A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
-- Louisa May Alcott.
...........hmmm....that more or less describes my situation !!

 
On His Blindness

WHEN I consider how my light is spent
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoke, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.

-- John Milton

I have been reading Stanley Fish’s critical essay Interpreting the Variorum, and it was quite a task manoeuvring around the elaborately argumentative piece. I will probably want to discuss my thoughts at length when I am at more leisure, but such a time never comes, so I will at least briefly run over them for now.

Stanley Fish’s important claim in this essay is that literary texts cannot be judged on the basis of their ‘formal’ features. Formalism is a school of thought that believes that the text is an independent entity, and whatever needs to be understood or analysed about it, can be done by purely studying the text’s form such as the literary devices used, narrative strategy, and so on. Fish is completely opposed to this mode of thought, so much so, that he believes that an independent text, as such, does not even exist! The latter appears to be too radical a thought to admit belief; however, Fish takes the reader through a series of arguments to prove his case. For my part, I found the arguments going a bit round and round, in that, some of the premises themselves didn’t hold water with me.

Now, the question is, if the text’s form is not the ideal basis for literary analysis or criticism, what is? Fish’s answer to this question lies in the ‘Reader’. The Reader’s ‘experience’ in the course of reading the text is what makes the text what it is, according to him. No Reader, no text, and as such the text as an independent entity, does not exist. The text as an independent unit that can be analysed without reference to an intended reader, does not exist.

To elaborate and explain his point, Fish selects some of Milton’s poems as examples. The poem On His Blindness (reproduced here) is one such. In the course of reading this poem, the reader traverses a gamut of emotions. In the beginning, the reader feels the pain of the speaker and cannot but empathise with his complaint—why did God deprive him of the very gift or eyesight that he could have used best in God’s service? As we move along the poem, our emotions continuously undergo change. When the speaker says ‘I fondly ask’, we know that the speaker’s faith is a bit shaken merely but still intact; the speaker instinctively believes that God has his own ways of dealing with his servants. The voice of Patience brings another perspective, and soothes or fails to soothe our troubled emotions depending on how convinced we are with its arguments. The last line “They also serve who only stand and waite” leaves us confused. We do not know, for sure, who spoke this line¬—Patience or the speaker. We do not whether this line suggests the speaker’s acceptance of his passive duty (which would be the case if he spoke this line) or whether this line merely continues the argument that Patience has been making, in which case, the speaker is still ambiguous about his role and faith. The words ‘stand and wait’ are also susceptible to two readings—does it mean ‘wait for a suitable opportunity for active service’ or does it mean ‘wait passively’? Literary critics over the centuries have apparently debated over what these lines exactly mean, who spoke them, and such other questions that are difficult to determine by studying the text. They have also tried to introduce extra punctuation and other such intrusions to give the text the meaning they chose to interpret. According to Fish, the problem lies in the fact that we believe that the text is supposed to have some independent or inherent meaning. According to him, there is no such independent meaning; the experience that the individual reader goes through in the act of reading is the meaning!

This is not the end of the argument nor is this the only dimension. He also goes so far as to say that readers do not read a text—they actually write or create the text in the process of reading!

I must admit, I do not agree with many of his arguments. I do not feel that the form of a text is as fluid or as arbitrary in the interpretive process as that. While Fish says that readers create the form of the text depending on how they interpret the text, I choose to believe that the author’s intention of giving the readers a particular experience leads him to choose a particular form.

What I find intriguing and useful about Fish’s argument, though, is that the readers’ experience cannot be ignored while interpreting a text (whether that experience is not motivated by the text at all, as he says, or whether the experience does arise because of the author’s studied use of markers in the text, no matter how successful or unsuccessful, is a different argument). The experience of the reader, as Fish says, is a ‘temporal’ one as against the ‘spatial’ experience suggested by form analysis. It is not a moment of experience after reading the text, but a series of thoughts and feelings and mental adjustments that the reader steers through in the course of reading the text that accounts for the overall experience.

… When you think about it that way, you do realise that you had hitherto never given this ‘experience’ that much notice, hitherto only thought about ‘what the text is’ but not ‘what the text does to me’. That’s a potentially rich line of thought to explore.
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 11:06 AM 2 comments

 
Little flowers bloom
in the warmth and shade of love
ever protected, ever watered
away and outside the harsh light of the world
Light that opens knowledge unbounded
expands the mind and opens intellectual horizons
but, leaves the heart empty and cold
encased in an iron box
each in its own
with no means to reach out
to touch or enfold
another kindred heart, trapped like its own
An unnatural development
blooming one way, dying in another
growing one way, stifled in another
such is our modern world
plenty in riches -- money can buy
plenty in food -- for the seeking mind
But, starved of the warmth and shade of love
where little flowers bloom
and where the soul finds nourishment.

