vermin like herself.

"Will you tell me? Look, I'll even give you some food to eat if you tell me about it," Zaved said.

"Mister, I can do without your food. And even if you give it to me, my dog will eat the better part of it. Don't try to lure me, because you can't," saying that Shakuntala turned away and her randomly accessed memory wafted to the house where she used to work.

The self-indulgent lady for whom Shakuntala labored before preferred to be called nothing else but mistress and mistress only, with courtesy of course. It must have been the dominating attitude in Shakuntala's mistress for which she hardly ever had any guest, except once when her mother came to visit her on a typical busy day. The old lady stayed in the house for a month - the last month of Shakuntala's stay. "You will call my mother, Grandma," the mistress taught Shakuntala.

Now this Grandma was from a conservative town with her antique traditions and beliefs. The following day while Shakuntala was serving supper, Grandma asked her, "Ai girl, which religion is yours?"

Shakuntala didn't reply. "Oi, you can't hear me or what? Answer, whore."

When Shakuntala didn't reply, the old lady went to her daughter. "Which religion does this girl belong to?"

Shakuntala had moved to the kitchen by then to fetch some more rice. The mistress answered, "We don't know really. Her aunt who gave her to us had come here in an idol worshipper's attire. You know, with that bloody vermillion and thick, colourful, shell-made bracelets. So I assumed that this girl is an idol worshipper too. We don't even know if it was her blood aunt. And when I ask her she never tells me which religion she is from."

The dissatisfied mother retorted, "Who told you to keep this bastard then? No, baba - I can't give away my faith staying with this infidel bastard. Tell her not to serve me food. I'll help myself. Any food she touches is untouchable for me, if she is an idol worshipper. But no taking chances here with my Gawd - my Hallah and His Prophet. Tell her not to touch anything that belongs to me until I find out the truth about her."

"Okay," the mistress called Shakuntala and ordered, "You heard what mom said? Don't touch her belongings and don't serve her food. Stay away from her. You understand?"

"Yes," Shakuntala answered and at the back of her mind wondered, if she couldn't touch Grandma or anything that belonged to her, wasn't Grandma an untouchable as well?

For the next two days, the old lady was full of activity as she planned an investigation. On the third day she appeared in front of Shakuntala and dictated, "Leave the work that you are doing as it is. You will now come with me to your aunt's house. My daughter can't have her household work done by an idol worshipper. We need to get to the bottom of it."

Holding Shakuntala's hand firmly, the old woman was rushing out of the house when she stopped on her track, and flashed a glare at Shakuntala saying, "Listen whore, you can just tell me what your religion is. You are making me go through this nuisance - movements that maybe injurious to an old lady. If the result is not satisfying then you better brace yourself for the worst."

Unanswered, the old woman led Shakuntala to the garage as Shakuntala faltered in her steps in fear of punishment. Hastily Shakuntala was pushed into that car. It was that tomato-red car which cut through the sticky traffic and carbon-di-oxided air to reach the out skirting shanties of the city. When the worried pair reached the slum, they discovered that it had disappeared. The government had taken strict measures to vanish the extra, unwanted people of the country. Bamboo poles, broken corrugated roofs, mud toilets, mud burners and empty haystacks marked the departure of the desperate souls. A dilapidated neighbourhood, waiting to be turned into a grand casino, gawked vacantly at the old woman and her prey.

"Sons of dogs and pigs these people are, migrating each day to some new place and defiling it with their unholy presence. Now, I do believe that you are an idol worshipper."

The old woman brought a shivering Shakuntala back to the air-conditioned apartment and then-

"She burnt my fingers with a flaming iron stick," Shakuntala recounted to herself.

"Who burnt your fingers? Who?" Zaved asked.

Shakuntala returned from her past-gazing and panned her stare back on Zaved. "Mister, how come you are still here? I thought you were gone. What do you want? Tell me. I don't think I can offer you anything."

"You are just increasing my curiosity each minute. You started dreaming, your eyes turned white and your lids were open. Now you have returned, saying that somebody burnt your fingers. Tell me who was it that did this to you?" Zaved asked as he laid a glance on Shakuntala's burn-stained fingers.

"An old woman - a strict follower of her faith," Shakuntala spoke softly.

Zaved eyed her suspiciously, a train of thought started rumbling in his mind. Is she one of those girls who are brought from their parents in village and sold out in the city? Is she one of those who get raped by frustrated husbands and beaten by furious wives? Is she one of those people who get their skin burnt and bones broken by unkind employers? Or was she supposed to have been exported to the desert, the sacred kingdom with a holy cube surrounded by materialistic monkeys to act as their stripped oracle, like in the ancient Dellpi?

"I must know about her," Zaved thought and requested, "Please, recount all that you remember and tell me."

"What for? You have bothered me a lot. Go back home to your parents," Shakuntala answered, clearly annoyed.

Her words struck deep. They resonated in Zaved's mind. Do I have a family? I don't even remember seeing my mother - Zaved thought. I haven't spent a single moment with mom and dad together - a strange truth became familiar to him. Why would he miss his mother or father, he had never known them in the first place. Why didn't he know them? His grandma had kept him away. Disappointment arose and fell: no, grandma cares a lot for me. The other half in him retorted: yes, took care so that you grow up away from your father and from the memories of your mother. Zaved felt like a little duckling that had been snatched away by a vulture and reared up in the vulture's rough nest. No, no, no, this is not the time to think about family ties; I have come here to find out the meaning of something, Zaved reasoned.
Shakuntala saw Zaved's pensive face and gave him time to ponder. When Zaved looked up again, she said, "Tell me about you instead. What is it that you are thinking about?"

The compassion in her voice hit the cords of confession in Zaved. He had so much to tell and there was Shakuntala, sitting right there in front of him, who wanted to hear all of it. Zaved felt he had found a confessional better than the one in which his grandma goes to on Sundays. What does she learn in confessionals - to keep me away from my father? In that regard Shakuntala's confessional is better; it has reminded me of what I have forgotten - Zaved told himself.

"I never saw my mother except in photographs and her wedding videos. But that too, many years ago, when I was a kid... She died, after my birth. You saw my father. Grandma and dad are the only ones who I have in my family now. It is my misfortune that I never got to spend any time together with mom and dad. I spent my childhood without my father. My grandma kept me with her. I met him - ", and Zaved told Shakuntala all that had happened to him after he met his father.

When he spoke of the belated birthday party, Shakuntala said, "You are lucky. It's exciting to have a father like that."

Although this intensified Zaved's disappointment about his grandma's decision, he didn't allow his resentment to interrupt his narration and went on till the finish.

After a short period of silence, "Do you mind...? Can we share the food I brought?" Zaved queried. Shakuntala nodded with a smile.

There were Mr. Cupers’ bread, freshly boiled vegetables and Pampamerican chicken fries on the menu, tailed by some dry fruits. Shakuntala was delighted and Zaved felt happy to see her happy. The dog ate the left-overs from inside the packets as Shakuntala and Zaved sat face to face smiling and chewing.
The taxi driver, sitting inside the car, kept checking his watch happily given that he was earning money without spending fuel or sweat. After the meal, when Zaved approached the taxi, the driver said, "Sir, shall we go now?"

"Alright," Zaved walked into the car and seated himself. He brought down the glass and waved at Shakuntala. "I'll come again soon," he promised.

***

Young girl and younger boy, I smell something fishy. What did they talk so long for? What were they talking about? Ah, I wish I had a human ear. O stupid, greedy self! Let me not pass derogatory comments to myself about myself. Can Durgo be interested in humans? Can Durgo desire to know of what the human beggar and the human boy talked about? No, I can't. I have higher businesses to attend to. The wind brought me odd news about some prophecy coming true. And maybe I will be instrumental in carrying out the prophecy. Oh, well, I'll just have to wait for my time to come and the wind will bring me the updates so that I may know the course to be taken.

Till then let me just amuse myself with this beggar girl and her dog, instead of desiring things that I shouldn't desire. I really don't wish to be born as this girl ever, she has a worse life than me. Although I am immobile, I don't have a need to be mobile. But this girl, given the power of mobility has to fend for food, has to worry about being taken to sorry places where they will torment her.

No, no, I am better off as a tree. I have had the life of movement and I know how it is. I used my legs to walk to the cowsheds of my friends and used my hands to poison the feed of their cows. I used my hands to steal hens and I used my leg to kick my ailing mother when she touched my feet to take her to a witchdoctor. I used my hands to beat my wife and my children and I have used my legs in carrying messages for the villainous landowner. I have been instrumental in bringing death sentences to families. I have showed the hounds of the landowner the houses they were told to pull down. I have seen temples burnt and priests massacred. I was the one who spied on people and brought news to my master, the landowner. No more of that in this life, no way.

I can't afford to lose my second chance. I will prove myself at any cost and book a cabin in heaven. Oh, eternal joy, I am coming, coming; I am not very far away.

***

Shakuntala sat pondering over her meeting with Zaved. Such a sweet boy - she complemented. But how similar they turn out to be even in their varied actions - she told herself, glancing back at the memory-sketches of all the other boys she had met in life.

There had been the carefree Rumman, who knew nothing except his coconut-leaf sledge and his lattu, a wooden top wrapped with a string which is unwounded rapidly to spin the top. Rumman loved to play with Shakuntala. He used to sit on the sledge and ask Shakuntala to pull it across the broad road that went out of her village. They used to take turns and pull each other under the over-heated sun. Rumman's usual garment was nothing but a pair of half-pants and in one occasion, it tore revealing his bony back. Shakuntala had laughed so much that day. And this butt-revealing boy became her first fantasy.

She would always be at his beck and call and never missed a chance to play with him. But it all vanished when one fine night Raihan, an older boy, pulled Shakuntala in the bushes and acted on his fantasy. It was just mushy kisses and faint grappling. They both were nervous. Their bodies shivered as they came in contact. And before long, Shakuntala had run away from the bushes. After that Raihan never came to her again; he was too ashamed to have acted on his dangerous impulse even though Shakuntala's mind was occupied with Raihan's thoughts for some time.

Long years passed. Shakuntala matured and grew suitable for marriage. There came along her first suitor Mohit, a decent boy who worked at the post office. He was chosen by Shakuntala's father. Mohit was average in his lifestyle. Eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep and eight hours of leisure time - that's how Mohit lived each day. There couldn't have been a better person than him in the village. But Shakuntala's attention was carried away when Raihan returned from Chapa, the capital, after so many years. He was a truck-driver there and earned enough to manage a family and go to movies on Fridays. He was handsome and he was witty with that charming smile. He was everything Shakuntala could wish for. Juxtaposed against Raihan, Mohit was a faded saree, that one piece of cloth Chappan women draped themselves with.

Playboy Raihan was very good at playing with the hearts of women. He exhibited his talent when he was a kid and he had developed it a lot more, reading those cheeky magazines that he found in the alleys of Chapa. He learnt the hotlines that can be used while talking to women. He developed a deep understanding of the hotspots that women have. He knew where to touch them and what to tell them. He knew that lilies are better than roses and ice-creams are better than nuts in case of wooing a virgin. He knew that his rural lovers loved to be teased by a peacock's feather. He knew that wearing a lungi, the long skirts Chappan men tied around their waists, with a silver-buckle belt made a man look manlier. He knew that the girls of his village loved to be held in hand, above the ground while being broken into. He was loaded with Chappan mannerisms - the attractive standing postures, the too-fanciful-to-be-reality sexual poses he taught his village-friends, the glamorous sitting styles, the urban eating manners, the bare-chested-and-bold walking gaits, the forget-me-not talking method - whatever was available in those magazines. He was a Chapawood-hero, a real Mannu the actor, the ultimate masculine form, for any village girl.

Shakuntala couldn't wait to become his Shobnur, the counterpart of Chappan Mannus. She started seeing him again, this time in thicker bushes because their bodies were bigger to hide. Lungi dropped, saree unrolled. The dusty wind moulded their moist bodies. Shakuntala lost her virginity under the naked moon in the claws of an unfaithful friend. This happened several times in quick succession; night after night Shakuntala would run from her house into the atrocious, untrustworthy, satanic darkness. Nobody knew about it, sleep enchanted the eyes of the village.

The bush that the couple made their nocturnal nest was not theirs legally. It was a farmer's whose curiosity strengthened as he kept finding broken branches and trampled grasses day after day. One unfortunate night, this farmer kept watch. But nobody turned up. When he was about to leave, there came noises of foot-steps and suppressed laughter. He waited to see what would happen. After some time he heard long breaths being woven and heaved. He assumed they were digging his ground to hide something or to take something. What if it was the treasure that was buried thousands of years ago by a poor farmer who had found the golden egging duck? What if it was the serpent's diamond, as precious as seven kings' treasure? The farmer wondered. It should be rightfully his, he justified. He ran to the spot in hurry-burry and witnessed a spoilt curry. What the farmer saw was more astonishing than golden-egg hatching ducks or serpent's gem. He saw two bodies rocking and rolling. He saw an idol-worshipping girl copulating with a one-Gawd believing boy. He saw Shakuntala and Raihan.

The next day, the news was in the village market, available free of cost.

Idol worshippers of the village flooded Shakuntala's house. Believers of the one-Gawd from the village flooded Raihan's house. There was a lot of talking, debating and manhandling. Shakuntala's father beat her with a cane and she bled. Raihan's mother slapped him. The elders of Shakuntala's house decided to arrange a scented fire ritual to purify her and to revert her into a virgin. The elders of Raihan's house told him to go away to Chapa. Shakuntala bathed and went through the process of purifying herself. The priest read hymns and the men and women chanted. Raihan took a train to Chapa. Shakuntala finished her fiery purification and was welcomed into the idol-worshipping community. Nonetheless, even with the past burnt in the fire and the mantle of virginity ensnaring her again, Mohit refused to marry Shakuntala. Raihan reached Chapa and went back to the alleys with magazine-vendors and dreary cabins. By day he drove taxi and by night he cruised around the brothels of the city.

Raihan's fate may be considered far better than Shakuntala's. Even after being purified formally, traditionally and religiously, Shakuntala was still held an outlaw, though admirable, in the eyes of her peers. She was a female Rawbinhud who had breached the laws of her native village, the laws of the king and of the priests and of the prophets and of the Gawds. Girls of her age, even though they would support her, avoided her in fear that they would be identified with her. Their mothers told them to take a bath after meeting Shakuntala. The neighbours assumed that these were the extra measures which must be taken to secure their proper lodging in Head'is' land after death.

Shakuntala spent friendless days and loverless nights. In time matters became worse when some friends of Raihan planned to set Shakuntala in a grander fire to punish her sinned body. They wanted to remind the village who the real Tar'jane of the forest was. Did the heathens forget that we are the rulers? Did they forget that the one-Gawd is more righteous than the non-existent millions of idols they worship? They questioned themselves and materialized with torches looking like fireflies at night. They threw the fire on the hay roof of Shakuntala's poor house. Her father and mother were trapped as the ruddy villains locked the door of her parents' room from outside because they assumed that Shakuntala lived in that room.

They didn't notice Shakuntala running away through the back door as her house burnt, her parents burnt. Shakuntala hid herself inside one of the tents of the actors who had come to her village for a country-opera carnival. While the mournful song played on the opera stage, while the hero blew his mouth organ, Shakuntala's house burnt and her parents roasted. Her mother's shriek was misunderstood for her own shriek and her father's howl died in the razzmatazz of the hurrah-ing villains. When sad tune arose from the violin, Shakuntala's house collapsed with two dead bodies. As the remains of Shakuntala's Hrome burnt, the opera's Hnero played on and on.

...... Bhau-bhau, Bhau-bhau! Shakuntala's faithful friend brought her back from the kingdom of memories. Looking at the bright eyes of the dog, it occurred to Shakuntala that the dog had no name. But why worry about a name? Maybe name isn't a necessity. To believe, no one needs a name. To trust, no one needs a name. To love, Shakuntala told herself, no one needs a name. Presence - even if nameless - is enough to inspire love and faith in one's self.

The dog's intention, on the other side of the coin, was not to wake her up but to alarm her of a supernatural being. Something popped behind Shakuntala and she looked back. A semi-nude being adorned in a glittering diamond panty and showing off shoulder-embedded sparkling wings, erupting light, stood behind her. There was a V-shaped halo over her head but it certainly didn't look like an imp's horns. The valley of the V was wider while the V itself was more sophisticated, smaller and golden in colour. Her white hair dangled down her fair shoulder. Her soft breasts lurked behind tiny straps of white cloth. Her white teeth flashed from behind the golden lips. Her white eyebrows gave off, a milky-white aura. The golden whiteness in her made her smart looking, acceptable and at the same time respectable.

"O what a sunny-cloudy house you have!" the stranger gave a smile and pointed to the red sun.

"That's not sunny. The sun is setting. It's getting dark," Shakuntala said.

The stranger gave Shakuntala a sulky look, "Okay, okay, I am new. I don't know much about your sun or moon or clouds. But to prove that what I said was right, I'll influence some things here a bit, though this is the only time I'll be able to use my influence. You don't know I guess but I must tell you, each of us are given one chance to influence at the start of our term just to make people like you believe what we are - to identify ourselves. Since I said this is a sunny place and so that you know who I am, I will use this influence to make your place sunny. And don't you ever contradict me again!"

With that the strange being clenched her fist and raised her arms. The darkness dissipated and the sun smiled again. "Is that sunny enough?"

Shakuntala nodded.

"Lord is great," she said and let go off the sun. Darkness spread its wings over the horizon again.

"Who are you?" Shakuntala asked.

"Hmm, let's see, I am the first female honorable messenger of Gawd, aka pori. We, the Pori association, have won the election this time and we have passed certain female rights under our regime. The new laws guarantee us more freedom in dress codes even in heaven, can you believe that? We can now wear bikinis instead of head-to-toe burkhas - those clumsy and uncomfortable long black covers - and we can now apply for jobs that were unavailable to us before. Gawd is soooooooo adorable. So here I am, executing a work that was a male's or rather an Angelfarishta’s before. I feel so sexy! What do you think? Does this bikini suit me?" The pori snaked her hips.

"Er, do you have a name?" Shakuntala asked, surprised.

The pori gave a hearty laugh, "What? Do you think only you mortals are entitled to have names? Of course I have a name. I am Isabel and I am here to deliver you an urgent message."

Night of the Golden Butterfly

2011-06-20T15:09:00.000-04:00

With this exquisite novel, Tariq Ali ends his Islam Quintet which I have been following for a few years now. Set in Pakistan and London and following the style of its predecessors, this novel meshes personal lives with the lives of Empires and brings forth the colors of Islamic history.

I am not a great reader of fiction unless they provide something worthy to think about and have a good amount of non-fiction in them. This novel satisfied me entirely. What can be an apt commentary on the political philosophies and individual liberties of today, Heraclitus is quoted: "Those who are awake have a world in common, but every sleeper has a world of his own." About Western performance art, Ali's character comments: "Tickets are so overpriced that not many music lovers can afford seats. It's corporate entertainment now and the audiences are very philistine... The ability to discriminate is disappearing fast in Western culture. People like what they're told to like, and since they've paid a high price for it they convince themselves that what they've seen and heard was good." On French authors, a book-lover character says, "Zola is essentially a journalist; Proust is a self-indulgent genius; Balzac is, of course, brilliantly predictable; but Stendhal, he is something else. The way he unveils a struggle of ideas and the resulting emotions is masterful. An unwitting reader not fully able to grasp the writer's mind suddenly begins to sympathize with a character whose radical beliefs are far removed from his own. Before he knows it he's trapped." About US intervention in Pakistan, Ali says, "This was... not so much a question of breaching a country's sovereignty but a necessary audit to protect imperial financial interests in bad times." The sharp criticism of memoir writing for the sake of money and fame goes as follows: "Fake anti-communism and Holocaust memoirs had become popular a few decades ago, with publishers justifying these faux biographies as an attempt to grapple with a unique experience of horror, rather than seeing them for what they were, tawdry attempts to exploit a historical tragedy in order to appease one's bank manager. Now it was open season on Islam. Any piece of rubbish was fine as long as it targeted the followers of the Prophet, preferably rubbish from women with pleasing exteriors, who would be easier to market in the West." And then I came across this beautiful poem about the enigmatic beauty of veils from Jami, the Persian poet:

I said to you my rose-cheeked lovely, 'O you with bud-like mouth,
why keep your face hidden like a flirtatious girl?'
She laughed and replied, 'Unlike the beauties of your world,
In the curtain I'm seen, but without it I'm hidden.'
Your cheek can't be seen without a mask,
Your eyes can't be seen without a veil,
As long as the sun's fully shining,
Its face will never be seen.
When the sun strikes our sphere with its banner of light,
It dazzles the sight from afar.
When it shines behind a curtain of clouds,
The gazer can see it without lowering his eyes.

Alongside depicting the beauty of the veil, Ali goes on to shatter so many other stereotypes of the Islamic world. He ends it by telling the story of Shah Hussein, who publicly flaunted his male Hindu lover Madho Lal in the streets of Lahore and wrote love songs for him. When Shah Hussain died, the mullahs ordered that his body be left to rot in the sun, since he had breached Koranic injunctions. But tens of thousands of the poet's admirers defied the mullahs. His body was publicly bathed and shrouded in the red colour he loved and buried with great fanfare and singing.

No matter which culture or religion we are born in, Ali inspiringly portrays, some us always go beyond set boundaries and become human.

Journal of a Young Man [73]

2011-06-16T09:16:00.000-04:00

I was always an adept at breaking toys open and playing with their internals. The wheel, the motor, the screws, the empty plastic body. I would make individual toys out of those parts and that way multiply one toy into many. I kept all these pieces in one big box and that was my precious storehouse. From time to time, I would sometimes lose them and mom would sometimes throw away the pieces that could harm me - that is, too small pieces that I could choke on or sharp pieces that I could get cut by. To avoid this inquisition, I hid these dangerous pieces in the garage. Among the clutter of other electrical equipments, mom did not notice them. I had a friend who could make new toys by combining parts of old toys and we used to do that together. It was fun. Making a motor run with two batteries for the first time with some wires brought me so much joy. And then when we added the axle and wheel, we called ourselves 'scientists'. But then our car had a paper body and blew away or crumpled every now and then. The first time I did any proper repair was in class five when my computer broke down. Windows had crashed. There was nobody to help me out. So I called up an uncle who knew about these matters and asked him what was to be done. He summarized a method to format the hard disk and reinstall the windows. Listening to him, it seemed I understood everything but when I got down to actually doing it, I was afraid I would ruin the computer. And I had gotten that computer after much arguing with dad. It was not the best computer out there, but that's where I could play Jazz the Jackrabbit and browse the internet. When I told mom about it, she was very casual. 'Well, in order to learn, you got to break things,' she said. So I got down to formatting and reinstalling, with hope that mom would back me up in case I ruined the computer. After five to six hours of nail-biting and following the screen, windows started up! I had fixed it. In the coming days, I would become more confident and go on to replace the hardware in my computer by myself. Though after class seven all that fascination with technology vanished as I began to question the very roots of it, why do we need technology at all? And even if we do, which ones are the ones we cannot live with? And when they are around, to what extent do they affect us?

