writing poetry

since we are treating of culture chiefly as expressed in words, we shall identify culture with “poetry”; not having in view the kind of poetry that nowadays babbles of green fields or that merely reflects social behavior or our private reactions to passing events, ... [Ananda K. Coomaraswamy]

To arrest the fleeting images that fill/The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast,/And force them sit, till he has pencilled off/A faithful likeness of the forms he views ... [William Cowper]

There cannot be a starker contrast between two statements as in the above two quotations about the same thing: poetry, and its role. And it is unfortunate that the world has gone on the path of Cowper, that of Keats and Wordsworth: mere artisans who weren't craftsmen, mere beauticians who didn't know how to breathe soul into words. Rather, they were bent upon extricating the soul from the words themselves, lost in plays of words and their sounds and the metaphors that became ever more ingenious: photoshopped photographs. The world had changed directions: reason was sought everywhere, even in the conduct of man (psychology); testimonies of miracles are scoffed at or sought to be explained by something or the other; and suddenly man, who has always been so superhuman to me, made himself so puny. He discarded the magic of believing, of living, of what lay beyond the "wordery": the mystic Rumi gave way to banal eroticism of Neruda, and worse: reading any American MFA graduate makes you wonder, why is the writer whining (which poetry does not) instead of singing (which poetry does). From the sunny day to how the lovemaking session went last night, from the man fondling a minor to the descriptions of a city's streets or immigrants - this is where we have come to, with poetry.

Yes, this is where. Now, poetry serves also as travel vignettes, as slices of life, as witty conversations, as a manifesto against something or the other in this label-riddled world, as confessionals in the world of religiously atheists and agnostics (whatever the latter term could mean; I doubt a sane person would be able to make anything of it), as vents of anger/frustration/drive/desire; anything but poetry. Now it is not deliverance, not praise, not seeking; not intangible smoke; not wonder, not burning curiosity; not happiness of pain, and pain of happiness. Now it is semotics; it is preservation; it is photocopies; it is residue.

It's a pity. It's a bit difficult to sometimes live in a world which is so hellbent against poetry: not too difficult, though, as any true poet knows to make and distill his own poetry. The voices have died already, they are no more to be heard in the public sphere: no publisher would ever publish real poetry. Not many would be writing it anyway. But the few who will be, will have charming listeners: their own souls as they converse with the bees and the clouds and the thousand joys that transport them - and they will ask whereto? wherefrom? Not content with painting still lives of the wind and the tossing grass, they will seek alternative bodies, other universes and new names of God: in eternal quest, these few will live in every song that ever will be breathed, in the joys of a fire kept during a cold night, in the noise and tumult of birds as much as rolling tanks: eternally.

वार्ता १

तेरे डेरे की हैवानियत पर
गुमान तो है आ बनता,
कम्बख़्त किस बवाल-ओ-कोहराम का
बखेड़ा तू ने ख़ल्क़ किया;
फरामोशी का नाम मैं रह गया बन कर-
गल नहीं, गर हमशक्ल न होता
वह मोती असीम लोट्ता तेरा और मेरा,
तब क़ायनात के किरदार में तू न जंचता|

Rooting for Root, and directions English cricket's taking

The emergence of Root - with his startling maturity, poise and ability to adapt himself to all paces of cricket - has suddenly made the English top order, which was looking a bit wobbly some time back, look so solid that I can't remember a top order more solid than this across conditions in the last fifteen years barring that Hayden-Langer-Gilchrist golden team of the Aussies. Suddenly, even England A is looking solid: the likes of Taylor are likely to stay awhile there, and Bairstow, Morgan and Bopara's Test hopes look to recede further and further away. Bairstow will at least hope that Prior will hang up his boots in two years' time, maybe after the twin Ashes: but will Bairstow be the number one keeper then, or will it be Buttler? Or someone else: in cricket, you never know!

