"Woman, Native, Other" by Trinh T. Minh-ha

Naeem, this is especially for you :-)

"Write your body"

It wrote itself through me. "Women must write through their bodies." Must not let themselves be driven away from their bodies. (...) When armors and defense mechanism are removed, when new awareness of life is brought into previously deadened ares of the body, women begin to experience writing/the world differently. This is exciting and also very scary. For it takes time to be able to tolerate greater aliveness. Hence the recurrence of musts and must-nots. As soon as a barrier is destroyed, another is immediately erected. Call it reform or expansion. Or else, well-defined liberation revolution. Closure and openness, again, are one ongoing process: we do not have bodies, we are our bodies, and we are ourselves while being the world. Who can endure constant open-endedness? Who can keep on living completely exposed? We write - think and feel - (with) our entire bodies rather than only (with) our minds or hearts. It is a perversion to consider thought the product of one specialized organ, the brain, and feeling, that of the heart. The past convention was that we desire because we are incomplete, that we are always searching for that other missing half. More recently, we no longer desire-because, we simply desire, and we desire as we are. "I am a being of desire, therefore a being of words," said Nicole Brossard, "a being who looks for her body and looks for the body of the other: for me, this is the whole history of writing."

We are reading this book by Trinh T. Minh-ha for the Decolonizing seminar and I highly recommend it to everyone. It's so beautifully written. The moment I opened the first page, the very introduction, I already felt her story speaking through my body, my world:

"The story began long ago..."

That's how she started. "That sounds like how my story'd start," my heart beat a little faster.

"... In a remote village, people have decided to get together to discuss certain matters of capital importance to the well-being of their community. A meeting is thus fixed for a definite date at the marketplace at nightfall. On the day and at the time agreed, each member eats, washes him/herself, and arrives only when s/he is ready. Things proceed smoothly as usual, and the discussion does not have to begin at a precise time, since it does not break in on daily life but slips naturally into it. A mother continues to bathe her child amidst the group; two men go on playing a game they have started; a woman finishes braiding another woman 's hair. These activities do not prevent their listening or intervening when necessary. Never does one open discussion by coming right to the heart of the matter. For the heart of the matter is always somewhere else than where it is supposed to be. To allow it to emerge, people approach it indirectly by letting it come when it is ready to come. There is no need for a linear progression which gives the comforting illusion that one knows where one goes..."

Ok, that definitely sounds like my village!!! :-)))) and onwards from that page, her stories, her struggles, her theories, her rage, her incisive slashes at white wo/men colonialists... flow, weave, whip, spur, and set words on fire!

Again, highly recommended!! i'd type out the whole book here to share with you if I could :-))

For instance, this is just 1 among many great quotes from it ;-)

It must be odd
to be a minority
he was saying.
I looked around
and didn't see any.
So I said
Yeah
it must be.

- Mitsuye Yamada,
"Looking out" in Camp Notes

It's just impossible :-)

It's impossible- tell the sun to leave the sky

it's just impossible

It's impossible- ask a baby not to cry

it's just impossible

Can I hold you closer to me

and not feel you goin' through me?

Split the second that I never think of you?

oh, how impossible

Can the ocean keep from rushing to the shore?

it's just impossible

If I had you could I ever want for more?

it's just impossible

And tomorrow should you ask me for the world somehow I'd get it

I would sell my very soul and not regret it

for to live without your love is just impossible

Oh impossible

impossible

immmmmpossible

The (im)possibility of a symmetrical comeback?

Wendy’s, Cannibals, Modernity, and the Boy from Ghana
(article by Pius Adesanmi)

"We were about to place bets when his eight-year-old son stormed out of his bedroom screaming: “dad, turn on the Tee Vee!” My friend reached for the remote control and flicked on the television. Wendy’s new commercial was on. The lad asked: “Dad, why do the tribesmen want to eat that innocent man?” A hush fell on us. The palm wine turned stale in my mouth. My friend looked at me in exasperation. I looked at him in exasperation. Oro p’esi je! All the answers one could have given the boy have been devoured by the question, as the Yoruba would exclaim in circumstances such as this. How do you explain the discursive politics of Wendy’s new commercial to an eight-year old?

.....

