I was born...

I was born in 1988, in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh in a small community hospital in Bijoynagar, ten minutes away from the political capital of Paltan - the same Paltan where the politicos pulled absurd stunts with mob violence and made public statements and press-conferences with a degree of irresponsibility that would embarrass five-year-olds. And it was Nineteen Eighty-Eight - the year of ridiculous shamelessness and many a nature's wicked tricks.

Nineteen Eighty-eight, when General Ershad organized a mockery of an Election where nobody else participated and he won an overwhelming victory with the record lowest votes ever casted in an Election, and eventually in a desperate act to win the illiterate masses, made Islam the state religion of Bangladesh, and sent Bangladesh on a permanent one-way metaphysical journey of identity crisis. It was also the year of the great flood, Bonna, the worst ever seen, most documented by media, the one that gave the perfect excuse to our politicos to set out to the West with their begging bowls, and the one that is primarily responsible for the Westerner's mental picture of Bangladesh as a place submerged in chest-deep water, with scantily clad, bony brown people wading-swimming-boating and whatever else flood-victims do and flashing teeth at cameras from the sheer delight of having their picture taken. It was a messed-up year.

And then to make things worse, I was born.

Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Greed and blah-blah-blah and REASON

Are you a godless person? Or does faith smack you in the stomach, numb you with pain, and leave you with a sick, sadistic desperation? Or does it take care of you like its child – lullabies, pacification, relief and all; or maybe it plays your mistress? - (yes, mistress and not wife) to whom you can confide without being judged or at least with a feeling that you are not being judged? Or does it, as Marx would say, relieve you with the potent mind-numbing and care-releasing effects of a powerful derivative of opium?

Or is it like kohi-noor on the Queen's (of England of course) head that she had stolen so long ago, that now she truly believes is hers? You know what I mean by that – oh yes you DO know, even though you hate to admit it, your God came to you as an ancestral gift, an inheritance, for being born into the family you were born in. Precisely because of that, I believe, you, me and us were taught at a very early age, to BELIEVE, have FAITH and NOT to question or to use reason, when it comes to matters of god.

I believe they did it out of a perverted sense of guilt that has been transfused into them through generations, because at some point down the branches, to and down the trunk and then somewhere in the roots of the family tree, there had been one traitor, one turncoat, one who committed treason and left his god (the one that he had inherited). 
Had he felt guilt in doing so? Had he in his most deserted and solitary moments thought things over? Had he then, unwittingly, let loose those worms-in-the-brain demons – the demons that urged him to fabricate new elements into the doctrines of his new god? But, suffer he sure did. And a kind of suffering that he never wanted any of his descendants to go through. So probably, he decided to not let ask questions - simplify it : BAN REASON!

Depending on the kind of person that he was, there would be different demons at play. We can assume here, that he was one of the many possible things- an ideal tyrant who chose what he chose to gain social advantages, or someone looking for meaning in all the wrong places, or a true and real radical but yet not bold enough to eliminate the possibility of a divine intervention, or maybe even a layman who found the new doctrine more convincing than the inherent. And thus, thousands of turncoats, thousands of demons, thousands of fabrications; each contradicting the other. Truth? - lost in the labyrinth of cock-and-bull. 

That, I believe is precisely why, religion divides, and each religion has some few hundred known and unknown branches. And that is also why, we were taught that REASON is truly the SATANIC superior of the seven (the number varies from doctrines to doctrines) deadly sins – so deadly is its venomous maneuvers, that it is not even mentioned.  

::Mama, mama if God created everything? Who created him?:: (REASON - the illuminati of sins trying to pollute an innocent mind)

::Hush!!! Never ask a thing like that sweety! Why?? He is God! He had always been there…::(protective demon-angels of the mother's ancestral guilt – protective, sweet and powerful, Oh! How would we live without him?)

 
As for me, I am not a godless person. I believe in a god. But which one?

