Saturday 12 October 2013

The first Bell for a Surprise


The first Bell for a Surprise
How can the students surprise the teacher? I didn’t think much about class room surprises from students till I knocked the closed door of fifth semester B.A. class room on 10.10.2013 at 9.30. The unheard melody of the flute heard conquered my ears, the smell from the incense sticks made me anosmic, with the smoke which blurred my vision. Behind the curtain of fumes, I saw the tombstone of the Salesman, Willy Loman.


After the first round analysis of the play, Death of a Salesman, I asked my students whether they can enact the second act. Since the University examination is standing on the threshold, at the last minute we compressed our dream to a classroom performance on the Requiem. When I entrusted the task on them, with my usual, vague directions, I couldn’t imagine that they would perform it as a real requiem, though in Uniform. As far as I can remember the only effort from me was that I prompted them to nominate the director, and the stage-manager in addition to the actors. Later, I came to know that credit goes to the whole class as each of them dedicated their effort, as the crew members of the performance. A few snaps , I kept in my mobile phone are displayed here , to motivate them in giving more surprises to themselves and to the teachers and thereby encourage the coming generation of learners, to break the cocoon of passivity of the listener to become active by acting out the acts. 



Production Team: All V semester B.A. English students ,guided by Husna
Music: Naseema Thasneem

CHARACTERS
Linda : Shahida Muhammed Ali
Charley: Mariam Wafa
Biff: Shameema Thasneem
Happy:Jisha







 Key note from the Director, Athira
REQUIEM
CHARLEY
:
It’s getting dark, Linda
.
(Linda doesn’t react. She stares at the grave.)
BIFF
:
How about it, Mom? Better get
some rest, heh? They’ll be
closing the gate soon
.
(Linda makes no move. Pause.)
HAPPY
(deeply angered)
:
He had no right to do that. There was
no necessity for it. We would’ve helped him.
CHARLEY
(grunting)
:
Hmmm.
BIFF
:
Come along, Mom.
LINDA
:
Why didn’t anybody come?
CHARLEY
:
It was a very nice funeral.
LINDA
:
But where are all the people he knew? Maybe they blame
him.
CHARLEY
:
Naa. It’s a rough world, Linda. They wouldn’t blame
him.
LINDA
:
I can’t understand it. At this
time especially. First time in
thirty-five years we were just about free and clear. He only
needed a little salary. He was even finished with the dentist.
CHARLEY
:
No man only needs a little salary
.
LINDA
:
I can’t understand it.
BIFF
:
There were a lot of nice days. When he’d come home from a
trip; or on Sundays, making th
e stoop; finishing the cellar; put-
ting on the new porch; when he built the extra bathroom; and
put up the garage. You know something, Charley, there’s more
of him in that front stoop than
in all the sales he ever made.
CHARLEY
:
Yeah. He was a happy man wi
th a batch of cement.
LINDA
:
He was so wonderful with his hands.
BIFF
:
He had the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong.
HAPPY
(almost ready to fight Biff)
:
Don’t say that!
BIFF
:
He never knew who he was.
CHARLEY
(stopping Happy’s moveme
nt and reply. To Biff)
:
No-body dast blame this man. You don’t understand: Willy was a

salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the

life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or

give you medicine. He’s man way out there in the blue, riding

on a smile and a Shoeshine. And when they start not smiling

back — that’s an earthquake. An

d then you get yourself a cou-

ple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast

blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with

the territory.
BIFF
:
Charley, the man didn’t know who he was.
HAPPY
(infuriated)
:
Don’t say that!
BIFF
:
Why don’t you come with me, Happy?
HAPPY
:
I’m not licked that easily. I’m staying right in this city,
and I’m gonna beat this racket!
(He looks at Biff, his chin set.)
The Loman Brothers!
BIFF
:
I know who I am, kid.
HAPPY
:
All right, boy. I’m gonna show you and everybody else
that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It’s
the only dream you can have — to come out number-one man.
He fought it out here, and this is where I’m gonna win it for
him.
BIFF
(with a hopeless glance at Happy, bends toward his mother)
:
Let’s go, Mom.
LINDA
:
I’ll be with you in a minute. Go on, Charley
. (He hesi-
tates.)
I want to, just for a minute. I never had a chance to say
good-by.
(Charley moves away, followed by
Happy. Biff remains a slight
distance up and left of Linda. Sh
e sits there, summoning herself.
The flute begins, not far away, playing behind her speech.)