(I am the last to downplay the accomplishments of the mind, but I can't help feeling that somewhere we have left our hearts and souls behind, in this eternal race or search or march of civilisation)
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 8:29 PM 8 comments

 
I never thought I would feel this way for a puny, small, tiny little thing. I didn’t even know about its existence till three weeks ago, when my brother got a huge cage and this tiny wonder, the little cockatiel bird. My brother told me it was a specie from Australia and he pronounced it as ‘cocktail’. Being my usual pragmatic self, not given to excitement when I see something or someone new, I looked at it detachedly, and went about my stuff. When everybody stared at it and cooed at it, I didn’t bother to notice, and when nobody was around, I went near it and thought it was quite a cutie, with a little crest on its head and orange cheeks. Most of all I liked it’s innocent babe-in-the-woods look. I wanted to call it ‘cookie’, short for cockatiel, and my brother insisted on calling it birdie; what a non-name, like calling a girl ‘girlie’, I thought. I decided to call it cookie, no matter what he said, and I decided cookie would want to be called cookie, if I called it often enough. I soon gave up my act of not being interested in the new creature, and had animated conversations with my mom about it. We discussed its eating habits, sleeping habits, playing habits, almost like it was a baby (I don’t have experience with babies but I know how moms talk about them). Things started settling into a nice pattern with cookie joining me for early morning tea (she seemed to wake up when we did and whistled so loudly that we had to wake up when she did anyway). I felt nice saying a bye to her in the morning and I don’t know if she whistled back at me when I called out cookie, but I liked to think she did. I started looking up articles on what cookie may enjoy eating or doing. I would call home in the afternoon to check up on what cookie was up to. My brother said she needed to be let out of the cage for some time during the day and then let back in. My brother did this at first and my mom, who being brought up in Mangalore is rather handy with these things, took up the task when he wasn’t around. During the weekend, though I wasn’t scared of cookie when she was out...I still felt like being in some other room when cookie was let out of the cage. When I warned the folks about what if she flies away, they had a very philosophical attitude: what if she does? Then maybe she wants to be free and let her be. None of us have had any experience with pet birds and I couldn’t help feeling that yes, wasn’t cookie really bored sitting in the cage all day? What if she did feel like getting away? Should we cage her because we want to? And another voice would say, but could she survive outside…? here we were taking such good care of her, talking to her, petting her, feeding her, who would take care of cookie outside? I didn’t know what was right. But I couldn’t bear the whole shock of what if she just flew away. And somehow, being oblivious in the other room when she was out, I could ignore these conflicting feelings. I would feel glad to see cookie back inside her cage later. And slowly, after a few days, my mom told me she had started going inside the cage on her own. I felt better knowing this, almost like a certain indication that she liked being with us too.

Every night, it was so funny to see cookie sleep perched on that exact same spot in the cage. It tickled me and pleased me, I don’t know why. I couldn’t understand how a bird could have a sweet spot like that. Or maybe because I like consistency, this consistency in her habits quite appealed to me. One day last week I remember how she danced a little jig from one end of the tiny pole to the other when I walked in home in the evening. I don’t know whether she was happy to see me, but she made me very happy. How I cooed to it! One day when it seemed to be growing too cold, I moved her cage a little further over the window, where the view outside was a little blocked… what a little ruckus she made! And then I moved it back and she was quiet. She used to be too quiet after sunset, perched on its favourite spot, and come sunrise, she would whistle and jump and gorge on the grains and other little tidbits we kept for her, like she had been hungry for weeks rather than the night. My mom would sit next to her with her toast and tea, and cookie would jump so much, that mom just had to give her a little bit of toast.

