tamaso mā jyotir gamaya (from darkness to light)
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Hi. My name is Mohan, and this is my story. This is the story of my generation. The Generation Me.
The generation where when I had to submit an assignment, I got the information I craved at the click of a few buttons, a few thousand rupees, and mass destruction of the planet. Of course, the generation where also the few thousand rupees were seen as a worthwhile investment, cajoled by marketeers, and where the mass destruction is blissfully hidden. Thomas Gray shot it right when said ignorance is bliss. If bliss is the goal of life, the Generation Me’s mantra is ignorance.
At the click of a few more buttons, I had my five hundred word essay ready (Alt+Shift+W showed me the number of words). And off the assignment went. That which should have originally consisted of library sojourns, book references, and visits to a far off place which I’d never heard of, all done soullessly in a matter of fifteen mere minutes. Of course, this is the knowledge generation. The information generation. But ironically, the ignorant generation.
Ignorance is not for lack of information or knowledge. It is for lack of intellectual good. We are a generation “who intellectual good/ Have lost” (Dante, Inferno Canto III). We know that every time we board that flight, thousands of kilograms of jet fuel is being burnt. We know that that jet fuel has been pumped at the cost of lives in Nigeria. Lifes, which we know from Amnesty International’s annual reports as lives. We know that that pumping out of jet fuel has caused an insane economic class difference in Venezuela. And yet, we board that flight. We know that as we reach out for that bottle of Coca Cola, thousands of lives around the world have been forfeit to bring you that litre of crap, marketed as an alternative for water, and more popularly as a digestive aid. And yet we reach out. We know that every time we smile at the diamond ring on that beautiful glittering shelf, hundreds of lives have been laid behind in the blood mountains of Congo. And yet, we smile. We know that every time we take that piece of paper to doodle or scribble, in the name of creativity, in the name of expression, in the name of communication, in the name of psychotherapy, a tree five times older than you, on which lives thousands of organisms, is cut in the rainforests of Brazil. And yet, we take.
This is Generation Me.
I was questioned the other day about the “time for myself”. Time for myself? I spend my time theorising time. I spend my time trying to define the concept of time. I create a nonsensical entity, and spend the rest of my life trying to define that entity. I have time for everything outside of me. How can I have time for myself. Oh, you object? My dear friend, the body-builder, the fashion-model, the doctor, and the meditator, all are concerned barely about externalities; the body-builder and fashion-model about some perfect shape, the doctor about her/his medical object, the meditator about her/his calmness to go about her/his life – which is in all terms external.
It is ironical that the Generation Me does not have time for meselfs.
Oh no. I’m more concerned about theorising the probable causes and consequences of being a pseudo-activist by clicking Facebook buttons, and about combining quantum physics and bioengineering. About windmills in the Sahara, and monkeys in outer space. About the twitches and turns of Dow Jones and the latest developments at California Berkeley.
This is the Generation Me. And this is my story. I wish I had been writing this…
[for Abhi and Arjun, who, this, can no longer see...]
Little yellow flowers border the introspecting brown iron fence.
Little pinks join them; to witness the crawling snakes, day a day, night a night.
I have no words to say, no speak to thought,
To capture this sleeping elephant rock,
This great spectacle
Seeming, in its bliss stupor to,
Cling on to another elephant peak;
Which in turn to an other,
And an other, settling to swim.
Suddenly, hidden by plumes of coconuts,
mangoes, and such other valley thriving crop…
Oy. paddy and sugar cane too?!
Its hot. A beary hay silo passes by.
Yup, eating his way through grass,
and probably children’s mothers in their desperate hopes to teach her children more words, to keep them from a brawling troll.
Words. words. words.
“Words are all I have, to take your heart away”
Really?
I cannot describe this land
In ease wit this Anglo Germanic tongue
As easily as once I did with the rivulets of Europa;
(with this same orange pencil, same white book)
I know I cannot hope to capture the lime fluorescent greenness of the juvenile paddy a pass;
There is something beyond in this stark bright illuminating suns rays playing hide ‘n seek with trainly windows
(that which has obfuscated logic thus far, and stings my curiosity.)
Yes, true.
But mean that, that I am structured of
phones, syns, and morphs?
["kvool draynks... vaateir..."
Ha! Describe that.]
The tog is almost empty.
And we soon pass the last terra firmatic elephant.
Hey! Suddenly it appears that the three (los tres)
are desperate in support of the drowning un.
Oi oi oi…
(Framed in aweificance by thick white plumes of cotton soft clods, and the oceany blue sky.
Where’s the jellyfish now?)
Hark! What is that which burns?
But wait, my orange friend,
Was that my tongue, or an other, I saw?
Am I already in embrace of my linguistic claw?
Namaskaram Kerala!
As I breathe into Kanjikode,
Where is my welcoming monsoon queen’s klem?
The sun just still shines…
(Tchaaayeee… Tchai tchayeee)
And so, I enter my region state,
A familiarity no doubt, they say,
Configured by the language mine.
Nay.
You jest.
For my land is mine for its greenness,
The countless chlorophylls that breathe air in my state,
And for its earth,
That gives rise to them green.
My land is mine for its water,
Flowing health from the mountains of blue dreams,
Illuminating, strengthening, and killing.