“How do you do that when the cards are so thoroughly dealt against us”, my friend ventured. He continued: “We don’t even have the pedagogical resources to counter Wendy’s narrative at age-appropriate levels. Take the case of your countryman, Chinua Achebe. Things Fall Apart is a great material. Do we have abridged, Children’s versions of that great African book? If my son had encountered masquerades in age-appropriate versions of Things Fall Apart, perhaps his question today would have been: Dad, why is Wendy’s making those masquerades look bad?”"

I have no idea that so recently Wendy's had such an abominable commercial, but then again, i shouldn't be surprised at this manifestation of a colonial discourse that is much more pervasive and deep-seatedly archived than Wendy's. Along with this stale surprise - yes, stale is the word -, I share the exasperation of having all the cards so thoroughly dealt against us! What do you do when "all the answers that could've been given have been devoured by the question"? I'm talking about the difficulty of personal encounters (be it with friends, classmates, genuine inquirers, etc.), but of course, this preemptive-gagging situation is ubiquitously beyond the personal. What do you do when what you say will inevitably be reduced to being "too emotional," "resentful," "bitter," "extreme," "one of those (nuts)"... while what is being said/asked/assumed on the other side is universally backed up by History, by Reason, by "Humanity"?! Not that this suffocating asymmetry will/can stop you from expressing whatever you want to/need to/must/can't help but express, but i just wonder, how do you shut the nonsense up effectively? How do you block - at least temporarily, at least in your presence, at least from your bleeding ears - the stream of obscenities that have been invading, killing, pillaging our worlds since conquests? How do you respond ethically when you can't respond symmetrically (yet?)? Rage? Calm? Silence? Maybe your body reacts before you do. Maybe you don't have that much control no matter how much you try to strategize about it. I know there's no one answer, no formula, no easy this-is-what-you-need-to-do, and perhaps no adequate countering weapons to hold beforehand... I just wanted to hear from you, my dearest friends, mis compañeros y compañeras, about your experiences/thoughts/feelings..... What do you do when you are asked "why do (you) the tribesmen want to eat (us) the innocent man"?

Mourning

Another deeply thoughtful article by Wandia Njoya:

AFRICA MUST RECONCILE WITH HERSELF, WEEP FOR HERSELF

(i'm only quoting here parts of it)

"Black South Africans had barely heaved a sigh of relief from the trauma of apartheid when Archbishop Desmond Tutu led them to accomplish the super human feat of listening to the confessions of gruesome acts committed against their kith and kin. The TV pictures of Archbishop Tutu's lowering his head as he was overcome by grief remain engraved in my mind, for they represent the profound horror and suffering of black South Africans which could not be expressed through words; only through tears. However, as black South Africans endured this painful grieving process, they were also asked to swallow the bitter pill of amnesty and of no promise of reparations or wealth re-distribution. A casual observer can therefore recognize that South Africa is upheld as the model which the rest of Africa is supposed to emulate; which is to have whites confess their sins before their black victims, pay no reparations or suffer imprisonment, while God damn the Africans as their open wounds fester, leading them to explode against women, children, neighboring ethnic groups, fellow citizens, and in this case, fellow Africans."

"All over Africa, we were and still are flooded with stories about reconciliation between blacks and whites, but never between blacks themselves... The message from this imbalance to Africans is simple: crimes committed against us by each other are normal and do not deserve to be addressed through meticulous court trials, reconciliation commissions and national healing. The only time we are expected to go through these processes is when whites are the perpetrators of the injustice. Thus, Africans are expected to spend time understanding the historical background and institutional structures that led Europeans to commit crimes against us, but the same commitment is not demanded of them when the crimes are committed by our fellow Africans."

"It is high time we Africans sat down and honestly discussed how the human identities of class, race, gender, ethnicity and nationality within Africa have been poisoned by racism. And we must do this within closed doors of our countries and our languages, away from the scrutinizing eye of Western donors and scholars. We must do it for ourselves and among ourselves, damning whether it meets the principles of human rights charters or the mildly enlightening but un-replicable theories such as Marxism and feminism. It is unrealistic and unfair for us to spend so much energy reconciling with and forgiving Europe for slavery, colonialism and apartheid, while almost none on acknowledging, explaining and forgiving the injuries we inflicted on each other across individual, gender, class, ethnic and national boundaries. Likewise, it is absurd that Euro-America culturally and politically imposes a policy of "forgive and forget" on us. How can Euro-America be forgiven when it has not apologized, and how can it claim to have repented the sins of racist exploitation if it has not abandoned the initial errant and exploitative behavior? Moreover, Euro-American continually protects its settlers and post-apartheid communities in Africa, but remains aloof when we unleash our frustrations on each other or when politicians and criminals inflict suffering on their fellow Africans in the name of history or "African standards."