Today, as usual, I waved goodbye to cookie in the morning. Around afternoon mom called frantically, ‘Ayyo! cookie has flown away, what do we do?’ I knew the inevitable would happen someday. She had let cookie out of her cage as usual but this time instead of climbing down from the fan, she just whizzed out of the opening in the curtains, even out of the grills surrounding our window. Mom is an unreasonable optimist and never really thought she would fly away through those. She seemed to be upset and hurt—maybe she never really meant that if cookie did fly, may be it was alright if she wanted to. Suddenly she seemed to realise that truly, she was gone. No cookie, only an empty cage. I didn’t know what to say, what to do to make cookie come back. She couldn’t see her around, and she had frantically looked outside. Doing a bit of Google search, the only sensible suggestion I found was to keep the cage outside with some bird food. Maybe she would recognise the familiar home and come back. That’s what I told mom but doesn’t look like something positive has come of it. The more I read the Google pages about lost cockatiels, my heart sank. I wanted to read about it because I couldn’t think of anything else, and I wanted to read something to give me comfort, but there was so much that made my heart sink. It doesn’t matter if cookie doesn’t come back but let nothing happen to my little baby, let it be taken care of, let it only find a kind soul, let it get food to eat, that’s all I ask for. I read that owners usually clipped their birds’ wings that they wouldn’t fly (it almost feels like cutting legs!), but cockatiels are strong fliers and if they get away, they rarely find their way home, because they don’t have homing instincts. It looks like we have lost her, never to see her anymore. I am thinking of all the sweet little moments I had with her over the last three weeks; I feel rather heartbroken as if suddenly our little one is gone and we can’t do anything.

Truth is, when my brother brought her home, I didn’t want to get used to her or get attached to her… I wanted to be aloof because I cynically thought, birds die soon… so why get attached to something that wouldn’t be around for long…silly me never realises that things never last…and then I was told how the cockatiel lives for 15-20 years… and that pleased and reassured me… cookie wouldn’t die soon after all…I started imagining how our cookie will grow old with us, how it would grow fond of us, how it will recognise us, how maybe it will even start talking a little, how it would look forward to being petted by us… I started thinking so far ahead… and how I loved her day by day, how my heart grew warm for her every day... and now, there is a dull ache…thinking about the dear little thing, gone, God alone knows where… I am missing its soft whistle and merry jig and how it perched itself in the same spot every night… I feel heavy about the thought of walking home and not finding her there, in her cage… no cutting small veggies to feed it, no enjoying her dance of delights, no discussing what she was up to, no smiling at its little figure at night, no waking up to its sounds… how I miss her already! Maybe she will come back, maybe she won’t… all I ask is, she may be safe and sound and loved wherever she is… I never understood people’s love for pets, and never thought I would… but now I do…I never thought there could be love where there was no deeper understanding…but cookie taught me something…that love sometimes transcends the mind and reaches the heart directly…will miss my cookie…
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:40 PM 3 comments

 
I was cleaning a room and, meandering about, approached the divan and couldn't remember whether or not I had dusted it. Since these movements are habitual and unconscious, I could not remember and felt that it was impossible to remember - so that if I had dusted it and forgot - that is, had acted unconsciously, then it was the same as if I had not. If some conscious person had been watching, then the fact could be established. If, however, no one was looking, or looking on unconsciously, if the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been. [Leo Tolstoy's Diary, 1897]

And so life is reckoned as nothing. Habitualization devours works, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war. "If the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been." And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known.

— Excerpt from Victor Shklovsky’s ‘Art as Technique’

Most of our lives seem to be full of ‘habitualized’ or ‘automatic’ activities, things that don’t provide us any sensation at all, things that we go about doing without knowing what we are doing. We go through the motions of everyday living, so to speak, with nothing to interrupt its ebb and flow, or make us start from our unconscious reverie. We yearn for ‘sensation’, whether it is in books, in movies, in music, in travels, we want to feel ‘alive’, to consciously ‘experience’ a thing. Which is why we are drawn to novelty, to excitement, to adventure, to experiences that we are not ‘familiar’ with, and which promise the maximum ‘sensation’. Shklovsky talks about how this desire for ‘sensation’ is exploited even in art, by making objects ‘defamiliar’ so that we are forced to take notice, to actually experience or perceive them. Techniques in art are used so that the same objects or experiences, though familiar and habituated, may still kindle ‘sensation’. Poets come up with novel ways of describing the beloved or the sunset, and each time, it is like seeing the beloved for the first time, or watching the sunset with new eyes…the same experience affords sensations as if we were experiencing it for the first time. We see it as if it were something new, we actually ‘perceive’ its beauty.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder how a balance between monotony and sensation could be best achieved. I am convinced that a balance is important, because just as a person cannot be eating rich food all the time because it affords ‘sensation’ (in any case the sensation would disappear when one gets habituated, and damage one’s health too), so also, one cannot be drenched in sensation all the time, to feel like one is ‘living’ every moment. At the same time, one cannot be going on living in monotony, going about work that does not involve the mind or heart at all, and deadens one’s spirit so that one may as well not be ‘living’ or ‘consciously experiencing the sensation of life’.
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 2:36 PM 4 comments

 
All beauty is what
But an imposture
Cruelty hidden behind
Every act of nature
Kindness, gentility, honesty
We all claim like masks
Carrying on our frightful farce
Teach me, O God,
To know your ways
Like an innocent child
Let me not fall prey
To words uttered but never meant
To emotions expressed but never felt
Teach me to distinguish the true from false
That I may live among the corrupt
But never to corruption fall.

