Not buying furniture in Oshiwara market

 

The atheist's mother in the morning

 

Oh! I have started bleeding

 

The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House by Audre Lorde | This is not a book review

The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House by Audre Lorde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Five beautiful essays. The first one says how poetry is no a luxury for women.

'Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.'

We have been taught by white male culture to ignore our feelings. Poetry says otherwise.

'For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt - of examining what those ideas feel like being lived on Sunday morning at 7 a.m., after brunch, during wild love, making war, giving birth, mourning our dead - while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears of being silent and impotent and alone, while we taste new possibilities and strengths.'

The second essay is 'Uses of the Erotic'.

It starts by explaining why female erotic is suppressed.

'There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information of our lives.'

She argues that the erotic is in fact the opposite of the pornographic. This misnomer is deliberate and done by men. She defines erotic as 'an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.' And for men, this can be a dangerous proposition because in all probability, that which gives us this internal sense of satisfaction is not, well, men. And once we recognize this, we will start demanding that satisfactory experience from ourselves all the time. We will not feel like settling for less. And this is not easy, Lorde says.

'It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society.'

She says that we shouldn't confuse it with demanding the impossible from ourselves or others.

'...the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavours bring us closest to that fullness.'

Now imagine women realizing their endeavours that bring them closest to fullness don't have men in it. Now you see why men fear the erotic. So she says,

'Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to separate the erotic demand from most vital areas of our lives other than sex.'

She speaks of the spiritual and the political and explains how they are not antithetical. I have not been able to understand completely because i don't know what exactly constitutes 'spiritual'. Lorde explains it as 'psychic and emotional'. I understand the emotional part. And agree that it is a wrong tendency to say that the emotional and the political are antithetical. Spirituality is misrepresented as aspiring to feel nothing and this is wrong, she says. And she says that the dichotomy between the spiritual and the political is false because the erotic is the bridge which connects them.

It became a little clearer to me over here when she says,

'Beyond the superficial, the considered phrase 'It feels right to me' acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge, for what that means is the first and most powerful guiding light towards any understanding.'

'Feels right to me' is often ridiculed in the political. Lorde says, and i agree, that it need not be so. Feels right is not abstract or silly. It is, often based on years of our understanding and experience, sometimes even as a species.

Recognizing the erotic is a dangerous proposition not only for men but also for gods and other such. Because the erotic, Lorde says, is also about the 'open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy.'

'...that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife.'

She also lays emphasis on the fact that this feeling of satisfaction cannot be borrowed. That's abuse, she says.

'When we look the other way from our experience, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who participate in the experience with us. And use without consent of the used is abuse.'

'To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time, however comfortable that might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience, and to allow ourselves to be reduced to the pornographic, the abused and the absurd.'

The third essay, 'The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House' is about the importance of intersectionality, if i may put it that way. It is important to note how all the topics of these essays are relevant to the feminist movement even today. And not just the feminist movement. The Black, Dalit, Adivasi... movements as well.

The essay talks about the practice of exclusion in academics - something she experienced in a conference in a New York University Institute in 1978. But the input of black feminists and lesbians was represented only in one panel at the conference, called 'The Personal and the Political'.

'To read this programme is to assume that lesbian and Black women have nothing to say about existentialism, the erotic, women's culture and silence, developing feminist theory, or heterosexuality and power. And what does it mean in personal and political terms when even the two Black women who did present here were literally found at the last hour?'

This reminded me of a short film by Rajesh Rajamani, 'The Discreet Charm of the Savarnas' where the film crew is desperate to find an actor to play a Dalit character.

Lorde talks about the futility of 'tolerance'. It is not enough that 'tolerating differences' is not enough.

'Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in out lives. Difference moust be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency becomes unthreatening.'

I am reminded of some of the recent discussions on 'Islamic feminism' i read on social media. Feminism cannot survive without accepting the differences. (Some don't even accept these differences, they say that something like Islamic feminism cannot exist.) It is not enough to accept these differences but it should be integrated into feminism without seeing it as a threat. I am an atheist and cannot ever understand why people believe god exists. But don't those who believe it (god) exists have rights? Don't they need feminism? Till recently, i used to be proud that i am one of those atheists who 'tolerates' these differences. Hell, isn't it highly benevolent of me to even accept that something like Islamic/Christian feminism can exist? Lorde taught me it is not. It is necessary for feminism to listen to the differences and nurture interdependency. See how beautifully she explains it.

'As women, we have been taught either to ignore our differences, or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretence that these differences do not exist.'