What Root has indeed given to cricket overall is a refreshing batsman who can stick there like his captain, Cook, but who can also play murderous and innovative shots when needed: someone who is supremely talented, and in this he goes even beyond Cook. To say it another way, if Root can apply himself even 70 percent of what Cook does, he will be an all-time great: of course, it's easy to say that, hard to do, for people like Cook and Andy Flower are superhuman. They bat and bat ... and bat. Let the sun beat down or the ball swing, let them be beaten or let them complete a glorious century, the thing on their mind is keep batting. Unfazed - by failure or adulation. I personally think, though it's early days, Root, too, has such a balanced head on his shoulders: of course, if he does become successful, it will be interesting to watch how he copes up with IPL's lure, and will he remain the player he could be otherwise: in the modern era, it's much, much more difficult to achieve greatness, not only because the distractions are many, but also because greatness often finds itself decried and shunned. After all, droves go to watch a Chris Gayle, an ordinary batsman with great power; or even some Maxwell...

Coming to England, batting is not a problem for the foreseeable future, not until at least both the Ashes are over: my chief worry is a bowling attack that is getting thinner. Bresnan's career is over for me, we don't know if Tremlett would be that effective or not once he returns from layoff, and Broad is struggling with being out of form since a long time now (he was never a great bowler, anyway, though he has the potential to be). Finn is injury-prone, even if an excellent bowler: I can't see him lasting even these three NZ Test matches, let alone the 10 Ashes matches lined up! That leaves Anderson all alone, remarkable though he is! I think it's a big mistake by the selectors to not play Meaker in New Zealand: I don't see Woakes as a Test bowler, and Onions wouldn't trouble the Aussies much anyway, even if he were to regain his pre-injury form. Looking into the future, I think England must try out Meaker and Reece Topley in the whites, and soon: even in New Zealand, if one of Anderson or Finn does get injured, the English attack could really struggle! It's a solace that at least England's spin department is in good hands.

The times ahead are exciting for English cricket: it would be lovely to watch Root, KP and Cook in one team; hopefully, they can win the Ashes and carry that momentum to beat SA at home, because right now SA is being made to look a better side than they are.

la houle

Across blank seas, no ship will sail,
I shall wait here, like burning rock steadfast
.

often

Rain has filled those sunken footprints,
Now, water shall seep inside like
Pain does, to every pocket of air.

nectar at edges

‘other versions of myself, / familiar and strange, and swaddled in their time’ – John Burnside

Fantasy is good – but if it has the courage to transcend oneself, one’s fate and one’s condition. And it has the rarer courage to not think this as fantasy. To scorn the so-called objectivity.

Burnside’s above lines remind me always of Hesse’s Steppenwolf: in particular, the theatre of Pablo. Many are unable to imagine anything temporally removed; still some are unable to think of themselves in other forms. Yet, when I am in Chennai, it’s not difficult for me to imagine Bangalore. Why should it be then the case for time or shapes? In myself the today-sad one, I see the germ of wisdom growing, that which will make me happy. In myself the today-sad one, I see the vinous tracing of thoughts and desires, of actions and graspings that thought led me to, and that makes me now-this-self. I am thinking: at every moment, I am changing. The next moment, I will be then-that-self. I will not remain now-this-self. Now-this-self will not be just history, but also a historical perspective from the point of view of the new now-this-self, the former then-that-self. And this new now-that-self will never equate to the former then-that-self, for the latter was dependent on my imagination and the former is dependent on reality - including the ever-changing reality of me, not just whatever lies beyond me. This flux, let’s call it with Reality, the one with capital r.

‘our world has nurtured in us such a multiplicity of modes of awareness that it must be impossible to bring them to a common focus even for the notional duration of a step’ – Tim Robinson

When I see the walls of Brihadeeswara, the dried moat, the fading panels, the heavy Nandi, when I see them across centuries: people of several hearts crossing these stones, today a royal pomp, tomorrow a milk abhisheka of the Celestial Cow, the drawbridge raised up and inside only stars playing and running around, every night in secret joy, with the devadasi dancing interminably: boy selling dates and woman selling flowers, smell of roasted coffee somewhere in a morning that I don’t know is it already been or is still to come or is: in one step, a leap much more gigantic than Armstrong’s, I, unlike Robinson, do not try to bring these multiple existences into one common focus. Rather, I live them and let myself be maddened, be dazzled and be distracted by each one of them. Rather, I celebrate life.

