[Reader-list] Don’t Hold My Hand Longer Than You Need To (Shuddhabrata Sengupta)

[Naeem Mohaiemen]

Thanks. The quote marks make the difference (I am not being sarcastic).

On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 1:53 AM, Lalit Ambardar
<lalitambardar at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Please do not misread.
>
> 'Pan Islamism' inspired terror has nothing to do with Muslims & Islam. It is
> only the extreme form of indoctrination based on distorted religious tenets
> that could lead to mayhem.
>
> Regards
>
> LA
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 23:59:13 +0600
>> From: naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com
>> To: lalitambardar at hotmail.com
>> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Don't Hold My Hand Longer Than You Need To
>> (Shuddhabrata Sengupta)
>> CC: reader-list at sarai.net
>>
>> What is "Islamic" or "pan Islamic" about these attacks? People born
>> into Muslim families, or taking on Muslim identities, and then
>> twisting that into their own twisted justification for gunning down
>> people? I don't recall any of that as a tenet of the faith I was born
>> in, raised in, and indoctrinated in through state school up to 12th
>> grade. I have many many arguments against what we were taught in
>> school, but gunning people down was not ever a part of even the most
>> backwards curriculum I had the misfortune to face.
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 11:50 PM, Lalit Ambardar
>> <lalitambardar at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> > Dear all,
>> >
>> > It is not difficult to miss the pain & anguish in Mr. Shuddhabrata
>> > Sengupta's statement. But he somehow manages to avoid any reference to
>> > the
>> > response that this latest pan Islamism inspired carnage in Mumbai
>> > deserves.
>> > Forget about the state, why should the civil society surrender to the
>> > menace? Equating terrorism with counter terrorism is dangerous. You
>> > might
>> > defer on anti terror measures but the need to counter terrorism should
>> > not
>> > be a matter of debate. If only the civil society had not chosen to
>> > remain
>> > silent over the foreign sponsored pan Islamic terrorism in Kashmir, it
>> > is
>> > quite possible that the Kashmiri masses would have been spared the
>> > ordeal
>> > that they have been going through for the past almost two decades now.
>> >
>> > Regards
>> >
>> > LA
>> >
>> >> Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:39:36 +0600
>> >> From: naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com
>> >> To: reader-list at sarai.net
>> >> Subject: [Reader-list] Don't Hold My Hand Longer Than You Need To
>> >> (Shuddhabrata Sengupta)
>> >
>> >>
>> >> "Let's not light candles tonight as we have been taught to do by
>> >> television, lets not make a spectacle out of grief, let us not make
>> >> mourning a telegenic, slow motion filler between the smug, loose talk
>> >> of war and retribution on prime time where everyone gets to make a
>> >> cameo grab at patriotic grandeur."
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> 'Don't Hold My Hand Longer Than You Need To'
>> >> by Shuddhabrata Sengupta
>> >> http://kafila.org/2008/11/29/dont-hold-my-hand-longer-than-you-need-to/
>> >>
>> >> There is such a thing as an exhaustion of witnessing. Glued to the
>> >> television for long snatches of time over the last forty eight hours,
>> >> while I watched gun battles and firestorms in Bombay, the first thing
>> >> that i found failing was reason, the second thing that failed was
>> >> speech, the third thing that failed was the capacity to do anything
>> >> meaninful in the face of such disproportionate horror. I did nothing.
>> >> I was parched, I drank a lot of tea, and water. I nursed insomnia to
>> >> fitful, erratic snatches of sleep, populated by lucid dreams that
>> >> smelt of cordite.
>> >>
>> >> Now, as the paramedics go in to retrieve bodies and body parts, as the
>> >> calculus of loss and damage is ascertained, as the smoke lifts, as the
>> >> ashes cool in crematoria and hotels, and as the hoarse voices of the
>> >> television impresarios of the carnage begins to lower an octave or
>> >> two, can come the necessary task of making amends for silence. Let's
>> >> talk.
>> >>
>> >> We can begin a conversation. Terror calls for speeches and statements,
>> >> communiques and condemnations, the one thing it kills is conversation.
>> >> We must mumble, if necessary, because even that is preferable to the
>> >> ludicrous platitudes that emanate from the tube that pours news into
>> >> my veins Today, I prefer a stammer to a statement. I dddddarrre
>> >> nnnnnoooottt sssayy a thh-thh-thhousand things that run through my
>> >> wakefulness, my dreaming.
>> >>
>> >> In the video of a song that Aman posted here earlier, I see a woman
>> >> driving a taxi in the city that they used to call Bombay. The song
>> >> that runs through her silent head says 'don't hold my hand longer than
>> >> you need to'. I want to stay with that line. I want to hear it again
>> >> and again and again. I don't want to commiserate or to condemn, more
>> >> than is necessary. Yes, I condemn. But no, I won't have the
>> >> condemnation wrested out of me like a confession. The mathematics of
>> >> tragedy does not follow the laws of simple arithmetic. A rising body
>> >> count is neither more, nor less tragic than a single gratuitous,
>> >> meaningless death. 'Don't look at me longer than you need to'.
>> >>
>> >> You might say, commiseration is necessary. I'll say "lets not hold
>> >> hands longer than we need to". Let's not light candles tonight as we
>> >> have been taught to do by television, lets not make a spectacle out of
>> >> grief, let us not make mourning a telegenic, slow motion filler
>> >> between the smug, loose talk of war and retribution on prime time
>> >> where everyone gets to make a cameo grab at patriotic grandeur. Let us
>> >> not disrespect the dead and the bereaved by even pretending that we
>> >> can share in what they feel. I feel all sorts of things, I cannot say
>> >> 'martyr', 'coward', 'hero', 'villain' as easily as many can. I feel
>> >> that all these words are like the decorations on a coffin. I want to