Feminism should understand that difference is strength. It should aim to 'define and empower' instead of 'divide and conquer'. Divide and conquer is patriarchy's tool. And it is here that Lorde says those beautiful words, 'For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support.'

A bitter pill to swallow, isn't it? That if you are a woman who cannot believe in community and creatively addressing differences and integrating them, it means you are comfortable in patriarchy.

'The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson.'

She talks about how 'educating' is a tool of oppression used by dominant groups. White feminists need not be 'educated' about Black feminists. It is not the responsibility of Dalits to 'educate' savarnas about Dalit feminism or caste.

'Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns.'

'Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism'

There is no need to ignore our immediate response to oppression, Lorde assures us, in this essay.

'My response to racism is anger.' she says. The oppressor's fear of this anger is not your burden to bear. You do not have to bear the additional responsibility of making them comfortable. Scared of women's anger? Black women's anger? Dalits', disabled people's, homosexuals' anger? Deal with it yourself. Do not ask them to change so that you can be comfortable. You have been comfortable for too long, and the whole world was designed to make you comfortable.

'Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change.'

This might be why they fear anger, like how they fear the erotic?

'Anger is loaded with information and energy. When I speak of women of colour, I do not only mean Black women. The woman of colour who is not Black and who charges me with rendering her invisible by assuming that her struggles with racism are identical with my own has something to tell me that I had better learn from, lest we both waste ourselves fighting the truths between us.'

She also explains the difference between the anger of the oppressed and the hatred of the oppressor. For example, it is not anger that lurks in the streets of my land - that results in my breasts being pinched, lewd remarks being passed etc. It is hatred.

'This hatred and our anger are very different. Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change.'

'I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action.'

She goes ahead and says,

'Guilt is only another form of objectification.'

'And my anger is no excuse for not dealing with your blindness, no reason to withdraw from the results of your own actions.'

and further,

'No woman is responsible for altering the psyche of her oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied in another woman.'

'Learning from the 1960s' - the final essay is about how we can use the history of any movement to our advantage without romanticizing it. Romanticizing the past is a tendency i am familiar with, especially coming from Kerala. Here everything of the past is romanticized. Communism, the 70s, the golden era of cinema...

'Which is not to say that I have to romanticize my mother in order to appreciate what she gave me - woman, Black. We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present.'

Lorde speaks about what the Black people can learn from the 1960s and it is relevant to feminism too. It is relevant to all ideologies and i would like the communists of my land, especially to listen to her.

'...we must move against not only those forces which dehumanize us from the outside, but also against those oppressive values which we have been forced to take into ourselves. Through examining the combination of our triumphs and errors, we can examine the dangers of an incomplete vision. Not to condemn that vision but to alter it, construct templates for possible futures, and focus our rage for change upon our enemies rather than upon each other. In the 1960s, the awakened anger of the Black community was often expressed, not vertically against the corruption of power and true sources of control over our lives, but horizontally towards those closest to us who mirrored out own impotence.'

As woman, this is very familiar to us. Women turning against women has historical precedence in all ideologies. See how clearly Lorde explains the psychology behind it.

'Historically, difference had been used so cruelly against us that as a people we were reluctant to tolerate any diversion from what was externally defined as Blackness.'

The same way how some women turn against those who say they are lesbian women, dalit women etc. This is counter productive especially in the light of the fact that revolution is never a private affair or a personal achievement. '

'Revolution is not a one-time event. It is becoming always vigilant for the smallest opportunity to make a genuine change in established, outgrown responses; for instance, it is learning to address each others' difference with respect.'

'Change is the immediate responsibility of each of us,...' she clarifies.

We cannot be in our comfort zones with our delusions. Like how Christians think they are safe under RSS because the enemy is the Muslim. If the Muslim is the enemy, it means all are enemies.

'We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable.'

'Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (they don't mean me) or by despair (there's nothing we can do).'

I wish to read the whole of this Penguin collection, the thin books with absolutely delightful font for the covers. Of course, that will take me forever.

View all my reviews

This is not a book review: The Elephant Vanishes - Haruki Murakami

The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Read it for the second time and the rating has only gone down. I don't understand the point in this kind of writing. Evokes nothing. Says nothing. Does nothing. Then why read it at all! I think this was the first Murakami i read. I will not diss a writer till i read more. Read Birthday Stories and didn't like it but will still read more to finally say for sure that i completely dislike this author. The author just writes what they should make the reader feel. And in utmost boring language. There was one story that was a little enjoyable. One where the protagonist goes without sleep for days. I liked the ending of the story particularly.