                                                'All night, on the surgery ward,

you were still playing catch on that strip
of lamplight and grass between home and the rest of the world'
                                                                    –    Burnside

Home and the rest of the world – this duality exists only inside the narrow, spatial world some choose to confine themselves in, for they are afraid of an undefined space. The man asks, keeps asking, so … how much is mine? He keeps on marching, with interminable steps, to know the bounds of his possession; he’s already conditioned to think in dualities. He’s conditioned to think in right and wrong, true and false, good and evil, light and darkness. He will even try to disprove God, the One, through Two, the duality. For him, life is Venn diagrams minus the Universal set; for him, darkness is where light is not, not another form of light. But, yes, as reasonable men, even if not reasoning, everyone starts out from home.

What when we step on the border, that separates home from the rest of the world? Can we go to and fro, transcend limits as and when we wish? Can we belong to space rather than to home or/and to the rest of the world? Reason will be useless away from home: it will ask, what are you doing away from home, in the land of aliens? Reason will only be blind. How then shall we move back and forth? How shall we cease this movement, finally, but rather hover in space? Since there is no Pablo, I only have the choice of my infallible guide: Intuition.

'no one survives the hunt: though men return
in threes or fours, their faces blank with cold,
they never quite arrive at what they seem
leaving a phrase or song from childhood
deep in the forest'
                                                                       –    Burnside

Reason will try to construct a sequence of now-this-selves. It will try to construct a necklace of them, threaded through causality: it will call it saneness, order and civilisation. Reason will say the phrase or song lost in the forest is trivial, is useless, doesn’t affect causality. It will neglect it like some infinitesimal part, as we often do in equations in our classrooms. I wonder about those phrases and songs left in the forest: do they assemble together and make something wonderful of their own, without being subject to self-doubts, without rejections of each other just because they sound a different tone?

And what will he do, without that song or phrase in the heart? He will try to fit up a part borrowed from Reason there. He can breathe, walk, drink. He can live. Even if life is bereft of song. Songs are not logical; the tendency to make one shall be explained soon. Once we have the cause and the effect, the thing itself doesn’t matter. We know why we make songs, we know what a song is made up of, we know what effect a song has and why does it have so, we know what effect the song will have on whom in what precise degree, we know what the song’s presence tells about the man who lost the song. Now, since we know all this much, we can forget the song itself. Song is data.

Like, ‘the sense I have of my place in the world becomes a static, meaningless fact’ (Burnside). So with the song.

But I shall not choose to do so. I shall always make songs. For only through prayer, only through repeated explorations of the borders between, I will rise above facts. Above duality, beyond Reason - into Intellect, to Wisdom.

क़ैद

घरौंदों का तमस, जैसे बू सुर्ख
भुनते दरख़्त की, ज्यों
इक फूँक वह बवंडर
वही प्राण-धारा, चेतना की सखी युगांतरों से|

चंदन से लिपटे इन साँपों से करो गुहार,
कहाँ-कहाँ है दावानल, किधर सड़ते बीज;
जोखम से निडर इस कवच से माँगो
थोड़ा भय, थोड़ी हया, कि भूल न जाएँ

हर चित्त में देव, हर देव को पुष्पांजली|

s'amuser comme Charlot / se suicider

It’s a too often repeated and propagated myth among French students (and teachers!) that se suicider is one of those idiosyncrasies that any language has, in this case the French. For often they ask, isn’t se redundant, for how can someone else do the suicide for you? But, can one not? It’s a myth that exists even on Wikipedia as of now: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbe_pronominal

Strangely, I never checked (se) suicider on the CNRTL website, my first point of reference otherwise: in a way it’s good that I never did so, for CNRTL would have busted the myth immediately and I wouldn’t have chanced upon my own path of enlightenment (since later on I found the CNRTL verifying all those conditions of suicider existing as transitive verb that I discovered through my reasoning). As is often the case with me when I am learning something new, the route I took was a bit osé and triggered by a certain memory.

S’amuser comme Charlot isn’t a highly-used expression, and I have no idea why this Charlot should be capitalized, since to me it is rather the usual, old charlot, the executioner, and not the modern clown, who gets a huge, even erotic kick out of his business of torture, or at least he is supposed to, as I am not all that familiar with the once-daily European business of tortures and inquisitions. But perhaps, the expression refers to Chaplin? That would be interesting, to say the least. However, whether it be ill or well used, and wherever it comes from, it’s a reflexive expression, for another highly reflexive thing: se masturber. Or is it really all that solely reflexive?