My land is mine for the butterfly’s smile,
For the coconut silhouettes in brown paddy aquadigms,
For the krrr krrrs of Cicadas singing at night,
For these mountains like elephants,
For elephants like loving mountains,
For the people, the thought,
For love,
In short, in a coconut shell,
For this lands energy.
["Tweet tweet, tweet tweet... Es em esss..." Palakkad Jn...]
How can you say it is for the langue?
You call that intellect?
Or is that insolence?
[and is this a discourse of knowing, or desperation? or of hate?]
A. K. Hamza sells chips, chips, more chips,
and of course, halwa, halwa, halwa…
(among other dirty imperialising bites…)
Kakas bite water drops off dripping manual taps,
And people smile on talking, ordering.
I might be hugged by the sweet melody of mine tongue,
Now enveloping like the first monsoon rains…
(“Kerala, Kerala, Kerala lottery tické, pooja tické, win-win lottery…”)
And political dialogues in seats a couple front
may enigmatically critique in powerful speaks…
But did the langue come first, or first the chicken?
I think the chicken;
(and that the langueists should get a life)
Black pipe on a yellow balustrade,
Carries the life of water,
As our snake slowly etches forward
Inscribing change in our universe.
And in my realm now, as slowly as this train moves,
I shall begin to settle to other affections of my selv
My addiction of the word, now satisfied.
Oh A and A for whom I this dedicate,
May love be with you,
And let this land’s energy too.
Drip drip drip drip
Coconut thatches that build this energy’s intellectocracy, fairocracy,
And small boys a playing cricket,
Whilst woman bent over love’s labour ploughing nature,
Red beats promising exercise,
Whilst the sun shine, this train and rivulets move,
the wind caressing my hair…
Peace out.
- neo garfield
There’s jazz in the soul, oh yes, there is jazz in the soul…
The little metal brushes swoon caressing the cymbal and hi-hat. A hit, a swyuuuuu… A couple in the mind swinging cha-cha-cha, sharp turns, predicted burns…
And whilst the bright moon brings a sweet night, and the black sun dawns darkly, the jazzist blowing a u-turn with the tenor, an man in the guise of an adolasian dog howls through the night.
(the pet and the pseudo-chocolate dumb-bone gives company from below)
And the many wheeled centipede goes witchie tai to. Who tied my shoe lace so?
Hello? Where did all the snow go?
Men ikke nåk for alle rundt til å gå! Hvor gikk du, min tålmodig lau?
And on difference thrives the andolasian cone ice-cream now. On difference force-frightened by lonely medusa’s so.
Boing tsssshhhhhhhh…. Let the flowers flow.
I remember when we used to walk, hand in hand, through the streets of everyday busytude. People hurrying past, cars and buses honking, meandering, dust rising, winds taking, bliss settling… I remember how I used to scavenge on the ground for sepals of that majestic flower, that flower which proclaimed to be the forest’s greatest fear, and thus, greatest love – the flame, Gulmohar, or The Flame of the Forest. I remember how I used to separate those sepals into seplets, and scratch off its green inside to reveal a sticky fresh underside, which we then played with, using them as nail ornaments. And all that, not just for fun, but also with the interest of holding your hand a few moments longer…
Today, I saw a Gulmohar in full bloom. Standing tall on green grass, on the other side of the road. An army area; fenced out. Protected, and isolated. With no children like you and me to leap around and play. Simply, in full bloom. The seplets drift down, with no you, no me, to gather them, and make them love.
Today, you and me are worlds apart. We barely know each other. You talk so different, I hardly understand. I bet that I talk insanity, not given to understanding either. You have probably found others to hold your hand and play with you, and so probably have I (um, or maybe not.). Weird to see, be, change. Can things be the same?
Let us not ponder why they should be the same. We both cherish a longing memory of that sameness. The worth pondering is which asks, what is it really to ‘going back’? Truly think. We are here, now, perhaps worse off than that before, but can we make of the coming what it had been that before? Maybe we can, but you and I, we are not isolated lovers in a sterile universe. We are complex networks of people, places, memories, happenings…. And those networks, they will have to change with us. Or we end up in the pyre where all things returned do.
There is a Left and a Right. Must we chose one? Can we not have another, without having to negotiate? Perhaps there is a digital and a non-digital. But for all things practical, is there a viable non-digital? Perhaps there is trust, and then again, perhaps not. Can we see from here, and move? There are the good old days, and then, there are these hideous present. But for the way ahead, do we have to strive for those good old? Is that really a plausible? Can we not see the good from the old, and inherit a future taking off from this ghastly present?
Is there purpose in dwelling in the past, but to learn the happenings, so as to understand the present, and construct a what is to be? (and of course, for lovable memories?)
Not rules and code on top of rules and code to produce a new set of rules and code for another set of rules and code to build on. But reconciling with the what is yet to be for peace…
So perhaps we must just let the Gulmohar tree inside the wired off enclosure be. Let it be. And you and I, changed we are, and apart, once dancers of love, now partners in changing the world, perhaps we should see from here where we are, without hope or agenda of the past. So be it.
Today, as the rain rained, and wind blew, the little seplets drift gently to dance, and I remember you.
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