Gibberish

Suppose you wake up one morning, yawn some, fall back again, roll a little, get up, stretch a bit, and go of instead of the washroom to the window, fly it open and find to your shock (or awe, or anything for that matter) that the world has taken a tinge of pink! The sky –baby pink, the greens - greenish pink, the oblong concrete monsters – pinkish from the baby pink sky, and to top the already toppled over senselessness of the situation, the air is scented with a trace of fruitypink! Rub rub, rub your eyes, pinch your tummy, breathe deep and exhale. Still the same!

What would your reaction be to such a phenomenon? Honestly now, and seriously too. Would you be scared? Confused? Puzzled and anxious? Would you telephone the police? Would you pray? Or would you numbly await an explanation, refusing to analyze the event or even experience it with your full emotion until you had read the papers, tuned in the news, heard how experts from the universities were explaining the chromatization (or, fuitification or whatever it maybe), learned how the geologists planned to deal with it, were reassured by the Prime minister, who might insist, as Prime ministers always will, that nothing really had gone wrong?

Or instead of fear, bewilderment and anxiety, or in addition to fear bewilderment and anxiety, or instead of a hard impulse to dismiss the happening and get back to business-as-usual, or in addition to a hard impulse to dismiss the happening and get back to business-as-usual, do you imagine that a bright trace of delight, unnamable and indefensible, might tickle down your spine; could you feel in an odd way elated – elated, perhaps, because, in a rational world where even sickening-malicious-crimes are familiar and damn near routine, some thing of almost fairytale flavor had occurred?

On Minor (?) Post-colonial anxieties

Back when I was smaller, 1971 was a thing of paramount importance to me. This happened through my reading. Recent Bengali children's literature seems to suffer from a severe dearth of subject. The only issue it covers is the war of 1971 and the liberation of Bangladesh. Elaborate details of heroic deeds of young Bengali guerrillas is discussed with insidious facets of massacre, mass killing, assault, rape and violence done by the Pakistan army; this is done without providing any preceding historical references. As if all of this happened out of the blue.Back then, I was too small anyways to doubt or try-to-look-through anything that is printed and bound. So, I hated Pakistan. 

Racism was inflicted to the unwitting mind of an adolescent with the ebony tentacles of half-finished-tales and history-in-fragments. History was hidden from me/us. Inaccessible. The politicians did it because they didn't need to rewind any far backward to achieve their goals of attaining popularity and the authors did it because they could not come out of their petty emotions. I cannot blame either much; the former, because I already ceased to expect from them and the latter, because the war had happened during their youth. Their [latter] closest ones had been murdered or raped or both. But they must come out of this. It is about time they give the children a comprehensive detail.

Why should a child live with an animosity towards his neighbor country, only because he chose to read? Who is to blame? "There are things which took place on the night of the March 25^th [1971] which must remain permanently in the state of confusion"- Midnight's Children. Who is to blame? The only acclaimed literary giant, who spoke about the unsurpassed, unparalleled and unthinkable wrongdoings of modern political history, with comprehensive specifics of the three preceding decades, is banned in Bangladesh. The west, however, reaches out so far as to honor him with knighthood. Whether they do it out of appreciation for good literature or out of a sense of guilt, I doubt. Who is to blame? The religious fanatics? If so, why them; who made them, I ask.

The west condemns the East (largely Muslims) as religious terrorists. On the 3^rd June 1947, Viscount Lord Mountbatten of Burma, the last British Governor-General of India, announced the partitioning of the British Indian Empire into India and Pakistan, under the provisions of the Indian Independence Act 1947. At the stroke of midnight, on 14 August 1947, India became an independent nation. And the partitioning – let's not go into the back-then- prevalent political ideologies – was done on the basis of religious identities of the peoples; the chain reactions that would follow should have not been unanticipated by the great political minds who entered these lands in the name of the "Lord". Now there are grown up men who write books justifying colonization; I doubt neither their motive nor their ethics; I doubt their faculty of logic.

Why should a youth intent upon knowing his history end up with an identity crisis; Who is to blame?