Black Theology & Black Power

2011-06-15T14:25:00.000-04:00

This is an insightful look at slavery and abolition from a black theological perspective. In the wake of equality, whites have no right to talk of justice or invite anyone to a discussion about peace or educate the blacks to grow up to be whites. The only way to freedom is to meet the blackness of blacks in its raw form and meet the consequences of white oppression in a non-condemnatory and understanding manner. In other words, let the black man be as he is and respect his dignity. He does not have to fit in to the white culture to fulfill the end of slavery. To this end, the black man's church has to play the role of erecting a new morality, a new set of values that is not the image of the white man's morality. The church has no business talking about the existence of God or the death of Christ or the holiness of the spirit. Those are dead discussions. The only thing that the church can do is carry out the words of God, that is, live with the oppressed and the poor, in the gutters and fight for them, even if that means the death of God in the hands of rich and powerful. While reading this book, what's happening in the Middle East now echoed in my mind. Under the current circumstances, the mosque too has no business talking about the existence of Allah or the rise of Caliphate or the holiness of the book. The only thing that the mosque can do is carry out the words of Allah, that is, live with the oppressed and the poor, in the gutters and shanties and loving them, fight for their existence, even if that means the destruction of mosques in the hands of rich and powerful - from the middle eastern monarchs to the muslim CEOs across nations.

Journal of a Young Man [72]

2011-06-15T09:45:00.000-04:00

I think I can write away anything that comes to my mind. I do not censor myself. Censoring is for cowards and slaves. Yet I have been a coward and slave many times. Mostly because it is very easy to be a coward and hide behind niceties. Also because I was told to respect the sentimentalities of others around me. Somebody would get offended if I spoke my authentic thoughts on religion. Somebody would investigate, step inside my private circle and maybe even slander me if I discussed my sexual adventures. Somebody would hate me if I aired my philosophical musings. Somebody would think I am stupid if I showed little appreciation for the relentless technology of today. Hiding appeared to be an easy choice given those conditions. But life is not veiled. It is naked, raw, running as blood through veins. I was ignoring life with my politeness of 'yes, please', 'sure, of course', 'you're right', 'makes sense' and 'thank you'. I was a child and I empathize with the child because there was nobody to show him the way. Over the years, the child made his own way out of the pit. How beautiful is the saying - it is the intention, not the action that matters! Now when I use those very words, I really mean them and I never use them when I don't mean them. In this honesty, there is so much joy everytime I utter words. From masturbation to communism to assisted suicide to prostitutes to prophets to QED, I explore and experience. There is so much joy in this wandering. Those whom I offend, sadden and those who hate or slander me have something to work on. And those who stay despite everything I say are capable of understanding non-manufactured, real humans.

Journal of a Young Man [71]

2011-06-13T23:21:00.001-04:00

I celebrate women. At this point in life, having studied the backstreets of history and walked the gutters of modernity, I am filled with love and admiration for all those unacknowledged and slandered women, from Hypatia among Greeks to Aisha among Arabs to Farough among Iranians to Arundhati among Indians, who through the ages never accepted defeat in the face of oppression of religion, society, politics and men. I recently discovered that the first computer programmer in the world was a lady named Ada, the enchantress of numbers. There are so many other female mathematicians who on being stopped by their fathers or societies worked and produced brilliant mathematical works under false names. There are mystics like Rabia and Mira Bai whose verses are dazzling. Yet there persists a dogma against women to enslave them with ideologies, to the point of brainwashing them in such a way so that they happily accept their slavery. I have had to endure several arguments with some of my male friends about their perception of women. Some think women are inherently incapable of any intellectual endeavor and cannot live without male guidance. I detest such notions. They show me examples of stupid and indecisive women and, if truth be told, such examples do exist. But that does not show anything inherent about women. In fact, it shows the reeking state of cultures and societies that have forced women down to that level where women are nothing but flesh dolls that cook in the kitchen and warm the bed and carry the freaking baby. With the rise of what they call female rights, women are only pushed to live up to the standards of men. They have to do everything that men do. They have to compete with men. I never understood this whole measurement of women against the standards of men. Why is it so difficult to just let women be? If they were judged before from a religious standpoint, now they are judged from a you-gotta-do-the-stuffs-men-do viewpoint. Add to that the fact that women still have to maintain certain physical standards. Our societies appreciate women with low self-image who eat only carrots for lunch and work the hell out in the gym everyday. Put ten to twenty pounds of flesh on those miss Worlds and miss Universes and they will have difficulty existing. Yet, that's the kind of weakness of character and mental feebleness that is appetizing to many. I celebrate women who are plump, white, fat, black, big, thin, brown, large, yellow, or whatever pleases them, as long as they honor their bodies and celebrate themselves and live by their own calling, giving a damn to the dictators of all ages. I love women who are free, absolutely, unquestionably free from cultures, traditions and religions. Growing up in a family where my mother's education was halted after her marriage I know how awfully a woman can be affected by the norms of society. When I think of what my mother would be if she got to study, I think she would be a lawyer and a writer. She once expressed her wish to be a lawyer, and I have read her diaries. She wrote in them the simplest of things but in such detail that I can refer to those as our family history with dates. Definitely there have been billions of women like her across the ages who could not do what they could have. And those who did but were harassed for it. I stand with all of them. A woman is a storm, beautifully ravishing. A woman is the wind of freedom. A woman, withstanding the assaults of men, is a glimpse of divinity.

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

2011-06-13T22:36:00.000-04:00

This is where Ayn Rand lays down her foundational thesis on cognition and measurement, concept formation, abstraction from abstractions, concept of consciousness, definitions, axiomatic concepts, the cognitive role of concepts and consciousness and identity. Despite the profound topics, Ayn's foundations are summarized in three to four pages and elaborated in just about a hundred pages, making this a very fast read. This is the first time I am reading a philosopher who can set down the foundation of her philosophy in so few pages. However, everything she states here are basic ideas of philosophy and psychology. I can hardly say she added anything of her own, other than slandering Kant as usual. At the end of the book, there is a conversation between Ayn and some professors, debating the things she just discussed. But it's more like a classroom session with Ayn where Ayn corrects and judges if these professors understood her alright. I laughed aloud when I read the blurb which said these are the 'near legendary workshops on Objectivist epistemology that Ayn Rand conducted.'

Circumcision - A History of the World's Most Controversial Surgery

2011-06-13T02:01:00.001-04:00

Beginning since the Egyptian times as a religious ritual, circumcision has been picked up by Moses to Muhammad as the religious ceremony without which a child does not become a part of the believers. Christians abandoned the surgery only for PR issues. Given that many adult Romans would refuse to convert to Christianity if forced to circumcise, Paul got rid of this practice. In the rest of the cases, from polytheistic worshippers in Egypt to natives in Australia to monotheistic worshippers of the Judeo-Islam faith, circumcision has been unanimously practiced.

Primarily, circumcision is taken as an initiation ceremony, but over the years religious scholars have added many other justifications to this practice. One of them is to reduce the sexual pleasure in men so that they can focus on spirituality. Some also say it leads to more fertility. Later scholars have argued about how circumcision helps men avoid many STDs and other diseases. Medically these claims of disease prevention and more fertility have either been disproven or concluded to be inconclusive.

But medical research did not stop prejudiced doctors from carrying out this surgery or airing propaganda, even to the extent of writing overly biased research articles that could be used in defense of circumcision to blur the matter. Such biased research writing have specially happened in the USA and others cited them as valid sources in the last decades.

In certain special cases when the foreskin is the definite cause of the disease, circumcision make sense. But when it is not a definite threat, it is superfluous. Proponents argue that they are preventing any future disease, but by that chain of reasoning we can also give a child an appendicitis surgery or a heart bypass surgery to prevent complications in future. Not to mention how this superfluous surgery violates the first law of Physicians, "First, do no harm."

Many religions didn't just stop there. In some versions of Islam, women too are circumcised. According to some hadiths, Muhammad approved female circumcision though many muslims refuse to accept this surgery on females. Interestingly, the Quran does not specifically mention any such surgery to be carried out on its follower. But some derive indirect proof that circumcision was prescribed by Allah through interpretation of the text. Despite all that, female circumcision is more prevalent in Africa where its more of a tribal culture than any other place.

Ultimately, mandatory child circumcision is a baseless prejudiced practice. It robs the child of a healthy part of his body which would provide him immense sexual pleasure, given that having the foreskin means having more nerve endings to stimulate pleasure, though pleasure as a quality or subjective phenomenon is another story. While medically rational circumcision in case of a disease is understandable, much educating is needed to reveal the pointlessness of mandatory circumcision.

Two Tailors' Tale

2011-06-11T19:35:00.000-04:00

Three
Two Tailors' Tale

Lost-Angels, the land of jinns and poris, boasts of its plastic-painted streets - all those vegetative designs found in fashion magazines cascading on the concrete; Pampamerica, a faraway well-wisher of Chapa, boasts of its talented wall graffitists and their lollies of labour - walls exhibiting three dimensional art - blown up in proportions and fantastic in shades and shadows - breasts, bums, skulls and all; but what does Isa's country Chapa have to be proud of?

Can walls painted with Sex'Sutra drawings, the royal methods of seederupting, arouse pride; can declarations of mathematical lust-affairs like SAMI F(tut)D SUSHILA or RITA + RAJON or sometimes TINNI - TONY + TONOY stimulate pride? Well, you never know because in Chapa capability is never the question; the Chappans argue that when something's there, there it will remain forever regardless of its capacity or necessity or effect.

And these Sex'Sutra drawings, not that anybody is obliged to know but since one sometimes needs to know what one doesn't like to know, are pretty basics, just straight lines, circles and semicircles. The muse of these artists is not Mealton’s poetry, the weighty poem that gave Shoytan a right to be heard, or princess Shita's love, the love that is somehow related to a story of a monkey raising a mountain; instead Chappan artists are greatly inspired by pornography, soft and hard both. Each of their work bears witness to it. In rare cases, you may even find carnal couplets that are more erroneous than erotic on walls as white as innocence. And coming closer you'll notice that the only words that these poets seem to have taken to their hearts are ‘suck' and its equivocals. What a word: suck!

Poet and author Isa Khan was looking at another of these familiar walls through a polished window. His car had to halt because of the other cars trying to find a way out of the traffic jam in higgledy-piggledy motion, though they unintentionally ended up further clogging the way forward. THIS was the primary problem with Chappans. They always created confusion unintentionally but never ever did anything straight intentionally. And if you ever told them the truth, they would unintentionally ignore you but never intentionally heed you. Well, ‘f(tut)k you' to them!

So as the description proceeds: Isa's car honked; the other cars honked; the whole street honked. Each car was a part of the disorderliness and each car made shrill complaints about the situation. There was nobody to solve the traffic puzzle, to lead these people out of their sweaty, stinky pen. All were present there only to create problems. Uff, huff, I am going to be late for the award giving - thought the author.

Call it meddlesome but in Chapa there are always some sympathetic passersby, who bounce up and jump down to help damsels, who after having lost their Romios, blind lovers who can't differentiate a sleeping body from a dead one, are in distress, men who have been caught red-handed with mistresses and roads that, due to unruly vehicles, are in mess. As per the tradition another one of these life-size, totally real heroes came to the rescue. He shouted at drivers, yelled at rickshaw-wallahs and even took the liberty of slapping one of the shrieking vendors on the face. Soon the knots of cars and the hullabaloo of honks vaporized under the bright sky. The road was flowing, like oil from oil well, packed with vehicles on both sides. The sudden cape-less super-hero vanished too, among the passersby.

Isa felt lucky. Thanks God! Lord, despite my suspended disbelief, is great, he murmured. This sudden topping of belief upon disbelief was because the day held glorious events that would honour Isa's creativity and greatly uplift his dignity in the literary society. Better yet, those who called him brainless in the literary circles would now have to think twice before interpreting his poems. Publishers, though fed up with his weepy family dramas rooted in Oedipal complexes, would take his novels more seriously. They would no more fear that he was too young in the field or rather too fond of lachrymose plots. Isa had been invited to the people's and critics' choice author of the year award ceremony and from some reliable secret source Isa learnt that he was going to be lucky.

With Isa immersed in blissful dreaming, his car reached the ceremony. Several journalists, photographers and digi-cameramen gathered to cover this enormous gathering of men and women of words. The guard on duty opened the door and found Isa staring at the ceiling blankly. "Sir, Sir," he called. There was no response.

There is no mark of life, the confused guard told himself and was scared to realize the meaning of his words. Reaching out into the car the guard caught Isa's hand and shook it. "Sir, sir, are you dead?"
Isa’s eyes opened; shocked by the broad mustached guard and agitated by the abrupt awakening, Isa yelled, "Save me, save me, the monster is eating my medal of honour. Vicious monstrosity! Ill-mannered frivolity!! Horrendous calamity!!!" and he collapsed at the last eruption.

People thronged around the car. Isa's fellow writers snickered among themselves. The journalists started interrogating the veryhairy Bayhari guard, a member of that floating community who unlike the Juice still haven't found their promised land. The cameras chattered away - click, click, click. Within a few moments Isa was carried out of his car and put into an emergency helicopter. The powerful engine roared, the wings spun and Isa left the ground still dreaming about his medal of honour, probably.

The surprise of the accident dissipated as people reminded each other that it was unlikely for an author of Isa's station to be confident and not lose consciousness in such a gathering. Soon among the crowd asked: what would happen now? The appealing hostess in sleeveless blouse and transparent saree came up with the answer, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are facing a moment of dilemma here. Mr. Isa's sudden departure has taken us offhand and our schedule has been interrupted. But soon I'll have the new schedule in my hand, so please do not worry. Take your seat and kindly wait awhile."

A small boy, wearing only shorts to cover his innocence, appeared from behind the stage and handed the hostess a piece of paper. He then whispered in her ear and because her mouthpiece was just a few inches below her ear, the crowd heard what the boy said: "A cup of tea has fallen into your bag of bras."

The crowd gasped and held their breath. The hostess after realizing that the crowd knew what she knew, reassured, "Ladies and gentlemen, I now have the paper with me but the urgent news about my bras will hold us for a little more. Please allow me to help this boy rescue those bras from being permanently stained."

Some minutes passed and the crowd started muttering about the unfortunate chain of events that Isa's collapse initiated. The modification of the schedule, wet undergarments and Gawd knows what else was to come. Their thoughts were replaced in a rush when the hostess entered with a stick in her hand, beating the young fellow, on the arm, on the leg, on the chest. "Ugly little butt, you lied to me and the whole crowd," she yelled furiously.

The helpless brat ran like a hen chased by a fox; he gasped like Saddamn, the son-in-law killer, strangled by Boohooush, the owner of underground oil tanks. The crowd’s eye-balls shifted rhythmically from one end of their sockets to the other, following the two pairs of feet scuttling. The hostess caught the blue shorts of the kid and the kid jumped out of it. Since he had nothing on top either, the kid became stark naked, stark innocent, like a new mother's baby. In the process of catching the small prankster, the hostess had bared him and needless to say, in a few seconds, she would happen to open herself too, to the goggling eyes of the literary audience, some of whom found the drama risible enough to cover their lips and bare their teeth in silent laughter.

Like foretold the hostess tripped on her long saree, fell and rolled. When she stood up, the saree was no more on her body because it was lying on the floor. Raged further the Mayduza, that ancient accursed beauty, stared at her prey and in the next second threw herself at him. The fanatic comedy went on until a red-swollen-eyed man, probably the chief organizer of the ceremony, walked to the stage, caught the Mayduza by the hair and shook her violently.

"Leave now. You are dismissed," echoed his command.

The chided hostess left ashen faced and the kid, as mendacious as he was, was nowhere to be seen.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry for the inconvenience caused by that slut of a hostess. Excuse me...my words... From here on I shall take over and guide you till the end of this show," a pause, "Authors come and authors go but there are some chosen ones who stay with us forever. It is these authors that we honour every year in this ceremony. The readers as well as the critics participate in the procedure to find out the author who holds the creativity to entertain us forever and infuse in us new ideas, open to us new windows revealing different horizons, inculcate in us all that is worthy and reveal to us all that is unworthy," he looked at the quiet mass.

"I am now going to announce the winner of this year's people's and critics' choice author of the year award." One. Two. Three. Seconds passed. Drum rolls. Seconds passed. Three. Two. One. "And the winner is ISA KHAN." His voice lingered in the auditorium like a musician who having struck the last chord waits for applause. But there was no effect.

Wondering if the microphone had betrayed him, he said it louder this time, "The winner is: ISA KHAN."

Overcoming the shock, the crowd clapped and reluctantly threw their hats in the air. Who ever imagined that Isa the weirdo would receive this award?

"Since he is ill and has been transported to hospital, let me call upon the person who has come all the way here with him. Miraz, please come on stage and collect your master's award."

Isa's chauffeur appeared with a Paapsodent smile, the all-too-popular smile of tooth-care-powder advertisements, eyeing the gold medal of honour hungrily. Receiving the medal from the host, Miraz picked up the microphone. Seeing that the chauffeur was planning to address the gathering, the host snatched the microphone away and showed him the neon-sign exit with the left hand. The chauffeur left with a sad face.

The crowd was still making noises when the host waved his hand and resumed, "I ask for silence. We don't have Mr. Isa with us and there is nobody else who can speak on his behalf. Let us then allow his writing to speak for him. Let me read you an extract from the novel which brought him this prize." A silver screen behind the host came alive with words and he began:

A Room, A Storm, A Head

Dismal raindrops assaulted the windowpanes. Each drop an arrow, fell on the shield of glass. Sitting inside the house one could hear the wind howling like a wolf baying at the moon. Looking through the window one could see the rebellious tree-tops dancing to an insane rhythm. It was dark. The heavens spurted fleeting lightning, tree roots in electrified state. The spongy clouds, squeezed by an invisible clasp, poured.

A rain soaked muddy smell hung in the air. There was no glow of light inside the room. The wooden bed stiffly stood on four legs but the pillows on top of it had been torn to shreds. The bed-sheet was ruby red and wet but warm. The photo frames were all broken - the splinters of glass were on the carpet. The walls had pictures drawn on them. Unfathomable symbols and languages were there as well. The artist had used only black to portray his emotions. The closet was open and the clothes lay in crumpled state. On a shelf to the left stood hardcover books on dangerous mysteries and risky knowledge. The windowpane continued to vibrate as the wind thumped and roared.

The drawers of the table were drawn open. In the first drawer one could find various pens. Pens of different colours; pens of different sizes: as short as a matchstick, a little longer than a cigarette, standard sized, a few inches longer than the standard size, like a sugar-candy and as long as a sugarcane; pens made of different materials: Pampamerican wood, metal from Lost-Angels, Finician glass and Chappan plastic.

In the second drawer there were pencils. Every pencil was as thick as a lady's finger and had instances and characters from history or from fiction engraved on them. One had a Faroh protruding out of its wooden mould and another had a girl called Gingergranger drawn on it. A swift tide of light flooded the room for an instance and then ebbed away. Seconds later, there came a booming thunder shaking the windowpane once again.

Papers littered the floor without anybody to find them a case. They carried poems, paintings and prose pieces. The door of the bedroom was ajar and through the gap, one could see the next room. This was the room of an apparel designer. Fabrics of vibrant colours covered the centre table. Scissors and measure tapes were on a tray. The forsaken sewing machine had no needle. A plastic torso stood stiffly at the corner of the room. The tables, the shelves and the floor were dusty and the depth of dust was a proof of the long carelessness. A three-handed fan attached to the roof was motionless. A looping rope hung from it.

The kitchen had no door. The utensils were neatly stashed against one another and the wash basin had dark-red stains. The knives, it could be noticed, were not in their place. They had been moved, manipulated and marred. A glass platter with leftover food was on the kitchen counter. Whoever had eaten did not wash it. The food was now the home of fungi. The water tap, with a lizard imprinted on its metal body, had no water. It had stopped weeping days ago. The overhead cabinets were dank and most of them were homes to worm inhabited books. The wind hammered the windowpanes.

The main door to the house was not locked. In fact it was being pushed to and fro by the storm. The rain had drenched the doormat. There were footprints on the floor. The shape of the shoe was shocking. It wasn't like shoes as the world knows it. The shape was like a satyr's hooves. These footprints started from the main door and led to the bedroom which had those drawers; that wet but warm bed, those walls and those papers. There was another door to the right of the bedroom. It was open too. On reaching the bathroom the footprints became red.

The bathroom had a dim-light and in that one could see the bathtub full of reddish water. Nearing a few more steps the watcher would behold a sight. The robust thunder alarmed the mortals beneath; the sky bared its teeth in lightning; the wind and rain gathered their courage and launched as one being. The windowpanes exploded and the doors fell open. The house came down.

A bodyless head tumbling in the bathtub!

The host took a breath; it was over; the crowd was terrified. Some of those audiences yelled from the back, "Isa has put us all in an anxious state. We are afraid now. We might be killed just like that someday." A whisper of worry rose in the air. Right then and right there a plan was formulated. Those who were afraid to die came together to form a private and more vigilant anti-crime organization beside the one that the government owned.

One impressed group departed with a resolution that they would open a theatrical project where only thrillers written by Isa Khan would be enacted. A third group, who shared nothing common with the other two, were not bothered at all.

The host threw the piece of paper in a dustbin and strolled to back-stage. The nearly naked Mayduza was shedding crocodile tears: big and salty. Pulling her into his brawny arms, the host kissed her and revealed to her a key to one of Radish-and-sons comfy suites.

***

The vooedy-vooed-pecker show, thanks to its perky and noisy protagonist Aves, awoke Isa in the morning. The nurse, with the air of a queen, was sitting on the sofa and watching television. "Hey don't you watch Lumsum or Tunthun or Kublum or any of those grossly-edited mega serials? Or are you a fan of one of those Chappan mega serials with the makeup of actresses melting in the heat?" Isa asked.
The nurse stood up and switched off the television. "Good morning Mr. Khan. How are you today?" Not waiting for the answer she went on mechanically, "You have been through what we informally call a state of UN, unnecessary nervousness. But you are fine now and can leave the premises whenever you wish."

Isa noticed a bouquet of recently plucked flowers standing on the table in the far left. The nurse was leaving the room while her patient's attention was somewhere else. But Isa was a cautious viper; hardly had the nurse reached the door when Isa called her and as if to prove his poethood he said, "Ye lookie bring me the bouquet."

She gave him an aggressive look and fetched the anonymous gift. "You can guide your bum out of the room now," Isa snapped at her. She marched out and the door closed with a clank behind her. There was a green card on the bouquet with red letters - Congratulations! I will receive you at seven tonight. Be ready. Nobody should know about this meeting.

Isa stared at the card for a while and wondered if he was being blackmailed. Under the state of UN (pray, don't misunderstand) Isa was about to faint again but the same nurse reappeared. "Excuse me Mister but you have to leave now."

"But I was about to faint..."

"Sorry, do the little drama elsewhere. Your car is waiting at the front door. And the whole world is standing beside it."

Like a mole that drops dead to avoid its predator, Isa dropped his head in pretension but it didn't work. The nurse pushed him out of the room like a fat wife who only cooks the whole day and orders her husband to fetch her vegetables, meat and masala every now and then. Reaching the car was a few seconds of hesitant walk but to get into it Isa would need some force. Nosy and talkative journalists were barring his way. The ill-attired snoop-dogs of the Chappan printmedia couldn't help being annoying, noisy, chatty or nosy as they appeared; they got paid for it; butter spread on their bread came from this prying trade.

At the front door, when Isa appeared in a white pajama there were flashes of cameras and cues of questions. Who? When? How? Where? The questions battered Isa from many different angles. Miraz, the chauffeur, came to succor. He pulled Isa into the car and sped away.

