a poem By Prof. Biswaroop Das

FOR SADAN


You may just be in search for words,
But here I can't even locate the letters.
Trapped and hung on inverted commas,
Texts around me are all in fetters.

Lonely they yell, and swell as they please,
Some just gang up only to tease.
Few skip and jump through the tightened noose,
And the rest hang safely, always loose.

Texts get hijacked by cooked up stories,
Shaped and spiced up by many chefs.
Words and letters look pale and grave,
and crawl all over to work as slaves.

Wish you could search for those lost words,
And I could locate the letters in odds.
To weave and shape a good new text,
Put to the world, and work for the next.

Biswaroop
4th November, 2009

words betray me

words betray me.
one by one,
slowly,
letters fade and disappear,
leaving but a trail
vast and scattered and empty,
filled with surreptitious details,
codes in mysterious fonts and colours,
they call mind boggling.
i restlessly shift my body,
leaving pages blank

Night Life in Rander, Surat

प्रतिलिपि प्रश्नावली/Pratilipi Questionnaire

Following is my response to a questionnaire on issues related to terrorism. This is from anniversary issue of a bilingual online journal pratilipi.





1. Have you ever felt ‘terrorized’ by something? Have you ever told / described it to someone? Has it found an expression in your work?

sadan:
My immediate response to the first part of the question was ‘yes’. However, on a second thought, I take a pause. I begin excavating my own experiences. Nightmares of my childhood days and moments of agony immediately come to my mind. A group of dacoits are following me and I am unable to run. They are coming close…and close… the night before those school exams or preparing to face authority with a deep down realization of committing grave wrong, crimes during those early days.

Sharing was not an issue then. Now when I revisit those experiences, they appear banal, everyday life. I question again, are they same — terror and fear? Are they twins? They are inseparable, yet not identical.

Terror has definite political underpinnings. It engulfs or even comes from everything that we own and witness today in our everyday life. But, this everyday-ness has to be distinguished from the moments of the ordinary-ness that I mentioned earlier. Nightmares and facing the authority both can be examples of terror. Yet, the fear of getting scolded in the school or from parents is different from seeing media images of shooting in a non-descript US school premises. The figures like decoits and terrorists though share anti-establishment agenda differ in the sense of their orientation towards desired objectives, their own self image and most crucially in terms of their positioning vis a vis the institution of the state.

To bring together these figures-dakoits and the terrorist may be an act of over simplification but similar argument (albeit in different mold) can be made when we bring traumatic experiences of Partition violence of 1946-50 or from German Holocaust, communal riots or for that matter similar episodes of mass violence along with terrorist attacks of 1980s or of recent origins. The context is different, manifestation is changed and the ramification is at a different terrain.

The second part of the question though posed in the limited sense of telling, expressing experiences of terror actually opens up a much difficult zone of experience that is about sharing. The flip side of the mentioned question is have you listened, shared traumatic part of some one’s life? Sharing has therapeutic potential in both modern modes like psychoanalysis as well as in a number of non-modern practices oriented to share the experiences of another (person’s) body. In modernity, we reduce this engagement in binary terms-a relation between the victim and the perpetrator, between the patient and the doctor/therapist, nature and development, authority and liberation. What about the cultural context of sharing and listening and expressing what body undergoes during episodic outbursts of mass violence?

I am more interested to understand these aspects of sharing to be more precise cultures of listening. However, the key question, here, would not be to develop a scientific language to resolve the complexities inherent in regimes of experiencing and listening narratives of mass violence but to unpack the very category of experience itself. To begin with the need is to rescue experience from the science on the one hand and from poetry on the other extreme. The usual disclaimers must not be avoided-the act of rescue is only a first step and not an end; this rescue operation must not be at the cost of making science and poetry redundant.

2. At a psychological / aesthetic / philosophical level, can terror be ‘represented’ in art? Would you like to name certain works (art/writing) in which it has been done effectively?

Sadan:
There has been a very long debate on representing mass violence. To those familiar with the discourse on Holocaust, this is not a new topic. Yet, this is not a saturated discourse at all. The question on the one hand addresses complexities constituting the concept of representation and its ability re-present a subject. The apprehensions often come shrouded in the language of positivism - in terms of authentic presentation, miss-representation, full-presentation and so on and so forth. On the other hand, we have the subject of mass-violence and the form in which events and experiences related to it can be expressed. In recent years, Giorgio Agamben has been offering us insights to go beyond this binary and stretch the equation between representation and extreme and unique experiences of mass-violence. He argues that the language is the only means to express extreme experiences of violence. There is no escape from language (language here is not one specific linguistic system). On the other hand, language becomes incapable to express/represent certain extreme forms of brutality/trauma and we come across representations that redefine the limits of human language. This engagement with the boundary I believe is the need of the hour.

