I wanted the donkeys to climb down the hill

I wanted the donkeys to climb down the hill


Working like a donkey is a cursing judgement on work exhausted of its labour.

However, when I see donkeys carriying the heavy baggages of devotees of Sabarimala Ayappan, the ‘secular god’ of south India, to the hill top, I curse the god. I hate his devotee. In anyway donkey is not a devotee of man-made-god. But the animal being hired by the man to his empire; and, god is the custodian of men’s holy fears.

Once I asked a donkey : ‘hei, have you ever seen a god (of men) in your dream?’.
She was alone in the street; an early morning, the donkey and I was looking for a breakfast without much dreams. I was jobless. She was preganent, looked sad, to try for a dialogue. I had plenty of time. She, I do not know. However, the silence of her was enough for me to assemble a picture of any gods I met, though I have n’t met any. Because, silence have rooms for fears.

My grandma used to see gods and used to have exchange with gods whenever and wherever she wanted. I get feared when she do that: its like that they two were alone in the whole plannet. There, I would start fantasizing my fears.

The donkey carrying the luggage to the hill top is a sympol of the brutal harmony man made with god. The donkey carries the luggage like a duty entrusted to. But it is not. It is simply a hand out picture of man : he would say, ‘See he is doing his duty’.
The donkey I met in the street had eyes washed in dreams. Which I met later in my own eyes : I was a donkey when I was doing my duties in silence; and it had many rooms for fears. Still.

I wanted the donkeys to climb down the hill, with out the luggages on their top, without the fear of those man-made-gods; although what I saw was more fearful : the silent line of donkeys to the hill top was succeeding mutely through the mob of black clothed men, who were calling loudly the god on the hill top.

READING POEMS

READING POEMS
(1)
I found a brush

at last, I got the password :
“I am a surrealist!”

Then I could conked out the pearl
which was in my hand
All the night, which cared me with
the lost songs my grandma used to sing..
the sleepless corridors of nights
where we met first,
I sat there, in a corridor of many ,
on a clock,
Dali forgotten to take to his death.

The pearl was yours :
I found a brush,
a brazier blue,
and a seed (could be of a Sunflower)..
I took the brush to give to you
I wore the brazier to show to you
And the seed I wanted to brake :
I stay to stop its gasping..

I know you are a surrealist
Who once painted her bathroom with white
And disappeared in the sky at noon.
Who loved Blue, wore brown bangles!

The letter I got from you last, when?
In November, with a memory of coming January…
You said : we will leave the town in October
I said : yes, agreed, tonight…

(2)


Watching bath,
be a painter in disguise


How I would see you in a mirror
when there is no mirror in my room.
So I took the water in a glass
and put on my table.
The glass was of Spain,
and had a picture of a bull, though
the red curtain he saw was missing.
And the water was from a story,
my grandma told :
it was of a river
coming from the head of an angry god,
who just burned his beloved, and
went into sin of silence..

oh, no, my table has your sketches,
your letters
and the last smell you left
before leaving the room..

So, like in an old Arabic story,
I looked into the glass
and I saw you: having bath,
like a women in waterfall,
and I saw me, too,
a boy of 8
watching the bath:
like a painter in disguise!


(3)

Kiss me alone, oh!
When you come from the rain


Met in a dark room
touched by a lightning
I smelt , finally a river,
And tried to remember her.

The river beneath a sky is a call
Lost in a heavy rain; then
she came and held my hands:

“doesn’t matter”

The river beneath a sky is a call,
swim around
heard many, and return.

And, now,
met in a darkroom, touched again,
this time, like a rain…

‘ who you are?’

- ‘doesn’t matter’, she says.

Then the lips closes, closes words…


Note :
(Just written by a passionate for poems or
could be a poem of anyone in love,
written in English, unearthed near Pattambi Palam,
found with an umbrella. Still verifying – however, please send
to 20 receivers..after 20 days you may get one kiss of….)

The dramatic entry of him Or Watching Gandhi

The dramatic entry of him

Or “Watching Gandhi”

By Karunakaran

There was (is) always a drama in Gandhi: The life of his been woven with chain of events when India historically engaged to emerge as a ‘nation’. Later, Gandhi became ‘Father of Nation’.