>> >> see the body. The naked, injured, dead, body that asks for no
>> >> decoration, for nothing other than the dignity of a decent burial or
>> >> the comfort of a well stoked pyre. I want to speak of and to that
>> >> body. Those hundreds of bodies.
>> >>
>> >> In the strange and paradoxical solidarity of death in conflict, the
>> >> bodies of deceased assailants and their victims, become just that,
>> >> bodies. They were terrorists or hostages or rescuers, Hindus, Muslims,
>> >> Christians, Jews, Indians, Americans, British, Turks or Israelis till
>> >> they died, in death, their inertia brooks no name, no qualification,
>> >> their distinctions, barely meaningful while alive, died with them.
>> >> Now, they are gone. That is why, when someone dies, we say, "they are
>> >> no more".
>> >>
>> >> But we are. We are still claiming for ourselves a piece of the action.
>> >> Still bursting with pride and thirsting for grief. These are our worms
>> >> and ashes. These are the signs of our rigour mortis, the stench of our
>> >> daily, hourly decomposition. Some of us are calling for war. Some of
>> >> us are saluting. Some of us are speculating on the realignments in
>> >> international relations. Some of us are wondering what this means for
>> >> the investment climate. Some of us are mulling which quotation from
>> >> which scripture to hurl in which direction in order to prove which
>> >> religion teaches you to kill with greater ferocity. I have no comforts
>> >> to offer, none to hold on to. I have no war to fight, no stocks to
>> >> worry about, no holy or unholy books to throw.
>> >>
>> >> The truth is, all abstractions, all attempts to tell us that there is
>> >> something more valuable than life itself in the end, demand their
>> >> prices in blood. The difference between a terror attack and an act of
>> >> war is ultimately a question of degree. A man who kills another is a
>> >> murderer. A man who kills ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, hundred
>> >> is a terrorist. A man who sends thousands or millions to their deaths
>> >> is usually called a president or a prime minister or at least 'great
>> >> leader'. We hang one, shoot the second and build memorials to the
>> >> third. "Terrorism" is actually only a name for the dull mediocrity of
>> >> organized violence. In lesser or greater degrees it comes with less or
>> >> more honourable appellations. Homicide, Terrorism, War, Genocide. No
>> >> one sings songs to terrorism, but our brass bands do blare the music
>> >> of war. In the end its just a question of how many bodies there are in
>> >> the morgue.
>> >>
>> >> When you value a book, a map, a flag, a code, a memory of an injury or
>> >> a vision of heaven or hell more than you value the eating, drinking,
>> >> sleeping, walking, working, dreaming, shitting, pissing, fucking,
>> >> tired, old, young, wrinkled, bare, naked body of just another human
>> >> being you will in the end, pick up, or genuflect to those who pick a
>> >> gun, walk into a city, and begin a few days of mayhem.
>> >>
>> >> Ask the little terrorist in your own head, the next time you curse one
>> >> you see on TV, "what will it take for you to admit, that there is
>> >> really nothing more important than the ungainly, misshapen bag of
>> >> water that is a human body". Now ask the same question to the little
>> >> policeman in your head, and try and divine the difference between
>> >> their answers. I have tried all my life and I have failed to
>> >> understand the difference. Both say they shoot to avenge injustice, to
>> >> fight wrongs, to bring hope and peace into the world. I understand the
>> >> voice of the assassin, the bank robber, the psychopath and the injured
>> >> lover, for they shoot for no reason other than to do with the concrete
>> >> circumstances of their lives. They shoot for money, madness, love or
>> >> revenge - all human reasons. I am not condoning the murderer and the
>> >> assassin, but I can see that they take responsibility fo what they do,
>> >> and there is a strange honour in that, a perverse, twisted honour
>> >> perhaps, but honour nevertheless. But the terrorist and the
>> >> counter-terrorist shoot for supposedly altruistic reasons. They shoot
>> >> at you and me, for the sake of other yous and mes, sometimes even for
>> >> just ourselves. The voice of the terrorist and the voice of the
>> >> policeman sing the same song. "I will shoot you for a higher cause. A
>> >> higher cause, a higher cause." The cause varies, the bullets stay the
>> >> same. And I am always told, 'I am the cause, and that higher cause is
>> >> you'. No terrorist ever says that they shoot to perpetuate injustice.
>> >> In their eyes, they are the just. They say that they are the only ones
>> >> who are. Such certitude is the privilege only of those who shoot in
>> >> the name of things loftier than themselves, it could be a state or a
>> >> wannabe state, it could be a dream or a nightmare. Something, I don't
>> >> know what, tells me that I could be better friends with the madman,
>> >> the bank robber, the assasin and the jealous lover, push comes to
>> >> shove, I could even share their prison cell. But the terrorist and his
>> >> mirror leave me cold.
>> >>
>> >> All flags are shrouds. Every holy book is a sheaf of death
>> >> certificates. And the priest who sometimes wears the robes of a
>> >> politician is the undertaker. The terrorist is only the shadow of the
>> >> hangman.
>> >>
>> >> Take your comforts while you can. Do not let the drought of the real
>> >> make an arid desert out of your soul where the flags of many states
>> >> and insurgencies can flutter their shadows. Switch off the television.
>> >> Blow out the candles. Turn out the light. Pour yourself a cup of tea,
>> >> a glass of wine, a beaker of water. Drink. Stay awake through the long
>> >> night ahead. Squeezed as we are, between terrorists and hangmen, there
>> >> is lots to do, and not much time. Or, as the song that Aman posted
>> >> (the one that I talked about earlier said) - 'Lets do the things
>> >> that we normally do'.
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>> >
>> > ________________________________
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>
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