One of those times when I feel overwhelmed and deeply jolted by how low human nature can stoop, how selfish it can be, how its own ends it can seek without one little whit of thought for another. We seem to live in a world full of superficialities and the only tools to survive are the superficial, the sophisticated, the suave and the trivial ones. Simplicity, honesty, and other core values have become a relic of the past. They are fashionable, yes, but only as a surface cosmetic. Any more deeper and they seem a nuisance.

We no more judge of people by the ‘substance’ they possess — the form, the outward, the veneer has become all important. We place so much emphasis on cultivating the exterior in today’s world, while the interior, the heart, the soul remains forgotten and unattended.

How I wish we had the capacity to look into the heart of things and the wisdom to know that only what we find there, is really worth possessing.
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 8:21 PM 4 comments

 
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies

-- Shakespeare
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 9:36 AM 2 comments

 
Okayyy. Let me get the wishes out of the way first.

Happy Christmas.
Happy New Year.
Happy 10th blog anniversary (to me).

I had meant to do all these wishes at the right time, if not in advance, but a LOT has been happening. A ‘first’ wedding in my family. My sister’s to be specific. On New Year’s eve, no less. And the preamble to the wedding, as is usual in all such cases, started many months ago. I’m glad we’re over the wedding and into the marriage… that which really counts :)

It always strikes me how much we plan and prepare and anticipate and deliberate over the wedding ceremony. We want it to be perfect and lovely and want the guests to have a good time and have good things to say about how well it was organised and how much they were taken care of. We stress over every little thing till the last minute — the decorations, the food, the dress, the toast, the invites and what not… sometimes I wonder if we pay equal attention to ‘after’ the wedding or we prepare as much for life after the wedding, the beginning of which we actually celebrate with all the song and dance. I also wonder if we get to really, really think about and prepare in our hearts and minds for the life we are about to enter, because we are so busy planning and plotting over the frilly and unnecessary details… I sometimes wish weddings could be done differently… if it could be a celebration in the real sense of the word for only the two people who have found each other, who have decided to pledge their life to each other, who wish to spend the rest of their lives together, and who want to celebrate that moment, that journey, that first step together…
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 11:38 AM 0 comments

 
I have had this question asked often, and am sure everyone asks and gets asked often enough, “what are you doing this weekend?”. Now, perfectly innocent and harmless though it is, I used to feel slightly uncomfortable under its mild scrutiny. People seem to expect one to be “doing something” over the weekend, so one feels slightly pressured to measure up somehow, “oh, I’ll be watching a movie” or “oh, I’ll be going to the mall” or “I’ll be catching up with a friend over lunch”, or sometimes even, like I have heard a few times, “I’ll be doing spring cleaning!” —anything to sound sufficiently occupied and busy and ‘blocked’ I guess!

At one point, I used to feel positively guilty to not have anything to say that may sound like my weekend was actually quite fruitful or exciting, in the way people would relate, especially if the people putting the question were the hyperactive kind, who could be doing any number of things and maybe juggling many at a time, without being the worse for the wear.

Now, what I think is this: What’s wrong with simply “being”, why should one be doing something all the time? What’s wrong with enjoying your own company, why should one be seeking company all the time? What’s wrong with just pottering around the house, picking a book, sharing things with the folks, dozing, eating, walking, thinking—basically, “doing nothing” or “nothing really exciting”. Which brings me closer to the point: Isn’t excitement different for different people? Maybe passive enjoyments like reading give me more pleasure than active enjoyments like hiking — but what’s wrong with that? Why should it mean that I am not taking advantage of my time as someone else who may be out and about does?