The drama that was, not acted even in a ritually enriched Sathyagraha, a kind of political act in Gandhi’s case. His simplicity in life and in discourses dramatically engaged the mass in act : To India, freedom struggle was the first in series of shocks in chain it had ‘as a nation’. Or, ‘put together’ was the life, that struggle, tried to live. Gandhi was not the first leader who understood India in its complexity. There were many. From Tagore to Phule. But Gandhi was one leader who pin pointed the ‘Indian drama’ India lived those days, he coined political struggles from language a society lived then.

The word ‘Harijan’ was one . The word, he claimed well again, meant to the dearness to god. Hari is God, ‘Jan’ is the people : thus the word coined to one to show its meaning in a different way in a different period. They were the untouchables of India. The word ‘Harijan’ later become more political even in post independent period of India. Mostly because the democratization of the country do happen, too, in its political language. This is what ‘the new’ in Gandhi’s leadership.

Otherwise, the language which does not hang with ideological burdens is more political when it start works in its social context. Gandhi with this word, one may argue that, did not promise the ‘untouchables’ the ‘political rights’ in the making of the country. Its true but. However, he surely challenged a system to ‘touch the untouchables’, where, ironically, the system stood hesitant. And, he never seized himself from that act, like an actor who forgets that the character he played well already been passed him. True, the leaders always get the “Character roles” to play : after all, the politics, is an exchange of lives between good and bad. The ugliness prevail where this exchange withdrew to no good no bad. The drama in the language plays well of the language because its acts deliberately.

The quality of Gandhi’s political language we all know that it rooted in its culture. Historically one could say that the culture he understood and tried to speak of was more complex than the ideologies, the political world experienced then, socialism etc., could explain. Through out his political life, Gandhi, like a street player in a crowded place, performed well of the drama of politics he chosen to.

And, also, people around the world loved him. They loved him passionately because he always made a dramatic entrance to their hearts with his costumes : the round glass, the bald head, the smile of the toothless, the half naked body, the stick in hand, the watch he hanged in his waste, the leather chapel,- and children loved, found easy, to imitate him in schools to get a first prizes. Moreover, with his political slogans (language, of course): Disobedience, Salt, Sathagraha, Harijan, Quit India.

So, when Vijay Mallaya ‘brought Gandhi’s belong – the costumes – to India from an auction in USA by giving a huge amount in dollars to the auctioneer, he said he acted his own and for his country. Everybody was relaxed in India, even Thusar Gandhi, the grant kin, himself.

Finally, Unny, one of the finest cartoonist of our time, drawn a cartoon in Indian Express. Gandhi is watching “IPL matches on” in television, sitting in front the TV, of course with his ‘costumes’ – the caption was :AND THANK GOD I’VE SOMETHING TO WATCH.

Yes, we were (are) watching “GANDHI”.

The return of the hunter – Retold

The return of the hunter – Retold
By Karunakaran

I , too, take part in talks on ‘economic recession’.

And there were a few incidents to watch :

(1) the strike in Greece (people wanted to know from the State what will happen to them). (2) the close down of a steel door factory in Chicago (when the workers heard that the company is closing down from tomorrow, they refused to return home from the day, and the strike went for weeks, become a national issue, finally found a compensation to workers, and closed down. (3) the continuing strike of British workers against the ‘foreign workforce’ which is spreading through out the country. (the government is upset, because it sees this not a ‘democratic, of which a country is well known.

The story is that the ‘ melting down ‘ , the more used word in discussion, is really ‘global’ and affecting ‘regionally’, taking ‘nations’ to their souls : it’s the power of control on economy, the story once nations told historically. Apart from our recent issues such the political extremism, religious extremism, now the ‘economic recession’ is also could understand in a better way, precisely, ‘nationally’. I would like to note here on India : In India’s case, the return of ‘foreign workforce’ from the Gulf countries is a case in discussion. (The migrants to Europe, USA, Australia, Canada have a different story).