Metamorphosis of Shakespeare

Past Tense: I hate all "wanna-be" intellectuals. That naturally inclines me to hate Shakespeare. Not because Shakespeare was anything of that sort but because of the fact that he/ his works has/have been immensely overrated by the wise and the not-so-wise alike. Shakespeare haunted my very early literature classes with absurd poetries and apparently unrealistic plays, the characters of which behaved neither like mortals nor like those of fairy tales. I was told that he wrote in English but the only English I could make out of those lines were the letters. But that was not what disturbed me most. It was rather our teacher's face that beamed at the slightest reference of Shakespeare that perplexed me. I was but altogether confused about why someone would be all that enthralled at such intolerable senselessness. Why grown ups would take such an interest towards fairy tales, I did not quite understand.

I suppose those were good enough reasons for a person to hate something.

I was introduced to this mammoth of literature sometime before I learned to talk and sometime after I learned to remember. My choto-chacha,(youngest uncle) who had lived with us back when I was small, was a huge admirer of this 'god' of a playwright and thus a framed poster of Shakespeare hung from our drawing room wall for as long as I can remember. That was the first visual signature. The auditory signature, however, was a bit different. My grandmother would tell me the story of The Merchant of Venice (which by the way, is by far the lost logical among all his plays, or so it seemed back then) with an anti-Jewish flavor, a lot of animation and punctuated add–ons, which only later I found out were just add-ons. So I had pretty much known him all along.

Present Tense: It was much later, in my late-mid-teens, when my readership had matured, and I watched plays (both his and of others), that I realized how gravely I was mistaken all along.

It is neither the motive, nor the purpose of a blogger like me, to elaborate how and why I had been mistaken earlier and how Shakespeare really is another way of life. Why he is regarded as the world's pre-eminent dramatist, is not something I am going to try to show the audacity of elaborating.

Now I am slightly involved with a couple of theater groups and I am only, as it seems to me, dipping my beak into the ocean of the Shakespearean world. I wish to find out more.

I also hope the prevalent English medium curriculum in Bangladesh does something to try and change their English literature course curriculum for middle school children, so this playwright does not appear as something of an apparition who lacks both, meaning and contour, but does not fail to induce trepidation. This often leads to an early denial towards literature at large and children fail to take up reading as habit or a hobby.

I hope this changes.


Illustration references:
Image 1(this hung from our wall when I was a child):
Artist: Unknown
Title: Flowers portrait of William Shakespeare
Medium: Oil on canvas


Image 2:

William Blake, Pity. 1795. Tate Gallery.

The work illustrates two similes in lines from Shakespeare's Macbeth (1:21–23):

And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd

Upon the sightless couriers of the air.

Ishmael (and others)

I was re-reading Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie), which, in spite of being a magical realism post colonial literature, explores the theme of recurrence. Saleem (protagonist cum antagonist) discovers himself entangled, time and again in the labyrinths of  the spider webs of the past, present and even the future.

It is so beautiful to see how recurrence fails to get banally repetitive. As I read Ishamel, I could not help but relate it to Sophie's World (and even to Midnight's Children because in Ishmael, magical realism had seeped in), where young Sophie learns about human knowledge through an epistemological approach. Her mentor Alberto Knox shares basic forms of alienation with Ishmael.

Ishmael's propositions on alternate knowledge are very profound and provoking. Even though Biblical characterization and speculations on its[Bible] metaphors have been major themes in many literary works, Ishmael seems to present them in a way that makes one really ponder; mostly due to its inexorable relevance with the world we live in.

In the second page, I found something very interesting. There, Herman Hesse's Journey to the East was referred to. How Hesse failed to identify the ingredients of Leo's "awesome knowledge" was mentioned. Now, Hesse is a very favorite author of mine – owing largely, to his Western origin and Eastern interests (he also shares with me a penchant for water colors). I had read most of his books, but not chronologically.

