[Reader-list] March on, March on, Dear Poetry

Fri Mar 15 01:12:43 IST 2002

Dear Readers,

I present to you some poems. The first of them have
been written today. The others that follow have been
written over a period of time, the same period in
which civil society has been quite, and quite
competently, taken over by fascists who today (March
14, 2001) have become bold enough, once more, to
actually challenge civil society in India.

The first time these fascists challenged civil society
was in 1992. All of civil society was aware of this
challenge. Civil society remained inactive. [Can't
blame civil society. For the first time, salaries were
linked to the market and were rocketing sky-high.
Vetan-bhogis (as the govt. of India, and credit card
forms, put it) were experiencing a release]

The same fascists -- more organised today, more
penetrative of institutions, encouraged by a decadal
civil-social inactivity, spurred by NRIs realising
their second-class status in places other than India,
planned and paid for by government -- are challenging
civil society again. They are confident they will win.

I am a vetan-bhogi (that is to say, in case you don't
understand, a salary-bearer). At this moment, I feel
like writing poems (since I am an educated vetan-bhogi
salary-baggaged in India, and not a Global aeducated
Indian).

Therefore in all humility and in absolute abjection to
"heretofore", "hereunto", "wheretofore" and
"forthwith", I should like to request you to: forget
this painful politics,
enjoy some gainful rhetorics.

yours,

pp

But this is...

But this is March.
And I'm Brahmin.
Stone of Hindu Arch.

Prologue

Can there be poetry after Atom Bomb?
There can be, post shoved-in Tomb.

In  hindustani aesthetic tradition,
poetry's a sublime expression
of Beauty.
Nowadays, they mean: Duty.

Opem 1: The News, March 14, 2001, in rough couplets

(A)
It seems Paramhans Ramchandra Das
is -- thankfully -- going to kick his ass.

This Dude Hindu says: I am committing suicide.
hindustani tradition says: Hey! Why hide?

(B)
On Aaj Tak News Sri Griraj Kishore has said:
(Implicitly) Now all Muslims are dead.

He said: Just as Muslims have their Mecca,
Hindus must have their Ayodhya.

Shakespeare said: comparisons are odious.
This guy thinks they are melodious!

Opem 2: Tension

The Budget has reduced my pension,
The government, increased my tension.

Now goons, just holding sway,
take my good-night sleep away.

These belligerent religious fuckers --
Oops! -- my salaried forehead puckers:
What have I said, or, even worse, thought?
Am I a hindu, or have I been bought?

The Budget has cut my pension,
These guys, they increase tension.

These apparently religious [blip,blip],
Have given me the slip,slip.
Or could it be, that, [clip, clip],
I didn't contest, sip, sip?

Whatever be my pension:
This government likes the tension. 

Opem 3: No Title

[Blip] religion
[Blip] Astitva
[Blip] religion
[Blip] Hindutva  

Tract 1: I should like to know

I should like to know if there does exist a civil
society in India. Currently, I am confused.

Political scientists, and sociologists, who have
thought about this matter, seem to present no
consensus.

For instance, Andre Beteille says that that does exist
a "civil society" in India. He gives, as examples, the
presence of hospitals and universities.

But aren't universities part of what Althusser calls
Ideological State Apparatus? Certainly in India the
university system, centralised and controlled by the
University Grants Commission, seems to be an ISA. So
how can it belong to "civil society"?

As far as hospitals are concerned, there exists a
clear (and triumphant) distinction between
"government" and "private" hospitals. What happens to
" public" health in this distinction? The one belongs
to the state. The other, to the free market (and in
Delhi, the grey market). Where is "civil society" in
all this?

Rajni Kothari, who is the only political scientist
that Independent India has produced (the rest are in
the UK, like Sunil Khilnani, or in the US, probably
writing papers on terrorism), is also convinced that
there exists a "civil society" in India. As any
political scientist would do, he separates the "state"
from "civil society". But then, he is unable to define
any, institution, association, or even "interest
group" that qualifies within this
(political-scientific, in his terms) of existence.

Andre beteille rejects NGOs as belonging to "civil
society". His argument is a simple: they are
externally funded.

Therefore, does there exist a "civil society" in
India? Can we talk of a "public sphere" (if you want
to shange the terms of the argument) in India.
Certainly, Nancy Armstrong's critique of Haberbas'
concept of the public sphere, for one, makes sense.

But I am confused. I ask you, Sarai Readers, does
there exist a "civil society" in India?    

I should like to know.

Opems:Contemporarily Reminiscing

1.
With a jhatka
broke the matka,
as Sareen in lust
goodwife ko patka.

Though she is bhaari
petnamed pyaari,
Sareen pouncing
spreads her saari.