The badly affected countries from the gulf region are started to ‘send back the foreign labour’ which they ‘hired’ from the ‘market’. Yes, the word is ‘Market’, where you pour everything to double the chances. The construction arena, where the foreign workforce mainly been employed, is weakened due to the fall out of their ‘national economy’. The real estate companies, who were investing money, acting as clients, in such major projects like sky-scrappers, shopping malls which been considered as landmarks in gulf’s growing economy , are badly affected; sometime to the extent of bankruptcy. The major work force from India, like from China, Pakistan, Philippines, are employed in construction sector and whom found a sudden termination from the job or they already been alarmed of the RETURN. It is likely to be continued for coming months.

However, their return to India is not been addressed properly. Mainly because the economic growth India seen in present is a ‘infrastructural phenomena’, mostly been supported/determined by the ‘globalization’ – this can be noted primarily on all the developing economies around. And, the ‘expatriate workforce’ which consist a huge number of skilled labour is however not been in the ‘building of the nation’, officially. Otherwise, ‘the hunter’ went out to hunt for his kin at home.
We know the story of hunters in many versions : 1) he returns with a dead animal on shoulder. 2) he returns with a treasure he found when knocking down a tree. 3) he returned horrified by seeing a silent fire 4) he returned with empty hands.. And, here he went to ‘DUBAI’ instead to the forest. Text of the story will be same.
The return of the hunter is otherwise a household affair (one day he, or she, the hunter, came home empty handed, ‘what we will do’) : the state will watch (‘what is to be done’- Lenin) Or, looking at the state as a savior is in any case a pray at the time of prays – it may work or may not - ‘ the God (show) will go on’.

Exporting human power is also a contemporary way to support the ‘local economy’, anyway. A trained or developed countries take this seriously. But in India’s case, like in many ‘third world countries’, this is a gush from the poverty. In past, the people who left to Gulf countries were mainly from villages, they found themselves as semi skilled or unskilled labours, trained nurses, teachers, maids, housekeepers, gardners, shepherds , teachers etc. And, they, these fortune hunters , pulled their families from the poverty . In Kerala’s story ‘Gulf Malaylies’ played a big role : its not the so called Marxists who brought the ‘economic change’ in Kerala. It is the ‘draft-economy’ , as noted in print, where the ‘Gulf money’ played well, though the behavioral part of this course indentified the society as a consumer one. Of course, this return of the hunters is, yes, going to affect Kerala.

As a writer, as a blogger, as an expatriate Indian, I refuse to romanticize this whole situation: the global melt down. There will be many victims every where; and its affects , once more, reminds us how human race is linked globally, socially and economically, more than what our great Darwin found. No surprise, Marx and Engels met Darwin with new insights in their exchanges.

ON TWO ANGRY YOUNG MEN

ON TWO ANGRY YOUNG MEN
(by Karunakaran)

A few weeks back I saw two ‘angry young men’ in television.
Seeing is what you believe. I watched them alone, in crowd, and even when I closed my eyes to get a sleep. And, it (be asleep) opens the back entry to all the wrongful doings a day carries: how sinful, how pleasant, how sorrowful, I was, could be the utterances at the entries.
Then the two angry young men again, came in : the first one was a ‘captive n ‘escapee ‘ from the Taj Hotel carnage and the second was a journalist from Baghdad : the other day he just thrown his shoes to the American president, George Bush, as a gift to the departing president. To Arabs, it seems, throwing one’s shoes is a sign of utmost ‘insult’ one could express. He insulted the president of a country in front of world television channels (believe, what you see) and got arrested. He is still in ‘custody’.
I saw the other angry young man of Mumbai in NDTV and he was really angry :
(1) to Pakistan ‘for sponsoring terrorism’ in India
(2) to Indian authorities for ‘not doing anything’.