Anyway, this was the first time i completed reading from two copies of the same book. I started re reading at my friend's place in Goa. Couldn't complete it before leaving. Then when i went home in mallu land during corona lockdown, saw that i did have a copy there. Completed reading after taking it back to bombay with me.

View all my reviews

Headstand | കാലുണ്ടെങ്കിലും ഇല്ലെങ്കിലും തോന്നിയത് ചെയ്യും.

 (Thought of this when i saw kani's headstand and a social media post talking about under representation of disabled bodies.)

 

I was sure i saw a man's head upstairs

 

Actually, no one was reading

 

Foot in the Door : Shrink Tales

Recently, when i told someone that i was scared, they unanimously said that it was me trying to play with their emotions. I always wanted to be the victim in the story and therefore assigned myself the role of the scared, helpless woman in every situation i was in, in their opinion. And yet, the fear was real. Palpable. Amidst all the theories that people threw around me, it was in the air and i was always in the look out for a safe place.

Session after session, in therapy, i tried to find out what it was that scared me because the last time i told someone i was scared, that's what they wanted to know. 'What is it that you are scared of?' They'd asked me repeatedly - which made me even more scared. I pay - my poor sponsor does - Rs. 2000 for a session to find answers to such questions that people so casually spring on me. 'Hey, did it rain yesterday, in Calicut?' 'You got a haircut?' 'What's your fear?'. Hold on, give me Rs. 2000. I'll try and find out?

But today, i drew my fear. It was a boulder. A large one, with a stick in its hand. A lopsided mouth, shouting unintelligible sounds. Grey, like a rock. I joked about it after drawing it, saying how it was a classic phallic symbol. My therapist asked me what associations i had of my phallic symbol boulder shaped fear.

Two came to my mind, even as i drew it. One, from when the familiar scenario of me being beaten by mother for various reasons. I would hide under the cot when it got unbearable. Even as a child, i always felt that she never looked under there because she too, was tired of beating. I only ever felt compassion for her, even when i knew that my fear boulder had the lopsided mouth because she imitated me, making ugly shapes with her mouth, producing sounds that were supposedly how i talked and cried, but sounded so gross, it made me feel like shit.

The second one was that in a hotel room, it was not going well with that man. I had to get out of there. But you know what? Men are physically stronger than women. Science. A man my age and weight will be stronger than my physically. Reason why we have male - female criteria in sports for the same events. Different rules. Anyway, this man was more than double my age. He was strong. I unbolted the door and was about to flee. But he just swept in from nowhere and ever so casually put his foot at the door and that was it. I couldn't open it. However hard i tried, it wouldn't budge. And all he had to do was put his damn foot at the door. Effortless gesture. Lots of time to further beat me up, rape, if he felt like it, verbally abuse. A foot got him all that.

This was what it felt like. I was confined to spaces i didn't want to be in. Under the cot. In a pathetic hotel room. While i only felt compassion for mother, for the man and his foot, i felt pure rage. '

I was cornered. There was no help in sight and pretty soon, i would be able to hear the fear boulder spew out its opinions about me. It could be 'you sleep with older men because you like seasoned dicks' or 'all you are interested in class is how the asses of the boys sway' or, more recently, like i said, 'all you ever want to be is a helpless victim and that's why you say you are scared.' I didn't want to be under the cot or in the hotel room listening to these theories but you know, the foot.

The thing however, is that now, i am out of it. I always come out of it. The most recent episode took around two months, i suppose. It lingered till i sent a one liner mail saying what i wanted to say. Till then, i was under the cot. The others took years. But, i just want to tell everyone that you will always find a way out of under the cot, out of the stupid hotel room - if you work hard. If you are not able to get out of there, it only means that your two months or five years haven't passed. But the good thing about time is - like the bad thing about physiology is that men are stronger than women - that it can only pass. You can only grow older. The only people who are happy about aging, friends, are us, because it just takes us closer to our way out of under the cot.

Balancing the bolster before sleep

 

Readers

 

Who said fish couldn't climb trees | മീനിന് മരം കയറാനറിയില്ലെന്ന് ആര് പറഞ്ഞു

 

The last kiss is mine to take home

 

Mother! See what i can do!

 

First Kiss

 

You scratch my back and - Sleeping with grandparents

 

Shrink Tales: Grief

What she and i had, the safety i used to feel when around her, that's gone. That's what is dead. And i need to mourn it. It died when she betrayed me. I am finally saying the words. She betrayed me. Like how when my sister betrayed me. When friends hurt me. Every time that happened, i swore i would be more guarded. I wouldn't divulge or open up. I would shut people off, scared of being betrayed. And with her, i never even had to guard myself or think of it because i was sure that day would never come. It did.