I looked up the chronology now, just to make sure. In Siddhartha (Hesse's other novel, published in 1922, some 10 years before the publication of Journey to the East) Hesse does account for the source and making of Siddhartha's enlightenment. Had Hesse, over the course of ten years, reiterated his beliefs and concluded that it was impossible to account for a thing of such magnitude? Makes one muse; and yes, recurrence is inevitable.


I started this to write about my thoughts on the book Ishmael. Look where I ended up. Justifying Peripheral Pigments, I guess. :-)

Lately, I have been using a lot of brackets. It is the effect of Midnight's Children. I can't help it – the authors I love to read find their way of seeping into the way I write. Yeah, recurrence is inescapable. :-)

A History of Doubt by Krista Tippett

Speaking of Faith, the popular radio program by Krista Tippett, discusses the role of doubt in religious beliefs throughout the ages in the episode A History of Doubt. Tippett is joined by historian and poet, Jennifer Michael Hecht, and Hecht's book, Doubt: A History, forms the basis of their conversation.

Jennifer Michael Hecht has a very encouraging outlook on the issue of doubt. Only recently has "doubt" been directly associated with non-believers. Doubt, to question what seems to be wrong or incredible, had always been a constructive force, a force that was built on the possibility of answers and explanations still uninhabited by the human mind. It had been the ladder to progress in many ancient societies and the key to numerous innovative ideas and philosophies. This is often forgotten today and the steady times throughout history are concentrated on as being the most flourishing. 

The hour starts with the discussion of the vocabulary that was used to classify doubters during the time of the Greek civilization and what those words stand for at present. The word "cynic" comes from the Greek word for dog and was referred to the nonchalant lifestyles of some philosophers of the time as opposed to the nihilistic stance that we use the word for today. Alexander the Great and Diogenes the original cynic, were known to be much similar at the root, but how the difference in their ambition and philosophies shaped their lives in reverse directions, come up in the context. 

As Wilson Mizner, playwright of The Deep Purple said, "I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education", without doubt and questioning, there can be no innovation. The greatest imperfection in most religious schools of thought is probably the dissuasion that they impose on the exploration of new ideas. The resulting lack of curiosity leads to the bland lifestyle and thinking process that we have seen many people face today, as well as in the past. However, it is thought that religious beliefs are crucial to the common people, for whom it may be difficult to accept the uncertainties related to these philosophies. The possibility that there is no justice in the universe, and that death is the ultimate irrevocable termination of our existence may come as a frightful shock to many. 

This widely acclaimed episode has much to offer to the curious and doubtful hearts out there. With the discussion of how doubt has been present all through the pages of history, we find that doubt is not as modern an idea as it might have been perceived to be, but an omnipresent line of thought in all great communities and civilizations throughout the ages.

So yeah, that's about it. I just made brush over sketch of the talk. Interested folks may want to download it from the link provided. It is, of course, a free download. J

A History of Doubt by Krista Tippett on Audio Download

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Tangled in the Webs

Sometimes you find some videos in YouTube that are simply too cute. And there is no telling how you would stumble upon them. I was reading this article from fineartsbd.com where a surrealist painter was being reviewed. I do not precisely remember, how from that article, I found myself through the webs into YouTube, watching a video on Salvadore Dali.
I found this video on the sidebar while watching that video. It is quite different from the usual mindless YouTube videos and I really liked it.