Africa must find the time to mourn; regularly. It makes little sense to celebrate liberation without remembering and mourning the millions of victims who lost their lives under brutality or in the struggle. Africa is further prevented from being emotionally and psychically connected to our history by the philanthropists and do-gooders who shed crocodile, and maybe sincere, tears on our behalf. Every time Madonna, Bono, Angelina Jolie and ilk adopt children, hold concerts, produce documentaries and visit the G8 on our behalf, they effectively impose another barrier between Africans and their past. The inherent message of philanthropy is that Europeans know our pain better than we - the people who bear it - do, and therefore they are best placed to weep for us. Meanwhile, when Africans mourn apartheid, racism, colonialism and slavery, we are told to "get over it" and not to "dwell on the past" that academics separate from the present using the latest "post" theory. And the more we are distanced from our history, the less likely we are to learn from it."

Who's mourning for whom? Who can mourn (what) profusely and who is barred from even uttering it? Do supposedly good-doing efforts like Amnesty, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, philanthropy... shed tears with us or do they effectively gag us from mourning for ourselves, mourning with each other, mourning "with our own voice, in our own words, and in our own languages"? Njoya's article's profoundly affected me with these questions...

The Audacity...

TO BE HUMAN

what do you think about the issues that Wandia Njoya is talking about?

"...

In the meantime, those of us with TV's tune in to Churchill every Thursday night to laugh at the jokes about stereotypes of the different Kenyan ethnic groups. No one seems to realize that during the elections, we used the same, same stereotypes, but at that time we were not laughing. We were serious. We killed Luos because they were flamboyant. We killed Kalenjins because they were violent. We killed Kambas because they were traitors. We killed Kisiis and Luhyas whom we thought should have known better than live in districts that are not their own. We killed Kikuyus because they are money-hungry thieves who stole an election. And Kikuyus retorted that everyone else but them was lazy and jealous because Kikuyus are supposedly the only Kenyans who work hard. And that "everyone else" - symbolized by the militia Group 41 - responded by hoping to rally a whole country to exterminate one ethnic group.

...

We have believed the politicians who lie to us and blackmail us to believe that our only hope for survival is tribal cocoons. They have killed our hope to be completely human, to be more than a potential ballot on election day or a potential militia to protect their power and wealth. And once we no longer know that we are human, it doesn't matter whether we live or die. We can kill without a blink and not be moved by the blood we spill. And we expect to die by deluding ourselves that injustice is fate or God's will.

..."

The New School

Is the school a bigger bomb than the bomb?
This is a powerful passage from Cheikh Hamidou Kane's Ambiguous Adventure:

"For the newcomers did not know only how to fight. They were strange people. If they knew how to kill with effectiveness, they also knew how to cure, with the same art. Where they had brought disorder, they established a new order. They destroyed and they constructed. On the black continent it began to be understood that their true power lay not in the cannons of the first morning, but rather in what followed the cannons.

Thus, behind the gunboats, the clear gaze of the Most Royal Lady of the Diallobé had seen the new school.

The new school shares at the same time the characteristics of cannon and of magnet. From the cannon it draws its efficacy as an arm of combat. Better than the cannon, it makes conquest permanent. The cannon compels the body, the school bewitches the soul. Where the cannon has made a pit of ashes and of death, in the sticky mold of which men would not have rebounded from the ruins, the new school establishes peace. The morning of rebirth will be a morning of benediction through the appeasing virtue of the new school.