***

Chief Advisor to the caretaker government of Chapa, Mr. Gout tuned into an af-am station and waited for the news of Isa's return. A reporter narrated, "Isa Khan, the famous poet and author who recently won the people's and critics' choice author of the year award, has been declared healthy by the hospital authority. Isa Khan had lost consciousness inside his car after being touched by a veryhairy Bayhari guard. The guard has been detained. And yesterday an angry crowd had turned up near the Municipal office complaining about how the Bayharis are killing innocent people by poisoning them with their stares. We do not know what Isa Khan has to say about it. His driver pulled him inside the car by his collar as soon as he walked out of the hospital. For a moment some said they saw the driver hugging Isa Khan and sharing a moment of intimacy as the car left for Mr. Khan's house. We are trying to investigate this mysterious relationship between the master and the chauffeur..." Gout switched it off.

They have the habit of making a pond into an ocean - Gout thought and then reconsidered - on the other hand, it works magically when they magnify a tiny good thing you did into a piece of grand good work.

"Sir," a sentry interrupted Gout's thought, "the guest is here."

"Show him in," ordered Gout.

Isa Khan entered the room with long steps and stood before the mahogany desk. The Chief Advisor's back was facing Isa. "Who are you? Why did these men bring me here? Why have you kidnapped me? Was it you who sent me that card?" demanded Isa.

The black-leather chair swiveled and Gout came into view with a cigarette in between the golden ringed fingers of his left hand. A branded Baymond's shirt inside a cookie-colour branded coat from Sharks and Spencer raised Gout's social status quite a few steps. His thin grey hair bore a mark of borrowed wisdom and his sly eyes showed canny abilities. The cracked lips had been attended to by moisturizing Hivea cream and a so-not-saintly scent, something like that of old wine and slightly burnt grass, hung around him. Gout asked Isa to sit.

Isa sat and started again, "Why am I here? What do you -"

Gout barked, "Hold your tongue. I have heard those questions; you have said them earlier. There's no point in repeating them," he took another puff of smoke and continued, "Congratulations once again, winner! You see, Mr. Poet, I have been greatly impressed by your award winning book. Although I didn't personally vote for you, I am still a great fan of yours. You have moved me and now I want you to move others for me."

"I don't understand," said the timid Isa.

"Ah! Listen Mr. Isa Khan, you are a tailor of sentences and I, a tailor of policies. We fabricate what is best for us and feed the country with it for our own gain. We have a similarity there. The difference, however, is in the fact that you can write a book and receive your reward all by yourself whereas I can't. You are a one-man army but I need a band of minions to do my bidding. I can't carry out the processing of policies alone because my stage is vast; my stage is not just some pages but the whole country from every gutter to every street of it," Gout stopped with a smile. Isa noticed something peculiar in Gout. Gout's head had the habit of bobbing sideways at such an invisible pace that only a keen looker could perceive its simple harmonic motion.

"But what has that got to do with me?" Isa asked.

"You have no reign over your tongue, do you? And while you work with us that is one important lesson you may learn. Yes, you are going to work with me. That's why you are here. I have the spoon to feed my policies to people with. I can gun it down their throats. My brave heart soldiers, the golden boys are there to make sure of it. But along with spoon feeding the mother sings songs of how good the food is, you may have noticed. Now, you, my dear poet, will be the mother of the people of this country. You will sing songs of praises of my policies to the citizens through your writing. You will convince them of my goodness. You don't have to worry about being published. You don't have to worry about the money at the end of the month. You will just indulge in flowery worship of my greatness. You don't have to worry about the good or the bad in it or for that matter you don't have to worry about your piety or sins. You are Gawdless from now on and I am your sole protector."

"Are you crazy?" Isa gave up. Gout's head bobbed again. He was about to make a decision.

"I am in perfect health Mr. Isa. This is the reason why you received that award in the first place. Now if you don’t comply, I may have to silence you to keep my plan in darkness. Our custodian government is facing a lot of trouble lately and we need a voice that can speak eloquently. Apparently you are one. May I ask you to make your decision quickly since you have five seconds?"

The seconds dripped from the wall clock opposite Isa. "Time's up. You will be -"

"No wait," Isa pleaded, "I can do it. I can do it."

"I always knew you can but for now I want to know if you will," Gout glared at Isa.

"Yes, I will. I will. I promise."

The Crucified Parrot

2011-06-11T18:08:00.001-04:00

Two
The Crucified Parrot

But what is Chapa?

Chapa is the name of the country and also its capital where this novel is happening. Inspired by Chapa's curious defect, the next seven paragraphs together will be a garrulous pastiche of what is not, what is, what is to be, what might be or should be – a pallet of words quite gossipy in nature, an appendicitis to the central plot, no way a participant in the action and avoidable if time or patience is in question. But then, this very book is written by moulding popular characters and famous names into how Chappans would perceive them and pronounce them after their unique tongue-twister fashion. So knowing about Chapa is not so inconsequential. Besides, a willingness to sacrifice time and patience is a requisite, since this novel must be read with godly tolerance and compassion because only an unwaveringly tolerant entity can live with any people as insensible as Chappans. As for why its name is Chapa, here are some supplementary facts from a travel magazine:

Among all the other inherited qualities, the one quality that stands out in the people of this country is their thin tongue that can spin out thick, gooey stories which, in more general terms, might be called big talks or boastful lies or exaggerations... forgive Me, I don't have a proper word to oomph out the exact meaning to you, and hence We or rather none could help but take refuge in the blood-won language that these people spoke. Now in their language this untranslatable quality, hopefully not imprinted on their genes, is called: Chapa and since this word represents the distinguishable quality of this race, it was adopted as the name of their country and also the name of their capital where chapabazi or the act of chapa happened most.

If there's a Chappan patriot of any dimension on the audience seat, please forgive My involving imagination. The country Chapa in this story is just the fairytale version with its good and bad poles balancing each other. The reality, if there ever were any country of such a name and probably there is, is worse. Chapa seems to be bent on only one side, defying the dichotomies of ‘In and ‘Ang or Gawd and Shoytan. If I were talking about the real Chapa, if there ever were any and probably there is, then I would have to talk about its mindless expansion of itself. Can't another city be named anew? Why should it be an expanded section of the same old city? Why should rivers die and trees be felled to expand?

If I were portraying the real Chapa, if there ever were any and probably there is, I would have to talk about its government and its people – the government who fooled the people by influencing the election results, winning it unfairly and the people who fooled the government by submitting empty ballots. I would have to talk about the red light districts that were available everywhere, from universities to schools to households, and the red light districts where prostitutes lives on steroids, for the malnutritioned blue-collars of Chapa found super-plumpy prostitutes attractive.

Chappan philosophers asserted that only one who knows right will do right. Maybe nobody in Chapa knew what was right. And in that case, surely the preachers of Chapa had failed to carry out their self-claimed duty of moralizing the nation, of showing the masses the contrast between black and white. How would these unhygienic preachers, who never trimmed their pubic, or for that matter non-pubic, hair ever succeed if they spent their time planning petty assaults on sculptures and youth parties, and learning how to sabotage buildings and vehicles with humabombs? Humabomb, if there is any curiosity, is just another name for lovelorn, duped, bearded or veiled, pushed-to-the-corner suicidal human beings carrying bombs.

If it was the real Chapa, if there ever were any and probably there is, I would have to talk about the covert liberty that the citizens enjoyed and the overt torture that was inflicted on them. For instance, men and women who had the liberty to enjoy marijuana and rum had no money to buy proper food to appease their hunger.

If it was the real Chapa, if there ever were any and probably there is, I would have to talk about the thieving beggars, little brats with dirty skin. I would have to talk about Chapa's buried liberation fighters whose spirits must be roaming the streets of the after-world, if there is one that is, and dreaming about the city they had desired to build. Maybe seductive sirens brought them news that the red-green flag was dirty now since nobody took the time to wash it. Or even if they washed it, it was to glorify their public image in society. Maybe the dead war-heroes feared in the depth of their minds that the blood-red-chili-green pretty parrot that their country was has now been crucified at the altar of narrow-minded people who exploit patriotism for personal gains, who turn patriotism into extended tribalism to wreak chaos, promising afterwards peace under their reign. Only a hope that the crucified parrot is bidding her time for a divine resurrection must be consoling these dead war-heroes whose fight was now going down the drain.

Tirelessly, I would have to go on for pages and ages pointing out the misbalance of priorities in Chapa, if there ever were any country as such and probably there is. But no, I am a storyteller of fairytales and let Us remain within My profession. It is risky to have a long nose and there are many examples around Me from whom I can see the fate of a nosy face.

***

A boisterous house stood behind a resplendent garden. Far ahead, overlapping starry lights and jolly sound effects in the background, Hamdu entered the scene. The lament of squashed grasses under wheels marked his arrival. The disciplined lines of rostrata, the spiky fence made of young bamboos split in twos and the foreign lamps hanging over them from metal poles added merriness to the in-house atmosphere, which was visible in silhouettes through the square windows: balloons, streamers, bright lights, cakes and boys in various postures, arms dangling on side, legs bent, head turned, talking among themselves.

None noticed the confused old man climbing down from his car, stealing into the backyard. Hamdu positioned himself in a respectable pose in front of the back-door. Knock-knock, the clash of an elderly wedding ring against a senescent wooden door brought Hamdu some attention. Somebody in the inside shouted, "I heard a noise from the kitchen. Grandma, will you go and check please?"

"I have to go anyway. The apple pie is in there."

There came the noise of hurrying footsteps before the door was cautiously opened. For a moment Hamdu and his mother-in-law looked at each other, and then in a sudden recognition she said, "You..."

"Yes, Hamdu, mother..."

Keeping aside all the dormant disappointments, Mrs. Rami ushered him in. "So here we meet, after so many years..."

"Twenty years precisely," Hamdu said.

"Yes, yes... let's not go over it, we'll have time to talk later. For now go meet your son, he is right there, standing in front of... you came late, very late... after precisely three hours. We couldn't wait further once every other guest arrived. Most of them have gone away and those who are present right now will stay here for a sleep over. Zaved is the one in a blue shirt," Mrs. Rami walked towards the oven.

Finding nothing to say, Hamdu walked into the next room. At a short glance he roughly estimated fifteen boys aged between sixteen to twenty. While some were spreading out their sleeping bags, others in the far corner were playing a video game about some prince in Persia. Three in the centre of the room had gathered around a fourth boy wearing a blue shirt. They were looking at a glass jar, smiling among themselves. It seemed there was something alive in it. Maybe an insect, Hamdu guessed.

"Zaved...?" Hamdu inquired.

Zaved raised his head and faced the intruder. The others followed. They looked at the old man, sizing him up and taking notes of the small details, which they would poke fun at later. The red tie was too red for an old man. The shoes were as brightly polished as that of a boy going to a military school. The clean shaven chin and smiling lips were that of a happy man whose happiness caused unhappiness in adults but caused laughter among adolescents who were unaccustomed to happy adults. "You are Zaved, aren't you?" Hamdu asked the tall, bright-eyed boy who was wearing a blue shirt.

"Yes, but who are you?"

For Hamdu, Zaved looked so different - so different from the picture that stood on Hamdu's bed-side table. Why had Hamdu kept it there? Was it a mere ritual of a father whose son was far away from him or did Hamdu really love his son? To this Hamdu found no answer. The lost years had weakened their bond. Maybe there was no bond anymore. They were strangers in different worlds. Would they ever be father and son again? Hamdu had thought over these issues but his heart would listen to no reason. His fatherly affection was blind. He was blind. He hoped his son would be blind too, would forget the years of separation.

"Come, we will talk. I have some news for you," Hamdu said.

Zaved walked to Hamdu and asked, "Yes?"

The other boys stared at the pair standing in front of the door. "Zaved, Zaved, come here son," Mrs. Rami called from the kitchen.

Zaved walked out of the room, trailed by Hamdu.

"This is your father."

As soon as his grandmother uttered those words, Zaved went back a step as if he were looking at an apparition.

"You... my father?"

Hamdu's face was passive but his mind was racing. Would Zaved accept him? How would this boy react to seeing his father for the first time in his life? Hamdu felt as if he was in an operation theater and this was a life and death situation where the patient was Hamdu himself. Like a doctor treating his own wound, Hamdu imagined everything going wrong.

It came as a delightful surprise when Zaved, instead of moving away, took a step towards Hamdu. That was all Zaved needed to do and Hamdu rushed to his son, hugged him and kissed him on the forehead.

"My son, my son... Zaved, my son," he cried.

Zaved's friends filled the kitchen, witnessing the father-son reunion - a joyous yet tearful incident as if Pryam had regained Hacktar – a mythical incident about which seriously-expensive movies were made in Pampawood, a stars-studded forest of Pampamerica.

Not long after the reunion, friends of Zaved moved back to their den, talking among themselves about their misconception that Zaved was a bastard, which of course, they never told Zaved. How could they? Zaved was their ring-leader and the only one among them by whose virtue all their naughtiness became acts of honest intentions in the eyes of teachers.

Behind the wall, in the kitchen, Zaved was dazed by a new source of affection while Hamdu lost himself in happiness. Not knowing what he would talk about with his father, Zaved asked, "What do you do?" when they sat down across a rectangular plastic table.

To that Hamdu answered, "I am a doctor."

The intense climate was fading and no storm was at hand. Mrs. Rami seemed unusually comfortable with her son-in-law. Zaved, after struggling through a short conversation in which he accepted Hamdu's invitation to have dinner together the next evening, went back to his friends.

Only Mrs. Rami and Hamdu sat at the table now; Hamdu chewed his supper and Mrs. Rami scrutinized him, pixel by pixel. "So, did you marry again?"

Hamdu was pulled out from his jouncing thoughts regarding Zaved: if those friends were decent enough to be a good company for his son, if his son felt the way he felt at the moment and so on, "No, no I haven't."

Mrs. Rami heaved a sigh, "Why would you? You got all you wanted..."

"Ma, let's not go through the same discussions again. I am happy that you have taken care of Zaved so well - "

"Don't praise me! He is my grandson and I will take care of him, whether you like it or not. You don't have to appreciate my concern, rather repent on what you have done. Gawd will forgive you if you ask for His forgiveness."

"Please, please let's not discuss it when Zaved is just in the other room. I don't want him to overhear us."

"He won't. He wasn't taught to be snoopy," she retorted.

"It seems you can bear me no more."

"I would if you were compassionate yourself," she replied.

Hamdu didn't say anything to that. He did feel somehow responsible for all that had happened. Maybe he had the sole responsibility of that sad night when his young wife died. All those long years couldn't be recovered now. Not saying another word to Mrs. Rami, Hamdu left the house.

Once he was outside, he looked back at the house with its curtains drawn. He imagined his baby dreaming. He pictured not the old Zaved, but the small Zaved, who was in the photo frame on Hamdu's bedside table, sleeping. Hamdu longed to kiss Zaved goodnight and put in with a smile, "Sweet dreams!" But it was to remain a longing only.

On his way back to Ricemondi, the area where Hamdu lived and which was repulsively cluttered with box-buildings, Hamdu saw the steamy animal that pale invaders from a cold island had unleashed in this part of the world. The train - the mechanic serpent - crawling past Hamdu reminded him of his schooldays when he with his friends would travel in trains without tickets.

***

The next evening held a tricky trial for Hamdu. He would have to befriend his son. If he failed maybe Zaved wouldn't give him a second chance. Besides, Mrs. Rami would always be there to reveal foggy secrets to the clear hearted Zaved and upset the slim bond that still flickered between the father and the son. Hamdu was determined not to let that happen. He would have to impress his son more than Mrs. Rami's instigating explanations of the past ever could.

At a corner of Hamdu's mind, the words of Shakuntala hung without making much commotion. A pageless book - what could she mean? Was it literally meant? Or was it metaphorical? Maybe it was spiritual, he guessed.

Hamdu had taken Shakuntala back to where he found her and had given her a walking stick to lean on. The interview had left Hamdu speechless and thoughtful. Even while driving, as Shakuntala sat beside him all the way to the banyan tree, Shakuntala's reply was ricocheting in his mind. Now after so many hours, when he was getting ready for dinner, Hamdu remembered Shakuntala again. For a moment he developed a respect for her. Surprised by the strangeness of his mind, Hamdu flushed the thought away. Hamdu told himself strictly - first thing's first. My son, the dinner, I have to impress him.

Suited and booted like the hero of a stereotypical Chappan movie, Hamdu reached Mrs. Rami's house. As if it was another date to impress his late wife Diya, Hamdu had polished his shoes eagerly, shaved carefully and wore a tie to fit the occasion. When Mrs. Rami ran her eyes over her son-in-law, she could see the alluring image of an ideal husband. But the horrid memories would never leave her, and she told herself the ideal Hamdu was an illusion.

"Your dad's here," she called Zaved.

"Hi, dad," Zaved surfaced out of the house, equally well dressed. He was wearing a light green embroidered shirt with spreading collars and wooden buttons, an expensive pair of brown boots and a pair of jeans. Zaved had combed his hair untidy with a lot of effort though it made little sense to Hamdu. But holding back his quick-to-remark tongue, Hamdu replied, "My son, get in the car. We are already behind schedule."

Zaved and Hamdu drove away. Mrs. Rami's suspicious stare followed the car until the backlights disappeared around the bend. Sitting inside the car, Zaved felt slightly uncomfortable. "You can switch on the music if you want," Hamdu said.

The radio was switched on. Zaved kept turning the tuning knob until it reached a noisy station and the car, filled with jhang-rock-jhung songs, moved on. There wasn't much talking. Hamdu had to pay full attention to the road. Chapa's traffic is such that when one drives, one just drives. And they say Chapa's drivers are the best drivers in the world because these drivers drive through lawlessness, pesky rickshaws, bribe taking sergeants, ruined roads and malfunctioning traffic signals.

Radish-and-sons, the Pampamerican hotel, stood proud of its glory by the side of the Hairport road. Its creamy colour struck by light red paint on two sides made it look like a flamingo. This multi-windowed, multi-lighted, multi-functional piece of construction was an epitome of design for students of architecture from all over the country. It was a shrine of modern Chapa that offered every heavenly luxury in exchange of coins and cheques, not piety.

When Zaved and Hamdu reached Radish-and-sons, there was a band of flashy-clothed men standing in an arc in front of the entrance. As soon as Zaved walked out of the car, a return-of-the-loved-one themed song started.

These singers and musicians were not the traditional bandwallahs. They had guitars, keyboards, violins, and a slight touch from the old days - a dhol, a cylindrical instrument that had to be palm-struck on the sides. It was wider in the middle and the sides, if one must know, were made of animal hides and once struck, these sides made a dum noise. But many such dum noises, when played together, sounded clever. And this way the secret of the nation of Chapa was hidden in one of its very own, long cherished music instruments.

Breaking away from the details, let's be reminded that a song had begun to welcome Zaved. Cheerful girls reached Zaved with flowers. It was a belated birthday party thrown by his father. Surprisingly, Zaved's friends, teachers, relatives were all there. Stunned by his father's gift, Zaved stood there, petrified.

"Son, are you happy?"

"I don't know." Zaved said, confused.

Zaved's friends pulled him into the hall. There was a big banner in the parlour wishing Zaved a ‘happy birthday'. The hall was decorated with bulky, red candles and white flowers. The same band who had greeted Zaved in the entrance now took their position inside the hall and played on. The picture that consoled Hamdu year after year sitting on his bedside table had been enlarged and covered a whole wall in the form of a painting. A long table on the right side of the hall stood bearing all the gifts. People in pairs were dancing. Everything has to work in the Pampamerican way, boasted the organizers. Hamdu came to his son, "Come let me introduce you to your uncles, aunts and maybe also to some of my friends."

"Okay... Dad, listen..."

"Yes..."

"Thank you. I really mean it."

At that Hamdu put his arm around Zaved, "Your mother would have wanted it just the way it is."
When Zaved and Hamdu walked together to a nearby circle of pretty-looking, old people, they exclaimed, "O, look who it is? The hidden prince!"

Zaved didn't need an introduction, they knew him well. Instead the others were introduced to him. His grey-haired uncle who was a lawyer, his really-red-lipped aunt who was a gynecologist, his quite-short uncle who was a history professor, his belly-bulging uncle who was a government official, his scarily-slim aunt who was a fashion designer... the list went on. As Zaved talked through cobwebs of relatives, he suddenly noticed that his grandma wasn't present. But he kept it to himself for the moment.

After some time, the music took a backseat and the dancers left the stage. Food was served by white wearing waiters and waitresses. Hamdu and Zaved, just the two of them, sat on the same table. The hall had sunk into juicy fruits, sumptuous courses, soft music and little talks. "So do you like the decoration?" Hamdu asked.

"Like? I love it."

"I feel successful."

"Accha, dad, why isn't grandma here?"

"I invited her. In fact, I called her some moments ago and she said she is not feeling too well," Hamdu answered while cutting his steak.

"Huh, anyway, let's talk about something else," Zaved said.

"I am sorry for not being present last evening. I'll give you the truth: I met a girl that day on my way to your birthday party. She looked terribly ill, dirty and was sitting under a tree. For some reason when I saw her, I felt she was very different from the rest of the beggars we meet on road and so hoping that I would be able to help her, I walked to her and just as I reached her, she fainted. What could I have done? I felt responsible for her somehow. I brought her back to my hospital and treated her. That's why I was so late in coming to your party - "

"Mm hmm... Even I was wondering why you were so late. Grandma told me that you would be coming and I was waiting impatiently. When you didn't come I thought you wouldn't come. But anyway, that's all gone. Because you are a good person, you gave more importance to the dying girl. Tell me about her. What happened then?"

"It was mainly a case of misplaced ankle, but she had many deep bruises too. She is fine now and today in the morning when I met her, she gave me a really strange answer."

Zaved slightly bent forward, "Yeah? What was her answer?"

"Her name is Shakuntala. Probably she doesn't have a home. But what’s strange is when I asked her about her religion she wouldn't answer. I asked her what the name of her Gawd was - "

"You were really pushing her, weren't you?" Zaved smiled.

"What else can I do? It's a hospital policy, you know. Not receiving any answer even then, I rephrased my inquiry and asked her what holy book she read, and then... she answered -"

Zaved bent forward with interest, "What was it?"

"A pageless book..."

At that Zaved looked puzzled, "That answer is a question to itself. How can a pageless book be a book? Books are books because they have pages."

Hamdu said, "That's what puzzles me. Did she mean it in a metaphorical way?"

"Come on, a beggar from the street won't know how to concoct metaphors. On second thought, I would like to meet this beggar."

The discussion went on. As Zaved and Hamdu tried to solve a puzzle, their unfamiliarity dissolved in the labyrinth of Shakuntala's words.

***

Zaved sat in a taxi heading to the embankment road. When the driver reached the embankment road, he asked, "Now, where?"

Zaved replied, "Just keep going until you see a lonely banyan tree."

The knotted banyan tree shook a little as the car stopped with a jolt in front of it. There was a girl with wind-combed, rough brown hair sitting amongst the protruding roots of the tree. A dog lay at her feet. Zaved told the driver to wait. When he reached Shakuntala, he saw her eyes closed. He looked at the dog and the walking stick near her hand. He noticed the bandaged ankle. He wondered if there was death behind those eyelids. He wondered if the body was already cold. "Shakuntala," he called softly.

The dog's ear twitched and Shakuntala awoke. "Who are you?" she asked.

