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? 

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 …

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.