Of course, a YouTube video without some comments is less than half the show. Here are some of the comments that I picked:
chocolatebunny333 (6 months ago)
Wow, you guys really did your research. Good job.
piewiistuff1 (8 months ago)
this is like lol and education at the same time
UploadPancakesHere (8 months ago)
I love the way you put the show together. Sophia is just such a natural little actress.
Tescosorangejuicerox (6 months ago)
yay i know my dead artist :D
olsenator1996 (8 months ago)
looooool thats so cool...im kinda intrigued on how she works the laptop :)
chelseaxoxogirl (8 months ago)
I love the theme song!!! your such a great mom! I wish my mom would've filmed me when I was little!! They will be so happy when they are 13 years old and watch all of these cute videos!
mavinajfan (8 months ago)
Salvador Dali is one of my favorite artists. He wasn't just an amazing painter but an extreme narcissist. I've read so many of his quotes online the man was amazing! Riverbasil did an awesome job! I totally see him as a Dali- esque person. The shadow puppets were also great!
Back to my childhood. Chelseaxoxogirl's comment made me a little nostalgic. Like her, I too, sometimes wish that some of the things from my childhood were preserved. Like that portrait of Albert Einstein which I did when I was 12; I do not have a wild clue to how it disappeared without a trace. Essentially, there is nothing that remains but memories – we are but, in the end, accumulation of our memories. 
As for the comment by Mavinajfan, Dali definitely was an extreme narcissist. But isn't creativity to some extent naturally inclined towards narcissism? Isn't all art but a desperate attempt of self portraiture?

The Eastern Dog

Have you noticed the prevalence of cats over dogs in a mediocre Bangladeshi house hold? I did. Having house pets (not dairy or farm animals and those are not house pets anyway) is not a very popular convention in an average Bangladeshi household. Still in exceptions where there is a pet it is invariably a cat and not a dog; if it is a dog it is almost always treated as a farm animal that lives outside the household, barks incessantly and eventually bores itself to silence, does not produce milk or any other edibles for that matter and wags its tail violently in an outburst of glee when the master does so much as call it by its "western" name. The post colonial dog does not have the permission to enter a Bengali house hold. Its fate is like that of colonial India, which is reflected in a mock rhetoric dedication of Nirad C. Chowdhury's " The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian" which read, 'To the memory of the British Empire in India ,Which conferred subject hood upon us ,But withheld citizenship.' The dogs that are there not really pets you see, they are just animals that add to the master's elegance and fine taste. They are turned beautifully bovine, while their feline counterparts are given a virtual membership of the household.

      Here, dogs are considered impure. But why is that? What is the actual reason for this animosity towards dogs? Why do we persist in saying dogs are impure, and cleaning and purifying our homes from top to bottom if a dog happens to enter? Why do we believe that those who touch them spoil their ablutions? If our dresses brush against their damp fur, why do we insist on washing that dress seven times like a frenzied woman? Only the fanatics could be responsible for the slander that a pot licked by a dog must be thrown away or re-tinned. Or perhaps, yes, cats…….

A Vichyssoise of Verbiage Veers

Fancy names have always attracted me. This means stuff like naming a helicopter "Black Hawk" instead of just a chopper or calling an anti-terrorism mission "Operation Clean Heart". I must admit the true origin of my interest in Astronomy here: the names. It might sound silly but hearing terms like 'Supernova', 'Quasar' and 'Big Dipper' from my elder cousin since I was just a kind of convinced that I would love knowing more about this almost supernatural subject, which fortunately did turn out to be true in the end.

The thing I enjoy most about these fancy names is the mere playfulness and immaturity that comes with it. Of course, along with that comes their ability to make things look simple, easy and well, let's just say, 'cool'. They can remove the stink that comes from the name "A Giant Garbage Collector"—just name it the "Super Duper Pooper Scooper"! They can also make a person feel special; call a regular cook a "Kitchen-Artist" or a sweeper a "Sewage Disposal Officer" and see the change in his self-esteem.

There is another special ability these names have. They can make a severe, grave, or even gross objective seem like a child's play. I am sure the name of the operation "Desert Storm" makes it a lot easier for the soldiers to go out there and carpet bomb a place, eradicating it of all life forms. And with the term "Operation Clean Heart", it is simpler for the law enforcement agents to forget enforcing the law and instead shoot a criminal dead before trying him legally—which was a situation in Dhaka a few months back.