(“India should reply to Pakistan in a proper manner”) (“War is a proper answer”)
Anger is constructive.
Constructive in the sense that it is historical even in personal scale. However, anger is destructive also since it is historical; historical in the sense that history is a man made route to a given time. And, we knew that man is a victim, too, of his time, place.
Thus the politics. Whenever the politics miss to understand its ‘present’ it misses its historical relevance itself in present. In most of the cases, it carry the burden of past. Politics is a culture in which the history itself get a character. Like the hero of Umberto Ecco’s novel , “The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana” , to get into one’s own memory one has to catch with the history already told. In Ecco’s story, the hero meets Italy’s fascist past while constructing his own past.
With out a past one has no entry to present. Present is a premises where one is honorably invited.
Anger is an ingredient in every culture. Anger, too, has a role of communication of opposites in a society and its given time is the one with we, as a ‘commune’, get ready to communicate. Readying to communicate is the cultural politics the modernity warrant.
An ‘individual expression’ of anger is a limited communication as it is limited within its own ends. But, anger of a ‘civilian’ is more than that : where the ‘state’ itself is being taken in. Anger of the State(s) is somehow reflects its ‘ruling’ on the issues : issues, like, freedom, liberty etc. Then, the two angry young men were presenting the ruling of their States, though all of us may not subscribe it. Which doesn’t matter.
However, the angry young men we met above were the victims, not the communicators, of an anger, we call terrorism, which modern societies yet to address wisely. They were victims because , as civilians, they failed to represent their case. The case they wanted to argue is ‘their well being’, as we all dream, live peacefully to die at an old age where you may not able to memorize anything. The angry young man from Baghdad met ‘his enemy’ who he hold responsible of utter destruction of his “Nation”, “People”, the political terms where his own well being is defined. His anger was against the destruction of his well being and its given definition.
Ruling of the State(s) is also a kind of expression a society been trained to live. So, when you present your rule on liberty, rule on freedom etc., also cover a liberty, a freedom to agree and disagree, too, which in either case has confrontation with the State itself. After all what democracy is offering is his or her practices in power, as an individual, as a member of State.
War with any of its forms is there always in a democracy. Or democracy contain the war(s). Terror is a kind of war as the anger is. The civilian casualty in a war, in a terrorist attack, is not counted in numbers only; instead it also meet the casualty of our understanding of a period, a society, where we live a life of civilians. And, how we practice our power. We have named us surely : “Political animals”. And, we are.

trying to Understand the Attempt to Assassinate a City

trying to Understand
the Attempt
to Assassinate
a City

(By KARUNAKARAN)

The dead, too, speak when their memoirs met an abrupt end. And, remembering of the dead brings the present one live in.

When watching the Mumbai of 27-28-29-30 November’ 08 on television channels, I felt myself like a dog who just lost his shelter wanders around the street. Otherwise, everybody was telling that the city lost her master. And, like a dog I, too, was looking for her master. Then the dead came with their memoirs.

I was thinking about the city, itself. Without a cup of tea in hand. With a cup of tea like you get in an ancient “Irani café’ in Mumbai will bring, otherwise, the memoirs of the dead.
I am thinking of the city, itself.

As you said, Mumbai has its street vendors and tycoons. Have its slums and sky scrapers. Mumbai has its beautiful women in the world who just returned from a Bolywood location as at the same time an assassin who just boarded in a suburban train with a task to fulfill. A city celebrates its beauty. As its bears the ugly of its. To a city, like Mumbai, the terror, too, find a time in a day which starts with the sun rise. I have been there in those sun rises of Mumbai. With the sirens of the textile mills, most of them shifted later to outside or closed down, with the sounds of early trains to all over the city interiors, I also used to stand in a long line of a slum’s only tinted toilet with a small bucket of water. For us the day begins. If you are at office your wear a decent cloth. Or you may find someone from the same slum in front of a railway station with a few to sell: the hand kerchiefs, hairpins, combs. . I once found a class mate there in a busy toilet of then V.T station (now it is Chatrapati Sivaji Railway Station) after fourteen years. A city has its secrets, its memoirs woven in generations.

The secular aspect of a city is also the process of the migrant mind which sees it a place to live. Living in a city is living your aspirations or dreams. You may find everybody from everywhere in a city after a dream. And, the metropolitnisam, as we name it, is a code of behavior a city asks from its inhabitants. There you learn to forget your cast, religion, status to fit in the dream of the city. Past is forgotten. Present is very much alive. Future, yes, is the dream. And, dreaming is freedom. City allows it. The city has all the genres of aspirations a society hold. In its job, culture, politics etc.

At Assad Maidan I used to hear the fire brand George Fernandez who spoke to a cheering crowd for a change the country wanted. At Assad Maidan only Swami Chinmayanada spoke to his crowd of a war sacredly explained in a sacred book. The city has the multitude of minds split in everything but with certain of its multi culturalism. When a Dalit come from the village of Maharashtra to Mumbai for a demonstration to be held in front of “Vidhan Sabah”, he is there to assert a fate of modernization brought: He sees a city which holds the power over him. He sees a nation which being ‘controlled’ by cities with its wealthy men. The politics you talk in a country, then, change to the power its cities hold. Then the growth one talk about a nation is also to count in “growth of its multi cultural expressions”. This is how the cities formed.