I get hurt the most when people use the things i said to them against me. Things they agreed with at the time. Or pretended was normal. The most number of heartbreaks i have had is when my mother did it with me. A sentence i said would be quoted at a later occasion to illustrate how i always had a problem. 'When you said 'can you do it faster?' that showed me what your true nature really is', she would yell at me, mimicking my voice in an ugly manner. Making an ugly expression with her face. To show my ugliness when i said it, probably. I would make a mental note that 'can you do it faster' is never to be said again. The sentences, gestures etc. varied. The list increased. Pretty soon, i was able to tell before it happened that certain things would piss my mother and would later be used against me. It was not just me. Mother did that with everyone. And that's what i hated the most.

In every single person i met, i searched for signs of this disease. If they had it, i could guard myself. For a long time, i was like that with K. I had even told her i had this problem. That my paranoia - as she called it - that everyone would use things i said against me, was based on repeated experiences from many people and that Mother was one of them. She had advised me that i should still try to be open minded. In the end, K herself did that to me. Used my own words against me.

But with her, from the time i started talking till the point she betrayed me, there was not a moment when i had to even think of such a possibility. I could always worry that she would hate me, she would stop talking to me, bitch about me to people i didn't like. But never that she would use my words against me. Use anything against me. That's what makes it a blow.

I was hit where i wasn't looking.

During the week, the hate campaign against her on Facebook gained momentum. I was worried. I sent her a mail. Asked her to stay strong. She always told me that i was the strongest. I felt it was time i said that back to her. Gan messaged me. He asked me if i could write something in support of her under the post where she was being attacked. I told him i could intervene through a collective i formed because what was happening online was a clear case of harassment of a woman at workplace. He said he would pass on the message to her. That night, she called me. 

She said her side of things. She asked me to do certain things. I agreed to do all of that but for as long as she talked, i couldn't forget how she had betrayed me so recently and how she could talk to me as if nothing had happened.  I gathered up the courage and finally asked her. Why had she sided with K and A when they were harassing me over a false claim. She then told me the following. 

1. A was right. 
2. I have always been a 'casual plagiarist'
3. I have done it with her in the past, presented her ideas as mine.
4. I copy frames and ideas in my films
5. I have said so myself in many of my Facebook posts. 
6. She unblocked me and talked to me because my family has done her enough harm that she has the right to ask that of me. 
7. I am a toxic person and that's why she blocked me. 
8. A and K were doing me a favour by 'taking me in'. No one would have me and they still 'took me in' and i messed it up like i always do. 
9. Repeated that i mess up at workplaces. 

I was shocked that she agreed with A. She, who could always see clearly. I was shocked that she used my jokes, my casual conversations against me. My blog description reads, 'Godard famously said 'Every edit is a lie'. I totally agree. Every cut is a lie. Every shot is stolen. All stories are told. I am a nasty thief. This is a film student's diary.' Now, she was telling me that because i have always written things like that, it meant that A's claim that i had plagiarised his story in one of my Facebook posts was true. 

But at the same time, it was a relief that she actually thought she was right. It just meant that she wasn't siding with A and K against me because she wanted to destroy me out of hatred. At least she was justifying herself. 

I feel numb. I know that i have not done what i am being accused of. I know that my writings do not, in any manner support plagiarism. Even then, the words that she said hurt. The fact that she is capable of thinking such things about me hurts. 

She repeated A's words. They sounded like pilot and dubbed tracks. 'You cannot always plan on being the victim' she told me, just like A had. 

Sometimes i feel angry. Because it is not fair. She kept saying i should be grateful to her that she wasn't taking any action against my family for speaking ill about her to a lot of people. But i have never done that. I have only ever confronted my family on this and earned their hatred for it. I feel broken. Like a part of me has been irreparably battered. Deformed. I feel dirty. Like all these people, including her dumped a lot of their trash on me. Now they feel empty and relieved. Their places are spic and span and i stink. It infuriates me sometimes. But there is nothing i can do. Except move ahead with my life and not die. Yes. Suicidal thoughts came twice after she spoke to me. 

Someone who thinks so about me cannot love me. She cannot love me. Contrary to what i believed all these years, she can never understand me. 

I am scared. That i won't be able to make films ever. Everything they said about me rings in my ears all the time. Constantly dreaming about it. I am scared they will define me into failure and i will end up being that. I feel everyone is ganging up against me. There is nowhere to go. No one will understand me.  