Neither a hauaa
nor a kauaa,
Sareen has had
egg-boiled and pauaa.

On the bister
fucker and sister,
Sareen proves
who is the mister.

2.
Hello pritty laddy
can I call you Billo?
I am rich and Joginder,
gaet inside my Cillo.

Gaet inside,
Laet us go foray ride.

I love the river.
I love the sea.
I am raising plantation,
I am eco-friendlee.

Gaet inside,
Laet us to go foray ride.

We will go to drinking
We will go to disco,
Bhabi is at home
lekin jaraa near khisko.

Gaet insiide,
Then we will go foray ride.

I am working harder
Everyday in Office,
Billo you are very lovely,
Now you give me kiss.

O gaet insiiide,
Late us go foray ride.

I want to love you.
I am stopping heear.
But Billo you are educated:
Than why this feear? 

You gaet insiiide,
Laet us go forayride.

Goodbye pritty laddy,
Tata dear Billo,
Dont remaember Joginder
But reemaember the Cillo.

Gaet insiiide,
Laet us go for a ride.

3.
Now imagine Dilli,
Next  millenium billi:

People call it city,
Freshly turd of shitty.

People say its metropole,
Only place you score a gole.

Then imagine Dilli,
Next  millenium khilli:

Supposedly civil.
Here you must be divil.

TV, stereo, car, andscent,
Here you reap the divlipment.

Persist to think of Dilli,
Next  millenium billi:

Crudely engine scooter.
Economy is looter.

Standing scratching Sharma
Crash into a Verma.

Forcibly the Dilli,
Ind  millenium silli:

Buy the ethnic cloth,
Here you learn to loathe.

Buy the ethnic furniture,
Hindu is the deathfuture.

4.
Whenever the chance is got,
the official is bought.

The system is being blamed,
In a tone that is inflamed.

Life is being described,
as the clerk is being bribed;

The system is being blamed,
in a tone that is inflamed.

Societal ills are counted,
survival is being flounted.

Has a problem been known
in which life is not thrown?

The system is being blamed,
in a tone that is inflamed.

5.
Why are things swelling
in anabolic fashion?
Have you brought ration?

6.
BillGates,
I want to come to you.

Four years are pass
I leave my class-12 class;
I got forty-seven marks.

BillGates,
I want to come to you.
But head is hanging low.

Last year I pass
3-year computer class
I got ninety-seven marks.

BillGates
I want to come to you.
But head is hanging low,
My life is very slow.

This year I tried,
I did everything, I cried!
No visa, I was fried.

BillGates
I want to come to you.
But head is hanging low;
My life is very slow;
I will hang, just go.

Postscript to this piece:
I read in the newspaper one day of a boy who had
hanged himself because he was unable to go off to the
US. According to the newspaper, he had been trying for
a long time to go off to the US. To that purpose, he
had even done a computer course.
	According to the newspaper, his suicide note had
especially mentioned how proficient he was in
computers.
	It didn't hit me immediately, but a few days later
after I had read this bit of news it came to me that
the so-called IT revolution had really gone deep, like
any other revolution anywhere else. The boy's suicide
came to my mind, a little more vividly than it had
done when I had read it. It struck me that this was a
boy who had believed completely in the efficacy of
information technology. Asshole that I am, I began to
imagine a voice that would elegiacally address itself
to Bill Gates, who in India is not so much a living
human being as a metaphor of success and money,
someone who had "come good" on the basis of hard work
and pure brains. I realised the amount of investment
in "pure brains" that middle-class Indians make. I
understood that the belief that IT was the escape
route through which a middle-class could completely
transform its anxiety-ridden existence had become a
deep-structure belief. The IT revolution in India was
here to stay, because millions of middle-class Indians
were ready to invest their energies in it.
	Every revolution takes its toll, banishes its
enemies. This boy  as his name and the location of
the house where he had hanged himself signified to me
 was not middle class. He was petty-bourgeosie, as
was clear to me from the newspaper report. He had
hanged himself in a house in a house in what was once
a slum but had now become a so-called "colony", that
is had been upgraded officially by the compulsion
politicians in the area faced. Such upgradations
signify no social change in the lifeworld. What it
signifies is that the entitlements have to be fought
for, even more militantly. He was one of the upcoming
ones, who wanted to break out.
	Sad, I told myself. Even the IT revolution is
stratified.
Naïve, I then told myself. How could I think
otherwise? How dared this boy?