A Pageless Book

2011-06-11T18:01:00.000-04:00

One
A Pageless Book

A tomato-red car sped along the embankment road; a flag of smog streaming behind it. A grin hovered on the driver’s lips and behind him sat a plump woman with a face streaked with spite, her fingers knotted around the fragile arm of a nobody. As the driver's humming continued in accord to the song on ninety-nine point nine af-am, the woman's face twitched and her fingers wielded more pressure on the skin-wrapped twig she was grasping. A violent storm was brewing in her mind at that instant - an argument between her Gawd's rules and herself. At the peak of the squabble she submitted. She knew she would never ever win over her Gawd. She opened the door, with the car galloping at a speed of a hundred and one kilometer per hour, and without another thought she tossed the nobody out of the car.

The body flew into the air like a garbage sack and landed with a thump on its stomach and rolled with a thud on its head and ended with a crack on its leg. A soft moan of unfathomable syllable hung in the air. With a hungry stomach, a mouth festooned with loose teeth, a bleeding nose, a slashed-scratched-burnt skinned, skeletal body of a girl lay on the road with only the dark smoke to blanket her in the coldness.

***

I am not what I was. I don't mean growing up from a kid to a teen and from a teen to an adult, the shift has been broader in my case. I have changed my form, shredded my old skin and have become immobile. The land that I ploughed has now become my only refuge and I haven't stopped ploughing it, not for crops, but for water these days. I used to feed my animals sincerely and I still feed all sorts of animals; the scale is larger. Nothing other than pigeons and pigs and chickens and cows and goats and grains worried me when I was a farmer but now the weight of earth is on my roots. I have become a tree and this is my only chance to win a full-furnished luxury house in heaven. For the actions that I rooted on this earth, it seems, the earth holds me so tight now. For the tricks that I played on my friends, it seems, Gawd has tricked me now.

You see, I had died. The Farishtangels, the divine guards, the light bulbs of heaven, had interviewed me and I succeeded in satisfying their curiosities. But when I reached the bridge hanging over the seven heavens and six hells, I fell, I fell not into one of those rooms below but into a vortex that teleported me here and during the process of teleportation, I was metamorphosed into a tree. I am a hundred and one years old. I call myself Durgo. That is all I remember about me.

***

First a finger and then a toe the organs shivered. Life still lived in that body which missed the warmth of love, open to the dispassionate asphalt road and strokes of lackadaisical breeze. Another two or three cars sped by without noticing the body at the roadside. Maybe a little girl saw it, but the skinny body, covered in a tattered rag, scared her and reminded her of horror films, especially that horror movie about a family of ghosts who were covered from head to toe with white powder. The frightened miss Muffet just wanted to forget the sight of the horrifying body, let alone telling her father about what she saw.

A very old woman in the third car saw the body at the roadside through her half-an-inch thick lenses but pooh-poohed it away. She told herself, "It can't be true that somebody is lying there. Besides, I can't see nowadays. So it might just be a trick of my thickening vision," she went on to recollect, "When I was a beauty queen of eighteen, I could see a mile away and before those keen suitors, who wished by day and night to marry me, reached our neighbourhood, I would know about their presence", then she turned to her grandchild in submission, "Sweetie, can you see that thing lying by the roadside?"

By this time the car had already moved many yards away from the body and the young boy looked out of the window and turned back saying, "Oh, grandma, you are so full of shit. Don't ask me to look again; look you interrupted my c-h-a-t session," stretching the word ‘chat' like a chewing gum.

The kid's mother who was driving the car turned around, "Honey, you mustn't speak to Grandma like that. That's rude. Behave well with elders, sweetie."

The old lady expected a little more chiding than that. She watched her daughter returning to the steering wheel and turning on the music. The boy kept striking the keys of his laptop.

The old woman retreated into herself feeling that she was not wanted anymore, that she was really a sack full of shit. And with this insecurity of uselessness came a worry: what if they send her to an old-home? All her old friends had been sent there. The old lady hypothesized that old people stay in old-homes because they can't cope with the preferences of their children. So she still wore bikinis with her grand daughter and visited the beach often where old men strolled around in rainbow underwear. She would sit with her aged opposite sex and yak about cabbages, condoms, love and colorful pills. However, We feel obliged to say that My prose has dwelled long enough in emotional grannies; let Us return to the lonely road and the lacerated body.

Lying in the dark, Shakuntala first dreamed of heaven and then shadows crept into her dream turning it into a nightmare where she was laying down on a fiery bed in hell. She screamed and foams pouted from her mouth. She raised her arm and saw there was no skin on it. She agonized in this deathly pain, yet there was no death. The pain was unbearable, yet she was bearing it, still breathing in half breaths.

"Maa, Maa save me," she cried to her mother-gawddess and then tried calling the other peripheral gawds and gawddesses - the husbands, brothers, sisters and friends of the mother-gawddess. Not receiving a reply from any of them, she now turned to gawds of other religions. ‘Hawya, Hallah, Gawd, save me, save me," she yelled in desperation. But there was no answer to her calls; she was trapped in her own figment of imagination, in her own nightmare. Slowly the door in front of Shakuntala revealed an opening and the room sank in light - THIS IS IT, she calmed down...

Standing like a virile man’s erection, a cock cock-a-doodle-dooed and the hydrogen-burning sun answered its call. Light opened the door behind which Shakuntala was dreaming that horrid dream. Light struck her eyes and dried the blood on her body. Light anointed her weak physique. Shakuntala parted her eyelids. She felt like a chunk of ice, frozen at night. The warmth of first rays melted her benumbed icy shell, but she could not move. Now, she felt like a log of wood warm and dry yet motionless, helpless.

Hunger rang. Shakuntala had never seen much food. A handful of leftover wet rice, a chili and a pinch of salt was enough for a day. But anything would do for the moment. She looked around.

The desolate countryside haunted by a steel-concrete horizon gasped at Shakuntala. The sprawling fields were no more cultivated; instead they were waiting to be sold out so that cathedrals of knowledge, mosques of medicines, synagogues of economy could be built on them. Rice wasn't a necessity. It was necessary rather to develop artificial food in laboratories. “How delicious would genetically modified beef be! Ah, how delicious synthetic potato would be,” the crowds of this country daydreamed.

The river on the other side of the embankment road was stagnant. She had her own sorrows. Everyday huge trucks came and defecated their back loads into the river. The water became thick with garbage and reeked of rotten raw materials. If only that was it, but no, from the other side, tall factories urinated their tanks full of colorful pee into her, slaughtering her precious inhabitants, the minute planktons and in turn the vivacious fishes. The river was disappointed with herself because she was no longer a safe home for creatures. She was no more the protector. She was vulnerable to the unstoppable penetration of very Machiavellian humanity. Architects, engineers, developers, and men wearing suits visited her often. On a usual day when dirty trucks were pooing and factories were peeing at her, there came a different set of lorries with sand on their backs. The river screamed and wind howled as the lorries dumped their sand on her. She was now being buried and she yelled at them but who would hear her? The driver and the workers saw the river-water moving edgily and the wind becoming impatient but they were fearless, courageously determined soldiers of civilization. Besides, the weather report had predicted no storm that day!

Thus lying in the borderline between spooky lands and sorry waters, Shakuntala wondered if her fate was to die of starvation. Images from the international news at BeeBeeSay channel swarmed into her mind. Those videos of dark people looking like ghosts on dieting crash course scared her.

Shakuntala used to reflect upon and shudder at the thought of being in that situation herself. She wished to give those people some of the wet rice she ate and maybe she could even share half of a chili she was given everyday. Once, Shakuntala had even taken the liberty of speaking her mind to her owner, "Don't anybody give food to those people?"

At that her owner had sparked, "Stupid whore, go do your work! It's not up to you to think about what's happening to them. There are bigger people worrying about it. You vile idol-worshipping bastard! Go! Did you iron the clothes -," saying that she looked at the crumpled clothes waiting to be ironed, "I'll sell you to a brothel now, that's a better place for you. Go back to your work right now. Never look at the television again. Ask your whoring mother to buy one and then you can gape at it."

As her owner fumed, Shakuntala made her way back to her work, still thinking about the distressed people of the hungry continent. She didn't know where this hungry continent was but had it been somewhere within her territory she wouldn't have waited for her owner's order to share food with those skeletons. But Shakuntala's territory stretched only as far as the nearest medicine shop where her owner sent her occasionally to buy sleeping pills.

Shakuntala's vision blurred. She dreamt again and this time it was her mother who she saw. Red-saree clad, red vermillion on forehead and conch-bangles on hands, her mother was that perfect housewife her father rarely praised. In Shakuntala's dream her mother gave her the most comforting smile. Slurp. Shakuntala's sleep fled. She opened her eyes only to see that a slum dog was licking her feet.

The dog gradually moved its nose along the sideline of Shakuntala's body and came face to face with her. It stared at her deep dark eyes. As if some evil spirit possessed her, the dog barked anxiously and ran away as fast as it could. Shakuntala watched the dog disappear and sank back into herself. There was no hope left in her, it was time for her to die.

Death.
What is it?
Soul.
What is it?
Shakuntala asked herself.

Maybe it's true that at the moment of death all questions come to an end, because Shakuntala did hear something inside her say: soul is a poster and the body a wall. When one starts experiencing the joy, the beauty, the passion, the rhythm of life, one's longing to live gains weight and this life-craving becomes the very glue that sticks the soul to the body, the poster to the wall. As Ass'Real, the embodiment of death, comes carrying the banner of the mysterious otherworld, the soul panics because it can't undo itself from the wall, the glue of desire is tough. Impatiently, unable to wait for long, Ass'Real wrenches the soul out from the body.

It hurts.

Excruciating pain runs through the body as well as the soul. The person yells in agony and the spectators conclude, "Death is terrible. Look at his distorted face, see the horror in it. Look at his red eyes as if they are going to spill forth blood right now. Look at his body vibrating as if he is on an electric chair. O Gawd, death is so difficult. Help us Gawd, may we have a peaceful death." They pray wholeheartedly only to further strengthen their desire to live, the pain-giving glue.

Well, if death it was then Shakuntala was resolute to face her last moments with a brave heart. Weathered by slavery, harassment and refusal her glue was already giving way. For her, death would be peaceful.

Ere her eyes could close, she heard hurried pawing. As if Gawd had sent an emergency order through the messenger Gab'Real to postpone His plan, the dog jumped into the scene with a lump of thrown away meat and bread. It was all inside his mouth and on his teeth hung a bottle with some water in it. He coughed out the meat and the bread. The sight of food recharged Shakuntala's spirit and she found new energy in her hands. Unscrewing the bottle she moistened her lips with drops of water and drank some. She brought the food near her mouth steadily and ate that saliva-wrapped crust of bread, chunk of meat, and fell back to sleep.

When Shakuntala awoke, although she could move her body, she felt weak. She crawled to the nearest tree, folded her legs and hands like a fetus and hoped for a shelter but all she found was the dehydrated bark of the tree caressing her soft body, the hot wind touching her lips. The dog slept nearby in the shade with its tongue lolling out.

Does a dog dream? Shakuntala thought. Maybe yes, maybe no or maybe both. “O why am I thinking these? O gawddess of foolishness bother me no more,” she exclaimed. With the outburst came realization, Shakuntala now felt spears in her stomach and pricks on her skin. It burnt here and there and everywhere. Shakuntala's head ached and she discovered a potato bulge up there. A soft sting erupted from below and slowly developed in magnitude. Shakuntala discovered that her ankle had been dislocated.

Sight is so devastating sometimes. Until now everything seemed tolerable to Shakuntala but as soon as her eyes saw the dislodged ankle, the pain grew all the more powerful. Shakuntala wailed and wept. The startled dog barked. A confused song of bow-wow and huuuuu ensued…

***

Hmm, who bothers me now? Who is crying at my feet? Who wakes me up from my sleep? Eh, who are these? A dog? A beggar? Who are they? A street dog at my feet? Why is it barking? Why the f(tut)k, or should I say FatherUncleCousinKing politely, is it barking at its mistress? And why is the mistress weeping? This poor-looking girl, uff, she'll burst my eardrums.... Damn it! What should I do? What can I do? I am just a tree... a damned tree... a reincarnated tree. What do they expect me to do? Call the paramedic? Honey, I don't have a phone and even if I had a phone I don't know how to use it. You better hurry up and find a phone booth somewhere. The hospital has all sorts of facilities. They can even rescue you with a helicopter. But wait, do you have cash, paisa, money, any smooth rectangular pieces of paper that can buy you this entire world? If not then drown yourself in a ditch, you are one unlucky bitch. Without money you are a mere glitch, society's hitch, a guitar without any pitch, worthy to be sucked by any leech. Was your mother, sorry to ask, a miserable screechy-bitch from a poor beach? Tell me about your father too. Ahem, never thought so many rhyme wriggled inside me.

Are you still crying? What's up? Sweetie, I am helpless here! Why are you looking at me with fear? What did I say? Was it scary to hear that you have no other way but to kill yourself if you have no paisa? If yes, I can't help it; I am not one of those eduplated doctors out there, the ones who plate themselves with certificates, like bronze dressing up as gold.

The tree kept throwing its tantrums around but Shakuntala understood nothing of it. All she saw was quivering of branches and heard a gurgling noise from nowhere. She had a broken ankle, a filthy dog was barking at her and the tree in front of her was swaying madly. Surprised by the tree Shakuntala stopped crying and the dog stopped barking, and the tree stopped swaying.

Hmph, there now, it's quiet and peaceful, I love it.

But hardly had Durgo puffed up his mud pillow to go to sleep, it started all over again: that confused song of misery.

Ahhh...

The tree roared and everything froze as suddenly as it had started.

***

That doctor Hamdu was the city's finest doctor was popularly accepted from the fact that he had a young heart in an old body. He was an inspiration for some and a matter of great astonishment for others. How did this man avoid watching television? Why does he wake up at five in the morning day after day? Why does he avoid public ceremonies and parties? How can he roar and paw around like a tiger in his age? A mist of myths surrounded his private life. Some rumours called him a blood-sucking immortal and some identified him as an angel fallen from grace.

Unfortunately for Hamdu’s neighbours their overwhelming snoopiness was never attended to, as there was nobody within Hamdu's house to give away his secrets. The doors, windows, curtains never betrayed him. None even knew that his wife had died at the age of twenty during the birth of his only son.

After the incident, Hamdu's mother-in-law took the child away and Hamdu never saw his boy since. He spent sleepless nights wondering about how his son was leading life. He wondered if his son received a balanced diet and lived in a healthy environment. Hamdu worried if his son exercised regularly. He pondered over his child's education. Hamdu thought about all that for a son whose name he didn't even know.

A few days ago, Hamdu had received a call from his mother-in-law, who inquired about his health in a few curt sentences and then told him in a matter-of-factly way about how well his son had grown up to be. In an unwelcome tone, Hamdu's mother-in-law asked him if he would meet Zaved on his twentieth birthday. Hamdu agreed at once. How could he not?

When Hamdu was driving to his son's birthday party he saw Shakuntala, the dog and the tree huddled together on the side of the road. It was painful to see a depressed, probably a diseased girl sitting with an equally distressed animal and both the sad creatures being shadowed by a vast, untidy banyan tree. Hamdu parked his car. The -ship of doctorship overflowed with a sense of duty within Hamdu, and he felt obliged to help the girl. Unable to justify his ground for pushing aside the long-awaited engagement, Hamdu walked to Shakuntala. The dog whimpered once and ran away. Shakuntala looked up at Hamdu and by the next second fainted at his feet.

The next morning Shakuntala awoke on a hospital bed with a metal stand on which hung a saline bag. A cannula, pregnant with saline, made its way down to Shakuntala’s arm where a trocar had been pushed into her vein. Her ankle was in plaster. A slight pain still lingered in her ankle. She was feeling better, much better and hungry at the same time. A tray of food was at her bedside, decorated with fruits, milk and bread. Shakuntala ate.

Hamdu entered and sat on the visitor's chair as Shakuntala filled herself. When she was done, Hamdu stood up and, "So, ehm, you are fine now, completely out of danger and ready to leave. But before that, I would like to get some things written. It is a hospital policy to keep a record of the patients. Do you know how to write?"

Shakuntala stared without any word. "Okay, I'll write it for you; you just have to answer me." Pulling out a pen and a form from his bag, Hamdu brought the chair closer to Shakuntala and sat down, "What is your name?"

"Shakuntala," she answered.

"Where do you live?"

Shakuntala remained quiet. Hamdu translated the silence as that she was a street urchin and left the address box empty. "What is your religion?"

Shakuntala didn't answer. Although she knew the answer, she was too scared to disclose it. What if this man too was going to throw her out of a car? Shakuntala acted as if she couldn't comprehend Hamdu's question. Hamdu persistently asked two more times, "Your religion, the gawd you follow, what is his name?"

Another blank look from Shakuntala. "The book that you follow, what is it?"

On hearing that, clear pictures of her mom and dad reading their holy book filled Shakuntala's mind. But she was not going to talk about it. Shakuntala had faced the world alone for a long time and was clever enough to keep such matters secret. Hamdu looked at Shakuntala with irritation. It scared her more. With no spare time to compassionately interrogate further, Hamdu coldly asked, "For the last time, what book is it?"

Shakuntala spilt, "A page-less book."

Dancer in Darkness

2011-06-11T13:32:00.001-04:00

It has been two years since I finished writing this book. My beloved friend and teacher professor Mutalib was with me more than halfway through this project and his departure made it difficult for me to work on it alone, remembering him everytime I picked up the manuscript. I kept the book away so that I could come back to it one day and read it again before putting a period to it. Now is that time. Like never before, the thought of this unfinished project burdens me when I begin any new writing project. It is a heaviness inside and I must let it out. So this summer, I have decided to conclude this project finally. I have begun reading the novel very acutely. In it I see the hands of a different writer, the mind of a young word artist. There are quite a few things that I don't agree on with this writer. But right now I am more of a reader and editor. So I am not going to change the writer's work fundamentally. I put myself in his shoes and improve on his clarity of presentation, not what he has to present. Professor Mutalib used to say, "this book has a charming wordiness. You create a forest but I enjoy being in it. You create a bridge and enchanted I keep walking on it, as behind me the bridge falls away." I agree with him. Certainly, this writer has a charming way to put words together into one long sentence and sometimes leave his readers mystified. Zarin particularly appreciated the details in the descriptions of events and things. Though it can slow down the pace of the novel, I think the writer's primary intention was to hold on to those to draw word pictures, so I will not modify that aspect. The other thing professor Mutalib would say is, "Every chapter is a story in itself and together they form a novel. They are disconnected if looked at one at a time, but connected when read entirely." Xavier too said this to me the other day, having read some portions of the novel. I thought the same. In fact, it was the writer's intention to make each chapter independent of the whole and yet when one reads all the chapters together, they would form one harmonious whole. Given three readers thought the same, independent of sharing their thoughts with each other, I suppose the young writer succeeded. So while reading Dancer in Darkness now, I walk a narrow path between distortion and blurriness. While I try my best to make the writer's presentation as clear as possible, I hope I will not distort his meanings, symbols, themes and ideas.

Journal of a Young Man [70]

2011-06-08T23:48:00.001-04:00

There is a fuzzy boundary between the doer, the experiencer and the witness. In ordinary language we refer to them all as 'I'. I did this. I felt that. I observed this and that. This 'I' is a beguiling representation. It is far from accurate, even misleading, a mere approximation of a complicated reality. As I sit on my desk and write these journal entries day after day, I find myself obliged at some point to talk about this 'I'. All these experiences that the journals relate are not of the present. All these actions taking place are not being done in the present. They are the doings and feelings of somebody somewhere lovingly named Efu by his mother. Hardly anybody who read these journals ever asked who the young man is. Given a few similarities, Readers prefer to assume a tangible relationship between he who writes and the one who is written about. They sometimes love, sometimes dislike, sometimes admire the 'I', stretching thereafter their link from the 'I' to he who writes. Yet, how distanced is the witness and the 'I'. The 'I' may completely disagree with the witness while the witness writes on, even the disagreement of the 'I'. The witness is of the present and the 'I' is of the past and future. The witness writes and the 'I' experiences and acts. Like a man, staring at his own image, is observed by the image itself, and soon vanish into each other, leaving behind a work of creation, a piece of journal entry. The 'I' does not matter, the 'I' may not exist, but the witness has given the world a glimpse of eternity - that's what matters and that's all there is to it.

Journal of a Young Man [69]

2011-06-08T00:20:00.000-04:00

I don't know what it means to be wild. Does it mean to be hyperactive and meaningless in action? Does it mean to be superfluous and extravagant in expression and appearance? I do not know. I have refused to get a haircut even with a bribe of two hundred dollars. I have thrown stones at mangoes. I played pranks on friends. I carried around a crucifix on my bag. I attempted to watch varieties of pornography. I spent time walking for hours to Walmart. I intentionally got lost in the cities I visited. I fell in love with people from many walks of life. I wonder about why I was circumcised. I like to draw cartoons on the sides of my notebook pages. I used to be afraid of spiders but now I can let them crawl on my body. I feel a faint ache when people slap mosquitos. I am tickled when dogs lick my toes. I would like to wear flowers on my head. Is any of that wild?

Israel's Way or Highway

2011-06-07T20:07:00.005-04:00

Physicians abide by Hippocrates' dictum: primum non nocere, meaning 'First, do no harm.' Given the present colonization of Palestine, the leaders dedicated to bring peace on all sides can be aptly termed physicians of a profusely bleeding open wound. Yet, in recent times, the first thing Israel's policies ever do is supersede primum non nocere. They literally 'First, do all harm'. Nowhere is this tendency to willfully ignore rational principles more concretely illustrated than what unfolded a few days ago. On the 44th anniversary of the 1967 Middle East war when Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria along with West Bank, Gaza and Sinai desert, peaceful Palestinian protesters stormed the border area from Syria. They had no weapons with them, except their determination for freedom from oppression. They had cut through wires and crawled on ground to take their stance on the buffer area, just as Gandhi once went on his peaceful Dandi March defying the laws of British Empire. The Israeli military open fired, killing 23 Palestinians and wounding 350 more. The video is available on the web for the world to witness the Israeli reaction.

In the most recent address to American congress, Netanyahu proudly claimed, "Israel fully supports the desire of Arab peoples in our region to live freely." Apparently, he forgot to mention that Arabs can live freely and protest freely only within the bounds set by Israeli bullets. As for Netanyahu's assertion that "Israel wants peace," one ought to question how sincere that dedication towards peace is when Israel open fires at peaceful protesters. Unless one believes that alongside the divine sanction of hijacking land from other people, Israel also has the divine sanction to take away human lives as it pleases. Of course, this event is not the first of its kind. The other happened on the anniversary of Israel's founding, what Palestinians call the Nakba, or the catastrophe. 13 peaceful Palestinian protesters were killed when Israeli military open fired under similar circumstances.

Israel and its allies are quick to denounce terrorists and quicker even to launch missiles against terrorists, including their children and wives. But they take no time to appreciate, perhaps also encourage, the non-violent acts of Palestinians. When grievances are not heard and non-violence is replied with violence, there are only so many options left for the oppressed. Nobody should be complaining about a few people bombing buildings, going on shooting rampage or for that matter, blasting themselves in a marketplace.