I felt like a street dog. At everyone's mercy. The way she said it, i was at her mercy, A's and K's mercy. They were the only ones who would 'take me in'. Which meant that if no one took mercy on me, i wouldn't survive. 

I felt ashamed that that's how she saw me. Now, i feel angry that she thinks that way about me. Because i am not a street dog. It's not because anyone took mercy on me that i survived. No one was doing me a favour by 'taking me in'. Everyone had something or the other to gain from it. It was either my right, or i had earned it, was fully deserving. In fact, no one was 'taking me in'. They were partnerships. I am enraged that i put myself in a position where she dared say such things to me. Not just me. I am angry that she is someone who doesn't hesitate before saying such things to a human being. In a way, that's good. When i am outraged at some behaviour, it is easier for me to handle it. Oh. She said that all people like me felt was 'rage' and that we wreaked havoc everywhere because of it without thinking of consequences. That was all my activism was, she remarked.  

Checking if grandmother's alive

 

Paperweight

 

Shrink Tales: No One Understands my Pact

It is a pact I have with her. A bond that says that we will be together always. No matter what. In that, it is similar to what I have with my mother. She will be my side no matter what. That's what mothers are there for. 

I take pride in her. That no one can understand what we have between us. Irrational. Inexplicable. When I think of what she and I have, excitement mounts. Like in new found love. 

I still remember missing her call, waiting for her call, how my heart skipped a beat when I see the + sign before a number. That's how calls from her looked like. If that's not love, what is? 

I know that there is a connection. I know that she is the only person who will be able to understand me. Like during the keyboard stealing. She was the ONLY person who understood. That's the faith I have in her. 

The feeling is of warmth. The picture I once drew in therapy. It was that of my mother with me like i remember from an old photo of mine. When i shared it on Facebook, she made it her cover picture or something. It's things like that that i understand that she understands. How else did she understand by seeing that picture that it defined a hell of a lot of things for me? 

Going through my old therapy notes, i found a drawing that had come as a surprise to me during one of the sessions. The one that i drew when Ish asked me to talk about my relationship with my sister. It was that of a sinking boat. When i thought of her in the light of what happened between us, i felt i should draw it again, this time, about us. This time, she was the sinking person. Unlike in the picture of my sister, there is a treasure trove under the water that is enticing her. 

Us

With great difficulty, i have come to accept the fact that she can be enticed by things i don't understand. Things she might choose over me. Like in the picture, i don't understand what can be more valuable than getting saved by me, taking my extended arm. But for her, it is a magic world and it is beautiful.  

I was talking to Calico about her and told him how the only thing i couldn't believe was that if it was her child, she would have done the same thing. So this only proves me wrong in one way. I used to think that she would behave with me the way she behaved with her own child. But it is too big a thing to ask of a person. And i was wrong to believe it possible. 

There is a primary condition for stages of grief to happen. Something has to cease existing. For me, it's never ceasing to exist. I gave it a thought when Ish asked me, exasperated,'what is this thing?' I know. I take pride in the fact that she and i are a force to reckon with. Someone i have great respect for is taking a bow and saying she wants to run away from Us. I consider that a victory and a testimony to the fact that it hasn't ceased. 

As to what it is, all i know is that it is love. It is my kind of love. I tasted it once and live in its memory. The memory is enough for me to sustain myself for years. Till it is not alright. 

But i feel lost. In all this pride i take in our relationship, i do feel lost. Like i don't know what i am defending or fighting for anymore. Like Ish said, i am fighting for an idea of her i have. The idea of a relationship i claim we have. Sometimes it tires me. It reminds me of the times when i had to defend abusive lovers at home. Abuse metaphors come easily to me, like she pointed out in the scathing mail she wrote me. Saying how good i am in understanding nuances of sexual harassment but not anything else. 

I don't understand her and that makes me sad. It makes me frustrated but more sad. I think how come she has me all figured out and i haven't understood parts of her. 

All i want is one day with her, the children so that i can live the rest of my life in its memory. When i go to mallu land i will request her to give me that in exactly the same way. I am crying as i write this. Ish would ask me what my tears would say if they could talk. They would probably say, why can't she be kind to me. She who always asks others to be kind. Why am i not worth any kindness? Why am i worthless to her?

