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
Sunday, 30 November 2008
Sunday, 16 November 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.
(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.
Saturday, 15 November 2008
ONE IS BLACK, OTHERS ALL WHITE
Saturday, 15 November 2008
ONE IS BLACK, OTHERS ALL WHITE
ONE IS BLACK, OTHERS ALL WHITE
(by Karunakaran)
When Barak Obama was elected as president of United States of America, all of us were talking about a new Era. Electing, first time in history of USA, a Black as a president was the story. The joy. And, then came the memoirs of Abraham Lincoln. Slavery. With that I remembered Steven Spielberg’s films on Blacks. (Do you remember those films?).
I am working in Kuwait. Kuwait was the launching pad of two wars in Iraq. American military is there. Saddam Husain is not there. But war is there. As well as the killings and deaths.
I used to follow the news of Iraq. Now no. In fact, nothing much to follows a war already forgotten: in your memory, I assure you, death is simply a cry. A sound like. You do not have to worry much about it. But living like a dead in a war zone is a life one will not choose: people love to eat, drink, fuck, and of course they love to write stories, poems, or at least draw a line or a circle in WC which they use peacefully. I remember a trip of mine through Iraq in 1990, just days after the Iraqi Occupation of Kuwait. The bus stopped in a petrol pump in Basra. A cold evening. From the darkness, suddenly, a group of children came to our bus begging. They were asking for anything one can offer: Coin or banana. A piece of bread or a pencil. Then we saw a lady in black. She stood there looking at the bus, like a dead waiting for a trip to heaven. I do not know anybody went with her to the heaven. But the war was, war is a hell.
We do not know Obama, the next president of America, will withdraw his troops from Iraq. Probably Yes. Most probably No. However, the countless deaths occur in Iraq is a daily life a man cannot ignore: Even if a President does. A president always a head of a system. Systems always look for its survival. And, the survival is the sad story of the failures. Failure in a war is not simply a lose in a fight. It is like a fist you put above your head and disappears in air. That is why we all look at sky when we lose something: a love, a job, a fortune.
I just told you about the countless deaths in Iraq. It is not at all news, as my colleague from Iraq says: he gets worry when his phone does not reach his family. And, I get worry when he goes for a short vacation in Bagdad. War, who says, may bring love with your close ones – even with your enemy who fought for his fist. But it does not bring a life which one does not live with his heart.
I do not know Obama could hear the cry of the living. Not the dead.
ONE IS BLACK, OTHERS ALL WHITE
ONE IS BLACK, OTHERS ALL WHITE
(by Karunakaran)
When Barak Obama was elected as president of United States of America, all of us were talking about a new Era. Electing, first time in history of USA, a Black as a president was the story. The joy. And, then came the memoirs of Abraham Lincoln. Slavery. With that I remembered Steven Spielberg’s films on Blacks. (Do you remember those films?).
I am working in Kuwait. Kuwait was the launching pad of two wars in Iraq. American military is there. Saddam Husain is not there. But war is there. As well as the killings and deaths.
I used to follow the news of Iraq. Now no. In fact, nothing much to follows a war already forgotten: in your memory, I assure you, death is simply a cry. A sound like. You do not have to worry much about it. But living like a dead in a war zone is a life one will not choose: people love to eat, drink, fuck, and of course they love to write stories, poems, or at least draw a line or a circle in WC which they use peacefully. I remember a trip of mine through Iraq in 1990, just days after the Iraqi Occupation of Kuwait. The bus stopped in a petrol pump in Basra. A cold evening. From the darkness, suddenly, a group of children came to our bus begging. They were asking for anything one can offer: Coin or banana. A piece of bread or a pencil. Then we saw a lady in black. She stood there looking at the bus, like a dead waiting for a trip to heaven. I do not know anybody went with her to the heaven. But the war was, war is a hell.
We do not know Obama, the next president of America, will withdraw his troops from Iraq. Probably Yes. Most probably No. However, the countless deaths occur in Iraq is a daily life a man cannot ignore: Even if a President does. A president always a head of a system. Systems always look for its survival. And, the survival is the sad story of the failures. Failure in a war is not simply a lose in a fight. It is like a fist you put above your head and disappears in air. That is why we all look at sky when we lose something: a love, a job, a fortune.
I just told you about the countless deaths in Iraq. It is not at all news, as my colleague from Iraq says: he gets worry when his phone does not reach his family. And, I get worry when he goes for a short vacation in Bagdad. War, who says, may bring love with your close ones – even with your enemy who fought for his fist. But it does not bring a life which one does not live with his heart.
I do not know Obama could hear the cry of the living. Not the dead.
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