I guess I have resigned myself to the fact that you can never really explain things to people if they insist on looking at it through the prism of their own personality. I have stopped trying to fit my reality to better match others' perspectives. I realise I do myself a disservice and subject myself even more unfairly to others’ judgements. Now if someone asks, “So what are you doing this weekend?” and I respond, “nothing in particular”, and if I get a reaction that suggests “boring”, I don’t bother about it because, really, it isn’t—a cup of coffee with mom in the evening, chatting, gossiping, laughing, nibbling on murukkus, dunking khari biscuits, watching the evening fade into the night—need I anything more to make my day worth it? I look forward to these evenings more than anything else… but what do I say when you ask me, “what are you doing?". Small pleasures are the only pleasures we have in this life; looking back, I don’t think I would ever regret not going hiking!
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 8:16 PM 6 comments

 
Does life have meaning? Does life need to have meaning? Can there be a standard definition or yardstick for life’s meaning? Can philosophers define a meaning that every individual could evaluate their lives by? And if our life did not conform to the definition, would our lives be meaningless? Would a meaningless life mean an unhappy life? But if a happy life could be meaningless too, would that life be worth it? But then, if a meaningful life were unhappy, would that be worth it either?

Most important of all, what IS meaning?

Maybe this is one of those questions that holds the key to life itself.

Why are we always in search of a larger design or grand plan to life and our place in the scheme of things? If we were told that there is no plan, no design, it is all pure chance, pure randomness, you come into this world someday, things happen to you at random, and then one day you die, and then you are no more —would we accept it gracefully? How utterly meaningless and pointless life would seem to be!

Contrast this with the other theory that all this is a part of a larger significant plan and everything works according to that plan. It is not randomness but a carefully laid out chess board as it were where every piece has its place and where there are rules to how you play. Religion is that rule for some, pure actions for others, moral codes for some others, and what have you. How heartening to believe that what you sow, you shall reap, how well you play, you will be rewarded; your entire life gains a perspective, a reference point, you see a goal before you, you see some ‘meaning’ before you, you may not be sure what it is but just the fact that it’s there somewhere, however elusive, hidden in the game, waiting to be found, makes you want to wake up another day, makes you want to ‘live’ …makes you want to give your best to the game while you’re at it… and win in the eyes of the one who matters…in the way it matters…

Some say life must be lived and not analyzed… but isn’t that saying one must live in darkness and never look for light?
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 10:32 PM 7 comments

 
When I discovered blogging almost 10 years ago, it was new territory. There was no term called Social Media then, that I recall. As someone who loves to ponder on things and discuss them with like-minded people, I loved the idea of having a platform to do just that—to scribble away, to think aloud, to share my thoughts, to connect with whoever came along and could relate with what I had to say, to argue and debate, to meet minds all over the world… seemed like an exciting proposition!

I didn’t know where this would all lead to… but my blog grew to be a happy place for me by each passing day and the only thing I knew was, till the blog or I existed, it would be a part of my journey, recording my thoughts and impressions and even emotions, however subtly, as we went along… that has happily been true. My blog has been that one constant thing in my life among many inconstancies, and what is more, it has been a listening board when I just wanted to vent out to no one in particular. I guess it makes sense that I stopped writing a diary after my blog came in…

Being an intrinsically private person, it has been challenging at times to say what’s on my mind, without compromising on certain codes of behaviour that are important to me. I strongly believe in maintaining a certain dignity, whether it’s online or offline, and to me dignity encompasses being sensitive about what is public and what is personal, and not letting the two boundaries overlap.

Today, many years later, there is a whole new world called Social Media, and blogs are just a small part of this giant phenomenon. New platforms, tools, technologies all help you ‘connect’ with people, in one way or the other, and nobody’s life is now untouched by it. Everyone has a ‘voice’ now and everyone is exerting that voice. I wonder if it hasn’t become like the proverbial ‘bandar ke haath mein ustara’. Even a good thing can become dangerous in the hands of a person who doesn’t know how to use it. And the question that has been increasingly niggling me is, are we using these tools sensibly?

I tend to feel that people are giving free reign to their insecurities, their need for self-validation, their desire for attention in these spaces...there also appears to be an obsession to share every minute tidbit of one’s life, whether what one had for breakfast is of even the littlest interest to anyone else, doesn’t seem to be a cause for pause. We seem to be bombarded with or force-fed the most inane and banal of details of everybody’s lives everywhere we look around us, and the inconsequential seems to be taking over our very existence! We presumably are more ‘connected’ with everybody else now, but somehow there is a lot of emptiness… in the need to show how happy, lucky, friendly, wealthy, pretty etc we are, I somehow notice a lot of shallowness…

Sometimes it is difficult to say whether it is these tools that are reshaping our thoughts and behaviour and making us more vain and obsessed with ourselves, or whether these tools are just projecting the new reality, the inherent lack of depth and meaning in our society. I don’t know. I think it’s not about the medium or the tool, but about how we use it and what we do with it…the tool is just a mirror, and it can only be true to the face that looks into it. It can’t make ugly look pretty.