J’aimerais bien te masturber. That’s a phrase you would imagine quite common among the young: more than … me masturber! So if one can masturbate someone else, an activity that till some years back I only associated with the practice of giving pleasure to “self,” then why cannot one suicide someone else? That may sound illogical to people hung on to the (Latin) roots of a word: while the former doesn’t have any element of “self” in it, suicider does contain sui, self, so the word in itself means “to kill self.” So, then, the myth gets reinforced through something that seems a redundancy: se se tuer?

Why not? Because se tuer in French only means to get yourself killed, maybe in an accident: of course, hardly anyone “gets” oneself killed in something that would still be qualified as an accident, but that is the joy of French: one gets oneself robbed, murdered, fooled, etc. To say in an ironic voice: one is robbed, murdered, fooled, etc. But why not se fait tuer then, why se tuer? The difference for me lies in that while se faire tuer points always to an agency, seen or unseen, said or unsaid, human or inhuman, se tuer simply points to the fact without bringing up the element of pathos or destiny or omniscience or even some merciless irony, all of which is the purpose of se faire tuer. And since se tuer could also mean to get killed by an agency that is not necessarily oneself, it’s quite logical to have a se se tuer!

As for how is it possible to have a je te suicide, think of it in terms of je te masturbe! In cases of assisted suicide, mercy killing (or euthanasia, call what you will) or provoked suicide, it is in fact the other person doing the job for you: he is doing the killing act and the will to die is yours – a collaborative effort. Just as someone else does the caressing and the pleasure is yours!

one inch, two inch

You go on,
go on. the sky, the wind bleached,
nude sand and few palms. as the smiles
unwind, you
go on till eternity. like in mother's lap.
the moon will twinkle like silent sentry,
the night will spread like ink on dark hands.
the blood shall sputter with names in incantations,
the cars shall overtake yours, life you could've grasped.
If you had wanted to.
The fireflies you will mistake for muse, each one.
The dew-soaked bamboo for forest of fire.
Thus in darkness you find deception, in darkness enlightening.
squalls of flying squirrels shall be music,
the roar of the hidden cascade your guide.
you search but a corner to lay on, a mound to call your own,
you want but an hour where they claim you, where you are owned.
you own, to be owned; you pretend owned, to own;
you walk, to move; you move, to stay.
and thus you go, on.

Till the morning comes and vast swathes of oceans burst forth,
and you are in the middle, and the gulls are far.
There is but sun and the silent ocean, there is but drowning and the peace,
of a battle lost, a soul won.

Unheard shrieks

Prayers mumble out in quick succession,
Breaths whispering death among black cowls, blackened skies,
Before blood and piss rise in holy chant, and the wizened babies kiss each other's butts.

Cookie and the new way

The sheep don't know what's happened. - Alastair Cook

To someone who hasn't been aware of the quiet process of rebuilding that has been happening in the English setup since the Hussain-Fletcher days, the budding talk of English dominance in cricket looks a very jaunty and flashy bit of sunshine in an English summer of rain, but it is one that threatens to continue: for, yet again, cricket brings in its own inimitable way the sort of incorruptibility that makes it the only great sport to watch and follow. One would have thought that Twenty20 and the greedy Indians and Australians have already done away with the game, that utter reflection of life itself, Test cricket; and behold, there it is, though this time in the guise of a humiliating flagellation given to a team (India) that has never boasted of much gamesmanship.

In many ways, Cook epitomises all that's [great] about cricket: his unflappability is much different from that of Jonathan Trott, cool in cricketing terms as they both are. While Trott is much like Kallis, or even a bit more attractive but less solid version of Dravid, a bricklayer, Cook is the craftsman looking for perfection: each ball to him has an attribute about it and he thinks of each ball as the end in itself, just as for the craftsman each thread has its own colour and story to tell. While Trott sees the bricks in their entirety, Cook is in love with the bricks and his ability to understand each brick; curiously, often both Cook and Trott give the same impression to those who don't understand cricket much or to those who just want to get the building done as fast as possible, who cares how that is done, so they can have all the fancy brackets and doorknobs to fit somewhere.