From the magnet, the school takes its radiating force. It is bound up with a new order, as a magnetic stone is bound up with a field. The upheaval of the fire of man within this new order is similar to the overturn of certain physical laws in a magnetic field. Men are seen to be composing themselves, conquered, along the lines of invisible and imperious forces. Disorder is organized, rebellion is appeased, the mornings of resentment resound with songs of a universal thanksgiving."

the question of Care

for the last couple of days, we've been talking a lot about "caring" and "helping" and "reaching out" to people who are presumably worse off than us and in need of help. I thought this story merits consideration:

When the people were starving during the "Year of Ashes," 'Umar took a private oath that he would not touch butter or meat until the people were in better circumstances. This oath he kept faithfully until his skin grew dark and he grimaced if he ate an olive. It happened that there came into the market a skin of butter and a skin of milk, and one of 'Umar's servants bought them for forty dirhams. The servant went to 'Umar to tell him what Allah had granted to him; how this skin of butter and skin of milk had come into the market, and how he had bought them for him. But when 'Umar heard the price he said: "It is too clear; go and give them away as alms. I cannot bring myself to eat what is bought extravagantly. He sat silent for a space and then added: "How can the state of my people be of concern to me if what touches them does not affect me?"

How much do we - can we - care if what touches "them" (those whom we profess to care) does not affect us?

What Bush and Obama have in common...

The Empire v. The Graveyard
An article by Tom Engelhardt

For all their differences with Bush's first-term neocons, here's what the Obama team still has in common with them -- and it's no small thing: they still think the U.S. won the Cold War. They still haven't accepted that they can't, even if in a subtler fashion than the Busheviks, control how this world spins; they still can't imagine that the United States of America, as an imperial power, could possibly be heading for the exits.

Listening to Tracy Chapman...

Born To Fight (wish I could get a better quality video)

They're tryin' to take away my pride
By stripping me of everyhing I own
They're tryin' to hurt me inside
And make me into a white man's drone


But this one's not for sale
And I was born to fight
I ain't been knocked down yet
I was born to fight
I'm the surest bet


There ain't no man no woman
No beast alive that can beat me
'Cause I'm born to fight
They're tryin' to dig into my soul
And take away the spirit of my god
They're tryin' to take control
And monitor my every thought

I won't let down my guard
And I was born to fight
I ain't been knocked down yet
I was born to fight
I'm the surest bet


There ain't no man no woman
No beast alive that can beat me
'Cause I'm born to fight

from the blog of A Family in Baghdad

The ordeal of Gaza......
Thursday, January 8th., 2009

Peace be upon you...

My heart is sad about what is happening in Gaza and its people for two weeks now, and wondering about the lowliness of this world we are living in?

There are cruel people, and there are cowards; cruel people who bomb by warplanes and kill the unarmed civilians with all malice and a dead conscience… and cowards- the neighbors who watch, condemn, and criticize with meaningless, empty words…

And there are the millions of civilians around the world; rallying, marching, sitting-in in protest, burning flags and raising slogans, but who cares?

And- the decision makers are watching, their coldness cannot be interpreted as keeping their nerves under control, but cowardness, slackness, and a conspiracy against those poor people in Gaza, for they abandoned them, leaving them under the daily savage bombardment, the shortage of water and food supplies, besieged in their homes which they cannot leave…

All these sites reminded me of the Iraq war in 2003, what we suffered under the daily bombardment while we were besieged in our homes, waiting for the bombing to calm down so we can send our boys to the bakery to stand in the long line, to get a few loafs of bread; while the electricity went out, and we abandoned the notion of refrigerators in our houses, and had to buy the vegetables each day for immediate cooking only… we had to spend the night in the light of lanterns, and the suffocating smell of kerosene… we listened to the news by a small battery-operated radio, hearing the world’s reaction about what is happening to us, feeling angry and sad because the world abandoned us… living in daily terror, no longer feeling the taste of sleep or comfort, our faces pale, our minds tired, our children fearful, shivering. These were pitch black days…

And now, poor Gaza is going through the same thing… we pray for them in each prayer; that God would give them the victory against their enemy, that their dead would be in heaven, that the living among them should be patient until the catastrophe is ended, that their enemy is destroyed, along with everyone who loves to be arrogant and a tyrant on this earth, that everyone who let them down should be let-down, or whoever collaborated with their enemy to hurt them, even if he was a Muslim, for then his punishment from God would be bigger and more severe, for agreeing to betray his brothers, and shedding their innocent blood…........

Then we sent money donations through professional organizations authorized to gather donations. We know this is not enough, but we believe in God and his justice, He will award everyone with what they deserve- if good, then they will get goodness, if evil, they will get evil. With God, nothing shall go astray in heaven or in earth, not even a grain of mustard (= the smallest possible thing)…

My heart is heavy with pain, but what good will words do?