Other sides and uses of these sorts of names can also be found. In the beaches of Cox's Bazaar you will find lunches of Papaya Poo Poo, Mango Moo Moo and many other different fruity foo foos bursting with rich overripe tropical vowels. And because I have tasted more than one of those 'dishes' I can tell you that I and many others like myself, did not find them as tasty too too as their sounds promised to be. That is definitely the 'ad-able' side of it.

But what I find most interesting about these 'fancy names' are not the former qualities of good humor and childishness, but rather the simplicity with which they exhibit the power of language. They show the uncanny and implicit authority language or more precisely, the use of language holds. They can make you feel comfortable with deadly things or make you want or want-to-be something just by hearing the sound of it.

With all the deceptive powers these names hold it would not be unjust to call them "criminals". But as I admitted earlier, I am very fond of fancy names, so I would rather do a silly deceptive trick here and call them "outlaws" instead.


 

Rainbow in the Dark

 

In another setting it could have been Becket's sun, (Murphy) shining, 'having no other alternative, on the nothing new'. Why you see, it did indeed have the post-modern qualities of exploring one's hidden drives and desires in a cunning act of psychological realism. It gave one the sense of secrecy associated with primordial cravings and the setting where the whimpering howl of a forlorn street dog is the perfect background music. It was, after all, a night thing.

It could be said of this setting that it had the ghastly impurity of a world seen through the delirium of a dying man. Colors pale and ghostly and colorless. Appalling and deathly yellow. Leaning more towards shadow than light; depicting the sinister effects of shade and dark, the qualities of nightmare and alienation stubbing out and rebuking the celebration of incandescence and beauty. Munch's 'By the Deathbed'

Or it could have been Tagore's 'talgaach', standing tall and firm and erect on one leg against the otherwise flat horizon, peeking or rather glaring at the empty bliss of the wide ceaseless skies – an embodiment of the quintessence of freedom. It could have been.

But you see, it was only a lamp post. A lamp post on a solitary street in a suburban setting with no exception from any other of its kind, except that it was lonesome. It glowed dim and yellow. And even its dim had a lonely feeling. It was a as if the municipality had placed one lamp post by mistake on a side street that is never used and then upon realization of the error got so irritated at their own neglect that they did not even bother to remove it. Or something like that.

The setting grasped me. In the undisturbed harmony of darkness, stillness, barrenness and neon, the urban agitation induced by the decadence of an unplanned modernization vanishes. It knocked at the core of my thoughts with the subtlety of a cartoon sledgehammer and yet with the sharpness and sting of a thorn. Why this constant need to arrange, define, relate, place and subject everything? It seemed not just irrational but to a certain degree unfair to classify every other thing into imposed worlds – imposed on me with and without my conscious consent. I am not the Plato, Shakespeare or the Einstein that has been systematically injected into me. I choose not to see the world through their eyes.

I am puppy dogs and rainbows, stumbling happily through the world in unmediated, manic bliss. The glass is not half full; the glass could be broken, the water evaporating on the desert sands, and a fallen shard sticking out of my bleeding hand as a tool, a shovel, which I can use to dig to get to the underground water. I am delusionally optimistic, a fool. I have encountered reality on semi toxic overdoses of fiction, or with a brush painting red and scarlet of a joyous epiphany. The lamp post would be mine. I would be the never-and-nowhere promised Messiah of freedom and escape and the lamp-post would be my shrine. It would be the mecca of independence, autonomy and liberty and I would be its sole resident.

I felt the joy of leaving, at least for some time, the toil of being in our translated world.

Painting Portfolio

“And if their interest wandered, I would tell them, in the end, a love story, about a king called Shantanu and how, on the banks of the great river, he spotted a woman of dazzling beauty. This was of course, none other than the Ganga herself, but the king had no knowledge of this. On the banks of rivers even the most temperate of men lose their heads. King Shantanu fell in love, wholly, madly; he promised the river goddess that he would grant her whatever she wanted, if she chose even to drown her own children he would not stand in her way”

Love flows deep in rivers. With more than 700 rivers and tributaries flowing through the 55,598 square miles of Bangladesh, it is justly called a riverine country. Much of the men’s lives, their joys and sorrows happen around the rivers. The vast waterways flow ceaselessly shaping thousands of lives around them.  The sheer number of colors that float on these river channels is amazing. This portfolio is an attempt to recreate those hues and their alterations with the changing backdrops of sun, rain, wind and storm. Sometimes the subject shifted from the waters towards the land.