What will now be the litmus test for Cook is that how well he manages the twin responsibilites of being Cook in Tests and being the English one-day captain: he must not let mix the two. A craftsman, at least as a batsman, has no role to play in one-day cricket; Cook will have to rather enjoy his captaincy and bat with a mixture of sturdiness and swish, but build a stronger team than himself around him. And when he goes back to the Tests, he needs to again play the music. This is the next challenge not only for Cook but also for England. Central to it would also be Eoin Morgan: he is too good a player to not finally become a very good Test player, even if his credentials to some seem more like that of a shorter-format player. I don't see Pietersen lasting more than a couple of years, and Morgan it is then who could have the talent and devastating effect that Pietersen promised often but delivered rarely: Morgan though seems to have a much more balanced head on his shoulders.

As a side otherwise, the only other weak spot that England has is that they lack any other excellent spinner than Swann. They need to find another wicket-taking spinner soon, and maybe also need to have a relook at Panesar and encourage him to take wickets even if he goes for runs. Someone like Irish George Dockrell or Dutch Pieter Sielaar could be great, as they are quite attacking and also very young, if they could qualify for England (though I wish Ireland start the procedure to get Test status; they are much better than West Indies, Zimbabwe or Bangladesh any day). In the present team, Ravi Bopara is the last remnant of those English teams of the past composed of players who could hardly bat or bowl and yet were selected year after year: those horrible years of Blackwell, Shah and Snape. Not to forget the bit earlier times of able but unwilling players like Stewart, Fairbrother and Lamb: all in their cocoons. Soon, Bopara has to make way for great youngsters coming through the England Lions setup and directly from the county teams: mental strength is a must in cricket, and in fact in most sports; the highly talented failure Vinod Kambli is one of the best examples of that.

The one thing that England must always remember is that good cricket makes for good memories. And that is what it is exactly for: not for riches from mindless games played for mindless people in search of fast food.

untitled

blue air resides often where i stand, watching from under the hazy spires of Bonn. clocks run, watches are timed, and in a matter of minutes people are lined outside the gents' toilet. outside we make sense of nonsense and chip away at the nose of Donatello. amidst flying colours and spread words, in the patch of humanity melts and touches arms. like gum and gold, the sequinned wear sparkles from where you look at but has no consistency.
amidst the languages, i will stamp my hand in the red soil, i will brand it on the wall of a house, my home?, and i will look scorningly at the sun. life is here. come down, you, get off your high horse. in every smile and tear, in the rolled up pants.
home is where my foot crosses, river and ford, jungle and terrace. Tea and berries.

Love that defines

It is a rare feat, one I've almost never come across, to be able to capture India, or a corner of it: for the whole magnitude of it is merely impossible. It is further rarefied to be able to tell everything in a matter of minutes and leave countless stories untold: to go deep into one man's consciousness and show him what he is composed of, amidst the flying accusations and erudite theories, of what all he was and still is, of how the Marina sparkles as I sit for hours on its wide expanse of sand looking at the stormy Bay of Bengal for hours on end, feeling the humid Madras sun. It is all that the latest "Royal Enfield: Handcrafted in Chennai" ad manages to do, another ad that proves how India excels head and shoulders above the rest in the advertising world, but also that goes so much beyond.

My love for Tamil Nadu is synonymous with my love for life; both commenced very early. Even though I do not know Tamil, and there are many more things that I, the uninitiated, do not know, it has never bothered me: when I am there, I know from inside that I am there. The soil, the air, the sun, the smell. Every being inside me cries with delight, and every me is moved to beauty, to the contemplation of beauty. What tells me I am there? All modern scientific theories seem so ridiculous besides that knowing: I pity them; they will be always at a loss to know the worth knowing.

Tamil Nadu, on overt looks, is a land of men and women very simply clad, especially men: checked shirts not inserted in the pants, and of course lungis. A land where both religion and atheism has its rigid rituals and many men and women are bound by them: to sway the populace to the latter, a leader would strike a deity with a chappal and laugh, and ask did something happen to me? The land where films with strange pyrotechnical fights and dances rule the hearts, and the actors are more dearly loved than gods, because the latter are feared more than loved.