I have chosen to make him the vehicle of what I think
is a satire. That is cruel. I acknowledge that. But
this poem is, I think, less cruel than the IT
revolution, which promises actually only slavery, of a
very sophisticated kind. If you look at the history of
slavery, then in the IT revolution and in the response
of educated Indians to this revolution, you will find
for the first time an eager willingness to become
software slaves.
Strange, this new kind of slavery where the
slave-driver does not have to come over and take you.
You go yourself, willingly you go and become a 21st
century slave. The question I want to ask is how did
your education allow you to do this? Or, is it that
that your education allowed you to do precisely this?
I don't want to think on this at all. Is that clear?] 

7. 
Focus on the First Letters

Internal

Perfectibility
Invigorates
Spiritual
Soul.

Ossifications
Nervily

Freely
Aggressively
Superimpose
Casually
Impregnated
Sophistications
Terroristically

Exclusivist.
Demanding
Unequivocal
Calumnious
Angst,
Trauma
Etherises
Dutifully.

Invigorated,
Newly
Demonical,
Instantly
Appears
Now
Self.

8
Off Calcutta Airport

[A young, healthy, 24-something youth steps off the
plane in Calcutta airport at 9:30 in the morning. His
after-shave is still fresh. His suit  it is clear it
is an Armani suit  is uncrushed. He breathes in the
morning air already a little dull, and strides towards
the bus waiting to take him to the terminus. He
travels lightly; an overnight expensive leather bag is
all that he carries. Thus while his fellow passengers
wait for the luggage, he strides out towards the exit.
A few people accost him; does he want a place to stay?
Does he want a taxi? A dark man wearing some kind of a
uniform promises him a good girl. He stares the man
down, the man trails off. Leaving behind these
hangers-on, he strides towards the exit. He knows the
city. It is his city.
	Outside the glare of the morning makes him blink. He
walks past the aluminium-metal railing festooned with
people  eager relatives, young, and old; uniformed
drivers holding placards; onlookers  and is
immediately swamped by taxi drivers. They circle
around him, asking, cajoling, demanding.
	Suddenly he loses it. He loses his composure; he is
destabilised.
	Destabilised, he loses himself in a conversation with
one of the men  completely nondescript  in that
crowd of minnows. He is no longer a shark.]

Sexy neck-tie
And the world is a pie
O-o.
You can believe
But you dont want to see
No-no.

So youre living it up.

Come to this corner
Ill show you your power
O-o.
Ill bash your head in
Youll see a red flower
No-no

Just when youre living it up.

9
Love Song of J. Alfred Bhadralok

Upon drinking MIT jol
Holo proactive aamar ball.
Aar shukobe na bichi;
Aaye, toke ektu khichi.

Upon drinking MIT jol
Holo proactive aamar ball,
I feel I am one of a kind,
Bokachoda, why're you in a bind?

Chole aai, come over;
Forget Arnold and the cliffs of Dover!
All that is colonialist hyperbole,
Come; you can make machher jhole.

Chole aai, come over;
I'm telling you, forget Dover;
Here there is freedom and soul,
Here play football, score a goal!

Aami toke bolchi, phata-phati place,
Do you remember singing Amazing Grace?

A
[Music: Led Zeppelin  "ooh, need to love; oh, oh,
need to love" etc. Voice breaks in]

Kya aap chut ke dhakkan hain?
Ho sakta hai aap lund ke makkhhan hai.

Either ways, today, right now,
Apna Jeevan Bima karvaiye.

Aapka apna Bhondsi Insurance Co
aapko waelcome karti hai.

Apna Jeevan Bima karvaiye;
Meet your local agent Pappu Walia
Jo aapko global advice deinge.

Ride the world, completely insured.
Yeh aapke mardangi ka sawaal hai.

B

Chee-chee.

Have you heard your neighbour talking about you?

Mrs Gulati yeh kehti hain:
Haw, unke house mein to kuchh bhi nahin hai.
No consumer appliances at all.
H-h-aw-aw.

Chee-chee.

Now is your chance, people,
Yeh mauka aapko phir nahin milay gaa.

Fill up your house with the latest.
Don't think about money;
Sab kuchh easy instalment mein avalaible hai.
Easy instalment; very, very. So very very.

Sale lagi hai; come and order.
Sale lagi hai; order and take home.
Sale lagi hai: shut Mrs Gulati up.

Bhar dijiye apne ghar ko.
Fill up your sweet home
So that as soon as you move
You touch something electronic.

In your chhota sa ghar
Itna goods bhar dijiye
ki
Ganr hilane se
Washing machine pe jaake aap takraiye.

Now is your chance, people.
Bhool jaaiye chee-chee.
Buy.
Buy and fly  ganr hilaa ke.