**************************************

In spite of the material and human loss that has befallen poor, sad Gaza, some people believe that the leadership of Gaza is a bunch of absurd adventurers, that the wise leaderships are those who bow to America and Israel, the leaderships that agreed to play the role of the crippled onlooker everyday, watching the children’s blood and children’s corpses, the cries and tears of mothers, but did nothing to stop those hideous crimes. These leaderships proved that they do not represent their people; for the people are boiling in anger, crying blood for Gaza and its people, while the leaderships always think about how to keep their positions, their chairs. This dilemma revealed the truth about positions; whether they are defeated, cowardly, opportunist, or honest, true nationalist.

What a shameful matter it is that Chavez; the communist leader of Venezuela, decided to send the Israeli ambassador out of his country and to inform him the deep anger of the Venezuelan people about what is happening in Gaza, and the Arab and Muslim people marched to demand throwing the Israeli ambassador out as a demonstration for refusing the killing of the Gaza people, but no Arab leadership, alas, did throw out the ambassador or address him with an angry letter.

These little calamities reveal the true faces, and these actions accumulate to show our people the truth about their leaderships, unfortunately these leaderships do not represent their people, do not reflect the pulse of the people, or their wishes. It has proven that whatever they call- moderate leaderships are nothing but weak puppets in the hands of America. Also now, it became clear to the western people the false claim that Israel is a peace-seeking state, with the evil neighbors. But to the opposite; it is evident now how much of a cruel, evil state Israel is towards the neighbors, and how weak and helpless the neighbors are. It is time for the whole world to see, understand, and re-arrange the calculations about what is happening in what they call- the Middle East; in Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Sudan, Darfur, Somalia, Afghanistan, and other countries that suffer inner conflicts and wars. The stories circulated by the western media are something totally different from the actual reality. But these calamities and mishaps have a single positive face- they are the accumulation of truths until the positive change takes place in the future.

We all want peace in our countries, we all hate unjust people, and injustice, and we should all work to seize the hands of the unjust and tell them: enough!

# posted by Faiza Al-Arji

News from Iraq

Saturday, December 06, 2008 (from the blog Healing Iraq)

"I'm not looking at whether they are guilty or innocent," said Air Force Maj. Jeff Ghiglieri, the president of the review board that convened in May. "We're trying to determine as best we can whether they will do bad things if we release them." Minutes later, the panel unanimously voted to detain Farkhan for another six months.

This proceeding is what has amounted to due process for many of the 100,000 prisoners who have passed through the American-run detention system in Iraq. Although the legal controversy over detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has attracted far more attention, 100 times as many prisoners have been held at Camp Bucca and other Iraqi sites with far fewer legal rights and no oversight by the American court system. The Iraqis are not charged with crimes, permitted to see the evidence against them or provided lawyers.

Iraqi blogs:

Baghdad Burning

Healing Iraq

An Iraqi Tear

A Family in Baghdad

....

Please share news and blogs that move you, surprise you, enrage you, haunt you, shame you, inspire you,...

World Social Forum 2009 - Belém

This year the World Social Forum will take place in the Brazilian Amazon, more specifically in the city of Belem. Yet there is the attempt to reach as much of us who believe in another world possible and we should keep up and participate with what is going on in this space through this link:

http://openfsm.net/projects/fsm2009interconexoes/project-home

Hasta la victoria siempre,

saudades,
ricardo

Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane

I'm reading this great novel about an "ambiguous adventure" of an African boy from his country Diallobe' to a foreign school and later to Paris. There are a lot of great passages, but this one in particular reminds me a little bit of Snow. I'm sure if we roleplay the dialogue like we did in class and get asked by Andy every sentence or two "what do you mean by that," :-))) we would see so many more layers in each sentence... but even at the surface of my first encounter, I love the talk about the end of the world, about the anguish, about "a little truth each day"...

(The dialogue is between a man from Diallobe and a Frenchman at the time of sunset and started by the latter. The former is called the knight here because he appeared to have "the air of a knight of the Middle Ages" to the Frenchman and his son...)