 

One of the speakers isn't talking

 

Those Taken | വെട്ടിപ്പോയ കരുക്കള്‍

 

Us

 

ഉന്തൂ മാണീ സാറാ ഗോട്ട് | Unthoo Manee Saraa Got

 

Forgetfulness | മറവി

 

Story of a shipwrecked love

 Sketch for a friend's poem

This is not a book review: 1984 by George Orwell - Unexpected Catharsis of Sorts

When i started reading the book, i immediately recognized the dangerous similarities it had with the Indian government and its ideology of today. Little did i know that by the end of it, i would be in a situation where i would have regular nightmares of having said 2+2 = 5 for the first time in my life.

Rupa kindle edition cover

1984 is a masterpiece. I think i was still a teenager when i read Animal Farm. I remember liking it but did not think its author would be capable of writing something that would shake my being this thoroughly. For example, when i read my first Marquez, i knew i wanted to keep reading him. The same with Sylvia Plath and many others. But Orwell wasn't one of them. He now is. I will have to read Animal Farm again.

My cheap kindle version was by Rupa and had many typos. The first note i made was to the line 'habit that became instinct'. I wrote - ' (that's) how evolution works'. I thought of how Muslims of India might evolve to be more responsive to ordinary sounds in the neighbourhood, picking up any hints of an organized attack that will be later labelled a 'riot'. Delhi had just witnessed one such befor the Corona virus pandemic shut everyone inside their homes. The events in my personal life that followed that week, have, however made me scared of even having such thoughts. It was a week of accusations that broke my heart, what was left of my confidence and integrity.

The brilliance of the author can be seen from the time he names his fictional ideas. Most of these names later became words that even laypeople use. Big Brother, for instance has come to represent everything Big Brother. Orwellian became a word, thanks to this book. The ironical names of the ministries is at its best with the Ministry of love. This description is chilling. 

The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all.

Look at the part where arrests are described. I immediately brought to my mind some arrests i had seen on TV. Salman's for not standing up during national anthem in a theatre in Trivandrum, Kerala and more recently, the arrest of Thwaha for possessing some Maoist related documents. Both by Kerala police. 

It was always at night—the arrests invariably happened at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.

During the pogrom on Muslims in Delhi following the anti CAA protests, India witnessed children with communal eyes unleashing violence on fellow human beings. 1984 describes children of the time in a similar manner. They usually reported their parents to the Thought Police if they even said something in their sleep. 

Nearly all children nowadays were horrible.

It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. 

In the worst of times, what gives a human being strength is the following sentence in the book. 

Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.

Those precious cubic centimeters.  

In a lot of places, the fictional country reminded me of BJP - RSS rule in India. Some of the scenarios the author had thought for this detestable country are already true for RSS - India. See here for instance. 

It was not true, for example, as was claimed in the Party history books, that the Party had invented airplanes.

What have they not claimed? From medicine to science and technology, they claim everything was invented in the vedic period by hindu saints and such. The fictional gods rode planes. So they invented it. Indians are all too familiar with these narratives now. And on top of all that there was the work that Winston had to do at office, changing dates, speeches, all documentation to tally with ever changing government narratives. He takes a moment once to reflect on something that is true for all fictional government narratives.

It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones.

Similarly, the observations about Newspeak, the propaganda language of the government are representative of what authoritarian governments want to do with our thoughts. Language creates identity therefore it can be used to restrict one's identity too. 

...Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?” 

the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? 

So by restricting the number of words, an authoritarian government can actually restrict the scope of our thoughts. By deciding on which words shall be valid, they can control our thoughts. This book was waaay ahead of its time and was brilliant. The words part made me think, that so conversely we have so many words because our thoughts widened and we felt the need for more. And then some more. A beautiful thing to happen, is it not? 

Something i hate when happens has been described just the way it has to be over here.

because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes.

And here comes a beautiful line. With meanings and associations so diverse that it's amazing how so little words can weigh so much. 

Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory? 

Am i? I always ask this of myself. Am i alone in the possession of certain memories that changed my life? The accomplice in memory creation often forgets that what we created, leaving the other guilty of a memory crime. It's sad but true in the case of most memories. 

And how does one confirm if the feeling we have that we have seen better, seen different, seen something else? Orwell explains so beautifully, i want to kiss his hands that wrote it. 

was it not a sign that this was not the natural order of things, if one’s heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness of one’s socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange evil tastes? Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?

Our ancestral memory will never leave us. If we have as much as a beard removed, we keep touching the absence of it in its memory. I am sure i will keep adjusting my glasses even if i switch to contact lens. However adamant the present is, in telling us that it has always been this way, our habits, our feelings will all give it away. We do not feel empty for nothing. We feel empty because of the memory of having been full once. If feelings disappear, biology will remind us, once in a while. Atavism exists for a reason. And i am sure the word wouldn't have existed in Newspeak. 