I feel Social Media has definitely brought tremendous positives into our lives; I needn’t look any further than my own blog. I also feel that while Social Media has increased the amount of noises and voices out there, at least, it’s made us the people a force to reckon with, for the same reason. It has brought the world closer and made us a global community in the true sense.

While being cynical is my nature, I don’t mind exploring the possibilities in things. In one of these moods, I recently landed on the micro-blogging site ‘Twitter’, and got myself a handle. And I have to admit it brought back some of the excitement I felt when I first created my blog. Maybe not so surprising because it shares many similarities with the blogging medium—you post blogs of 140 characters or less on anything that is of interest to you and people may choose to connect with you or ‘follow’ you as they say in Twitter terminology, if they want to continue listening to what you have to say. The good thing is you can choose to follow people who share your areas of interest, and be a part of only those conversations that add value either to your work or to yourself.

Social Media are here to stay and I would say that’s a good thing. Now, whether we use it to provoke terror (as in the recent UK riots) or to promote healthy dialoguing, is up to us… and would reflect where we are headed as a world…
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 8:12 PM 9 comments

 
A recent incident made me realise how arrogant and conceited people get when in power. And when they get that power in the first place because ‘we the public’ give it to them, you really wonder at it. Look at politics or media. I mean, aren’t politicians and journalists around to ‘serve’ people… do they do that honestly or committedly? The recent Murdoch case is enough said. And they have the cheek to flaunt a holier-than-thou arrogance! If it weren’t for us ordinary, non-powerful, non-influential, regular, common people, where would you be? What would you be? Remember your calling, which, like any other work, profession, occupation, is just ‘work’, but with a nobler motive. Do it honourably, stay humble, stay grounded, and count your blessings if we still ‘keep you in power’, whether we elect you or read you, and be justly thankful, like all of us are to our audience, clients, customers or whoever it is we strive to delight…

Here’s something that tickled me from this site schindler.org

***
[defining news]
Go out and find things that people want put in the paper
And things that people don't want put in the paper.
And interesting things.
Like that rain of dogs a few months ago?
There was no rain of dogs two months ago.
But...
One puppy is not a rain. It fell out of a window. Look, we are not interested in pet precipitation, spontaneous combustion, or people being carried off by weird things from out of the sky...
Unless it happens.
Well obviously we are if it does happen. But when it doesn't, we're not. Okay? News is unusual things happening...
And usual things happening...
And usual things, yes. But news is mainly what someone somewhere doesn't want you to put in the paper ...
Except sometimes it isn't.
...News all depends. But you'll know it when you see it. Clear? Right. Now go out and find some.
***
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 9:35 PM 2 comments

 
Goodbye is a word I have always hated. Maybe that is what makes me prolong the moment forever. I like to stick to things like glue and never say goodbye. Sometimes it does more harm than good… Good and harm… why do the things that feel so good, do so much harm?

I am going off on a tangent actually. I have changed my job after seven long years… it was a very strange feeling saying ‘goodbye’ after all these years… all these memories… all these moments… all the good times and bad times… but it had to be done, some time… and I have tried to put it off… as I always do… because I hate the final moment… the final bye byes… the final never coming back… I loved it and I hate to leave it… but I have to move on… have to grow… have to spread my wings… have to fly… have to see new places, new people, new things… have to explore… have to find myself…

I was reading this book and I felt there was some subtle message for me there… only when you let something free, do you really possess it… because it is then ‘essentially’ yours… not because you were binding it to yourself and holding it in a cage… because it intrinsically belongs… and no matter how far it flies… and how removed it is in distance… it still belongs… in its heart… and it must come back …

Fare well, dear old place… and thank you… will miss you…
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:02 PM 8 comments

 
Is the intention to commit a criminal action important in determining a person’s guilt? Or, is a criminal action in itself or of itself enough to prove a person’s guilt? Or, does the degree of guilt (and therefore punishment) in either case vary?

I was reading Herman Melville’s short story Billy Budd some time ago. More than a story, it is somewhat of a case study in how the letter of the law (in this case military law) can sometimes be at variance with the dictates of the human conscience, and how even when a judgement is ‘right’ in the eyes of the law, it may still seem ‘wrong’ in the eyes of God.

Without going into the exact details, let me summarise the main circumstances of the story. The action is set on board an English war ship in the latter part of the 18th century. Here is Billy Budd, a young sailor who is almost angelic in nature, innocence personified, who obviously cannot even hurt a fly, and there is an experienced, mean, evil minded man on board who somehow gets it into his head to land Billy in trouble, for no particular reason than for the fun his evil nature would derive to see an innocent suffer, and perhaps out of pure envy. The captain of the ship is a well respected, upright, man of principles, whose single-minded objective is to ensure that the ship’s war mission is achieved.