Mumbai has that power over India.

So, choosing to ‘assassinate Mumbai’ is to shake that power.

When a bomb explodes in a village it gathers a cry, a singular one. It is the cry of the loses. When a bomb explode in a city its inhabitants enter in to a fear they otherwise try to overcome with their stay in a city; precisely, they fear the loses of their ‘power’. A hotel, a Metro station, a Stock Exchange, the so called centers of power of a city been shaken by the terrorist attack on Mumbai. The money the city lost those days is then explaining the shaken power. There you talk about the general failure of a Government.

The extension of the ‘global terrorism’ is now is not merely the aspiration of religious hegemony. It is a kind of terrific experiment of ‘modern power’ we experience along with the apparatuses of the democracy. The inherent thirst of power could feel with every terrorist action like in every assassination. The spans of time of that power, how short it can be, give an unfortunate place we have chosen to live: the democracy. Hence, trying to stop the assassination of a city is then, understanding the very formation of a city. Its culture, its dreams, everything should be taken to consideration: Mumbai’s present political atmosphere went against it as we saw in past months. The attack against non-Mumbaikars was in raise. This, too, went against the spirit of a city. The power weakens there. And, the ‘terrorist attack’ came in. Military came in. They, the military, saved the city from terrorists. People praised the military, politicians been sidelined.

What are un-answered are the problems of a weakening position of the city, its multi culturalism, it’s very being as a city in making.

Then, what about the birds we saw in the sky on those smoky, noisy days? The silent migrants to the city? No commentators there for them. But they, the birds, came in groups to the photos, they, the men, taken.



December, 1, 2008

കാഫ്ക, ദ ബ്ലോഗ്ഗര്‍

KAFKA, THE BLOGGER
(By Karunakaran)
Gilles Deleuze once argued that “it's not men, but animals, who know how to die” - a cat seeks a corner to die in, a territory for death. He further went and said that “Writer pushes language to the limit of the cry, of the chant, and a writer is responsible for writing "for", in the place of, animals that die, even by doing philosophy”.
He said: one is the border that separates thought from the non-thought.
Oh, no, I am not a trained ‘philosopher’, though I love to read them. But the madness in imagining, which a writer experiences, is a kind of securing a territory. A writer dies in his writing, looking for a territory of his own - like a cat seeking a corner to die.
So far I have not talked to a cat. If ‘he’ or ‘she’ comes on my way, I get terrified. I get confused of a space I am sharing with ‘other animal’.
The territory of death could explain in writing, as Kafka does. A trail of life in an argument set in an uncertain period of a certain court is a life explained in death. Kafka was searching for a territory. The stories of his could read in a metro, too.
The metro you live have a few ‘men’ from the village you left long before. I use to see ‘them’ in fiction. The “village” is a kind of memory, one wants to be in peace with. I won’t forget the rude structure of a village in feudal period. Seeking peace is also a kind of death: a corner to die in.
A blogger may not be a writer. But a writer, of course is a blogger: he, too, seeks a corner to die in. Thus the blogger’s pray goes like this: This is my blog. I do not put my fiction there. I do not publish my poems there. The memories, too, I won’t. My blog is a place I share with an animal I found in writing.
The blog is a territory a metro could imagine. A lonely place in a packed suburban train is a blog you experience in a metro life.
Kafka was a blogger. The concern he expressed on ‘the human kind’ was not about ‘the existential stories’ of men just after the WW2. It was about the ‘corner’ one feel ‘free’ in a crowded ‘train’. Or he stood for it. ‘For’ is a word for ‘blog’ too.
So the storms that pass through a blog can come from a cup, can be from a coup too. The change of a government you ask can have a place in a blog. Like the beauty you argue for your underwear. However, the death you experience in writing is to be expressed. As, Mr. K, done in a century he lived. And, that was the ‘corner’ where you found the other ‘K’. Where, a cat died his honored death.