Interestingly, none of these events seem to appeal to the omnipotent and omniscient United States of America that has on its heavenly shoulder the cosmological duty to uphold human rights in the known dimensions of the universe. In fact, the response of our white President Obama, who with his newfound 'Irish roots' seems fairer by the day, has been petty-lawyer like, suggesting the Israeli shootings fell within Israel's "right to defend itself." This is the same President who some weeks ago hailed, "the moral force of non-violence", through which "the people of the region [Middle East] have achieved more changes in six months than terrorists have accomplished in decades." All that Machiavellian appreciation of "moral force of non-violence" has jumped out of the White House window and committed suicide in Netanyahu's tea cup. It is hardly surprising though, as Netanyahu pointed out, "You’ve [USA] been very generous in giving us tools to do the job of defending Israel on our own." How predictable that the American congress laid on Netanyahu 29 standing ovations that day for euphemistically narrating all the crimes he and his super ally committed and will continue to commit! Question is: if the American Congress really is anything more than an asylum of yahoos at this point. One can be inclined to liken this brotherhood of logic-defying and blood-splattering immense intensity to Joker-Riddler duo. This bond seems to be formed on a shared point of grief, sympathy and a pity-arousing justification of any crime they may commit, as Netanyahu put so eloquently, "We are a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust." All those who lost their lives in the Holocaust must be tossing and turning in their graves to see their deaths politicized, advertised and industrialized to stage a Holocaust of Palestinians.

One has to wonder if some monstrous transformation took place in people like Netanyahu as they rose from the "ashes of the Holocaust." As Nietzsche once put it, "Beware that when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you," it seems individuals like Netanyahu and their supporters, in confronting the history of Nazis have become Nazis themselves. The abyss has not only gazed at them, but found its bride in them. Netanyahu and the like have degenerated into supremacists who deny basic universal laws, live beyond rationality and colonize lands based on ancient folklores of an old man named Abraham and his family. Their form of justice is just what they please. Their line of negotiation is 'my way or highway.' And if Netanyahu and the likes call themselves Jews then we have an even more fascinating metamorphosis, Jewish Nazis!

References:

Transcript of Obama's speech on Middle East (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/19/barack-obama-speech-middle-east)

Transcript of Netanyahu speech to Congress (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/05/24/video-and-transcript-benjamin-netanyahus-speech-congress)

Journal of a Young Man [68]

2011-06-06T21:39:00.000-04:00

I think of your brown hair, shining with glory and the depth of brown standing for strength. Yet when I bring my face near them and inhale their fragrance, I smell a flower garden so delicate and enchanting. I like to touch your neck with my nails and kiss you on the nape. I like to see you blush like the tomato in our mozzarella panini, and I love it when being with you keeps me awake at night like I had drunk several cups of Colombian hazelnut coffee. Sometimes you poke me and you are ready to fight almost always. Your ferocity is so marvelous. I would die in the claws of such a lioness a thousand times and over. There is no murder more beautiful than this. I like to place my nose on your skin and smell every pore of your body. I like to run my fingers through your hair and look into their darkness, seeking jewels maybe. I think I look like a monkey. I love it when I dance around you and you are amused. Your laughter is bar music. I like to bother you when you are cooking and I like to cook with you whatever it may be, Indian, Chinese or deep-fried Southern. They ask me which love in my life I cannot forget. I don't know how to answer them. Love always comes as now, never as yesterday or tomorrow. And right now love is you.

Six Easy Pieces and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces

2011-06-06T15:28:00.000-04:00

In a clear, jolly manner that's distinctive of Feynman, this book narrates physics in several layers. Starting with the relationship of physics to other fields like geography, chemistry and going as far as to explain Einstein's theories in detail, Feynman does a great job. This is not just dumbed down prose for lay readers. Feynman actually takes the effort to present the subject with all its mathematical diversity and physical beauty as a comprehensible whole that can be used as a textbook for first year students from non-physics majors. This is highly recommended material for anyone interested in physics. Studying it is a pleasure, though the later chapters are not as entertaining as the first ones, to which Feynman agrees and says that's only because the scientific community doesn't know those later topics well enough.

Evaluating Pascal's Wager

2011-06-03T17:23:00.005-04:00

Pascal suggested that if the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a rational person should wager as though God exists, because living life accordingly has everything to gain (God's mercy, heaven and so on), and nothing to lose. But if you live as if God doesn't exist and you find out He does, then you have nothing to gain and everything to lose (hell, punishment and so on). I came across this suggestion in my A Level mathematics class while learning probability. Pascal, being one of the founders of probability, used the laws of probability to confirm the usefulness of having a religion based on God. A few years later, after coming to Georgia, when I was going through several Christian literature that argues 'rationally' for the existence of God, I saw that most of them appealed to their readers using the 'rational' justification of Pascal. As a young student, I found this line of justification quite acceptable. However, having delved deeper into mathematics and logic, I think it's time to evaluate this famous suggestion of a famous mathematician.

Quoting his book, Pascal's argument goes as follows:

"God is, or He is not"
A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up.
According to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.
You must wager. It is not optional.
Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. (...) There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain.

There are three points of concern in this hypothesis.

First Point of Concern:

In Pascal's model, life equalizes to 'a game', God's non-existence is one side of the coin and God's non-existence is the other side of the coin. Applying simple and clear thinking, we know for sure that the coin has two sides BUT we don't know if the hypothesis of God is valid or not. Here's the glitch! We are wagering on that which we don't know. Before we even wager on 'heads' or 'tails', we know definitely that 'heads' and 'tails' exist. The same goes for all other probability calculations. When calculating probability, we take into account only those events that have happened or can happen in our range of awareness or in our desired domain. Therefore, the very act of wagering on God begins with the prejudice that there is a God and is a circular statement.

Second Point of Concern:

One could argue that anything is possible, that it all depends on what range of possibilities our awareness can perceive. That is a valid argument. Logically it is possible for infinite things to happen and the intensity of our awareness may show us only so much. But if we are to live our lives by all that which is possible, we might find it very hard to do so. Say for example, I hypothesize that there is an invisible roof over your head and that it will collapse soon. If you say you can't see it, I reply by saying your awareness does not cover that range of perception. That's a logically valid statement. Not only that, I give you Pascal's wager, saying if you believe me and step out you have nothing to lose but everything to gain, whereas if you don't listen to me, then you have everything to lose, i.e. you will die when the invisible roof collapses. So you agree and step out from under the invisible roof. Now I tell you that the roof has extended and now is over your head again. So you agree and step out from under the roof. Thereafter, I continue to expand the roof until it covers the country the you are in and you have no place to stand on. I would be logically valid to tell you to step out of the country. In this manner, I could coerce you into doing anything in almost any field. But no individual lives like that. In fact, if we were to accept this series of proposition as laid down by Pascal, we would not only have to believe and live by the rules of Pascal's God, but also any other superstition that predicts rewards for those who follow them and punishment for those who don't follow them.

Third Point of Concern:

In Pascal's 4th step of the suggestion, he says, "You must wager. It is not optional." Now in a game, we agree that there are rules, that those rules are not optional. But in life, who is to say that one has to wager and that it is not optional? Should the decision to wager depend on the individual or the community in which an individual lives? Should Pascals of the world tell every one of us what is optional for us and what is not? Unless these questions are answered fully, the 4th step remains objectionable.

Conclusion:

Pascal's Wager is a probability distribution across possibilities that are not perceived by most of our awarenesses. While one could logically argue that our awarenesses are not intense enough to reveal the entire range of possibilities, accepting this would lead to the logical compulsion to accept other beliefs that are currently categorized as superstitions. In other words, Pascal's wager is Pascal's twisting and bending of his mathematical concept of probability to accommodate his prejudice that there is a God, a prejudice quite understandable given the century he was born. Pascal's suggestion is ultimately logically invalid, and plays a great deal on the fear human psychology has about unseen punishment.

New Suggestion:

It is logically acceptable that there are many possibilities beyond our ranges of awarenesses. We, as humans, are capable of grasping this notion with our primary awareness. Just as a bat's perception has no color, ours too lack an infinite number of other dimensions, a.k.a possibilities. So, given that background, if a human were to meet a God under some possible circumstances, instead of hell or heaven, there would follow a lucid conversation about why humans were not given the intense awareness to perceive the full range of possibilities and why still they were expected to follow that which they could not perceive. God, not humanity, would have to answer. Just as children question and parents answer, given that one's range of awareness is greater than the other. Unless Gods are only another form of high-dimension organisms that enjoy hurting lower-dimension beings, just as some humans enjoy slapping mosquitos.

Journal of a Young Man [67]

2011-06-02T23:32:00.000-04:00

Years ago, I had a friend quite a few years older than me. He didn't know how to read or write very well. He despised being in school and indulged in beating other kids, threatening girls, sometimes even getting into fist-fights outside school with teachers who gave him bad grades. There was a girl who loved him or so she told him. They would often hurt each other physically. I would see bruises and scratches on his body and he would tell me how he had punched her face. Before he became my roomie, when I was asked if I would like to share my room with him because he had been causing a menace in every circle he was being put into, I did not refuse. He came in with his blanket, pillow, mattress and settled down beside my bed. I was busy reading or sketching most of the time those days. He asked me if he could invite his friends over. I agreed. In the evenings, he would have his friends over and they would play cards, drink beer and speak about things that I couldn't fathom. One day, he came home angry in the afternoon and stared at me. I stared back at him. "Why aren't you afraid of me?" he asked. "What happened?" I asked. "I could hurt you very bad right now," he took out a knife, "I have gone to jail before for hurting someone," he ran his fingers on the knife. I continued to stare. "I could badly hurt you," he said. "I know you could hurt me very bad," I said. He put the knife in his pocket and walked away. A few days later, I didn't see any of his friends in the evening and I saw him looking down on his textbooks, sitting on a table. When I sat down to do my homework, he came to me, "Can you help me with some math?" I said I would. We did some factorization and quadratic equations that night. Other than losing attention as his cellphone beeped every 10 to 15 minutes, he solved the problems studiously. At the end of that night he told me he would show me several different drugs, starting with brown sugar. He took me around to the shadiest of places and introduced me to new people. He bought me coca-colas when he drank beer. He showed me the methods of sniffing, snorting, injecting he had learnt. While he smoked marijuana, I sat beside him reading Khalil Gibran. He used to say, "I don't know why I am not angry with you like I am with others."

Journal of a Young Man [66]

2011-06-01T18:58:00.000-04:00

Allah. That's what I was told to call the omnipotent deity. My father wasn't any extreme practitioner of Islam until a few years ago. Back in the days, he was often more excited about the formalities and celebrations. Only after his informal retirement and perhaps now that he thinks about death, he prays five times a day and tells us to pray too. My mother prayed whenever she could. Sometimes I saw her praying five times and sometimes three times. She was quite flexible but followed strictly the primary moral codes of Islam. At times, she would also practice the sunnahs fully. If I am to categorize the Islam we practiced at home, I should say it was partly the sunni version. Shias were looked upon by my family as human-worshippers because of the way they prostrated before Muhammad and his grandsons. On the other hand, the radical Arabian version of Islam was frowned upon too. My mother would never be subjected to being called the 'woman' who must obey her husband in all matters. We looked upon such an Islam as fanaticism. Therefore the version that prevailed at home was Sunni rituals merged with sufi philosophy of love, equality, brotherhood and annihilation in Allah. My mother often said, through your love for Allah, He becomes a slave to you. and went on to say, at a point there remains no difference between you and Him. It is not surprising that she came from a family that followed the sufi tradition very closely. Also, that is why since childhood I have had to visit several different graveyards of saints and sufis to hold communion with them. I also got to read hundreds of volumes about Islam, be it Shia, Sunni, Sufi or the rest of the variations. Since childhood my brother and I were taught to read the Quran and then later to recite it like a song. These exercises would make me sweat and I would feel bad about missing Captain Planet and Dexter's Laboratory because that's when the mullah would come to teach us. Once I pretended to be sick and watched cartoon while my brother did his recital class, but later I broke down and wept and ran to mom, saying, "I lied today... I lied today... Ma..." It was only in her embrace and simple question, "Why?" that I found redemption for my act and never pretended in any way again.

Journal of a Young Man [65]

2011-05-31T21:26:00.000-04:00

With its green and yellow, sprinkled with sugar, cantaloupe is quite the treat. I first ate a slice of it at my grandma's place, or more precisely, I was fed a slice of it. It didn't taste delicious at first. Too mild for my taste. Aunt came to the rescue and sprinkled a spoonful of sugar on it. Not soon after, I could sense the grainy texture of the cantaloupe merge with that of the sugar and create a semi-sweet juice in my mouth.

I saw cows get killed once every year during the Eid of sacrifice. My father would go to the temporary markets set up for cow-selling and bring home large white cows and sometimes a few goats. He would usually go to the market at night. My uncles would accompany him. Despite my father's wish to teach me how to go to the market and buy cows, I accompanied him only once I think. It seemed to be too much work to kill a cow. In later years, when it was discovered that mom had asthma and I was allergic to beef and dad himself was told to not eat too much red meat, dad began to sacrifice cows in share, that is, one cow would be shared by several families.

Lemoned chicken breasts are pretty delicious recipes. I do not know where this idea popped up from right now. But it brings to my mind images of men and women cooking away happily in the kitchen. In my family, it was my mom who always cooked. Dad was only good at eating the food, critiquing it, and sometimes going to the bazaar. Given my excessive enthusiasm for cooking, I used to stand in front of the kitchen and learn how to cook from my mother. She would find it strange for a boy to be so interested in the culinary arts and sometimes she thought I was just spending mother-son time with her.

The window of my present room shows me the other building opposite to mine. Nobody ever comes to the balcony of that other apartment. I have sat beside this window for hours and I've never seen anyone. There's a tree to the side of the window and the leaves hang down lazily on summer days, as light plays hide and seek among them. I sometimes wade into daydreams looking at those leaves. Green. Green. Green.

I have seen three colors of urine - white, yellow and semi-red. I sometimes drink a lot of water and make my urine crystal white and on repeating that, my urine loses its smell. If I am drinking less water, the urine is yellow and has a strong smell. Sometimes it can even be more dense than normal. I had this friend who had tasted his own urine and urged me to do so too... I was never able to do it.

My uncle loved pillows. He couldn't sleep without his long side pillow. He would wrap his arms and legs around it like it has been his companion since he was in the cradle. Watching him sleep so comfortably when I was a kid once made me wish to have a side pillow as well. So when my uncle was not in his room, I sneaked in and wrapped my arms and legs around his pillow and slept with it for some minutes. Mimicking my uncle I tried my best to find comfort in the coziness of the pillow. But it was all so boring after a while. Instead of being a comfort, I found it to be a problem between my legs.

The first time I saw women in swimsuit was after coming to Georgia. We went to the savannah hilton head island beach and there among the waves and sands were women in swimsuits. Men in their shorts or briefs were nothing new. I have grown up seeing men take nude showers outside in the sun. I have also seen semi-nude village women bath in the river or pond. The variety of swimsuit designs and patterns are testaments to how much we humans can do with small pieces of clothes.

Vanilla ice cream tastes good with cookies. Or even as float in Sprite, which my best friend showed me when we first met. I had gone to his house and he didn't know what he was going to give me. After some thinking, there came the 'aha' moment and he poured some Sprite in a glass and then two scoops of vanilla ice cream in it. I looked at it with curiosity. It was the first time that I saw something like that. He gave me a small spoon and said, 'try it. My family loves it.'

Journal of a Young Man [64]

2011-05-30T23:20:00.000-04:00

Could I ever be in a working relationship with a prostitute? I don't have angels on my shoulders and I shelter no qualms about prostitution as a profession, so as far as my companion's profession goes, I wouldn't have any objection. That is, as long as she enjoys her job and realizes the life risks involved in it. It is sad to see sad people saddened by their sad jobs. I am always for doing something you are indifferent to than doing something you don't like. But I suppose there are circumstances when you are forced to do something, and if my companion were a prostitute for circumstantial reasons, I would try hard to get her out of it. I understand such situations, having seen such circumstances at work before. And I also understand how much people need to be free to do what makes them feel fulfilled. That's why I fail to be possessive. I don't own anyone after all, and I wouldn't mind her sleeping with people I don't know, for business purposes of course. Any other form of relation would push the relationship between her and I to an open status, and I am not very fond of such open stuff. It sounds too free to be valuable. So no, as long as she is renting herself for work she enjoys, I suppose we could cook veggie soup for dinner together after her work. But then... in bed or in the couch, kissing her might feel like kissing a stranger. For I have quite the detailed imagination. As my tongue rolls in her mouth, I would probably imagine how the tongue of another rolled inside it too and I would suddenly sense that other tongue touching my tongue. That would be a strange moment. Not to mention the same phenomenon repeating itself when I am inside her. In an act of heterosexuality, I would perhaps experience moments of homosexuality in sensing the several other penises that have touched her. Well, what can we not adapt to? It just takes patience and time. Maybe in a few months or years, I would even be able to adapt to those unique moments of feeling the imaginary tongues or the invisible penises. But... how would I deal with the possibility of STDs? Indeed, that would be the prime fear in living with her. It would be a turn off during foreplay and an extremely scary topic for post-sex pillow-talk!

A Requiem for Neil

2011-05-30T22:45:00.002-04:00

Gossai imagines the life of his mad brother in this fictional autobiography, following the brother's perspective. When I first began reading it, I couldn't help but wonder how would Gossai even know what his brother thought or felt, given that Gossai never properly knew his brother? His brother never talked or communicated with anybody. This is like writing diary entries for God. As I continued reading, I saw how the story is an attempt for Gossai to get to know his brother more, to know him intimately, to know him as a brother would know him. The persona of Neil is like a ghost who is watching everything from beyond the veil and narrating what it could not narrate when it was in the body. As the story progresses, the two brothers - one ghost and the other a writer - merge to push me into a deep curiosity about the minds of madmen.

Journal of a Young Man [63]

2011-05-30T02:08:00.000-04:00

I write blogposts, read diverse books, watch recommended movies and animations, passionately solve my homework problems and try to listen to news from different sources. I do what I do and days pass by. Sometimes problems come up - a few times in my life but more often in the lives of my friends and most often in the world out there - Middle East and all that. Although I take my time to hear everyone out, I am not anyone's saviour. I am not even a saviour to myself. I do what I do always - that is, keep swimming like there's no tomorrow, like there has never been a yesterday. Despite sensing the pain that some go through while telling me their stories, I have never even had the urge to solve their problems. I suppose it comes from the fact that I never had any urge to solve the 'problems' people say I have in my life. I am bad with problems. Despite their proposed existence, they are invisible to me and being invisible, I usually find them irrelevant to my living. I wonder if I live in an illusion on a daily basis. As of now, I am not quite assertive about that part, but I don't see how we can be too real by accepting problems as if they really mean everything to us. I let go. I trust swimming. Now someone will be happy to hear that.

The Essential Galbraith

2011-05-29T10:59:00.000-04:00

It is a wise economist who recognizes the scope of his own generalization and Galbraith, knowing the scope of economic theories, is ever searching to broaden that scope. Starting from how buyers are as powerful as corporations to unions in the position of management to the false stability offered by conventional wisdom, Galbraith proposes valuable insights into the economic world that is so volatile. By questioning why many present economists don't change their theories with the time, Galbraith opens up a discussion that can lead to much development in the understanding of our society. This is perhaps the reason, the fact that he questions his fellow economists, that he was sharply criticized by several economists, including Krugman, and called a non-serious public economist. But Galbraith's vision is broad and his is the field of macroeconomics. He raises questions of re-evaluations of money, corporations, unions, individuals, economists and in doing so, Galbraith does what Nietzsche did to the conventional idea of morality presided over by God. Galbraith's work is valuable and an open path for any new thinker to tread upon.

Roundtable with the Pharaoh

2011-05-28T23:37:00.000-04:00

What follows is a conversation with Obama based on his speech to the UK Parliament on 25 May, 2011. These are direct quotations from Obama’s speech and consequent queries raised by Xavier and Efadul. The full speech in video and in transcript is available in the ingrained links.

Obama: The path has never been perfect. But through the struggles of slaves and immigrants; women and ethnic minorities; former colonies and persecuted religions, we have learned better than most that the longing for freedom and human dignity is not English or American or Western - it is universal, and it beats in every heart.

Efad: Words of immense understanding! Yet my President, you took sides with tyrants and called Hosni Mubarak a 'patriot' when the Egyptian revolution began, you took weeks before denouncing the corrupt rule of Mubarak, you signed a $6 billon arms deal with Saudi Arabia where 'human dignity' is unbelievably abused every day. And these are only some of the many crimes you approve of. Do you really understand what you say or could these be borrowed words?

Obama: We are the allies who landed at Omaha and Gold; who sacrificed side by side to free a continent from the march of tyranny, and help prosperity flourish from the ruins of war. And with the founding of Nato - a British idea - we joined a transatlantic alliance that has ensured our security for over half a century.

Xavier: Security of what? Is this security of people, economic interests, client states, etc? Mr. President, the word security has never been used in the context of actually securing flesh and blood people. It’s always used in relation to securing vital interests of the state such as natural resources, land, or property. For example when PM Benjamin Netanyahu talks about a secure Israel he is advocating expansion of illegal settlements and not protecting actual people. This is why he calls the 67 borders "indefensible" because this would threaten the existence of these settlements. Correspondingly, when you talk about securing US borders from immigrants coming in from Mexico it can't be because you have a legitimate concern for American citizens but it's about keeping people in Mexico so they can continue to manufacture our products at deplorable wages for our consumers. The movement of labor across borders is anathema to economies like ours that relies heavily on private enterprise. Because private power relies on profit, challenging policies of cheap labor puts a dent in profits.

Obama: Today, after a difficult decade that began with war and ended in recession, our nations have arrived at a pivotal moment once more. A global economy that once stood on the brink of depression is now stable and recovering.

Xavier: How do you reconcile this notion of a recovering global economy given the fact that 45% of children in India suffer from malnutrition (with a body mass index below 18.5), 77% of Indians live below the poverty line, and an Indian farmer kills himself every 30 minutes by ingesting pesticide? Maybe, Mr. President, you are ignorant of these facts but ignorance is certainly no excuse to make statements as irresponsible as these. Additionally, you fail to realize that there is no correlation between GDP/GNP figures and the actual health of the population. GDP and GNP fail to measure such things as job insecurity, unemployment, capital depreciation, malnutrition rates, and many other important factors. This statement speaks volumes about your conception of humanity Mr. President.

Obama: After years of conflict, the United States has removed 100,000 troops from Iraq, the United Kingdom has removed its forces, and our combat mission there has ended.

Efad: Indeed, as you pull out 100,000 troops, you are employing approximately 50,000 private mercenaries under the pretense of defending "five fortified compounds that will be left behind as US combat forces exit Iraq". In other words, you are effectively pulling out only 50,000 troops and not to mention, how many more private mercenaries will be further deployed. Do you really have an exit strategy in mind?

Obama: We should empower the same forces that have allowed our own people to thrive - we should help the hungry to feed themselves.

Xavier: Mr. President, there are easy ways to help the hungry feed themselves. For example, stop supporting dictators, allow people to have democratic elections, and stop invading countries. Plus how do you explain the blocking of Jean Bertrand Aristide, a champion of the poor, from returning to Haiti? This isn't any conspiracy theory. In fact, I've read that you made a personal phone call to South African president Jacob Zuma, ordering him not to allow Jean Aristide to return to his homeland of Haiti. Is this helping the hungry feed themselves? Here's the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere and you will not even allow a man who has done much to empower them return to his native-land? I noticed you didn't make a peep when Baby Doc returned to Haiti, a man that is responsible for some of the most horrendous crimes against humanity in the 20th century. You ask the hungry to "feed themselves”. First, Mr. President, why don't you allow the hungry people of the world to free themselves?