Here is an instance of how authoritarian rule favours certain stereotypes even about appearance. 

How easy it was, thought Winston, if you did not look about you, to believe that the physical type set up by the Party as an ideal—tall muscular youths and deep-bosomed maidens, blond-haired, vital, sunburnt, carefree—existed and even predominated. Actually, so far as he could judge, the majority of people in Airstrip One were small, dark, and ill-favored.

And here is the Catch 22 about rebellion in the context of the working class in Oceania. 

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious. 

Want to see an amazing metaphor? Here. 

It was like a single equation with two unknowns.

Truly, how does one find out what x and y is if we only know that x + y = 8. But to think of it while writing fiction and to use it as a metaphor, that's the writer i want to be. Or marry. Sigh. This is not the only time he uses science and math to prove a point beautifully. Look at this one here. 

like a fossil bone which turns up in the wrong stratum and destroys a geological theory.

I cannot begin to describe how lovely this comparison is. This is what i want to be. How utterly masochistic it would be, to be that fossil that destroys everything everyone believes in. I want to make an entire thriller film on this. People in quest of this fossil so that the theories that took years to prove can remain intact. It reminds me of her. She was always that fossil. Destroying theories with sometimes just as much as a sigh or a yawn and an innocent giggle afterwards.
  
Have you thought of how some songs will remind us of a past that we were not even part of? Not even heard of through stories? I think that's what songs are there for anyway. Like how a simple rhyme reminds Winston of an old London. 

Oranges and lemins, say the bells of St. Clement's, You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St. Martin's! It was curious, but when you said it to yourself you had the illusion of actually hearing bells, the bells of a lost London that still existed somewhere or other, disguised and forgotten.

And if you want to see the most beautiful use of the most famous three words in the history of humankind, It's in this book. Where the piece of paper reads,

I love you

And that's the beauty of it. You are too immersed in the environment and the ambience of fear that something that would otherwise have been your first guess at what was in the paper is the last thing you think of now. And when it comes, it comes as a blow. You feel the fire Winston is feeling in his stomach. 

And reminding us that love is the same everywhere, 

Then the memory of her face came back, and with it a raging, intolerable desire to be alone.

But at the last moment, while the crowd still hemmed them in, her hand felt for his and gave it a fleeting squeeze.

With hands locked together, invisible among the press of bodies, they stared steadily in front of them, and instead of the eyes of the girl, the eyes of the aged prisoner gazed mournfully at Winston out of nests of hair.

And Orwell confirmed what i had feared. In tumultuous times, love becomes political. I am not sure if i like love like that. I like it when it's stupid and silly.   

But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act. 
    
He wished that he were walking through the streets with her just as they were doing now, but openly and without fear, talking of trivialities and buying odds and ends for the household. He wished above all that they had some place where they could be alone together without feeling the obligation to make love every time they met.

How are slogans the same everywhere? Doesn't this easily remind Indians of the RSS war cry: Desh ke gaddaron ko. Goli maaro saalon ko. 

“Death to the traitors!”

And the following passage is reminiscent of every speech a typical BJP leader like Ajay Bisht gives. 

His voice, made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed forth an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations, lootings, rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying propaganda, unjust aggressions, broken treaties. It was almost impossible to listen to him without being first convinced and then maddened. At every few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild beastlike roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats. The most savage yells of all came from the schoolchildren.

   
Orwell's descriptions are the best. It's so apt. Not a word more than required. Not a word less. See here. 

It was like struggling with some crushing physical task, something which one had the right to refuse and which one was nevertheless neurotically anxious to accomplish.

Some thoughts from the revolutionary book of which mere possession was a crime. 

an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction—indeed, in some sense was the destruction—of a hierarchical society. 

For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

This is true about all forms of oppression like caste or gender.   

And when the government faces a crisis as to what to do with the produced goods, they engage in war. Constant. Like how we have constant military threats and operations whenever the government is questioned. 

Goods must be produced, but they need not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.

War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. 

War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. 

War, it will be seen, not only accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labor or the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society.

And science and technology will naturally become the enemies of such a state. The only exception will be when it can be used to wage bigger wars. 

The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty.    

Words written about the Big Brother are so reminiscent of Narendra Modi or Donald Trump. 

His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt toward an individual than toward an organization.  

And here is something that reminded me of the success of BJP over Congress, explaining it through another lens. 

The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living.
  