LINDA
:
Forgive me, dear. I can’t cry. I don’t know what it is, I
can’t cry. I don’t understand it.
Why did you ever do that? Help
me Willy, I can’t cry. It seems to
me that you’re just on another
trip. I keep expecting you. Willy
, dear, I can’t cry. Why did you
do it? I search and search and I search, and I can’t understand
it, Willy. I made the last payment on the house today. Today,
dear. And there’ll be nobody home.
(A sob rises in her throat.)
We’re free and clear.
(Sobbing more fully, released.)
We’re free.
(Biff comes slowly
toward her.)
We’re free... We’re free...



(Biff
lifts her to her feet and moves out up right with her in his arms.
Linda sobs
quietly. Bernard and Charley come together and fol-
low them, followed by Ha
ppy. Only the music of the flute is left
on the darkening stage as over the house the hard towers of the
apartment buildings rise into sharp focus, and the curtain
falls.)


Tuesday 5 March 2013

Cities fall Apart..


Cities fall Apart..

“The Venice I found when I arrived was not a disappointment - it was unreal. Venice is a city you must design and build for yourself. The tourist Venice is a chimera, the historical Venice is a museum. The living Venice is the one where every canal and palazzo and sun-shy square, with its iron well and unlisted church, has been privately mapped. No one can show you Venice. There is no such place.  Out of the multiple Venice's, none authentic, only you can find the one that has any value.”
Jeanette Witerson
            From childhood onwards I often try to decipher the unsaid stories revealed through the glance of eyes, the curves of lips, the hints of eyebrows and the speed at which the eye lids of the person whom I meet swings. Even now I could not help but read between the lines of their action or gestures than chewing their words with the mind’s digestive mechanism.  In every exchange I rigidly keep the firsthand knowledge even if unsure of my capacity to reflect upon or reproduce the source. The search for unheard melodies is interesting and adventurous if one has the right (?) kind of perception about the multiple responses of it if shared. The post modern writer may have the same eye view ,one may doubt, if reads certain works celebrating uncertainties which less adventurous people call as impossible to sort out. Here is a work of art that might have shown the panoramic view of Venice before tearing the big photograph to pieces. Reading The novel, Invisible cities ,of Italo Calvino, is a scintillating experience if one feels like a child who takes the  challenge of treasure hunt for nothing, who knows well that the treasure is simply an experience, and no treasure in the conventional, literal kind of the term exists. But the treasure hunt here is not direct as Santiago does in Coelho’s Alchemist .It would have been a disappointing experience if one approaches it with the attitude of a learner who is the middle standard consumer with special kind of appetite for second hand commodities, least fond of experiencing the pleasure of reading through one’s own mind and eye and succumb him/herself to get underestimated by being satisfied easily if a garnished summary is served in a decorated plate to be swallowed. If we call Invisible Cities as a historical piece, of course, it is history but personalized. Since history stops proclaiming itself to be authentic, the work is historical. If we have a taste for fictional it is fictional but appears like a single story located in between mirrors placed face to face or in the similar way as reflected by a Kaleidoscope. The major characters Kublai khan( the Coleridge hero) and Marco Polo, belonging to different cultures, places and even spaces striving to get themselves intersected through the universal thread of storytelling. There is no common language to unify their perception. Still one did not stop listening as the other did not stop describing. (A good metaphor to communicate the class room discourse!). But the idea the listener gathered is according to his knowledge, his experience, his level of understanding and his capacity for imagination. Though the writer opens his own umbrellas (titles), such as cities and Memory, Cities and Desire (smells waste land, but not about ‘waste’ land, I guarantee) the philosophies are open for multiple interpretations as the subject itself. Eventually  the treasure the reader searches would be the photograph of the empire of Kublai khan with light and dark shades according to the emperor’s (reader’s) moods, with masculine and feminine structure according to the narrator’s mindset . The City has every possible impossibility to be Venice as it has every impossible possibility to be Kublai’s empire.(Am I contradicting myself ? ) .The multiple layers and vertical and horizontal division may make the reader diffident. But when you read such a work, before you close the book after reading the first page saying it didn’t interest me, (it is purely personal, you may be thinking now, I am no one to interfere in your personal choice and it is against the proposed ideal by Winterson quoted at the beginning ) please think twice because our choices are built upon comfort and convenience. So isn’t it possible to think about the inconvenience as an adventure wrongly graded? 