But Tamil Nadu is so much more to me. It is liberty itself; the sense of vastness and an open earth and open seas is everywhere. In the luckier days, you could have gone to Tharangambadi and felt man as an outpost of nature: behind, the desolate Danish mansions of the first missionaries to India, and ahead beautiful ruins of a temple or two. Besides, a honest face who is trying to make sense of the world and an intelligent mind, selling you conch shells picked early morning. And yourself: in a world which is not uniform, which does not apportion you theories to follow and isms to join and sophies to debate about, but which directly enters your heart and makes you understand all its beauty. The world where religion is completely absent, unless you call the unflinching humidity everywhere except in the mountains by that name. Architectural marvels rise here as commonplace as every stone's throw, and every road of Mylapore rings with music: from temples equally as from vocalists practising and learning. In the harmony is that disharmony brought by the British - ideas of nation and state, ideas of career and English; and yes, the Enfield - but India has the unique ability to dissolve everything in itself but not to lose itself. And thus to create only more of richer nuances and novel ways of expression. The people are too many, the diversity is too great and the minds are too intelligent; how would you make a robot, whether mechanical or intelligent word spewing one, out of a Hindu?

Tourism ads are meant to please, and nowadays one is pleased when things are adapted for them; thereby, those ads automatically go against the grain of India. Hence, it is not an accident that the ad had to be that of a motorcycle, Royal Enfield - the oldest continuing motorcycle brand of the world. I would simply say that the ad is flawless and I thank the maker for it. Love of the earth, for when you love, it is always there: forgetting the receiving, you have to give, and it is in you and with you, it never takes you for a ride. It is the truest for every day comes with a new sun and a new storm, and every day must you woo.

You may watch the ad, if you have not already done so, here: http://www.royalenfield.com/community/handcrafted-in-chennai.aspx or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goOu4aNsOKU

Seeking a way out

The evils of a capitalist society are quite well-known and yet are often overlooked, maybe because what we’ve come up with in the last two or three centuries as panacea has been much worse: the same emphasis on capital in a different guise. We talk feminist theories and try to prove that everywhere a prejudice has always existed; we keep on focusing on the rich-poor divide and then only worsen it. And yet the unnamed monster has always been that we measure humans: in terms of their productive abilities. As long as you are productive in the sense of not creating a poem but a bushel of wheat, you can live; when you stop being productive, then there are many options: you can be killed, you can be relegated, you can be called a burden upon the society, you will get a proportion of society’s sum because you will be replaced by some others in the same position. Man does not remain free, for he has to produce to remain alive; he becomes the slave of his labour rather than his labour leading him to self-realization. The more he produces the thing considered more desirable in that particular epoch, the more “better off” he is: the problem with communism was that it never got itself rid of the prejudices for capital, and thus its start line was the acceptance that yes, more material goods is being better off. And then the fight for being better off started. Similarly with feminists, who forgot to question the basic premise of the society on which we function. It is very much like if politician A starts eating into the state’s funds, politician B starts rather quarreling as to why he also shouldn’t have a slice in the pie, too!

It is not that we haven’t ever tried a system not based on capital. The much-reviled Hindu system of caste was one such system which instead had the objective of placing the emphasis on knowledge and creation (in the sense of poem, yes). It of course had to denigrate, for people soon made it a matter of inheritance, but before trying to see why did it become so, let me take a mild digression.

Emotions are something that somehow science thought till recently “in the way of reason”: so even if they studied where in the brain they are being produced, they were always thought of as “those little inhibitors” or at best as stimuli. It is only now that the realization is seeping through across the scientific community that the emotional richness shown by the human species makes it the most intelligent species till date discovered: emotions are cues! Because of emotions we are able to take decisions, for better or for worse, related to our future; we have a “happy” memory or a sadness associated with a particular experience and which guides us in our future conduct. Think of emotions as “labels,” but as interactive labels: the ability to have, store and process them is what makes the humans able to manipulate time and space, and to construct huge projects out of thin air, to dream and to believe. And yet all along we have discounted these very emotions when we have seen man as a mere machine, as just another species of being who can be more productive than a bullock because he also has got a “brain.”

The ancient Hindus did try to break the deadlock by having instead a system wherein they defined classes based on the kind of work (and work was not defined by the money it produced) they do. So a knowledge-seeker was free to seek it, explore it; he was not constrained by having to produce. Knowledge was given the utmost importance and thus the Brahmin was on top of the social scale (instead of the rich) and he wandered about, living off food from others, who considered it a privilege, an honour to be able to give him food. Of course, the explicit hierarchy established brought very soon into being the attendant evils of this system, but here at least was an attempt to define man as more than a machine: the West often considers it another form of “division of labour” but it forgets that the Brahmin is not doing any labour in the capitalist (and thus always Western) sense of the word. It was more an attempt to free men from seeing themselves as hunter-gatherers, and use the rich resources with them to further explore truth. The problem with the Hindu system of caste lay in the confusion between atma/purusha and jivatma: I will not attempt to translate the words because the West has no such concept.