I have used experimental pigments in most of these paintings, namely, emulsion color. This is an industrial pigment that is used mainly for coloring walls. That makes it cheap, easily available and very long lasting. It can be used both as water color (commolex background) and oil paint (only it does not require linseed or turpentine). In the others, I used poster paint and a black gel pen for borders and highlights.

Criticism for the Critical Kind

Of late, I have been reading David Lodge. But that is not the point. David lodge for one, did not inspire me to write what I am about to write now. It is rather the set of preceding events. When a friend lent me the book, he like all other friends that lend you a book, made a comment, a one line review of the paperback - "it is about a decadent culture", he said. Fine enough.
Then I talked to him a little about a little this and that and on the bus back home, like you do when someone lends you a book, flipped the book over to its back to find out what the reviewers have to say. Now that tells you a little about the book doesn't that? Besides the overripe and overflowing adjectives such as 'fluent', 'superb', 'brilliant', there was this one comment that said, "about a bygone era and the tawdriness of the commercial world".
Once home, and in front of my PC, (oh these neat soldiers of modernity) I logged in to a popular http for a review of the book. Yes I do read reviews and I yet I am a big fan of Twain ("You son of a cauliflower! You turnip!! Who are the ones that review a book? The ones that never wrote one"). Again, besides the usual flow of mellifluous adjectives associated with a writer who had won a number of acclaimed prizes, (never mind he got the prize for his 25^th book and the one being reviewed was just his debut and the reviewer most likely never read the book before the author became famous for some other work) there was this one summarizing line that said, "significant work that encompasses the daily contradictions"

So, what is my point? You see, these little reviews of 'experts' and the ordinary, subtly urges you to try to find in the book their ideas or descriptions of the volume. As you start to read, your unsuspecting mind tries to find the "decadent culture" or the "tawdriness" or the "daily contradictions" suggested by the reviewers. Now as I read along, I looked and looked but failed to find the decadence. With a certain critical perspective one tends to find decadence in every other thing that comes along. It is that certain degree where the glass is perpetually empty and in exceptions where there is some water, the wall of the glass is either cracked or untouchably filthy. It can't help. Ok I have taken it too far out the point. Point is I found no decadence. I had simultaneously been looking for the" tawdriness of the commercial world". Yes I admit that the commercial world can be quite tawdry at times and yes I do also admit that the tawdriness is sometimes (two chapters only) discussed in the book, but please sir, the book is not "about" the commercial world's tackiness. Then comes the third viewpoint I had been looking for – "daily contradictions". Please sir, I am sorry to have to disagree but I do so with utmost humbleness. The book does address issues of contradiction but it is not "about" daily contradictions. If a book does not talk about contradictions it is probably a pulp fiction, and don't bother reviewing pulp fictions.

I for one thought the book was about faith and the lack of it. It was a calculated applause to a protagonist Mark, who had taken up faith in the form of Catholicism. It was an applause to faith. It in a subtle way urges the reader to appreciate the blessings of faith. But that is just what I think.

The Picturegoers – David Lodge's first novel. I had deliberately refrained from mentioning the name of the book so that you do not read this thing with a preconceived one line review in your head in case you read the book already. And if you haven't but are planning to anyways, I am sorry that you have too many of those one-liner reviews now to bug you along the reading.

I think it is great book, but yet not as good as the ones that were to follow it.



Here is a link to the pdf format of "From Then to Now and Next". He discusses most of his books in this interview:

http://www.paradigme.com/sources/SOURCES-PDF/Sources18-1-1.pdf

**The Picturegoers turned my interest to cinema-going and the film scenario of Bangladesh. I will be posting on this item shortly.