One day, the evil guy in pursuit of his aim to harm Billy accuses him of mutiny (rebellion) in the presence of the captain. The captain does not believe him and turns to Billy to demand an explanation. Billy, caught completely unawares by the accusation and having a tendency to lose his power of speech in overwhelming situations, knocks the evil guy on the forehead. The strength of the blow is such that the evil chap dies on the spot.

The captain is now required to take stock of the situation and pronounce a judgement. It is clear to him that there was no intention to kill and yet the military law of the time that he is duty-bound to uphold, says clearly that when a murder is committed, it deserves nothing but the highest punishment (death penalty). There is no provision in the law to take into account ‘intention’ or lack of it.

The story ends on a very sad note. The captain, in spite of his own conscience, complies with the letter of the law, and holds Billy guilty of murdering a senior officer. It does not matter if Billy intended to kill the officer or not. The officer is dead. Billy must hang.

If Billy was let off alive for killing a fellow officer, it may have led to mutiny, it may have led to more men killing each other, it may have led to the failure of the ship’s mission… no doubt, the military law was in existence to serve the interests of the military and the country at large, and not for securing justice to individuals. When one thinks about it, what should the captain have done?

The story made a powerful impact on me because I couldn’t but ask myself — what would I have done? The emotional side of me wanted to cry that someone as innocent as Billy, innocent as a babe, should have been hanged, for a crime he never intended to commit, for being a victim of circumstances that were forced on him. I only saw him as a poor victim and not a criminal. I did feel that his total lack of intention to commit an offence should have proved him ‘non-guilty’.

What made me think of this story? …the verdict in the Neeraj Grover murder case that was out yesterday. Seems quite unrelated but it actually made me re-evaluate the ethical dilemma posed by Billy’s story.

I have been vaguely following the Neeraj Grover murder case in the papers since it happened 3 years ago—I admit my attention was first drawn to it because of the bizarre and horrifying circumstances of the crime as reported in the media. I remember shuddering when I read that Maria Susairaj, the co-accused, had apparently gone to a mall to buy weapons and a bag, and later both Emile Jerome and Maria cut up Neeraj’s body into “300” pieces, put it into the bag, and burnt it in the jungles of Manor.

The court’s decision to let off Maria with 3 years’ term—which she has already spent in jail—and Emile with 10 years, stumped me to put it very mildly. The reasoning, from what I understood, was that it was a ‘crime of passion’ committed by Emile Jerome when he found his girlfriend Maria in a compromising situation with Neeraj. He apparently had no intention or premeditated plan to kill him. After the deed was done, Maria says that she was ‘pressurised’ to go buy tools and a bag at a nearby mall, which they later used to gruesomely cut up and burn Neeraj Grover.

Maria then landed up at a police station with Neeraj’s friend, as innocent as you please, to file a missing person’s complaint.

Maria has been given a 3 years’ sentence for ‘destruction of evidence’, it would seem, the said destruction of evidence being the act of cutting up the body and burning it. And Emile Jerome has been given 10 years because it was a crime of passion and he apparently did not mean to murder Neeraj.

The fact is, in this Neeraj Grover case, the judge seems to have taken into account ‘intention to commit a crime’ and though in Billy Budd’s case I strongly felt ‘intention’ should have been considered, in this case I feel such a ‘consideration’ has actually led to a dilution of justice. I feel shocked at the lightness with which a crime of such a disgusting magnitude has been dealt with. I feel shocked that Maria walks free today, that Emile will walk free after 7 years.

I do believe that an ‘intention’ to commit a crime should have a bearing in determining a person’s guilt and subsequent punishment. I also feel that when a crime is committed in the face of extreme provocation, it needs to be dealt with leniency. For example, if a woman who is being raped smashes a man’s head in that moment to defend herself, the woman certainly cannot be meted out a punishment for murder like any common murderer.

But, in the Neeraj murder case, could we say Emile acted in the face of extreme provocation, which the phrase ‘crime of passion’ would suggest? It is at once a tricky question because what’s extreme provocation for me may be mild for you. It can be argued that it was extremely provoking for him to see his girlfriend in a compromising situation with another man in her house in the wee hours of the night (it is another matter that the said girlfriend was definitely not acting against her will). Even if we grant him ‘provocation’, what sets this case totally apart for me, and what makes me absolutely unsympathetic towards viewing it as a simple ‘crime of passion’, is what happened ‘after’ the crime was committed.