Hindus posited the system of caste on birth: thus a Brahmin’s son was automatically a Brahmin. I do not have any idea when they started doing so, because here they have got themselves confused about the theory of karma (which again is grossly misunderstood in the West, import as it is). Out of a million-odd forms of life, including that of amoeba, if you are born in the household of a Brahmin, it was considered obviously as the best chance to further try to understand universe, as you are being born to parents who already presumably know a lot and moving in a similar society: thus, if you had a good karma, your birth could be there. However, chance does not mean anything else than a chance: someone with wealth has more means to do something, but how many times have you seen it happen? By way of good karma, in its quest for self-realization, the atma will be reborn as a higher form of life; however, one must remember that man’s consciousness is jivatma, and man is completely unconscious of his atma. It is the atma that uses different life forms as tools in order to self-realize, not the other way round. What man can tap into (what in the West is called as soul) is his jivatma, his living consciousness. This jivatma dies with the man; it does not get reborn or transferred. A Brahmin's son could be as bad as anyone; karma has placed him there, but it is now up to his present karma so that the atma that thrives on his jivatma advances further on or not. It is hard to tell when the confusion between jivatma and atma arose in the Hindu thought and how; probably it was with many of the Brahmins themselves who started to seek power instead of knowledge, and thus mixing up the concepts is one of the best ways to hold power. Also, with the prevailing of Jainism all over India, Hindu cults had to spring up, and a cult inevitably means sacrifice of knowledge for power. Both Jainism and Buddhism of course themselves are nothing but cults: offshoots from Hinduism to seek power. Ignorance of one has been always the source of power for the other.

I do not know what the answer is in the present day; we don’t have an aristocracy anymore, and the illusion of freedom that democracy gives, while actually antithetical to the idea all the time, is an evil hard to fight. Because everyone loves freedom in theory, and now that we have already divided not only society into fragments of individuals but also individuals themselves into fragments of selves, the more urgent question is how to make one self conscious of the other. Our different selves are becoming our hidden, many jivatmas, which are running in parallel to each other, manifesting a terrifying lack of unity. At the back, still, of course, is our urge to seek that unity, but when society forces us to think of ourselves as labourer-gatherers, and to live accordingly, the clockwork can only become worse. For we have become clocks from humans.

Another sad day for cricket & English, Zimbabwean and Bangla cricket ahead

How to kill the goose that lays golden eggs?

Is a lesson that can be learnt very well at many places, but in the precints of ICC, one has also the chance to learn how to mistake a hen for a goose. Ireland’s banishment from the next World Cup is not only shameful and disgusting, but it also defies all logic from even a monetary point of view: India does not invite Bangladesh for Test matches nor even for bilateral one-day series, simply because of the wide gulf between India and Bangladesh for any longer-term format of cricket; and yet, as Ireland showed on the subcontinent soil itself, if tomorrow there were to be an India-Ireland bilateral series, it could go very close and the spectators would be fully recompensed. Granted that Bangladesh has a government that provides public holidays on every match day and the people think themselves world-beaters on the basis of a fluke win and the next day, in the illusions that no one has a right to beat world-beaters, violently hurl missiles at the teams they lose to (or their own team; for that was the bizarre cover-up by a Bangladesh administrator) - thus effectively a very populous market - yet it is the strength of the game finally that generates interest and excitement. It was Ireland that provided the excitement in 2007 World Cup and yet again in this World Cup - not Bangladesh, who couldn’t even manage a team total of 100 runs on two different occasions, and certainly not Zimbabwe, who are right now only becoming more and more addled and just besotted with making the right noises to gain Test status.

