[Reader-list] From Delhi after Bombings

[inder salim]

Dear Shuddha, all

It is my third occasion when I was very close to a Bomb Blast. First
in Batmaloo Kashmir- I was meters away from the Blast in 1990. The
second one happened in Delhi. I was doing a performance in Tranvancore
Hosue, K.G. Marg, which was about an idea to blast a fire cracker .  I
had to wrap  myself entirely with recent and old newspapers, to be
circular form and look like a sac. And after that I had to lit the
fire cracker for a blast, almost in my hands. The idea was that I will
phone to different friends  and ask a question immediately after a
blast.  The replied text would be displayed immediately on paper
through written word. Now, just after I blasted the fire cracker,
which had some impact on me,  I could not immediately connect my
mobile with friends to complete the performance. That time obviously
I could not think why. I tried and tried again, but finally one or two
calls matured. But the whole performance frustrated me because of my
mobile displaying  ' busy network' .It was only after the performance
that we came to know about the Blasts which happened almost at the
same time - the previous serial blasts in Delhi.  That time, I forgot
about the whole performance itself, let alone its failure. In a
strange way, I was closer to a Bomb blast in Delhi than I was in
Kashmir.

And today, when I was in Mandi House the Bomb blast happened on
Barakhamba Road, one Metro stop away from the tragic scene.  Just
before the blast I met a friend who told me that Keshav Malik ( Art
critic ) wanted to meet me in connection with some exhibition on
Kashmir. Now, after knowing about the blast, I phoned Keshav Malik who
told me that he is just returning from an Art Opening in which he was
talking about violence, moments before the blasts happened.  We
concluded the conversation on phone with 'unfortunate and sad'.

The life goes on. Those who died are not alive, and those who are
injured are being treated in places like 'hospitals' and after couple
of days we will forget it and resume our business as normal. That is
how we say ' life goes  on. Public is already going  through 'the
spectacle of media'. Every known figure will gets her/his two minutes
in front of the camera. The actors and their directors who performed
it are content, and those who are on the opposite side of the fence
too will discover  contentment though their well crafted statements.

That is why I ask myself. ' Do I know what 'sadness' means in
actuality of thought?  Well, there are different kinds of deaths, but
I want to know what is death,  philosophically, politically and
poetically?  For example, I don't know why we have been experiencing
'Wars'  since thousands of years if life is so beautiful in the first
place.  Have those hostile conditions disappeared which were
responsible for those sequel of  'fights' between clans and then
tribes, regions and then between countries. Have those insecurities
disappeared which made two individuals fight for survival, and
continuity of race. I guess in many ways we are going though a series
of  crises  which in essence are  not different from those which
prevailed thousands of years ago.

We often talk about Guerrilla Wars. I believe, these animals have an
instinct to attack the enemy from behind, not in front of eyes, with
an aim to achieve the results without much loss to their own life. In
fact every war has adopted this technique. We have spies, we have
diplomats who do it peacefully. Finally it comes to treaties, exchange
of ideas, trade and commerce etc for a civil society. I feel strange.

Now this civil society is supposed to take care of its citizenry,
which it finds an impossible a task, to commit itself to the cause of
uplifting each and every individual that contributes to the
functioning of the structures of the very civil society.
Mathematically and otherwise, we find it difficult to implement
equality as we understand through a constitution, and therefore, a
ready-made uncertainty for all of us. A representative body does
construct a road, offers health facilities, and even arrange
charities. But everything is just sustaining itself through a
continuous exploitation of natural resources, and a simultaneous
mismanagement of it. These resources  usually come from  the areas
which are quite busy either in the process of  perfecting their
systems  or are reeling under the bad impact of erstwhile colonial
rules, or are unwittingly taken in  by the seduction of the so called
development. In any case these systems will finally demand a constant
supply of resources to sustain the structures which they espouse for
the continuity of life as we see it.  But meanwhile a lot of vital
gets brushed under the carpet.

To keep that ' brushed under the carpet'  under the thumb, or the
oppressed rebels who bounce back,  and follow their footsteps,
whatever the case, we do have a history of countless exploitation of
labour from poor countries, whipping out of entire civilizations from
particular areas, and what not. Least but not the last, we need to
steal oil from the fields of the others to maintain the charm of our
cities.   So the war keep on going, like life keeps on going.

Sometimes, it is just a word 'sad' that gives me a clue to feel the
metaphysical nature of wars on this earth.

I remember Ghalib. Bas ki duswar hai har kaam ka assan hona, aadmi ko
bi moyasar nahin insaan hona.

The rough translation : ( impossible it is to resolve the conflict, to
be a become human being is not available to a homo sapien even.)

Love
is

p.s these poor   homeless children sometimes had to  hide their money
in the  ( homeless ) shit, which is often a Rs.10 or 20 currency note
.because they don't know when police or someone within their own world
will take away that money on this pretext or that




On Sun, Sep 14, 2008 at 11:29 AM, Shuddhabrata Sengupta
<shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Thanks to all those who have begun responding off list and on list to
> this post. In my bleary eyed early morning sleeplessness, I made a
> mistake about today's date in the body of the posting. The fragment
> that reads -  'in the early hours of the 13th of September' should
> obviously read, 'in the early hours of the 14th of September.'
>
> I think we should also remind ourselves that many precious lives were
> saved by the alertness of what the morning's newspapers chose to call
> 'rag-pickers'. These itinerant informal entrepreneurs of waste and
> residue (often so-called 'illegal' emigrants from Bangladesh) when
> they escape anonymity, are usually vilified as a shadowy, quasi-
> criminal, underclass who sniff glue, act as scouts for criminals and
> terrorists, and harbour all sorts of malingerers. The police
> regularly thrashes them, extorts money from them, and occasionally, a
> pious NGO or two will dignify those amongst them with a slightly
> firmer entitlement to 'legality'  with 'Identity Cards' , so that the
> thrashings of the police can be a little softened from time to time.
> This only means that those with precarious claims to Indian
> citizenship, (those with an obviously east Bengali sibilance to their
> speech) get thrashed harder, setting off a mini civil war between the
> 'deserving' and the 'un-deserving' poor born of a triangulation of
> the enigma of Indian citizenship, NGO activism and the blunt edge of
> a regulation Delhi Police lathi.
>
> So here is a salute to all those called 'rag pickers' in Delhi,
> regardless of whether or not they can be decorated with the fig leaf
> of Indian citizenship. In the end, they have proved at least in this
> instance, that as far as saving lives are concerned, they do a better
> job than the police.
>
> regards,
>
> Shuddha
>
>
> On 14-Sep-08, at 3:18 AM, Shuddhabrata Sengupta wrote:
>
>> Driving through the city of New Delhi after midnight, in the early
>> hours of the 13th of September, one could mistake the eerie calm in
>> the broad avenues that skirt the hollow centre of Lutyens Delhi as
>> the lull of a city tranquil and asleep to itself and the world.
>>
>>
>
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.
> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
> List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>



-- 

http://indersalim.livejournal.com