The signs of fascism as explained by crimestop 

Crimestop means the faculty of, stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction.

Orwell goes on to say that it is therefore, 'protective stupidity'. By the time i reached this portion of the book, i had been accused of the same. 'You are pretending to be stupid,' she had said over and over again making me doubt myself, pushing me down a spiral of darkness where i was being told that everything i did was a pretense. And yet, even after using all the faculties of thought available to me, i couldn't see how i was doing anything i was being accused of, making me doubt myself even more. 

Everything started with one of my stupid Facebook posts. After i posted it, i got calls. Messages from the two of them. We had been working together on my feature film script for some time. He had said he would produce the film. She was the one who first thought it was something worth being made. She and i used to polish the script together. I was, before it all began, working on a draft. Was writing a little every day. I say a little because usually when i write after the urge, i write a lot. This time, i had to force myself and i was amazed at how little i was able to write when it had to be forced. I had just postponed a trip to Kerala for research for the film because of Corona outbreak. Ironically, the post was about the virus.   

They said my post was a replica of a script he was working on and i had knowledge of. I had read the treatment of something called the pilot episode. They said that with the material i had access to, it was impossible that i thought of what i wrote on my own, it was an exact copy of his script . I didn't think so. Not even a bit. I saw no relation. That infuriated them more. I started panicking. I couldn't see what was happening. I didn't understand why two people who used to be friends were telling me terrible things about me. I wanted it to stop. I asked him what it was that he wanted. I took down the post. I wrote up lines saying i was sorry, that it was his idea and copyrighted material that i wrote in my post. He said my note sounded coercive. I changed the lines to something that wouldn't sound coercive. All that content writing experience paid off. He asked to run my note by his lawyer. I did that and sent it in an e-mail. Like how he wanted. It said i was sorry it happened that i didn't know what i was thinking, putting up his script idea in a facebook post like that. 

After sending it, i got a minor panic attack. It was arguably the first time in my life that i wrote and sent something i did not believe a word of. It felt horrible. I wanted to take the pill prescribed to me for such times. It was the first time such a situation arose. I couldn't move and just kept crying. I didn't want to start another pill habit. Something told me this wasn't going to stop. More attacks would come. 

I wrote to her. I asked her if she thought what they said of me was true. I didn't know what to do. She and i weren't talking but it seemed to me like it was the end of my life. And i always wrote to her at the end of my life. I showed her the material i was accused of plagiarising in my facebook post and my post itself. She didn't tell me what she thought but said that i just had to tell them i didn't think it was plagiarism if i didn't think so. Wasn't that what i did and what infuriated them so much? They wanted me to say that it was an exact copy. How could i say that when i didn't think so. I wrote to Han, Calico and asked them all if i was wrong in this matter. If they too thought i had stolen someone's idea and wrote a silly facebook post.

He called me again, first asking me if i was not feeling well. I had violated some Non Disclosure Agreement by sharing it with a third party he said. Tell me who you shared it with, he kept asking. I told him about Han because i thought that was what he was talking about. Don't lie to me, tell me who else, he kept asking. I was scared. What was he doing? Why was he talking like that? I fumbled and said no one. He later called me a liar for saying that. 'It doesn't matter if you were scared. The fact is that you are a liar,' he yelled on a video call. 

Three therapy sessions costing a total of Rs. 5800 have passed and the impact this had on me is still there. I still dream of it. Think about it obsessively. How i should have refused to write a note i didn't believe in. All those things i should have said to point out how what was being done was wrong and terrible. Which is perhaps why the interrogation of Winston had a cathartic effect on me. he had to say 2+2=5 at the end of it. I had to say i had copied something i did not copy. 

No, there was no physical pain that was inflicted on me. And i agree with Winston. 

Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain.

I have experienced both. And in both, what i do is cower and agree to whatever is being said so that the terrible pain stops. Emotional pain is different, but it hurts just the same. I get overwhelmed just the same. I just want it to end. They told me that all i wanted was to emerge out of a problem unscathed, i just wanted to be the helpless victim - powerless. All i wanted was them to stop. 

“How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?”

asks O'Brien to Winston. 

Winston thought “By making him suffer,” he said. “Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.

I have a long road ahead of me. I have to learn how not to cower in fear and anxiety and say the answer that is being asked of me. However scary it is, however painful the questions are, however big i think the interrogators are, i have to stay put. Most people know how to do it when it is people we hate or have ideological differences with. I do. But the challenge is to do the same with people we love and agree with on most grounds. That's the long road ahead of me. 1984 was just the terrifying beginning of it.