"Does this twilight not trouble you? Myself, I am upset by it. At this moment it seems to me that we are closer to the end of the world than we are to nightfall."
The knight smiled.
"Reassure yourself. I predict for you a peaceful night."
"You do not believe in the end of the world?"
"On the contrary, I even hope for it, firmly."
"That is just what I was thinking. Here everyone believes in the end of the world, from the most simple-minded peasant to the man of great cultivation. Why? I have been asking myself; and only today, with this twilight, I have begun to understand."
The knight looked attentively at Paul.
"Let me ask you a question in my turn: you truly do not believe in the end of the world?"
"No, obviously. The world will not come to an end - at least not to the end that is expected here. That a catastrophe might destroy our planet - of that I do not speak."
"Our most simple-minded peasant does not believe in such an end as that, episodic and accidental. His universe does not admit of accident. In spite of appearances, his concept is more reassuring than yours."
"That may well be. Unfortunately for us, it is my universe which is true. The earth is not flat. It has no steep slopes which give upon the abyss. The sun is not a candelabrum set upon a blue porcelain dais. The universe which science has revealed to the West is less immediately human, but confess that it is more solid."
"Your science has revealed to you a round and perfect world, in infinite movement," said the knight. "It has reconquered that world from chaos. But I believe that in so doing it has laid you open to despair."
"Not at all. It has liberated us from fears - childish and absurd fears."
"Absurd? What is absurd is the world which does not end. When will one know the truth - all the truth? As for us, we still believe in the coming of truth. We hope for it."
Then that is it, Paul Lacroix thought. The truth which they do not now possess, which they are incapable of conquering, they hope for in the end. It is so in the case of justice, also. All they want and do not have - instead of trying to conquer it, they await it at the end...
He did not express this thought. He merely said:
"As for us, we conquer a little more of truth each day, thanks to science. We do not wait..."
I was sure that he would not have understood, thought the knight. They are so fascinated by the returns they get from the implement that they have lost sight of the infinite immensity of the workyard. They do not see that the truth which they discover each day is each day more contracted. A little truth each day- to be sure, that must be, that is necessary. But the Truth? To have this, must one renounce that?
Like Paul Lacroix, he did not express this thought aloud. He said, instead:
"I believe that you understand very well what I want to say to you. I do not contest the quality of the truth which science discloses. But it is a partial truth; and insofar as there will be a future, all truth will be partial. Truth takes its place at the end of history. But I see that we are setting out on the deceptive road of metaphysics."
"Why do you say 'deceptive'?"
"'To every word one can oppose another' - is that not what one of your ancient philosphers has said? Tell me frankly if this is not still your conviction today."
"No. And if you please, let us keep away from metaphysics. I should like to know your world."
"You know it already. Our world is that which believes in the end of the world: which at the same time hopes for it and fears it. Just now, I rejoiced greatly when it seemed to me that ou were in anguish there in front of the window. See, I was saying to myself, he has a foreboding of the end..."
"No, it was not anguish, truly. It did not go so far as that."
" Then from the bottom of my heart I wish for you to rediscover the feeling of anguish in the face of the dying sun. I ardently wish that for the West. When the sun dies, no scientific certainty should keep us from weeping for it, no rational evidence should keep us from asking that it be reborn. You are slowly dying under the weight of evidence. I wish you that anguish - like a resurrection."
"To what shall we be born?"
"To a more profound truth. Evidence is a quality of the surface. Your science is the triumph of evidence, a proliferation of the surface. It makes you the masters of the external, but at the same time it exiles you there, more and more."

Conversation with Chinua Achebe

I've been reading his collected essays in Hopes and Impediments and absolutely love his unbudging writing/fighting against the most sophisticated, "even brilliant" and well-intentioned (as he recognizes) colonialists... and his very inspiring, emphatic call upon us all to speak, to challenge Europe's presence, position, intervention and all that "they dress up in fine robes which they call universality," and perhaps most importantly, to be "ready to guide the curious visitor to the gallery of (our) art, willing to listen with politeness even to his hasty opinions but careful, most careful, to concede nothing to him that might appear to undermine (our) own position within (our) heritage or compromise the integrity of (our) indigenous perception."

Slumdog Millionaire

"Even if you did cheat, I am here to protect you. What you tell me cannot be used against you in a court of law."
(...)

Time to make a decision. I take out my trusted one-rupee coin. Heads, I coopearate with her. Tails, I tell her ta-ta. I flip the coin. It is heads.