Obama: Nearly 10 years after 9/11, we have disrupted terrorist networks and dealt al-Qaeda a huge blow by killing its leader - Osama bin Laden.

Efad: My president, you argued that details about Osama will not be released because Osama is not a trophy and here you are flaunting the dead Osama as an achievement. I am surprised that you semi-honestly call your act 'killing'. I appreciate it. Though in truth, Osama was murdered and this act blatantly violated international laws. I would also like to question your assumption that the murder of Osama dealt a ‘huge blow’. Do you really think it helped that much? Or did this murder actually deal a 'huge blow' to Republicans who called you a socialist and said you were against 'American' values? Did you do this in search of approval, out of a sense of insecurity, so that now they may say, 'Attaboy! You are a true American!'? Aren’t you happy about the rise in your public opinion poll results?

Obama: These challenges come at a time when the international order has already been reshaped for a new century. Countries like China, India, and Brazil are growing by leaps and bounds. We should welcome this development, for it has lifted hundreds of millions from poverty around the globe, and created new markets and opportunities for our own nations.

Xavier: How is India making great leaps forward with its attacks on the indigenous population, and what about the abuse of Chinese coal workers?

Obama: And yet, as this rapid change has taken place, it has become fashionable in some quarters to question whether the rise of these nations will accompany the decline of American and European influence around the world. Perhaps, the argument goes, these nations represent the future, and the time for our leadership has passed. That argument is wrong. The time for our leadership is now.

Efad: Why is it that the UK and US have to lead the world? What is so unacceptable about someone else taking the lead? I ask out of sheer curiosity. Is this not the very hunger for power and glory, the very stubbornness to not move on, to refuse to let is be, the adamant will to preside that separate fools and tyrants from peaceful human beings?

Obama: In an era defined by the rapid flow of commerce and information, it is our free market tradition, our openness, fortified by our commitment to basic security for our citizens, that offers the best chance of prosperity that is both strong and shared.

Xavier: According to Adam Smith free-markets is the circulation of capital and labor. In the US labor is immobile while capital is mobile. Also the unilateral sanctions against the Iranian regime along with the embargo on Cuba violate fundamental free-market principles. We have never adopted anything that remotely resembles the free market. Even our international "free trade agreements" violate fundamental free-market principles. Rather, we operate on a double standard which imposes free markets on the poor but refuses to adopt these principles for the powerful. For example, when NAFTA was passed during the Clinton administration state-subsidized agri-business corporations flooded the rural areas of Mexico, and made the crops of independent farmers uncompetitive. These farmers, unable to compete with these US corporations, migrated to the urban centers in Mexico to manufacture products at unimaginably low wages. Is this the "free-market" in effect? If it is we must recognize that the only freedom here is our government's and our corporate sector’s freedom to oppress others.

Obama: It was the United States and the United Kingdom, and our democratic allies, that shaped a world in which new nations could emerge and individuals could thrive.

Efad: My President, you must be joking. US, UK and 'our democratic allies' have not 'shaped a world' that allows for new nations to comfortably pop-up and people to develop organically. Throughout history, from the oppression in India, to the slavery of blacks, to the suppression of indigenous Indians within reservations, to the assassinations in South America, to present day Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest, we and 'our democratic allies' have mostly created nightmares, nightmares from which people decide to free themselves by teaming up to push us off, stand for themselves and claim the 'freedom' that has always been theirs. Our international policies are not the causes that lead to thriving individuals. These policies are obstacles to growth and development and thriving individuals. Let us not foolishly claim that people need help to grow. They don't.

Obama: Adam Smith's central insight remains true today: there is no greater generator of wealth and innovation than a system of free enterprise that unleashes the full potential of individual men and women.

Xavier: How would you address the concept of division of labor where Adam Smith describes it as a system that makes man as "stupid and ignorant as possible"? Mr. President, you obviously didn’t read Adam Smith. Smith also says that he or she who works under a system of division of labor "naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become." Opposed to the doctrines that Harvard Law School may have taught you to believe, Adam Smith rejected division of labor and felt that a capitalist society could only function if human beings were bound by a social pact that fostered cooperation. How can you hail Adam Smith as an inspiration while continuing to support the division of labor? Are you, deep down, against division of labor? Are you a radical thinker like Adam Smith? Or are you just practicing the lies you learned in law school?

Obama: As millions are still denied their basic human rights because of who they are, or what they believe, or the kind of government that they live under, we are the nations most willing to stand up for the values of tolerance and self-determination that lead to peace and dignity.

Efad: What kind of 'peace and dignity' have been given to the American citizen Mumia Abu-Jamal who has been accused of a murder without proper evidence, subjected to racial prejudice in the court of law and have been put on death row for the last two decades? Here's a documentary for you to watch between drinking Irish beers to discover your Irish roots: In Prison My Whole Life. What kind of 'peace and dignity' have been given to the 3000 people in death row in the USA alone?

Obama: No country can hide from the dangers of carbon pollution, which is why we must build on what was achieved at Copenhagen and Cancun to leave our children a planet that is safer and cleaner.

Xavier: Mr. President, 192 nations signed on to the Kyoto Protocols and we refused to sign it. This is just plain blindness on your part. Not to mention the attempts to use coercion to bully Ecuador into conforming to our climate policy. Strangely, you made these same mission statements about a "clean future" in your State of the Union Address. Plus, there are some glaring facts to be noticed before we accept your statement. For instance, was it not you, Mr. President, who was quoted on March 31, 2011 as saying "It’s important to recognize that nuclear energy doesn’t emit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so those of us who are concerned about climate change, we’ve got to recognize that nuclear power, if it’s safe, can make a significant contribution to the climate change question"? Remember, Mr. President, this was only a few weeks after the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan created one of the worst nuclear disasters since Chernobyl. How does your clean energy program work with this level of indifference to suffering? Perhaps when you add "if it's safe" the American public should replace the word "safe" with "profitable"?

Obama: And that is why countries like China, India and Brazil are growing so rapidly - because in fits and starts, they are moving toward market-based principles that the United States and the United Kingdom have always embraced.

Efad: You mean India is 'growing so rapidly' by forcing one farmer to commit suicide every 30 minutes, by displacing its indigenous population and calling these poor people 'terrorists', by policing the kingdom of Kashmir? Indeed, such economic models got to be based on the 'market-based principles that the United States and the United Kingdom have always embraced'.

Obama: we should advance the truth that nations prosper when they allow women and girls to reach their full potential.

Xavier: How can you support the rights of women and girls when you support Saudi Arabia where women are lacerated by horsewhips for driving? Maybe you think that King Abdullah is a nice guy because he gave you a shiny necklace but just because he treats you like his high school sweetheart doesn't mean he treats all women this way. Repression against women hasn't only increased in Saudi Arabia but it has also increased in Afghanistan as demonstrated in the Mid Year Civilian Protection Report of 2010. Outspoken advocates of women's rights, like Malalai Joya, have also shed light on this tragic plight of women.

Saudi King presenting a necklace to Obama

Obama: Our two nations know what it is to confront evil in the world. Hitler's armies would not have stopped their killing had we not fought them on the beaches and the landing grounds; in the fields and on the streets. We must never forget that there was nothing inevitable about our victory in that terrible war - it was won through the courage and character of our people.

Efad: Everything about this victory was 'inevitable'. With the atom bomb in one hand and the military fleet in another, was there any chance that you could NOT win? Indeed, in annihilating more than 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on those auspicious days, our country has exhibited 'the courage and character of our people'.

Obama: For years, we have faced charges of hypocrisy from those who do not enjoy the freedoms that they hear us espouse. To them, we must squarely acknowledge that yes, we have enduring interests in the region - to fight terror, sometimes with partners who may not always be perfect, and to protect against disruptions in the world's energy supply.

Xavier: Mr. President, you are openly admitting your hypocrisy. Is it necessary to be a complete hypocrite in order to preserve democracy? I have the feeling that you're an avid reader of Machiavelli's work. Every speech you give, you seem to be trying as hard as you can to, using Machiavelli's words, "maintain appearances". This strict adherence to appearance always comes at the cost of reality. From Palestine to Pakistan, the truth has never been called out by its first name. And what do you mean by "tension"? Perhaps, people dying? This remark echoes a remark you made in Chile when a reporter asked you if you would ask for forgiveness for the past crimes of the US in backing the overthrow of the democratically elected Allende government, which led to over 3,000 civilian deaths. With Machiavellian precision, you responded, "yes, in the past our relationship may have been a bit rocky”. Is plunging an entire region of people into 20 long years of state terror without an apology or reparations "a bit rocky"?

Obama: While al-Qaeda seeks a religious war with the West, we must remember that they have killed thousands of Muslims - men, women and children - around the globe.

Xavier: Mr President, this can't be a religious war, it is a war about natural resources and power. This assent to the religious narrative is very unsophisticated and obscures the real objectives of the US invasion. This need to qualify the conflict in Iraq as a religious war is a tool used by propagandists to stoke fear in the hearts of the domestic population and silence any dissent against the war crimes of the aggressor. But, Mr. President, you are not the only person who does this. Your buddy Ali Abdulllah Saleh also loves to raise the spectre of religion to control his population. For example, he went as far as calling the women who protested in the streets of Sanaa against his terrorism "anti-Islamic" because he claimed that the Quran forbids women to protest alongside men. To this day, Saleh has massacred hundreds of innocent people with our silent approval. But the comparison stops here Mr. President. For sure, I'm not comparing that monster Saleh with you. Saleh kills his own people! I know you are much too civilized for that, you only kill other innocent people.

Efad: On that note, while we in the West seek peace, prosperity and democracy, we must remember that we have killed thousands of Muslims - men, women and children - in the Middle East and Pakistan, shouldn't we, my President? How different are we, in terms of effects, when compared to Al-Qaeda?

Obama: We do these things because we believe not simply in the rights of nations, we believe in the rights of citizens. That is the beacon that guided us through our fight against fascism and our twilight struggle against communism... Let there be no doubt: the United States and United Kingdom stand squarely on the side of those who long to be free.

Efad: You talk about the 'rights of citizens'. Alright, what about the rights of Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis? I do not mean Hamas or Al-Qaeda. I mean everyday, ordinary citizens. What about more than 1000 civilians killed in Pakistan by now due to our drone attacks? What about the dilapidated water and food supply, improper sanitation, battered cities for ordinary Palestinians while we continue to veto UN resolutions aimed to secure Palestinians from the clutches of Israeli government?

Obama: Democracies are the closest allies we have.

Xavier: What about the Saudi Monarchy? Saudi Arabia doesn't even claim to be a democracy and we made a 60 billion dollar arms deal with them last October. Is this one of our democratic allies? Furthermore, Saudi Arabia is the only country in what's being called the "Arab Spring" that was able to crush protests before they even began. This isn't democracy. This is a police state and we are perfectly willing to take necklaces from and be polite to these police states insofar as they keep the population under their boot. Mr. President, I find this disgraceful.

Obama: During this transition, we will pursue a lasting peace with those who break free of from al-Qaeda and respect the Afghan constitution and lay down arms.

Xavier: Mr. President, this request of laying down arms is illegitimate because the overwhelming majority of the so-called enemy doesn’t have any arms, the people who are being killed aren’t fighters, they are civilians. This is a common fallacy of war planners (to ignore the civilian population or as revered admirals would call them "collateral damage"). Mr. President, have you read the Mid Year Report 2010 Protection of Civilians of Armed Conflict published by the United Nations? This report demonstrates that 2010 was the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since the US invasion. Here's a direct quote from the report: "Women and children experienced an extreme lack of protection in conflict-affected areas along with widespread violation of their basic human rights. From January to June 2010, women casualties increased by six per cent and child casualties leapt by 55 per cent from 2009." Mr. President, what do you have to say to these prepubescent corpses? Should they lay down their arms?

Obama: We also share a common interest in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

Xavier: What about the spread of nuclear weapons in Israel, Pakistan, and India. All these countries are not signers of the NPT. Iran has signed the NPT and acts within the law but they are the monster? Mr. President, this is pure hypocrisy. I don't think this hypocrisy is new though. You did the same thing when you condemned Iran for crushing protests in Tehran while you supported brutal killings in Bahrain, suppression in Saudi Arabia, and called Mubarak a "proud patriot". Not to mention the fact that any nation that drops two atomic bombs on an island of people, taking over 200,000 lives and leaving the offspring of the survivors to suffer birth defects should just shut the hell up about the spread of nuclear weapons.

Obama: Yes, our diversity can lead to tension. Throughout history, there have been heated debates about immigration and assimilation in both our countries. But even as these debates can be difficult, we fundamentally recognize that our patchwork heritage is an enormous strength.

Xavier: How do 700 Haitians fit into this "patchwork heritage"? Not only were these 700 immigrants slated to be deported but the Washington Post reported on October 7, 2010 that "the Obama administration announced Wednesday that in the past year it has deported a record number of unauthorized immigrants - more than 392,000, about half of whom were convicted criminals." This is doing much to destroy the "patchwork heritage" of the US and don't you think people should understand this?

Obama: we must always remember that the true source of our influence hasn't just been the size of our economies, the reach of our militaries, or the land that we've claimed. It has been the values that we must never waver in defending around the world - the idea that all human beings are endowed by our Creator with certain rights that cannot be denied.

Xavier: "Land we've claimed"? Don't you mean hijacked? The land that we call America could only come about after the genocide of the indigenous population. Every history professor in the US knows this even if they don't admit it. So the use of the word "claim" to cover up what was actually a brutal annexation of indigenous territory is a whitewashing of history and unbecoming of any person who professes a belief in democracy and human rights.

Moreover, there's a bill that’s about to be passed in Congress which violates the sovereignty of every nation on the globe including the US (that is if we accept elementary principles of universality). On May 27, Democracy Now! reported ''the Republican-led House has passed a defense spending bill Thursday with a number of controversial provisions. If signed into law, the bill would prohibit any non-U.S. citizen suspected of terrorism from receiving a federal trial regardless of where they were arrested. In addition, the bill expands the president’s ability to wage an endless worldwide war against terrorism suspects and against nations suspected of supporting them even when there is no connection to the Sept. 11 attacks." Contrary to what's being said, this bill if passed into law will ensure that the US "never waver[s]" in attacking people around the world.

Obama: That is what forged our bond in the fire of war - a bond made manifest by the friendship between two of our greatest leaders. Churchill and Roosevelt had their differences. They were keen observers of each other's blind spots and shortcomings, if not always their own, and they were hard-headed about their ability to remake the world.

Efad: For the first time in 1919, Winston Churchill ordered the use of poison gas against Arabs in Iraq and when asked to reconsider his decision, Churchill said, "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas." He further justified his order saying, "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes." In this case the 'uncivilised tribes' were Arabs. Roosevelt while dealing with Haitians commented, "The [African] porters are strong, patient, good-humored savages, with something childlike about them that makes one really fond of them. Of course, like all savages and most children, they have their limitations." In another instance, he said, ""The presence of the Negro is the real problem; slavery is merely the worst possible method of solving the problem." Indeed, these leaders are the 'greatest leaders' according to you Mr. President. Indeed, these are your ideals!

Journal of a Young Man [62]

2011-05-26T23:16:00.000-04:00

To go is to animate, bang doors, drive cars, force open, oomph it out, push it beyond the ordinary, snap in failure, vivaciously cackle on like geese, fling what it may be, crack under pressure, pop the question, slap cheeks, stab hearts, turn around and walk away, whack the shameless, whirl in ecstasy, approach criminals, cruise in deep water, depart from the scene, escape an angry father, exit the kitchen, flee a weeping girlfriend, fly away to England, get lost from sight, hit the road with no map, journey to the beginning of the world, leave the grass to rabbits, make for the trophy, move out of problems, pass the passerby, pull out a thick dick, push off idiots, push on against tyrants, quit the revolution, repair a rickshaw, retire from talking, run along with the caravan, run away with a fuck buddy, shove off nagging fools, skip out on breakfast, take a hike to neva'-neva'-land, take leave of office, take off from school, travel across Europe, withdraw from wedding, act on impulse, carry on being stupid, continue cutting paper, maintain schedules, make out with a doll, perform magic, persist in failing, proper through sweat, score a win, succeed in dying, work for food, connect dots, lead the way, make something, reach for the sun, spread religion, vary in opinions... No, I still am not a raving lunatic.

Journal of a Young Man [61]

2011-05-25T22:52:00.000-04:00

Superwoman, I loved the potato salad you had made the other day. The taste of it is still in my tongue. I tried to recreate your recipe at home tonight. I bought some yellow-skin potato yesterday. I boiled the eggs and mixed the potato, eggs and mayo together. Sad that I didn't have any celery at home. I did throw in some other vegetables. It wasn't anything close to yours. But I had fun eating it and thinking of you. In fact, tonight's potato made me think of the Bangladeshi-style mashed potato with oil, onions, shrimps, coriander and green pepper. Perhaps I will get around to making that during another vacation. My grandmother would make mashed potato almost everyday. And I remember how she used to spoon-feed me when I was a kid. She would make amoeba-looking shapes with them and give them names, trying to create a game where I would have to eat these shapes as she spoke aloud their names. I wonder how she is. By the way, this post is not an open letter. I am only thinking aloud here.

Infidel

2011-05-22T12:19:00.000-04:00

Ayaan raises some worthy questions and the life she had implies many others. Infidel's narration is direct but that is something I am not concerned about. I had to pause in a few places, the unfolding story was overbearing, but that's not because of Ayaan's literary genius but the sheer facts of what she went through. Her experience is her personal matter and therefore I am not going to comment on her choices and decisions and actions. However, to acknowledge what she really wanted to do here, that is to raise questions, I shall talk about those. Islam is a massively popular religion across the globe, but never before has its diversity come to light as it is today. Whenever I talk about contemporary Islam that is something I like to point out. The Islam of Asia and the Islam of Arab are different in several ways. The Islam of the 'moderate' and the Islam of the 'fundamentalist' are different in opposing ways. The Islam of Tariq Ramadan, an Oxford-based muslim scholar, and the Islam of Zakir Naik, a tycoon of theology in the muslim world, are vastly different. Not to mention the numerous sects, aside from Shia and Sunni, scattered across the globe. The uniform days of Muhammad are over. So while I point out certain aspects of Ayaan's life, let us keep that in mind, that the standards of Islam vary geographically and for now let us not put it to question, but just hear Ayaan. I shall strictly relate the parts, mostly quoting but sometimes paraphrasing, that are relevant to the discussion about Islam.

Perhaps it was Ayaan's grandmother who gave her the first morals. She says, the moral of every one of my grandmother's stories rested on honor. We must be strong, clever, suspicious; we must obey the rules of the clan... If my mother or her sisters were attacked by men out in the desert it would be their own fault... to be raped would be far worse than dying, because it would tarnish the honor of everyone in their family. She continues, living in the desert, my grandmother had never really had the time to pray. Among the nomads, women weren't expected to... In the desert, nomad women were not covered... My mother had no right to a divorce under Muslim law. The only way she could have claimed one was if her husband had been impotent or left her completely indigent... A father's curse is the worst thing that can happen to you, a ticket straight to hell... A whole cosmology of magical entities existed alongside the one God, Allah. Djinns, who could be male or female, lived in an intermediate sphere adjoining ours and could be counted on to bring misfortune and disease. The souls of wise men and dead ancestors could also intercede with God on your behalf... In Somalia, like many other countries across Africa and the Middle East, little girls are made 'pure' by having their genitals cut out... After the child's clitoris and labia are carved out, scraped off, or, in more compassionate areas, merely cut or pricked, the whole area is often sewn up, so that a thick band of tissues forms a chastity belt made of the girl's own scarred flesh. A small hole is carefully situated to permit a thin flow of pee. Only great force can tear the scar tissue wider, for sex. (Husbands often cut it with a knife) Uncircumcised girls will be possessed by devils, fall into vice and perdition, and become whores. Imams never discourage the practice: it keeps girls pure.

When Ayaan moves to Saudi Arabia, the kind of Islam she experiences is again different. She relates, now our mother began insisting that we pray when the mosques called, five times each day. Here, everything was segregated. Mahad had to go to a madrassah for boys, and Haweya and I to one for girls. They called Haweya and I Abid, which meant slaves. We had to learn it (the Quran), verse by verse, by heart. Everything in Saudi Arabia was about sin. You weren't naughty, you were sinful. You weren't clean; you were pure. The word haram, forbidden, was something we heard every day. Taking a bus with men was haram. Boys and girls playing together was haram. When we played with the other girls in the courtyard of the Quran school, if our white headscarves shook loose, that was haram, too, even if there were no boys around. People had their heads cut off in public squares. Adults spoke of it. It was a normal, routine thing... Hands cut off. Men were flogged. Women were stoned. As for praying, women were to pray but not with men. Some of the Saudi women in our neighbourhood were regularly beaten by their husbands. In Saudi Arabia, everything bad was the fault of the Jews. When the air conditioner broke or suddenly the tap stopped running, the Saudi women next door used to say the Jews did it. The children next door were taught to pray for the health of their parents and the destruction of Jews. When my mother went shopping without a male driver or spouse to act as guardian, grocers wouldn't attend to her. Pious women were not to work outside home and a woman living alone was a prostitute.

Truly muslim women should cover their bodies even in front of a blind man, even in their own houses. They had no right to walk down the middle of the street. They should not move out of their father's house without permission. Even when all women had been covered completely from head to toe, another line of thought was opened. High heels tapped and could trigger in men the image of a woman's legs; to avoid sin, women must wear flat shoes that make no noise. Next came perfume: using any kind of pleasant fragrance, even perfumed soap and shampoo, would distract the minds of men from Allah's worship and cause them to fantasize about sinning. A man's sinful erotic thoughts were always the fault of the woman who incited them.

They said women were in the grip of invisible forces that played with their minds and made them switch from one extreme mood to another. That was why Allah had ordained that the testimony of two women is equal to that of one man, and also why women should not be allowed to govern or accept public offices, for leadership requires mindful contemplation and judgments reached after careful thought. Women lacked all these by nature. We were flighty and irrational, and it was much better for us if our fathers and other male guardians decided who we should spend the rest of our lives with.

Most unmarried Somali girls who got pregnant committed suicide. I knew of one girl in Mogadishu who poured a can of gasoline over herself in the living room, with everyone there, and burned herself alive. Of course, if she hadn't done this, her father and brothers would probably have killed her anyway.

Ayaan's father told her she would have to ask permission from her husband to leave the house once married. She continues with what else her father told he, there is a Quranic injunction to women to be sexually available to their husband at all times. He read it (Quran): your wives are your tillage, go in unto your tillage in what manner so ever you will. He said, "You must always be there for your husband, in bed and outside it. Don't make your husband beg; don't refuse him; don't make him look elsewhere. Having unbelievers as friends is discouraged, but if you can make good, honest friendships with infidels, so long as you don't follow their ways, then such relationships are not forbidden. Asking help from a spirit or djinn is forbidden; it puts other beings on a level with Allah. "There is no coercion in Islam," my father said. "No human being has the right to punish another for not observing his religious duties. Only Allah can do that." My father said that committing suicide for Holy Wars was acceptable only in the time of the Prophet - and then only because the unbelievers had attacked the Prophet first. Today there could not be a Holy War, he said, because only the Prophet Muhammad could call for a Holy War. Her father once told her, "We must all work hard to convert everyone to Islam."