C
lonesense train

lonesense train
chaff on away
lonesense train
pfaff all I say

nutt-licking hooman
butt-licking pay

mr born fucked her
where is the brain now
mr horn sucked her
hair is the brain now

is it shredded up?
is it bedded down?

plucky for me
got to get doubt side
mucky for me
thought bout in ride

got to get my hooman
got to get my tide

pyaun pyaunwa wa wa pyaunwa wa wa pyaunwa 
tyaun tyaun tyaun tyaunwa wa wa tyaunwa
tiwi iwi iwi aeynwi aeynwi naeynwi
riwi siwi diwi gaeynwi taeynwi haeynwi

got to wet my hooman
got to get my wide

chiaonk chiaonk chiaonk
cha ika chiaonwa ika
chiaonk chiaonk chiaonk
cha ika chiaonwa ika
chiaonk chiaonk chiaonk
cha ika chiaonwa ika
chiaonk chiaonk chiaonk
cha ika chiaonwa ika
chiaonk chiaonk chiaonk
cha ika chiaonwa ika
chiaonk chiaonk chiaonk
cha ika

lonesense train
pfaff on away
i got my hooman
i got my day

Based in its non-entirety upon the J J Cale song
Lonesome Train. Which once got distributed from the
United States of America, easily the gratest nation on
Earth, totally erringly. That then surprisingly
pleasurably reached me, reached for me at me and got
hold of me upon an evening when, for the first time in
my life, I heard and saw the twelve-string guitar
being masterfully played in love and arrogant homage
by a teacher of mine who's written some sings and done
some "Hootenany" concerts in Calcutta (today, called
Kolkata).
Neither MTV nor VTV would air his songs, the songs of
Bertie, my teacher.

All deviations aforedung are mine.

  end    

Maaggie-o-graphy

maaggie-o-graphy
rhymes with hagiography.
they mean the same.

at various junctions
they perform the same functions.

Maiyya meri naiyyaa

Maiyyaa
meri naiyyaa
dagmagaaoes on the brink
Maiyya I can never
sever
ever
go to shrink.

I will lose my face-um,
I will lose my pose;
everybody grace-um
come and give you dose. 

Maiyyaa
meri naiyyaa
it is shaky on the brink
Maiyya I can never
sever
ever
go to sink.

They will try and catch me,
but i want to pass them by.
They will try and latch me,
but i want to make them sigh.

Maiyya
meri naiyya
may it quiiver on the brink?
Maiyya why you never
sever
ever 
go me think?

He has qualms. But give it to him. He seems to like
being mad. He chooses  does he?  to be mad.

In this country, it is very, very difficult for an
average person to explain the rationality of not being
rational. People do go off the rocker. Which is to say
that they do try and jump off whatever they are
trained to understand is fated for them. A life is
planned for them, even while they are learning what it
means to live. So they try and squirm around. They
turn compulsive, they turn obsessive, they begin to
live out their fantasies. Then, at a point of time,
they find without trying to find that they are still
required to be sane. That is to say, economically
productive. Socially reproductive.

They find that all their madnesses are eminently
explainable. Their madnesses at one point in their
lives are explained to them as indulged-upon
indulgences. Their madnesses, they begin to suspect,
have been heavily indulged in. They come to that point
in their lives when they horrifically discover that
their madnesses were nothing but aberrations socially
and programmatically socially allowed.

They find that they have to be responsible, and that
there are only certain fixed ways in which they can be
considered responsible. Essentially, they find that in
India being responsible means making lots of money.
Making money, they find, is the sanest thing to do. It
is the only thing to do. They find that if they don't
make money, they are not only considered mad, but also
and especially useless for all time to come.

The pressure of being sane pushes such people into
actual mindlessness. The tragedy is, that the people
who find themselves pushed into this position begin to
doubt their becoming, their unfolding. Their doubt is
a negative doubt. It is a socially imposed
questioning. It is a daily lacerating.

All madness has its method. But when the methodically
mad find that even they are being counted in the ranks
of the hopefuls, when the rationally athwart person
finds that even s/he has certain so-called survival
tasks to perform, then s/he tries to turns away for
all time. Impossible, in India. They must be
responsible, or be shunned.

The pressure to perform a survival responsibility 
pseudo-academia for making pots of money  is a
stupendous choke. Even the so-called mad in India
find, at some point in their lives, that they have
been guilty of the act of shunning. Nobody in India
can shun. They can do anything, but they cannot shun.
That is simply unacceptable.

The greatest burden such a person carries is that s/he
is genetically a shunner. Simply because, somewhere,
s/he chooses to shun money-making. And decides madness
is better than upholding the laws of political
correctness, social stratification, and economic
well-being, and the code of dutiful reproduction. 

Loss is madness. Good. Madness is a loss. Better. Get
lost, you best.  

Will you leave open door?

You are leaving open door?
I will become bore.
I will talk into your ear
Till you become sore.

________________________________________________________________________
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