"Do you know Albert Fernandes?" I ask her.
"No. Who is he?"
"He has an illegal factory in Dharavi which makes watch-strap buckles."
"And?"
"He plays matka."
"Matka?"
"Illegal gambling with cards."
"I see."
"So Albert Fernandes plays matka, and last Tuesday he had an amazing game."
"What happened?"
"He came up with fifteen winning hands in a row. Can you believe it? Fifteen hands in a row. He cleaned out fifty thousand rupees that evening."
"So? I still don't see the connection."
"Don't you see? He got lucky in cards. I got lucky on the show."
"You mean you just guessed the answers and by pure luck got twelve out of twelve correct?"
"No. I didn't guess those answers. I knew them."
"You knew the answers?"
"Yes. To all the questions."
"Then where does luck come into the picture?"
"Well, wasn't I lucky that they asked only those questions to which I knew the answers?"

The look of utter disbelief on Smita's face says it all. I can take it no longer. I erupt in sadness and anger: "I know what you are thinking. Like Godbole, you wonder what I was doing on that quiz show. Like Godbole, you believe I am good only for serving chicken fry and whisky in a restaurant. That I am meant to live life like a dog, and die like an insect. Don't you?

"No, Ram." She grasps my hand. "I will never believe that. But you must understand. If I am to help you, I have to know how you won that billion. And I confess, I find it difficult to comprehend. Heavens, even I couldn't answer half those questions."

"Well, madam, we poor can also ask questions and demand answers. And I bet you, if the poor conducted a quiz, the rich wouldn't be able to answer a single question. I don't know the currency of France, but I can tell you how much money Shalini Tai owes our neighborhood moneylender. I dont know who was the first man on the moon, but i can tell you who was the first man to produce illegal DVDs in Dharavi. Could you answer these questions in a quiz?"


Wanna watch The Movie together some Thursday when we are back, village?

Historical determinism, a costly and bloodstained fantasy, expelling us from the present, expelling our presence...

From Octavio Paz's Nobel Lecture:

... Como todos los niños, construí puentes imaginarios y afectivos que me unían al mundo y a los otros. Vivía en un pueblo de las afueras de la ciudad de México, en una vieja casa ruinosa con un jardín selvático y una gran habitación llena de libros. Primeros juegos, primeros aprendizajes. El jardín se convirtió en el centro del mundo y la biblioteca en caverna encantada. Leía y jugaba con mis primos y mis compañeros de escuela. Había una higuera, templo vegetal, cuatro pinos, tres fresnos, un huele-de-noche, un granado, herbazales, plantas espinosas que producían rozaduras moradas. Muros de adobe. El tiempo era elástico; el espacio, giratorio. Mejor dicho: todos los tiempos, reales o imaginarios, eran ahora mismo; el espacio, a su vez, se transformaba sin cesar: allá era aquí: todo era aquí: un valle, una montaña, un país lejano, el patio de los vecinos. ... El mundo era ilimitado y, no obstante, siempre al alcance de la mano; el tiempo era una substancia maleable y un presente sin fisuras.

¿Cuando se rompió el encanto? No de golpe: poco a poco. ... puedo recordar con cierta claridad un incidente que, aunque pronto olvidado, fue la primera señal. Tendría unos seis años y una de mis primas, un poco mayor que yo, me enseñó una revista norteamericana con una fotografía de soldados desfilando por una gran avenida, probablemente de Nueva York. "Vuelven de la guerra", me dijo. Esas pocas palabras me turbaron como si anunciasen el fin del mundo o el segundo advenimiento de Cristo. Sabía, vagamente, que allá lejos, unos años antes, había terminado una guerra y que los soldados desfilaban para celebrar su victoria; para mí aquella guerra había pasado en otro tiempo, no ahora ni aquí. La foto me desmentía. Me sentí, literalmente, desalojado del presente.

Desde entonces el tiempo comenzó a fracturarse más y más. Y el espacio, los espacios. La experiencia se repitió una y otra vez. Una noticia cualquiera, una frase anodina, el titular de un diario, una canción de moda: pruebas de la existencia del mundo de afuera y revelaciones de mi irrealidad. Sentí que el mundo se escindía: yo no estaba en el presente. Mi ahora se disgregó: el verdadero tiempo estaba en otra parte. Mi tiempo, el tiempo del jardín, la higuera, los juegos con los amigos, el sopor bajo el sol de las tres de la tarde entre las yerbas, el higo entreabierto - negro y rojizo como un ascua pero un ascua dulce y fresca - era un tiempo ficticio. A pesar del testimonio de mis sentidos, el tiempo de allá, el de los otros, era el verdadero, el tiempo del presente real. Acepté lo inaceptable: fui adulto. Así comenzó mi expulsión del presente.