All Eat All

A lrb (London Review of Books www.lrb.com) essay. It draws on the various meanings of the term cannibalism, its historical sources, contexts and references. The essay starts with the story of a couple of real life cannibals – Amin Miewes and Bernd Brandis, modern people with decent jobs. The later voluntarily subjects himself to be devoured by the former. This news, the writer uses mostly to draw attention.

The essay is followed by the origins of cannibalism. He mentions Marco Polo's reference of cannibalistic and dog-headed colonies and later assertions of Columbus and Avramescu of such existence. The word, it is suggested, has its origins in 'carib' from Caribbean. There are references of Robinson Crusoe and implications on how colonizers had intentionally coined the 'savages' as cannibals to give meaning to their merciless exploitations.

There is a certain example drawn from Othello which lacked relevance. The essay eventually takes a more passive turn and reflects more on cannibalism's anthropological aspects quoting from and relating to the likes of Rousseau, Locke, Father Labat and Swift's 'Modest Prosposal'.

The ending was quite interesting and more so to me as it relates Freudian (lately my subject of interest) interpretations of greed behavior with cannibalism. It ends with the example of Sweeny Todd the movie and suggests that modern cannibalism is really the corporate greed devouring the common man.

It is probably the alacritous and mellifluous adeptness with which the essay addresses otherwise dry or rather pedantic issues that liked so much.

Also the way the writer seizes the readers' attention with an example that has almost nothing to do with the matter that follows is very noticeable.

Anyone interested to read the essay can follow the link below:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n15/jenny-diski/all-eat-all

Question The Premises

Albert Camus had once written “There is but only one true philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental questions of philosophy.” This claim holds profound relevance as it encompasses the rudimentary elements and ideas of life. In context, however, it poses to ask whether life at large is worth living or not, but I see it in a different perspective. The question before us is whether we want to embrace the tradition of our society and not necessarily make it the only and dominant tradition. The idea of suicide, at a perfunctory glance may be altogether cowardly, but is it not really the premises of suicide that should really decide the relevance or meaning of the act? To condemn a situation without judging the set of events that precede it is but an act of foolhardy rashness.

Of a person, who has been continuously held back by series of rather unfortunate set backs and thus left unsure of his future endeavors, suicide poses itself as a rather quick and easy remedy. This is really a very tricky situation because the premises or determinants of well being set by his standards may vary from those of the norm. These standards surely offer flexibility for professional judgment but there are situations which are not so dubious and a common judgment to those can be availed. I have heard of various incidents of suicide or attempts of suicide where it appears to be the best decisive act.

A friend once told me of this fire accident that he had witnessed. A commercial building had somehow caught fire in the middle of the night and my friend who happened to have a warehouse in that building had to rush there immediately. What he saw that night were horrific realities that surface only in the close proximity of death. The fire had started on the second floor and was fast rising up. Three unfortunate victims got stuck in the 3rd floor. With no help approaching, they decided to jump off. It is obvious that in spite of what may seem like suicide they had only chosen an alternate/’preferable’ means to their ends. They only decided to end it quickly instead of being subject to prolonged suffering. In doing so, I believe they had undertaken an act of bravery.

But that is not the point of the incident. After two of the victims had jumped, the third could not decide whether or not he too shall jump. The direct consequence (immediate death) of the act had left him dubious. What had seemed like a cure was now nothing but exercising vanity. Judging the premises of suicide is a very delicate matter.

Social standards demean suicide. The laws try to prevent it. But, the implication that there are people who would not commit suicide because of the social stigma or the illegitimacy associated with it, is to me, the punch line of a very flat joke. It is only logical that a person, who has decided to end his life, does not bother much about such things as the law, and he definitely cannot be too pleased with people to care much for what they think is best for him to do. A person who has decided that suicide is a reasonable option cannot simply be expected to differentiate right and wrong through such social standards; his decision is an embodiment of his denial to those values.