The brutal, inhuman, degrading, disgusting, horrifying abuse of Neeraj’s corpse, just after the murder was committed, suggests in one word ‘cold bloodedness’—to get intimate with each other after the gruesome deed is done, to go to a mall and buy a weapon for destruction, to cut the body into pieces, to put them in a bag, take it to a jungle and burn it—does this suggest the act of a person who committed a crime in a moment of passion? does this suggest intrinsic innocence gone wrong? does this suggest basic goodness with no intention towards evil or crime? Yes, Neeraj was a dead man already when they mutilated him, but is it a ‘technical’ difference? The moment he was murdered, did a living, breathing man suddenly become nothing more than a piece of ‘evidence’, which the two ‘destroyed’? The intention towards the ‘body’ of this man is not the same as the intention towards a ‘living’ man? The cold bloodedness that is required to kill cannot be established towards the ‘living’ man but what does it show if not cold bloodedness that could actually make them commit what they did later? And, for this horrendous act, Maria walks free today and Jerome will after 7?

Had it been another Billy Budd story, Neeraj Grover’s murderers would have to die without question because the act of taking away a life was committed, whether intentional or not… The utter callousness with which such life was taken, with which such life was destroyed, cannot be equated with innocence that acted in the face of grim provocation or extreme passion. I don’t believe in an eye for an eye… but neither can I come to grips with the fact that I am living in a society and in the ambit of a judiciary where a life means so very little… where the dead deserve so very little… Billy Budd’s imaginary story suddenly seems a lot less heart rending, compared with the real world alternative…
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:37 PM 0 comments

 
A feature in today’s edition of Brunch, the Hindustan Times’ Sunday magazine, got me thinking. It was about relationships and how relationships these days are so much about individual choices than about the family, community or religion, as they used to be. Individual choices have thrown up new ways of approaching relationships such as live-ins, open marriages, and what not, and people no more care whether these choices impact anyone else but themselves. Contrary to a time when people used to take many things and people into consideration when it came to the decision to marry or the decision to separate, these days the worry is limited to themselves. I, me, myself. The individual is king.

When I think about it in a general sense, and going by my own system of thought, I see predominance of the individual as a good thing. I don’t believe in doing something because someone else says so, does so, it’s what one should do, it’s what my religion says, that’s how it always was done, etc etc. It is your life, and it has to be your choice, as long as it does not harm another human being, and does not stamp or tamper with anyone else’s freedom to make choices, you choose.

But, dig a little deeper, and I ask myself, is it that simple? We all exist in a community of people, and we all want to act as individuals, with our own independent way of thinking and being, and that’s all very good, but when such independence is carried to an extreme that it starts threatening the very fabric or structure or framework on which the community or society itself is built, is it really a good thing? I don’t want to be misunderstood here. I am not referring to the idea of live-ins or open marriages or any such arrangements as contrary to a healthy society or community—as I said earlier, I believe that every individual must have the right to decide and do what works for them, and no one can dictate that for them—but I must say that the question arises for me, in such a scenario where every individual operates as a society unto himself, with their own rules and values, how does the society thrive, or indeed, survive? How do we all live in harmony if we only look out for ourselves? Our emotions? Our pleasures? Do we need institutions like marriage, family, and so on to be in harmony? Marriage or family itself means putting a unit’s interests over that of oneself, so can we even function as a family if we want to be so fiercely individualistic? Is that why families break so easily nowadays because we just cannot be more than me? Where do our kids find the kind of support that we used to find earlier, if marriages and family units don’t exist anymore? How wholesome would such children be? And what about their children? All in all, is our individuality, our thirst for no-bonds, no-strings, taking us to a happier frame of mind, a happier world, where all are happy in their individual worlds, or is it taking us to a collective desert where everyone is lonely and imprisoned in their own world with no one to reach out to?

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Been reading John Donne, one of my favourite poets. The high point of his poetry is his ability to combine the intellect with emotion, and win your heart by engaging your head.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
—John Donne
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 9:54 PM 7 comments

 
Memories grown old
fall like dry leaves over my balcony
I hold them
caressingly, quiveringly
afraid I will tear them, break them, lose them
Memories caught in instants of time
freezing vistas and faces and things
frames that capture more than photos
Each embedded with sweet, sometimes sad
drops of feeling
Lost in time, yet never to be lost
like dry leaves with everlasting souls
that fly away skywards
to become little specks in the sky
twinkling in the night
glistening on my cheeks...

(by me)
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 10:39 PM 9 comments