Monday 4 February 2013

Game in Chess


Game in Chess

Part 1
 My chessmate would often be in a battle of wills with the virtual enemy, especially when the sun disappears at the horizon. This is the scene I often watch when returned from the battle field of wits. As his nephew once made a gambit (in his absence), he might be playing with my toy when I was out. Earlier I got his invitation to play the other (I was the other once or twice and he too, several times) . I rejected the proposal now, which, for sure, will advance to the battle of the sexes. Though I don’t like anyone to fail at the cost of my success, I don’t want anyone to succeed at the cost of my failure.( no sports(wo)man spirit at all !!)  So the strategic move is to abstain from the tug of war and be safe, I thought. My companion was compelled to be satisfied with the artificially intelligent partner, might have lost his spirit at the middle of the Game of Chess, not because he perceives himself to be Arjuna and considered the white king as Bhishma or Drona, but might be disheartened  that the partner, whose hand he held in ritual and moved seven steps around the fire, quit before the wrestling of calculations begins! (Do you know why the couple holds hands on wedding day? It is a routine gesture of handshake before Boxing: bets the sms mafia). Now and then his Abhimanyus would be caught in Chakravyuha and at this time I would encroach and increase the velocity of falling wickets, for that I would be suspended. I would think, then , that I should tell him this story : a queen in Swathi Thirunal’s palace, helped the King, who might fail otherwise in the Game of Chathurangam, by reciting the lines “undundu undundu undundu undundu undundundundu aaleyundu” in the tone of lullaby . Later, (it has been said) the king ordered Irayimman Tampi, the vocalist of the court to compose a lullaby in the same raga, Nilambari and thus the poet composed the song Omanathinkalkidavo. But instead, if showed yellow card, I would be an angry bird and would strike the ball back like a tennis player asking, ‘why did you listen to my commentary?’  My chessmate , being no cricketer who crosses boundaries with sixes ,already stalemated, without challenging me checkmate, would leave  the ground, whistle a humming in Nilambari, “mea culpa” “mea culpa”.
Part 2
 Even though the Game is over the ghosts of the white and black players on the black and white Ojo board haunted me. As Dr. R.V , the Professor I missed by being late at my birth , commented in his essay about games, margins and politics that the politics of games is hidden in the language of the games.  The unbroken hegemonic rules such as the whites should move before the blacks, the bishops, rooks, and knights should follow their predefined hierarchical pathways and the queen though be the most powerful should apply her game theory of calculations to make the powerless male patriarch, the king as the victor, the pawn, the marginal with the hard work if reaches the opposite goal post will be exchanged to another professed and confessed captain, wasting all its efforts etc. the game with injustice squared is everywhere and this binary game with mathematical board , no exception. The solution is gaming new games but getting them to be established is difficult. Equally difficult is to break the rules of the established ones. Even the technology’s sophistication is the helmet of the imposter, which without allowing the marginal to hit and rule , keeps the ruled barbed lines of battles. Let the bear and squirrel games be OUT and king and the queen game in chess be IN, with alternate roles; if one on  power, allow the ‘accomplice’ to win and keep on reminding the winner of changing mask: let me be the queen today, tomorrow is your day.
Part 3
Unless be careful, the track will either be a leg before the wicket  or the game will take its own diversions and the real game will begin where your chess board metamorphoses to  carrom board with collisions … later the player a  foot ball … a referee blows  the whistle proclaiming “ GAME OVER”. ..at the middle …