Maybe, it is the art of making right noises that Ireland lack. Or, that England is not supporting their case. Bangladesh has the powerful India at its backing and Zimbabwe the only worthwhile cricket-playing African nation, South Africa: given this, it is certain that ICC would pull out all stops to prevent these two countries from being excluded out. And today, if there were a league to be held between Ireland, West Indies, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Canada, Zimbabwe, Scotland and Afghanistan, and that league were to be held anywhere apart from the pitches of Bangladesh, then it would be highly doubtful if both Bangladesh and Zimbabwe would qualify: out of those eight teams, the four best on present form are Ireland, West Indies, the Netherlands, and Afghanistan. It is hard to fathom by what logic Ireland have been ousted; it is further hard to understand that what kind of motivations will be in front of the other associates, especially the bravehearts Afghanistan, if the top associate, Ireland, is in itself meted out this kind of treatment. And how come Zimbabwe gets to not only retain its place in the next World Cup but also is soon likely to get Test status completely browbeats everyone who follows cricket in the least.

Reviewing the English World Cup campaign, a tired unit did much better than expectations, and it augurs quite well for the English cricket ahead. Stuart Broad’s injury was a terrible blow post my previous write-up, and it also meant that England lost to Bangladesh, which subsequently meant that England had to face Sri Lanka on Lankan soil in the knockout game. The squad England ended up with was only half of the original selections, plus Anderson and Bresnan being burnouts, and yet the never-say-die spirit shown by England in the 50-over game was a welcome relief. England nearly lost to the Netherlands (if only Strauss had failed in that game) and managed to lose to Ireland and Bangladesh from winning positions, but apart from the knockout game, it didn’t lose against any top side. It didn’t even lose to India on Indian soil, a magnificent achievement. That could very well be the summary of things to come in the next eight-nine years: the battle of supremacy between India and England. While England have a slight edge in Tests, in the shorter formats India has a clear lead. What courageous decisions does Andy Flower take will now steer the course of English cricket: Collingwood must be trusted in again, players like Bell have no place in shorter formats, and players like Luke Wright should be given enough self-belief that they see someone like Shane Watson as their inspiration. Prior has to make way for others: I believe Foster in the Tests (whom somehow Andy is very reluctant to pick) and someone else in the shorter formats (trial and error being the possible method there). It is also important that England find a really good spinner soon: Swann wouldn’t manage to go on for ever, and a spinner could suddenly turn overnight from lethal to innocuous. Blood an exciting talent before it gets too late; and get a few Irish imports, especially now that Irish players have hardly a chance of a big stage before them. Both Dockrell and Sielaar, the Irish and Dutch main spinners, were highly impressive, and it would be a shame if their game is not looked at.

Zimbabwe have to unearth fast bowlers from somewhere, at least decent ones. They have pathetic ones right now. Get Chigumbura out of captaincy, and give it to Taylor; and avoid politics like the non-selection of Hamilton Masakadza. Taibu, even after years of cricket behind him, is completely immature about his batting; he still plays the same predetermined shots. Even I can predict what shot he is going to play next, forget the bowler. He must go. Craig Ervine, Taylor, Regis Chakabva and Sean Williams should form the linchpin of the Zimbabwe batting in the next couple of years or more to come: they are good enough; all they need is confidence and a couple of good innings each in the middle against good opposition.

As regarding Bangladesh, their problem is internal strife (cricketwise, Bangladesh needs maturity and temperament; and again good fast bowlers): captain Shakib al-Hasan is a coward, even if he’s a fine player both in skills and temperament, and the other captain in absentia, Mashrafe al-Mortaza, could only very skilfully demonstrate the malaise affecting Bangladesh cricket: he almost engineered his selection back into the Bangladesh squad by using media as a potent tool to manipulate public opinion. As Dhoni said, you don’t play for the public, you play for the team; when the public (helped by an irresponsible media) starts to have a say in everything (democratically elected cricket teams?), by direct or indirect influence, the cause is doomed. If Dhoni, one of the wisest minds I’ve seen in a long time (not just cricket), had listened to the public, India would not be the world champions right now.

(It is another story if a country like Bangladesh should be hosting flood-lit cricket matches and glittering World Cup ceremonies [a much richer nation like England rarely chooses to hold day-nighters and it had a very frugal ceremony for the World Cup in 1999; not that the ceremony was any less boring], when there are far more pressing needs to look to, and when they are not even likely to get much sporting recognition, for they are still much behind other cricketing nations: add to that the non-sporting behaviour of Bangla fans, and it would be hard to think of positives.)