After Ayaan joined politics in Holland, she pushed for statistics of honor killings and in a pilot project it was discovered that between October 2004 and May 2005, eleven muslim girls were killed by their families in just two regions (there are twenty-five such regions in Holland).

As can be seen, Islam appears to have many faces. In such a backdrop, the question becomes what is Islam? According to Saudi Arabian jurists, slavery is still allowed, but muslims in Asia would disagree. Not to mention, the debates about role of women, men, homosexuals, religious freedom, relationship between religion and government and so on. Is it agreeable when Ayaan says that the problem is that most muslims never delve into theology, and we rarely read the Quran; we are taught it in Arabic, which most muslims can't speak?

I repeat and with this I ask everybody to make up their minds, what is Islam?

A Tale of Two Outlaws, Feat. Obama & Osama

2011-05-20T11:23:00.003-04:00

Flaunting Nobel’s peace crown, Obama schemed, ambushed and murdered Osama – the songs sing in the streets! Perhaps Osama was a supervillain even if without superpowers, and in confronting him much has been revealed. We, the people from all continents, have unveiled ourselves. We the people of freedom, power, reason, knowledge and justice have shed precious light on ourselves. Without any conclusive trial, and solely on Laden’s videotaped confession, let us assume Laden was behind 9/11, that he was the Joker. But is Obama any Batman? Let us agree that Laden used his religion in a wicked way, that he was the firelord Ozai self-righteously using the powers of fire. But is Obama remotely close to Avatar Aang?

Obama stood that momentous night declaring Osama’s death. It was announced that a 'DNA test' was conducted, and Osama’s body, respected according to 'Muslim traditions', was dumped in the Atlantic. These few sentences narrated over and over and over in the news channels and streets created the collective belief that Osama is dead. None of these TV reporters or we who were celebrating in the streets saw Osama’s dead body. We did not get to see photographs or video. We believed what our president told us. Just because he said so. Is this process of thinking logical? In Kant’s words, this collective belief will be categorized as prejudice based on authority. Ironically, to knowledgeable folks, Obama is hardly an authority. That’s a Machiavellian president who signed a 60 billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia and killed more than a thousand civilians in Pakistan by now while promoting global peace. Returning to the question at hand, if Osama’s dead body isn’t shown, show us photos and videos. If photos and videos are not released, give us the autopsy report and the gene sample. If that’s not possible, give us the 'DNA test' report that’s there. All that we have right now is, this happened because I said so. And here I was wishfully thinking that the days of the priests were coming to an end, that from here on we would discuss tangible evidence, transparent theories and come to our own understanding without being told by a higher authority what is real and what is not. The standards of logic are neat and when certain initial criteria as these are not met, a logician won’t take a step further. Yet doing that would mean I will miss out on the greater unfolding narrative, no matter its questionable root. So let us assume Osama is dead.

Obama, standing behind the microphone that night, was an Aztec priest in suit, announcing to us the glory of his magnificent self, letting the world know the power under his claws, blessing us – the faithful patriots, while rubbing his hands on the sacrificial blood of Osama. Later when questions of evidence came up, Obama argued that the government will not release the details of Osama’s murder because dead Osama isn’t a 'trophy' and it could lead to severe reactions overseas. Certainly, Obama needs to work harder on concocting bullshit. Here we have a proud president appearing in talk shows, giving public speeches about how awesomely awesome this assassination mission was, thanking the people who shot down Osama – how is any of that not using Osama as a trophy? Before his death, Osama was a trophy worth millions and after his death he is a deer head on the wall. As for the reaction overseas, there will be retaliation anyway, whether the details are released or not. Osama will be an icon anyway, whether marines throw his body in some unknown location or not. Icons and trophies don’t just appear. They are created. Just the way the icon of a vicious Osama was created by unceasingly portraying him as the brutal, codeless, cold, sneaky, mighty, strategic, mass murderer across the world media to the point where these adjectives superimposed his not-so-extraordinary actions and made him seem more sinister than he ever was, more powerful than he could ever be and above all, a trophy worth several wars, millions of lives and billions of taxpayers’ money. It’s the Harry Potter parallel of our lives really. He-who-must-not-be-named and all that. Who is Lord Voldemort? Just some ordinary kid who suffered a sorry childhood, had some explainable psychological issues, was never treated properly, learnt wizardry and used it in a way predictable for someone of his mental state. Turning him into the icon of evil, giving him the title of Lord, that was people’s doing. Consequently, it was the fear, the superimposed image that left people helpless in his hands. The muggle Osama is a similar story. In hiding the details of his death while decorating the world with anecdotes about pre-planning and post-planning, the Obama government is only strengthening that icon. The only way to humanize Osama is to reveal him entirely. He is not just a bad guy who walked around with a Kalashnikov, he was a generous host who took care of his guests and 'spoke softly' to people. He is not just a solitary guy who planned to kill people all day, he too had a family, spent time with his children, colored his beard, combed his hair and liked to wear good clothes. He did not just use the Quran to justify him own ideas, he too believed in a benevolent God. This humanizing, this giving back to him who he really was is the only way we can deconstruct the icon we have created and it is also the most honest and most respectful burial we can give him. Not some top-secret garbage disposal in the North Arabian Sea based on superstition about Osama’s ‘negative energy’ or the fear that people would enshrine him.

Like a parrot, Obama repeats ‘justice has been done’ a lot these days. To this, there have been several responses so far. Let me direct you to read Noam Chomsky’s reaction, Xavier Best’s blogpost and Marjori’s Cohn’s article. Osama's assassination was an extrajudicial execution and 'the U.N. General Assembly and Human Rights Commission, as well as Amnesty International, have all condemned extrajudicial executions'. Osama’s killing was certainly not a legitimate act by any standard of law. In fact, Obama and his government are outlaws, not for the first time of course. What is of interest is that Obama takes great pride in killing an 'unarmed' Osama, even if guilty, and calls this justice, while clearly this action can only be called a murder for revenge. We who are asked today to celebrate the murder of an unarmed man ought to question ourselves if there was any justice involved after all. Plainly speaking, the scenario is something like this: some guys with guns shot an unarmed murderer without giving him a chance to explain himself, without a chance to say his last words, without a chance to take leave of life. If there is any humanity in us, then this is inhuman. If a marine team can raid a mansion on a foreign territory in a few minutes time, kill an 'unarmed' man, take his body, do some medical tests and get rid of the body so quickly, how was it impossible for such an effective team to arrest the 'unarmed' murderer and bring him back alive?

Violent US-Israeli policies jeopardized the lives of millions in the Middle-East and making that his justification, a foolish Osama bombed the twin towers and several other places jeopardizing the lives of thousands across the globe, and hastily in retaliation to that, a foolish Bush and a foolish Obama, raised wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, killing thousands more and murdered Osama in the end, and now in reply to Osama’s murder the foolish Al-Qaeda bombed some more, killing some more people, in fact following this chain of thought, it would be perfectly understandable if an Iraq-Pakistan-Afghanistan coalition assassinated Obama and Bush and bombed America some more, and still the chain would continue! This is violence wrestling violence, and if we move our focus from idiots like Osama, Obama, Bush, Saddam and the rest, who are the victims really? People. Everyday, ordinary people. People in America, people in the Middle-East, people in Asia, people in Europe, people in every part of the world. You and I.

Yet the view that we are encouraged to adopt is a simplistic idea about good guy vs. bad guy, the commando in Modern Warfare 2 shooting down the virtual terrorist who is a faraway dot on the screen. The commando knows nothing about who that other guy is, what motivates his aggression, what the other guy thinks about life, love, death, if he has a daughter or a son or if he likes to have a conversation over a cup of tea. It is one thing to know a murderer personally and quite another to know him just as a murderer. To know a man as more than just the opposition is to know him wholly while to know him just as opposition is to alienate oneself, to limit one’s own understanding and in the process, alienating the other as well, to the point where the only option left for the other to be is the opposition. In raising wars and indulging in revenge, that is precisely what we have done. We have left the others no choice but to be the opposition we imagined them to be. The story is same on both sides. The bearded guy in the sand knows little about the suave white guy and sees him as just opposition.

So far our celebratory response to the murder of Osama shows how desperately we wanted to be relieved of the fear of Osama. We were so desperate that we did not look for concrete evidence of his death, we did not question what Obama called ‘justice’, we did not look into our humanity and individual standards of morality, we did not ask ourselves if we would really dance on the funeral of a murdered man. When Obama proposes his healthcare plan, we don’t just believe him. There are hundreds of questions asked and even with proper statistics and answers, we refuse Obama’s plans. But in the case of Laden, we needed no further questioning, no discussions. We just believed because Obama said so. We were made so scared and so desperate that we seized the news as a way out of all our grievances and fears. We have developed a new kind of slave morality, that is, when we face a threat, without proper diagnosis we jump to the opposite end. Without thinking clearly, we have revengefully prayed for Osama’s death. Just the way slaves came up with religion to fight the oppression of aristocrats, just the way slaves did everything exactly opposite to what their masters did, we now view our lives in such myopic dichotomies. Slaves did not question if religion too would lead to oppression and we do not question if the remorseless murderers of Osama are any better than Osama himself. We have been duped. Joker is right when he says, “All that madness needs is a little push…”

As for Obama and his government, they have assumed the status of heroes. Are they our heroes? Do they embody the best in us? Are they any different from Osama? In the cartoon Avatar: The Last Air Bender, when everyone’s idea of defeating firelord Ozai is to kill him, Avatar Aang refuses to kill him and instead figures out a way to take away the power of destructive firebending from Ozai using an ancient energybending method. Despite Joker’s crimes and taunting, Batman never kills him but delivers him to justice and fair trial. What will be done with a murderer once turned in is a secondary question. The essential question here is whether we ought to follow the murderer’s footsteps and breach the very moral standards we agreed upon. We still have time to reevaluate our stance and redress our misunderstanding. It is time for confession. Let us give Obama, Netanyahu, Bush, Zawahiri and the rest of the outlaws a fair trial.

Journal of a Young Man [60]

2011-05-19T09:32:00.000-04:00

Trying out new recipes is an adventure. I never know what I am in for. Fish curry with plain yogurt, chocolate chip cookie with mint, ice cream sandwich or even some Syrian mint lemonade. A few weeks ago, we had to arrange a fund raiser for AIGSU and we were looking for something new, something middle-eastern, something that while being new would still be familiar to the campus crowd, and I came across Syrian mint lemonade on a website. It needed very simple ingredients: lemon, mint leaves, sugar and water. After a few days of spreading the idea around among friends, some volunteered. On the trial night, I was at my laptop working on my honors paper about underage drinking, not a task I enjoyed very much. Corey went to Walmart herself and bought what we needed. Soon we were in our messy kitchen stepping into the unknown world of Syrian mint lemonade. We prepared the lemon juice in a jug, lightly grounded the mint leaves, and finally mixed them together. Using a large spoon, Corey had the first sip and then I. It needed more mint I thought. So we put in more mint and tried it. This time it was new yet familiar, minty yet lemony. We had discovered harmony. Every roommate tried a small glass of the drink and everyone loved it. Need I say more why we chose it for our fundraiser event?

Philosophy: Who Needs It

2011-05-18T17:49:00.000-04:00

Who needs philosophy? To this Ayn answers, everyone. Philosophy provides the frame of reference, the backdrop, the integration of all the concretes in a person's life in which decisions are made and consequences faced. She writes, in the brain of an anti-conceptual person, the process of integration is largely replaced by a process of association. What his subconscious stores and automatizes is not ideas, but an indiscriminate accumulation of sundry concretes, random facts, and unidentified feelings, piled into unlabeled mental file folders. This works, up to a certain point - i.e., so long as such a person deals with other persons whose folders are stuffed similarly, and thus no search through the entire filing system is ever required. ... But if one asks him what he means by a given idea, he will not be able to answer. If one asks him the reasons of his convictions, one will discover that his convictions are a thin, fragile film floating over a vacuum... This kind of psycho-epistemology works so long as no part of it is challenged. But all hell breaks loose when it is - because what is threatened then is not a particular idea, but that mind's whole structure. Indeed, Ayn very critically portrays the situation of a person who hasn't yet figured out his philosophy. But when this same author shows unreasonable scorn for Kant, Hume, Nietzsche, Rawl and many others... when she suffers from a paranoia that university professors are out to brainwash helpless students into communism... when she is enraged because Kant questions her primary assumption that the mind is real and that its perception is real... when she suffers from the delusion that America has never committed anything wrong in the international sphere... one can't help but get a headache and ask, Ayn Rand: Who Needs Her? The answer would be: None.

For the New Intellectual

2011-05-17T20:12:00.000-04:00

Ayn is eloquent and reasonable, except that at times she suffers from bouts of errors of knowledge that might just be double standards. I absolutely enjoy the way she explains the relationship between the priest and the dictator, the baselessness of religion and the abuse of political power, the necessity of man to think for himself. I greatly enjoyed Galt's speech, one of the many excerpts from her several novels she pulls forth to illustrate her point. But then comes the times when she talks about the awesomeness of the founding fathers of America and how rational, ideal they were, while conveniently cutting off the parts about how they reigned over black slaves and that they called black people 'property' in the constitution. She talks about the ingenuity of renaissance and how Aristotle was forgotten in Western philosophical history until he was revived in the renaissance, while conveniently forgetting that the Arabs had kept Aristotle's ideas alive and passed them on to renaissance. But no, she can't say that, because all Arabs are savages to her. And then she goes on to talk about how teachers brainwash children and how communism is bad in this and that way... all of which result into a giant fountain of stereotyping. There is no insightful criticism of any political philosophy in her book but mere caricatures of American nightmares of collectivist societies. Not to mention that she falsely takes Soviet Russia to be the ideal manifestation of communism. In the end, Ayn Rand's non-fiction books contain so many factual errors and lies of omission that it degenerates into a priest's sermon. It's sad to see such eloquence go to waste, like crap decorated as wedding cake. Indeed, Ayn enthrones herself as the supreme priestess of whatever she calls capitalism and America.

Towards a New Architecture

2011-05-16T21:11:00.000-04:00

Le Corbusier's works have always appealed to me for their boldness, simplicity and austerity. And reading this book brings him all the more closer to me.

Many people look at architecture as just buildings and architects as builders. But that's not who architects are. We don't just create walled enclosures, but homes. As Corbusier puts it, houses make the street and the street makes the town and the town is a personality which takes to itself a soul, which can feel, suffer and wonder. This breathing-in of life, of personality into steel, concrete and glass is what we do. We are creators. As civil engineers, we provide harmony of structures and make them attune to the physical laws of the world and as architects we breathe in soul, beauty, life into plastic forms by playing with MASS, SURFACE and PLAN. Architecture, Corbusier writes, is a thing of art, a phenomenon of the emotions, lying outside questions of construction and beyond them. The purpose of construction is to make things hold together; of architecture to move us. It is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light.

Indeed, poetry lies not only in the spoken or written word. The poetry of facts is stronger still. Objects which signify something and which are arranged with talent and with tact create a poetic fact. Some misunderstand decoration as architecture. Corbusier clears away this misunderstanding by saying, decoration is of a sensorial and elementary order, as is color, and is suited to simple races, peasants and savages. Harmony and proportion incite the intellectual faculties and arrest the man of culture. The peasant loves ornament and decorates his walls. The civilized man wears a well-cut suit and is the owner of easel pictures and books.

The most beautiful way Corbusier explains architecture is when he tells us, you employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: "This is beautiful." That is Architecture. Art enters in.

As times change, architecture changes too. Pointed roofs and picket-fence gardens are stories of yesterday. We will move forward and imagine cities that are more beautiful, more connected and more human. Our cities should smile and roadways should slither like serene rivers. The world we create should make us happy. And that is the architect's aim. In order to do that, as in most other art, the architect has to employ clarity. Abstraction and romanticism are clothes we can shed off. We will, as Corbusier did, go back to primary shapes and employ them towards a new architecture for happy peoples.

Introduction to Logic

2011-05-15T18:48:00.000-04:00

Kant begins with the assumption that everything in nature, whether in the animate or inanimate world, takes place according to rules, although we do not always know these rules. From there he goes on to define Logic as a Rational Science, both as to its form, and also its matter; an a priori science of the necessary laws of thought, not, however, in respect to any particular objects, but to all objects generally: accordingly it is a science of the right use of the understanding and the reason generally, not subjectively, that is, not according to empirical (psychological) principles as to how the understanding actually thinks, but objectively, that is, according to a priori principles, as to how it ought to think. Kant divides logic into analytic and dialectic, natural and artificial, theoretical and practical, pure and applied and common sense and speculative. To Kant, philosophy boils down to four questions,
1. What can I know?
2. What ought I to do?
3. What may I hope?
4. What is Man?
As the book progresses, Kant provides a short history of logic up to his time where he points out how the Arabs civilized the Romans through reviving logic and reason and not vice-versa. On the perfection of knowledge he says, reason is an active principle which ought not to borrow anything from mere authority of others - nay, not even from experience, in cases where the pure use of reason is concerned. But the indolence of very many persons makes them prefer to tread in the footsteps of others rather than to exert their own understanding. Such persons can never be anything but copies of others, and if all men were of this sort the world would forever remain in one and the same place. It is, therefore, highly necessary and important not to confine the young, as in commonly done, to mere imitation. The roots of imitation happens to be formulas, sayings, apophthegms, canons and proverbs. As for the sources of prejudices, there are prejudices of personal authority, authority of majority, authority of the age and prejudice from self-love. I haven't read any other Kant books, but I think having read this fundamental book, the rest will make sense to me without much toiling.

The Acorn and The Oak

2011-05-14T09:27:00.000-04:00

Another collection of poems from David Starnes, the younger, and his father, Starnes, the elder. As I read the two poets, I see the contrast in their voices. The elder is more concerned about what ought to be, what should be - the do's and do not's. The younger states what is, and in doing so, passes on the realization of what should be. While the elder sits outside the chaos and comments on it as an aloof stranger, the younger jumps into it and shows me what it is like to be in it. While the elder ponders on lofty topics like truth and knowledge and beauty, the younger deals with the smallest things in day to day life, like shaving in front of the mirror. It's wonderful how poets vary across the ages.

One Body

2011-05-13T22:06:00.000-04:00

Another contemplative collection of poetry from Margaret Gibson. From cleaning a pitcher to meditating on a newspaper picture of women in stone quarries of Bangladesh to memories of her parents to reflections on her married life, Gibson puts forth a diverse bouquet of hymns to life in all its forms. She is a tender heart and has a keen eye. This is a poet in whom one would find comfort and shelter like one would near a burning fireplace in bitter winter.

Original Skin

2011-05-13T16:03:00.000-04:00

There is something about Starnes' poetry that cannot be enworded. I felt something similar while reading Walt Whitman. His words carry me away from my world into his world. Every poem is an honest cry from the heart. He talks about everyday affairs and everyday people. He certainly was a people person. After reading his chapbook Original Skin, when I came online to find out a picture of the book, I discovered that he was a professor here at Georgia Southern before he passed away some years ago. This discovery struck a chord deep down in me. I wish I could have taken a poetry class with him. I wish. Now when I walk the pedestrians of Georgia Southern, I wonder if David walked these paths too, if he looked agape at the people struggling to get into the packed bus, if he noticed the little pandas drawn on the concrete, if he noticed the tiny yellow flowers that grow on the side. The thoughts of this poet haunts me. Ah, so beautiful this haunting!

The Contracted World

2011-05-13T13:45:00.000-04:00

Meinke poems are striking. The wit, humor and simplicity of this poet works simultaneously to drive home his realizations:
So how can we wonder why the world's in flames
when every faith implies an infidel
and every heaven sends someone straight to hell?
There is a current of political commentaries, mostly sarcastic, running through many of these poems, as he writes,
How to find peace again?
Let's try the official way:
Let's attach electric wires
to the naked legs of bees
and make them tell us now
where all the honey's gone
Beside the sarcasm, above all, there's understanding in Meinke's poems,
Suffering's too common to be worth
anything joy too rare to be priced
The saints we search for will embrace the earth:
what wild-eyed murderer suffers less than Christ?

Icon and Evidence

2011-05-13T13:33:00.000-04:00

Gibson has that particular style where thought and beauty flow hand in hand to form poetry. In search of beauty she is not too abstract and in search of clarity she is not too dry. The influence of religion or sufism is heavy in some of her poems, and at times she breaks free of all influence to be herself. She writes, "And I think... how soul must be something unfinished, or never begun, or lapsed. Must be no thing at all, at best attentive, a flowing attempt to form walls around a small glint of light," and superposes that thought later with, "Who sends the mind to wander far - who brings it home? You think this asking is easy? A rationed calm? An abeyance, flowing with cool? Eat the question, you swallow fire - a ruthless, unoathed fire that swallows you completely." These are the times when her poetry takes a quantum leap. becoming incomparable.

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

2011-05-08T12:20:00.000-04:00

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, Albert says, and that is suicide. Killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it. The logic of the situation is absurd. The worm is in man's heart. The weariness comes as the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it jumpstarts consciousness. Consciousness that in this ridiculously irrational existence, you exist. With consciousness comes the consequence: suicide or recovery. In all consciousness, one sees that mere anxiety of existing, as Heidegger pointed out, is at the source of everything. Anxiety about what is to be and what was. All the pretty speeches about the soul and the kingdom beyond proves insufficient and pointless. The man says, there is nothing for me here, and there doesn't seem to be anything on the other side. But for all that, bring it on! I have nothing to lose anyway. Why does it all seem so meaningless? Is it because man has planted in his heart the seed of meaningful? What is so unacceptable if life is just bare life and is absolutely, pointlessly pointless? In confronting this phenomenon and trying to fight it off is how man creates conflict and passes the judgment of death on himself. Either he doesn't know his life or he has many hopes. Would it ever be possible to live by exerting one's own freedom, own passion and own essentials?

Journal of a Young Man [59]

2011-05-07T22:33:00.000-04:00

Growing up in Bangladesh was all about gathering mangoes during seasonal storms and feasting on ripe yet not-too-soft jackfruits during sleepy summer afternoons. Ah, those days! Whenever kalboishakhi swaggered through the city, we (the itsy-bitsy kids) would get on her way to collect fallen mangoes. She would pour rain on us and swish at us with wind-whips, but we were defiant revolutionaries, albeit the small packages we came in. We would bring home these mangoes and if they happened to be green, we would make a spicy aam-bhorta with it and if they were yellow, we would make holes and suck the juice out of them. In fact, it was dad who taught me that particular technique of getting the juice out of the mango by squeezing it from different angles. On lazy afternoons, we raided mango trees in the school. We would throw stones at the hanging delights and as they fell one by one we would look at them like pirates staring at treasure. So many times they told us not to raid those trees, but we were not the kind to hear. I never was. They had to give up. You should never tell a kid what not to do. Unless a kid is jumping off a the cliff (which sane kids never do), he is fine. Dad used to bring home jackfruits that were very soft. I never liked them. In order to make me eat, they would have to bring the not-too-soft ones. Mom used to peel these jackfruits with so much effort that she would sweat profusely, as if she had been to gym or something. And amidst that sweat, as we ate the peeled jackfruit, she would smile the most beautiful smile. Thinking of her reminds me that I never celebrated mother's day. When I am around, for her it is always a mother's day.