... Apenas ahora he comprendido que entre lo que he llamado mi expulsión del presente y escribir poemas había una relación secreta. La poesía está enamorada del instante y quiere revivirlo en un poema; lo aparta de la sucesión y lo convierte en presente fijo. Pero en aquella época yo escribía sin preguntarme por qué lo hacía. Buscaba la puerta de entrada al presente: quería ser de mi tiempo y de mi siglo. Un poco después esta obsesión se volvió idea fija: quise ser un poeta moderno. Comenzó mi búsqueda de la modernidad.

transcripción completa


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... Like every child I built emotional bridges in the imagination to link me to the world and to other people. I lived in a town on the outskirts of Mexico City, in an old dilapidated house that had a jungle-like garden and a great room full of books. First games and first lessons. The garden soon became the centre of my world; the library, an enchanted cave. I used to read and play with my cousins and schoolmates. There was a fig tree, temple of vegetation, four pine trees, three ash trees, a nightshade, a pomegranate tree, wild grass and prickly plants that produced purple grazes. Adobe walls. Time was elastic; space was a spinning wheel. All time, past or future, real or imaginary, was pure presence. Space transformed itself ceaselessly. The beyond was here, all was here: a valley, a mountain, a distant country, the neighbours' patio.... The world was limitless yet it was always within reach; time was a pliable substance that weaved an unbroken present.

When was the spell broken? Gradually rather than suddenly. ... I can remember fairly clearly an incident that was the first sign, although it was quickly forgotten. I must have been about six when one of my cousins who was a little older showed me a North American magazine with a photograph of soldiers marching along a huge avenue, probably in New York. "They've returned from the war" she said. This handful of words disturbed me, as if they foreshadowed the end of the world or the Second Coming of Christ. I vaguely knew that somewhere far away a war had ended a few years earlier and that the soldiers were marching to celebrate their victory. For me, that war had taken place in another time, not here and now. The photo refuted me. I felt literally dislodged from the present.

From that moment time began to fracture more and more. And there was a plurality of spaces. The experience repeated itself more and more frequently. Any piece of news, a harmless phrase, the headline in a newspaper: everything proved the outside world's existence and my own unreality. I felt that the world was splitting and that I did not inhabit the present. My present was disintegrating: real time was somewhere else. My time, the time of the garden, the fig tree, the games with friends, the drowsiness among the plants at three in the afternoon under the sun, a fig torn open (black and red like a live coal but one that is sweet and fresh): this was a fictitious time. In spite of what my senses told me, the time from over there, belonging to the others, was the real one, the time of the real present. I accepted the inevitable: I became an adult. That was how my expulsion from the present began.

...Only now have I understood that there was a secret relationship between what I have called my expulsion from the present and the writing of poetry. Poetry is in love with the instant and seeks to relive it in the poem, thus separating it from sequential time and turning it into a fixed present. But at that time I wrote without wondering why I was doing it. I was searching for the gateway to the present: I wanted to belong to my time and to my century. A little later this obsession became a fixed idea: I wanted to be a modern poet. My search for modernity had begun.

complete transcript

"If we aren't accumulating knowledge, what are we doing?" "Singing."

a short and sweet story of how to go (and how not to go) to school...

The Idiot's Warehouse

I know the idiot's warehouse
Is always full.

I know each of us
Could run back and forth from there
All day long

And show everyone our vast collection.

Though tonight, Hafız,
Retire from the madness for an hour,

Gather with some loyal friends
Or sit alone

And
Sing beautiful songs

To God.

-Hafız, our poet friend from Persia

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

I was looking up this famous Urdu poet and his words reflect such a beautiful and indomitable spirit of people resisting oppression:

Stanza

If they snatch my ink and pen,
I should not complain,
For I have dipped my fingers
In the blood of my heart.
I should not complain
Even if they seal my tongue,
For every ring of my chain
Is a tongue ready to speak.