Tuesday 1 January 2013

To Be or Not…




To Be or Not…
To be an ‘I don’t care’ personality or to be professional is the millennial probe that tickles the techie and pro-techie generation. It alerts men and women hailing from East, Middle-East or West. Professionalism, if connected to profession, is a sort of narrowing the area. Being generation of megalomaniacs, the new generation, in which I feel myself to be a part, not only with age but also with mindset, cannot understand those narrow casting. When I came back after dis-cum-re-orientation, the class which, I like best by virtue of its locale alienated me with the aura of unfamiliarity. Literally, I was baffled like a man who is watching his bride in a wedding dress. The familiar faces on the unfamiliar garb! In a half jocular manner, I told my student that I am very much pleased to be a teacher, in return, to my “B.Tech appearance” classroom of humanities, and added, the professional kind of dress could be the reflection of professional kind of attitude. Normally, I would stop it there, and keep the unsaid for them to fill if feel like, to create theirown meanings rather than be confined in myown. More than artistically putting things, more than selfishly keeping the intellectual property, the two aims guarded my action from behind:
1.    I don’t wish (which I strive to balance without shattering, but spills at times unknowingly)  to be an advice machine if not it is sought, generally.
2.    If I say everything, as a teacher, I was afraid, becoming bad by restricting their progress.
I don’t feel these guardians as the protectors of less responsible actions, though superficially, they would be perceived as in the way the kid in the lower primary class teachers’ hand book yelled, “ If I could not understand the way you talk to me, why can’t you talk to me the way, I can grasp easily.” The students in the field of higher education cannot be equated with the students of lower primary class. Who else will recognize this if not me, the teacher? So I prescribed, though not always, sounds and furies, since my students moved from the generation of Shakespeare who caught it as ’signifying nothing’, and reached at least near Faulkner, who offered a question for the examination: “what is the significance of the title, Sound and Fury?”, which can gain no credit if answered ‘signifying nothing’. But this time, I selfishly felt to be understood, contrary to the earlier revelations. I explained professionalism for the students in the light of the article, I read from Faulty Focus, without providing a hyperlink. Perhaps they may think of it as putting my old wine of punctuality, tolerance, optimism, commitment, reliability, integrity, staying work focused, supporting and respecting others ideas, listening properly, time management  and  self upgrading, as a decorated novel paradigm. But I did not reiterate the Old Testament, instead, provided our own wishes we regularly postpone, whether a teacher or student. We would often be confused with the notions of sacrifice with professionalism, which we need to demarcate to keep a balance to make ourselves feel that we are above exploitation.
Earlier professionalism has been recognized to be a profession-add on programme. But in the current scenario its relevance has heightened as it is no more a ‘profession’ and ‘al’ but a way of being, living and becoming. If by simply answering a mail, or by smiling at the face of an  acquaintance, or patting the shoulder of the small scale victories of your friend and listening, to the low tone music comes with the breeze which cannot be recognized if the parameters of the tempests shaking the buildings, you will be  surely benefited, by the feeling of increased reputation, dignity, contentment and finally self reliance. This can be best induced when you are the students, because the student is a free citizen than any other professional, that the student realizes when he/she is no more a student.

Afterword:
The author of this post, as V.S. Naipaul ‘remarkably’ commented in the link of yesterday’s post, is a sensitive, sentimental, emotional woman, on which she is  proud and not ashamed of , and  tried to use “ecriture feminine” to uphold the inscription.