Vigil for Syria, Libya and Yemen at GSU [MSA & AIGSU Event]

2011-05-06T09:26:00.000-04:00

In Commemoration of Egyptian Revolution 2011 Protestors [AIGSU]

2011-05-06T09:24:00.001-04:00

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

2011-05-01T17:25:00.000-04:00

Robert Venturi's book takes us on a tour through several architects, their works and his own projects to show how complexity and contradiction have played a major role in developing today's architecture. If you look at the picture (right) which is the Shodhan house of Le Corbusier, you can see that there is a contradiction in its formation. It has square sides, 'yet' it is not a cube, given the varied perforations. Google for the Philadelphia Society Building and you will see that the name of the building is on its roof, as if the building can only be identified by he who is 'taller' that the building in power and stature and can afford to stand higher or get a helicopter maybe, as if poor people below the building have no right to know the building. Taking many more examples, Venturi provides a great example of how the old has been incorporated and the new has been invented, how architecture has found room for contradiction and how we deal with its complexity. I wish I could put in the pictures of all the other buildings I want to put in here, but blogger has a pretty bad picture management tool. Perhaps some other time in some better platform.

Journal of a Young Man [58]

2011-05-01T16:55:00.001-04:00

Dad loved buying his kids ice cream. Only after mom’s day of anger and the following non-violent revolution, dad had stopped bringing home any more ice cream. We finished whatever vanilla and chocolate ice cream were left in the refrigerator. I don’t have that many childhood memories of ice cream, other than the few times I went out with my uncles, sneaking into ice-cream parlors and under their supervision and encouragement, getting myself the biggest boldest bad-ass ice cream I could find there. I have always loved ice cream cones, despite how quickly they melted under the sun and how inconveniently they dripped down my fingers. These days ice cream cones are even more inconvenient. Usually, I end up with ice cream hanging on to my moustache and beard. So the other day I bought a cup, not a cone, from coldstone. I ordered a ‘like it’ size but I think they gave me a ‘love it’ size. I was not ready for that large a chunk, but having paid for it already, I settled down with it. I remember trying kulfi ice cream in a bus in Jaipur, India. It was terribly hot and I remember mom and dad buying kulfi for the family. I think it was them. I think. I am not sure. Another time, for my birthday (or was it my brother’s?) mom brought home an ice-cream cake. Topped with cherries, it was delicious. I also enjoy eating the rum flavored ice cream with superwoman. She introduced me to it and its a delightful creation. After La Berry opened in Statesboro, I have been there quite a few times and I have begun to like frozen yogurt more than ice cream. But that’s another story.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

2011-04-26T23:48:00.000-04:00

Wittgenstein's logic comes like a bolt from the blue - so straight and so bright that it is impossible to miss. Among the many, the most striking logical propositions are:

In order to know an object I must know not its external but all its internal qualities.

What is thinkable is also possible.

The object is its meaning.

If a sign is not necessary then it is meaningless. That is the meaning of Occam's Razor.

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.

What can be shown, cannot be said.

In no way can an inference be made from the existence of one state of affairs to the existence of another entirely different from it. There is no causal nexus which justifies such an inference. The events of future cannot be inferred from those of the present. Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.

Probability is a generalization.

In logic there is no side by side, there can be no classification. In logic there cannot be a more general and a more special. the solution of logical problems must be neat for they set the standard of neatness.

Everything which is possible in logic is also permitted.

The sun will rise tomorrow, is an hypothesis; and that means that we do not know whether it will rise.

The world is independent of my will.

Ethics and aesthetics are one.

Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through. If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.

The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

We often hear these propositions, but it is rare to come across a person who attempts to establish these with expressed logic. I appreciate Wittgenstein, though I am waiting to read his last book in which he changed some of these propositions.

The Return of Depression Economics

2011-04-25T00:31:00.000-04:00

This is one of those watered down economics books that will given you a good enough run down on events in the economic calendar. Beginning with the economical landscape in the 1990s in the US and moving through Mexico's downfall, Latin America's crisis, Japan's trap, Asia's crash and all the several demons - like hedge funds - that have appeared over time, Krugman prepares his readers for realizing what is to be done in order to face the present crisis. Despite his tone, which may be called condescending at times, he does an acceptable job of elaborating all events with relative simplicity while not letting go of their significance. At the end of it, Krugman gives us a Keynesian prescription: "get credit flowing again and prop up spending." The present stimulus is not enough and governments ought to continue pumping more money into the system, while making regulations that stop activities like hedge funds that lead to catastrophes like that of the present. What puzzled me initially was how does he propose to deal with the ultimate deficit that will accrue. But as a friend of mine tells me, if we go on stimulating the economy, a time will come when the economy will reduce its own deficit. While I have to look into that further, I agree with Krugman when he says, "The true scarcity in Keynes's world - and ours - was therefore not of resources, or even of virtue, but of understanding." According to this Nobel laureate, we must follow our thoughts to wherever they may lead and that "the only important structural obstacles to world prosperity are the obsolete doctrines that clutter the minds of men."

Journal of a Young Man [57]

2011-04-24T13:18:00.000-04:00

The question was which moments flash in my mind when I think about happiness. I tried. I closed my eyes and thought about happiness. Nothing happened. No flashes. Everything was as blank as ever. Either I am forgetful and don't remember anything even under my consciousness, or I have never experienced the happiness in question. The question was have I been like this always. I don't know. When I try to remember I can't remember. All I sense are my limbs, eyes moving in sockets, nose fluting the air, hair on shoulder, ears catching the drift of Kaskade, the disorderly books and papers around me, my bedroom, the closed window, sun outside and shade inside, the incense sticks from Alba, the clothes waiting to be folded et al. and et al. The question was, is my memory fading. Perhaps yes. Perhaps I am sitting with some form of Amnesia. Or perhaps I am too grounded in the present, like a frog watching the pond. Plop!

Return of the Primitive | The Anti-Industrial Revolution

2011-04-23T12:59:00.000-04:00

While I stand side by side with Ayn Rand on her understanding of certain fundamentals, like philosophy, I can only call her senile and psychologically imbalanced in her presumptuous assumptions and assertions in most other cases. She beautifully writes, "the grandeur, the reverence, the exalted purity, the austere dedication to the pursuit of truth, which are commonly associated with religion, should properly belong to the field of philosophy." At most other times, she just 'bitches' about anything that has to do with collectivism. There is no proper reason given but only sentimental criticisms elaborated about collectivist thought form. In fact, her major flaw is in the fact that she takes hippies to be the pure manifestations of collectivism. She holds up hippies and unjust socialist governments in her court of law, while forgetting that none of them perfectly embody collectivism or justice. In my understanding, her pathological aversion to communism caused by childhood and later events in a socialist Russia compels her, in a Freudian fashion, to un-suppress all her latent emotions and, in a Nietzscheish narrative, practice slave morality as she denounces everything that has any link whatsoever with collectivist thoughts, despite her bright reasoning capacity. Ayn was the product of her past, an ideal example for Freud's laboratory, and was never able to move beyond that stage. Alba, the 'superwoman', pointed out that Ayn's fatal flaw lies in overgeneralizing phenomenons and I would rightfully agree.

Journal of a Young Man [56]

2011-04-21T20:01:00.001-04:00

I laugh when pessimists or optimists call themselves 'realists'. It is such a joke. You see, be it optimism or pessimism, both are branches of expectation. In a rough generalization, while one hopes for the best to happen, the other predicts the worst to happen. And there is that bunch of people who, based on past experiences, predict the worst or hope for the best. Let's not be fooled by their self-professed realism. Despite their superficial differences, these are all branches of expectation, expectation as an activity, expectation as a habit. The root of this expectation goes down to an insecurity about the future and a fear or love of the past. Funny that even certain schools of realism consider everything that happened and will happen to be reality too. Such idiots! All of them. Just look at them. All of them are stretched like a chewing gum between the past and the future! You know what I mean. Realism is right here. Reality is just now. Some may try to predict the future and what they predicted may coincidentally happen. But that's not because what they predicted is inherently true, but because that moment, that minute, that event happened to turn out that way. By all that I simply mean, one cannot call something real unless it manifests itself as real. This moment, the present, this, here and now is the only real. It's such a radical concept that the moment you think about what I am writing, my writing has become unreal, because now that you no more living it but observing it, it is of the past. Every moment one expects the future, positively or negatively, one is being unreal. Every moment one ponders over the past, one is floating a boat in the ocean of unreality. Now, unreality is not evil. It seems people have this prejudice attached to the word 'unreal'. The moment you say something is unreal, it somehow appears to be condemned. But no, I am not condemning anything. Just observing the process in which many in the world live, stretched like a chewing gum between past and future, from unreality to unreality, never taking notice of their present 'stretched' state. I refuse to be a chewing gum and those of us who are not chewing gums may be the only realists. Everything real is being here, now.

First As Tragedy, Then As Farce

2011-04-17T20:50:00.000-04:00

Zizek is a self-proclaimed marxist and that, as Xavier tells me, makes him "the most dangerous philosopher in the West" according to New Republic. Well, let me not go into the discussion about how fools stereotype to avoid knowledge. Let me just begin by saying, Zizek is insightful, and no less probing than Chomsky in his critique.

He writes, "The old saying "Don't just talk, do something!" is one of the most stupid things one can say, even measured by the low standards of common sense. Perhaps, rather, the problem lately has been that we have been doing too much, such as intervening in nature, destroying the environment, and so forth... Perhaps it is time to step back, think and say the right thing. True, we often talk about something instead of doing it; but sometimes we also do things in order to avoid talking and thinking about them."

True to his words, Zizek does some quite thoughtful saying. About the bail-out plan he says, "It is indeed true that we live in a society of risky choices, but it is one in which only some do the choosing, while others do the risking... Is the bail-out plan really a "socialist" measure then, the birth of state socialism in the US? If it is, it is a very peculiar form: a "socialist" measure whose primary aim is not to help the poor, but the rich, not those who borrow, but those who lend. In a supreme irony, "socializing" the banking system is acceptable when it serves to save capitalism... In the same way, the Chinese communisits use capitalism to enforce their "Socialist" regime."

As for the state of people who argue against communism today, "while the fundamentalist ignores (or at least mistrusts) argumentation, blindly clinging on to his fetish, the cynic pretends to accept argumentation, but... practices the logic of disavowal ("I know very well, but...")." "The real tragedy of Obama," Zizek concludes, "is that he has every chance of turning out to be the ultimate savior of capitalism and, as such, one of the great conservative American presidents."

He has plenty of sense to distribute on the topic of immigration politics, Iran, the disharmony between the three working classes though they all serve the same purpose, and how the masses not only pretend that they have a free will to choose a government but, in fact, demands that they don't have free will. In a sharply satirical way, mocking the way people re-christian or re-muslim themselves just before dying, Zizek calls forth the resigned liberals of the West at the end, "Do not be afraid, join us, come back! You've had your anti-communist fun, and you are pardoned for it - time to get serious once again!"

Journal of a Young Man [55]

2011-04-16T10:49:00.000-04:00

I remember falling in love with a woman, older than me in many ways
I know why it's called 'falling'...
Love is so unexpected, so strange, so untraditional, unquestionably authentic...
Moments with her are so overwhelming that I fail to say 'I love'
All I can say is 'love is happening and I am caught up in its whirlwind'
Sometimes, I am afraid I go overboard with what I feel for her... but I refuse to judge myself
I am only a dust particle in the storm and to judge myself would be to judge love itself...
And there is no court just enough to debate love... none that I have come across...
To her I say these crazy things that I wouldn't tell anyone else...
To her I might sometimes even come across as sentimental, insecure and childish...
Perhaps even jealous and inimical..
And sometimes as kind and compassionate and all the good stuff she says about me
Sometimes, it seems I bug her and annoy her... but I don't know what happens to me...
I don't really 'plan out' such behavior, you see... it just spontaneously happens
And I have come to believe that she loves me enough to forgive me and hug me again...
I really am so helpless in all these
If only it was like physics, or communism, or existentialism... it would all be so much more easier...
But things are never like that...
Sometimes, even the slightest nod leads to the greatest impact and the largest gift is quickly forgotten...
It's like quantum electrodynamics.... electrons going back in time while going forward in space...
Bizarre...
I observe the wonders happening around me,
I am a part of it all, but don't ask me why they happen...
Not knowing is a virtue of he who experiences...
And then there are times when she goes into her own time shells...
She doesn't talk much during those times or avoids any dialogue...
Oh, I miss her and though the word 'miss' seems so short, it certainly is not...
You know what I mean, if you have ever been a dust particle whirling in a storm of no end!

Genome

2011-04-15T09:37:00.000-04:00

Imagine that the genome is a book.
There are twenty-three chapters, called Chromosomes.
Each chapter contains several thousand stories, called Genes.
Each story is made up of paragraphs, called Exons, which are interrupted by advertisements called Introns.
Each paragraph is made up of words, called Codons.
Each word is written in letters called Bases.

- Matt Ridley summarizes the wonderful world of genome in six sentences. This book is all about how eggs came before chicken, the flaws of mainstream understanding of intelligence and IQ, the root of language which is unique to humans, the conflict between sex genes, the genes responsible for homosexuality, the interconnectivity between genes, free-will and environment, the quirky effects of a 'healthy' lifestyle that nobody talks about and above all, the misunderstanding about genetic determinism, that genes determine everything biological about a person. Instead, its been proven that our thoughts have the power to turn on or turn off certain genes, leading to different properties in us. Old school lessons, if you ask me.

The first few chapters were full of boring history and the last few chapters had poorly translated ideas about socialism. However, the middle of the book was fascinating, the discussion about cultural and genetic evolution was very intriguing. By a little amount of clear thinking one should be able to derive this but genetic studies add to that evidence. In fact, much of what Ridley mentions is ancient wisdom. Nothing new, as far as understanding goes. The only difference is that these observations have been verified genetically. As for free will, there is no gene for free will so far... that makes it a more of 'mystic flower' for now.

The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

2011-04-13T22:10:00.000-04:00

This book contains a collection of Feynman lectures on the strange theory of light and matter or in other words, the interaction of light and electrons, formally called quantum electrodynamics. These observations are 'strange'..weird.... electrons going back in time, colored and spinning particles, electrons going faster and slower than speed c, lights traveling in non-straight lines and many more interesting phenomenons tested more accurate experiments that destroy much of the determinism put into place by Newton. But more importantly, Feynman is a great physics teacher. I have even skipped my physics classes at university to spend some time with Feynman. He knows how to transmit his enthusiasm to his students. Perhaps, physics teachers ought to study Feynman for his teaching methods and not just his theories. I look forward to reading more from Feynman... about this wonderful topic.

Voting Results, Not for the Lack of Interest [GADaily]

2011-04-13T14:09:00.000-04:00

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Dear Editor,

I was a reluctant voter in this year’s SGA election and now I am concerned about our student body. It appears that there is a debate about the election’s fairness. Speaking practically, how much of an election was it? A candidate who ran told me that many students he approached did not even know that such an association existed. When this same candidate approached the SGA with ideas for further popularizing the election, no effort was made to address the issue. My friends and I who voted did not know about the goals, philosophies and credentials of the candidates. If I remember correctly, there was an event to meet the candidates, which certainly was not enough. I voted out of goodwill, not because anyone presented me with any reason to vote. It might have been the same for all the 10% students who voted. The article “SGA election results upheld” published in GADaily said, “there are no written guidelines for SGA elections.” What is that supposed to mean? Is this a Prom Senator Contest?

SGA needs to promote itself and make its candidates more accessible to students. Just to name a possibility, they could have published detailed online profiles of candidates. “I stand for you guys, vote for me” is an utterly insufficient, not to mention naïve, request. Teachers could have been requested to mention the election in their classes. But SGA is not to be held responsible alone. Such an enthusiasm could have gripped the campus if candidates had something worthwhile to strive for, instead of playing ping-pong with egos.

If SGA is capable enough to affect GSU campus, it should speak without stuttering and act without limping. If these senators are going to represent students, they should embody us! The GSU student body is anything but inactive talkers worried about power and position. If this amount of seriousness is not possible, then I sincerely appeal to everyone to not have these elections at all.

Efadul Huq

President, AIGSU

**The letter was published on 13th April, 2011**

Journal of a Young Man [54]

2011-04-13T00:10:00.000-04:00

Walking slowly. Most mornings when I have time, I walk slowly, very slowly, from my house to the university. Cars rush past me. Students hurrying to classes. Some girl jogs by and someone has a Starbucks cup in his hand. The grass beneath my feet is soft and wet. Sometimes I wish I wore slippers more often, so that I could touch the wet naked grass with my naked skin. It's like touching the beloved in shower. When it rains, the mud is like pudding. I miss dipping my feet in dirty mud and nasty stuffs and washing them clean later and sitting down with a cup of tea as the rain pours on. Quite another story. The sleepy apartment complexes stand with some lights on. As if they are waiting for donuts to turn up any minute. Some days there's pollen in the air. I walk past the houses, waiting cars, trash cans overflowing with pizza boxes and beers. People eat a lot of pizza it appears. I found a pizza lying by the pedestrian once. Who threw it there? Was it a girl who snatched it from her obese boyfriend or vice versa? Was it a guy who threw it at a friend as a joke? Was someone walking with a pizza plate when a slice fell off because he bent too much to the side while talking on the phone? There comes the bar, the chinese place, the haircut place which reminds me that dad would happily bribe me to have a haircut. Waiting at the traffic light is exciting. When there's a group of people, there is always one who runs across the street even though the light is green. I wonder if I will ever witness an accident. And before I know it, I have reached school... walking slowly, on time for my class. One step at a time. I don't always feel my steps stepping. So I try it sometimes. Its relaxing. When I feel my feet, I stand on ground, firm-footed.

The Very First Research Symposium

2011-04-12T20:37:00.000-04:00

Salman Ahmed, Srijan Karim, Nitin Philip - you guys - Thanks! Immensely grateful to my mentor Dr. Das for being kind and patient with my uncontrollable enthusiasm. And you guys, thanks again!

Journal of a Young Man [53]

2011-04-11T08:52:00.000-04:00

I am often asked why I am concerned about human rights. In fact, after taking up the role of president at Amnesty International at GSU, I have been posed with this question more often. When I am hurrying to a class, I cut it short with a smile or some silly humour, but if I have time to answer it and if the asker is patient, then it is not a very short story. I am not concerned about human rights because its my responsibility or it is a holy act or because I feel sorry about some people in the world because they live a comparatively poorer life. No, I don't adhere to any standard of duty and responsibility outside me, I am not concerned about hell, heaven or popcorns, and I don't live in comparison to others, no matter who or what they may be. In my understanding, I am concerned about human rights because I value life. Life, just life, is valuable to me. And if I don't stand up in support of another life, I am in turn devaluing my own life. Follow me through an example. Let's say I am not concerned about human rights and am not bothered about the hundreds of people dying in the Middle East. Aside from all the political implications, what I have done is devalued life, just life. Now if I were to be assaulted tomorrow in the streets, I would find it very unlikely of me to be bothered too. Because, come on, I don't value life! Why should I value mine? Aside from biological aspects, psychological states and social conditions, is there really any difference between the life in me and the life in someone else? I am not a double thinker. As I see it, there is no difference... the life in you and the life in me is... just a breath of air. Just a breath of air. Precious, because I choose to value it. Beautiful, because love has revealed it. Magical because as long as I have it, I can dance like the gods of myth. There is no other reason for me to support human rights. None. I am not bothered with utility, results, some divine responsibility, nope... those are superfluous to me. I value life and I shall stand up for it wherever it is abused.

Journal of a Young Man [52]

2011-04-08T01:01:00.000-04:00

Friday April 8

Sitting on a 'please-tidy-me' table.
I begin to write.
Nothing much comes up.
What the hell...
I am so not going to struggle.
If I have to fight for something, it's might just not be worth having.
Besides, why bother anyway? I don't write always or whenever I wish. Writing sometimes wishes me and I happen.
That's all.
Here comes the period

Journal of a Young Man [51]

2011-04-05T22:26:00.000-04:00

I am an amusement to myself. You might see me sitting alone, doing nothing, but really my fingers are drumming the sofa’s surface, tickling the solitary dust, and my mind is wondering about stuffs made of air while my eyes stare at particularly nothing. I hear the shout of protest in Iran, a fellow student talking about the activities he can mention in his resume, the firing of soldiers in Syria, the brownie on the table wailing to be eaten, the chuckle of Gaddafi, the oranges sitting around like luscious prostitutes of a country where sex is venerated… Amusing. So many different thoughts… the urge to go to La Berry (always gives me the image of an old gay man from France!), the desire to call a friend, the sadness of not having my mother and brother around, the immense wish to meet my beloved, the ‘want’ of an ipad, frustration with physics professor, disappointment with research work, excitement about reading Feynman… appearing, disappearing, re-appearing… but ultimately all these pass away… nothing ever lasts… Nothing withstands my sitting there, waiting, witnessing, being self-ish and the center of myself… I am a carnival for myself…the ride and rider both... my mind is a fizzy drink, with sufficient time, all bubbles… are gone.

Blinking Bright

2011-04-01T02:22:00.001-04:00

The First and Last Freedom

2011-04-01T02:15:00.001-04:00

Krishnamurti is elegantly simple. He writes, "There is hope in men, not in society, not in systems, organized religious systems, but in you and in me." That trust in humanity, that trust in existence he never loses. One can either take his observation or leave it. He is not going to force it on anybody, as he writes, "an education that teaches us not how but what to think is an education that calls for a governing class of pastors and masters." Such education leads us to a life of passivity. In fact, "we are so sluggish in our mentality that we think the world's problems are not our business, that they have to be resolved by the United Nations or by substituting new leaders for the old." The way to get out of this is to understand ourselves and our minds. However, this understanding doesn't have to be a struggle, it is more of passive awareness to receive what is, because "it is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free."

The Secret Doctrine

2011-03-29T23:33:00.000-04:00

Blavatsky certainly brings together all occult knowledge and condenses them to an intense array of stanzas. Although one might at first reading find this occult piece more inclined towards Indian or Tibetan mysticism, there are perceivable bits of western judeo-christian-islamic influence in it too. As far as occult forms of genesis stories go, I find this to be the most succinct version. The only thing that disappoints me about this book is that the translator put forward only 12 stanzas of Blavatsky's doctrine while filling up the rest hundreds of pages with his criticism. I wasn't expecting to read literary criticism. I bought the book thinking it contained all of Blavatsky's famous doctrine. Perhaps, I will come across more of Blavatsky's doctrines some other time.

The Poetics of Space

2011-03-27T22:37:00.000-04:00

I was looking for books on architecture when I came across Bachelard's famous book The Poetics of Space. Here, the philosopher discusses architectural spaces from the perspective of phenomenology, that is by taking into concern the experience of making spaces and the sensory properties of those spaces. The chapters vary from the house, to the drawers, chests, wardrobes, to nests, to shells, to corners, to miniature, to intimate immensity, to the dialectics of outside and inside and the phenomenology of roundness. At times, the book is more of a literary criticism where Bachelard relates poetry, prose, imagination with tangible architecture. At one point, he quotes Rilke, "Works of art always spring from those who have faced the danger, gone to the very end of an experience, to the point beyond which no human being can go. The further one dares to go, the more decent, the more personal, the more unique a life becomes." But how far should a poet, an architect or an engineer go to create the piece that best reveals the inside immensity in himself? Is that the question each of us will decide for ourselves?