[Reader-list] Re: Re:

[tarunksaint]

List administrator, others,
Kindly convey my disinclination to receive unsolicited mail at my personal
address to pp. I have already expressed my desire to discontinue this
unedifying 'dialogue'.  We put up our addresses taking full responsibility
for what
we post-- does this give anyone a right to direct crude gestures at another
(which if
made in person would receive an appropriate response), or violate another
contributor's privacy and personal space? Will this serve as an
encouragement to contribute in future to the many silent witnesses to what
has become a distasteful online spectacle?

On the subject of the Partition, and the poem-- well, a discussion might
have been possible which could have enriched this forum.  But not in the
face of motivated and crass misrepresentations of this kind, which reduce a
complex reality to 'holes' and 'rifts'. Research on the subject of Partition
literature is a little more sophisticated than that. It has taken years for
the psychic numbness that refugees experienced to give way to a new kind of
communication between generations that the poem  alludes to. Sentimentality
my foot! This about shades of emotion which require some experiential
grounding to appreciate in detail, perhaps, but at the very least
sensitivity and emotional intelligence. There is a growing literature on the
experience of those doubly affected, as in the case of Sikh refugees in
1984. Dilip Simeon was one of the first to highlight the genocidal aspects
of the 1984 pogrom. Instead of an acknowledgement of the courage of
survivors who remained, and were often forced to take a stand against
fascism, as the father the poem is dedicated to does,  in the face of
discrimination and collective amnesia, we have this vulgar rant about
appropriations by the VHP of such anger and grief. Nonsense-- it is the
refusal to allow for such voices to be heard which has generated the
situation in which new refugee camps as in Gujarat have now appeared.

The hostility towards NRIs and compensatory strut and swagger on
display are familiar coordinates of a certain kind of mofussil bhadrolok
mind-set; the
kunji-style account of satire a predictable cover-up for a lack of ability
to write satire well. There is a context in which effective satire becomes
meaningful; an implicit yardstick, or set of indices which allow for the
nuanced point to be conveyed. When everything is fair game, no point emerges
whatsoever-- rather, the vacuity of an aspirant to satirehood whose every
dig mirrors back his own inadequacies and ineptitude.


Yes, cyberspace also brings us the freedom to endure
mediocrity, to field ad nauseam the Grub Street hacks of our time (note the
continued pleas for recognition of some sort-- read my poems, says he, read
my satire, says he-- sure signs of the novelist on the make these days).
What is most comical is the recourse to political
correctness-- we can be rude, we can disregard conventions, and scholarly
etiquette, the sub-text seems to run, because we are not from the privileged
colleges, because we have read theories of the carnivalesque, and Rabelais,
because we are
anti-Hindutva. The tone of abjection, grovelling (kick my ass, says he,
reminiscent of the famed colonial cringe of yore)
suddenly shifts into belligerence and stridency (such as that of the local
colony goon, with his well-known repertoire of obscene gestures) when
threatened. Radicalism
of this desi variety has simply become a pretext for third-rate writing, and
lumpen behaviour.

I'd like to let the list know that I do not know pp beyond the most
superficial of acquaintance-- nor do I wish to. Each to his own.

One hopes that one's privacy and right to a dignified silence will be
respected in future. This extends as well to former teachers whose names
have been bandied about freely on this forum, in flagrant disregard of
earlier reminders. Indeed, both academics tried their level best to stay on,
one at D.U. , the other at J.N.U., but were faced with the same frog in the
well  syndrome that we find here on the Sarai list. (I can croak louder than
you! I'm the best!). Neither 'fled' India-- a term I would dissuade any
upstarts from using to thier face in direct conversation.  One's shelf-life
in the academic world is likely to short indeed, with such an attitude,
though one might get away with it for a while in the laissez-faire moral
economy of this list.

This basic courtesy is observed on numerous lists across the world, to which
both home-grown patriots and NRIs subscribe, all of which emphasise the need
for netiquette. May this list move on, as I plan to, to more worthy
concerns.
I repost the poem for those joining the 'discussion' late.

regards,
Tarun


For Papa
To my father
> >
> >August 14th 1947. Firozepur, Punjab.
> >You-
> >eighteen years old
> >sit alone and wait
> >for news of your parents
> >When they arrive days later
> >my grandfather, grandmother, and her brother
> >offer no explanation, no report, no narrative
> >of how
> >they ended up alive in a train from Lahore, Pakistan
> >Their arrival simply becomes a fact
> >--a fact
> >that even the children--my brother and I
> >learn never to question
> >
> >November 1st 1984, Delhi
> >You wait again.
> >This time
> >with your parents, my mother, my brother, and I
> >murdering mobs parade the streets
> >announcing their arrival by rattling street lights
> >My grandfather sitting in front of the house
> >reads the newspaper, pretending oblivion
> >The neighbors demand he go inside
> >"I left once," he says,
> >"where am I to go  now?"
> >You-
> >I know, are afraid
> >But refuse to remove your turban or cut your hair--
> >as some neighbors and so-called friends suggest
> >You, who would not enter a temple
> >mock religion and even God
> >Say that you are a teacher
> >And do not wish to teach submission to fascism
> >
> >September 11, 2001--to date. Delhi, India and Carbondale, U.S.A
> >You wait there
> >And I-here
> >My brother who is visiting me
> >Finds again that wearing a turban invites the name "terrorist"
> >And, just as in 1984, he wants to be on the street
> >I wait here
> >for news of American bombs on Afghanistan
> >while the successors of Gandhi's assassins
> >rule his birthplace
> >drowning in blood the hopes of 1947
> >sowing land mines into the line your parents had crossed
> >but one they would not let cross their hearts
> >
> >Years later in 1972
> >my grandmother would visit that border again
> >pick up a handful of dirt and call it "home"
> >my brother and I would joke
> >that our grandmother created nations wherever she went
> >born in Burma she was twice a refugee
> >once in Pakistan, then India
> >
> >Children know
> >that if not this history there would be another
> >
> >But if not for
> >those who labor to make this children's belief come true
> >the only drops
> >to fall on this desolate drought-stricken earth would be blood
> >Today-
> >as I imagine you eighteen years old
> >I long to take your  hands into my grown hands
> >And walk into refugee camps where children still get born
> >
> >