3. Which would you consider to be the most terrorizing moment / event / ideology you have known?

Sadan:
Twentieth century has been a century of mass violence. It is very difficult to take out a single event. We have state sponsored terrorism (totalitarian regimes are known and well documented for this part) to terrorism along ethnic and racial lines (ranging from east-Europe to western Africa to Middle East to name a few). Other forms of mass violence, if included in this list, would lead us to systematic erasure of cultural memories, civilizational underbellies and physical traces by state-sponsored mega development projects. A majority of such episodes are not even documented. In terms of

ideology, I fear totalitarianism (ranging from communism to fascism to Islamic and Hindu fundamentalism) the most.

4. How do you respond to the rhetoric of terror(ism) in mainstream media and politics?

Sadan:
Gradually the space of critical self-reflection is disappearing from mainstream media. Here, I presume a distinction between self-reflection and critical self-reflection. People are questioning media-bombardment of images, the manner in which specific events are covered in media. But, these criticism remain merely at the level of self-reflection without addressing the deeper questions related to the act. In another word, the mainstream media’s own criticism remains caught up within the singular equation between truth and ethics.

5. Have the (serial) blasts around made you feel insecure?

Sadan:
Insecure? No. But, it is pushing the environment towards more rigid/determined notions of self-hood and less to fragile, not so formulated and wandering personality.

हिंसा के संत्रास को सुनना: सदन झा

हिंसा के संत्रास को सुनना: सदन झा

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हिंसा के संत्रास को सुनना: सदन झा


भारत विभाजन पर एक शोधकर्ता की टिप्पणी
वक्ताओं और श्रोताओं
उत्तर भारत में एक लोकोक्ति प्रचलित है -

रहिमन निज मन की व्यथा, मन ही राखो गोय।
सुन इठलाइहें लोग सब, बांट न लीन्हें कोय॥

यह कहावत पीड़ा भोग रहे व्यक्ति के लिए एक तरह की सामाजिक चेतावनी है, या इसे एक मनोवैज्ञानिक सलाह भी कहा जा सकता है।

मेरी रुचि इस लोकोक्ति में निहित नैतिक संदेश में या उसकी पुनर्व्याख्या करने में नहीं है। मेरी दिलचस्पी लोक विवेक के उस घटक को समझने में है जो किसी के साथ अपना दुख बांटने या किसी की तकलीफ को सुनने को दो व्यक्तियों के बीच की निहायत गंभीर अंतःक्रिया के रूप में स्थापित करता है। लोगों के सामने अपनी कमजोरी जाहिर हो जाने की आशंका व्यक्ति के लिए अपना दुख बांटने को बहुत मुश्किल बना देती है। लोग आप की बात सुनकर आप पर हंसे नहीं यह आशंका श्रोता जुटाने की प्रक्रिया को और भी दुरूह बना देती है।

विभाजन पर शोध/हिंसा से मुठभेड़
सुनने के विविध आयामों के प्रति मेरी रुचि तब जागी जब मैं आशीष नंदी के निर्देशन में विकास अध्ययन केंद्र दिल्ली में “जीवन का पुनर्सृजन” परियोजना से शोधकर्ता के रूप में जुड़ा। इस परियोजना के तहत १९४७ के भारत विभाजन के दौरान हिंसा में जिंदा बचे लोगों के मौखिक इतिहास और अनुभवों को जुटाया और उनका विश्लेषण किया गया था। विभाजन पर अध्ययन करने वालों के बीच इस दौरान हुई हिंसा में मरने वालों की संख्या को लेकर भारी मतभेद है और यह संख्या २ लाख से लेकर २० लाख के बीच झूलती नजर आती है। इस दौरान विस्थापित हुए लोगों की संख्या निश्चय ही इससे कहीं ज्यादा है। दरअसल विभाजन पर लिखते हुए आंकड़ों का इस्तेमाल खास तरह की ऐतिहासिक संवेदनशीलता के साथ किया जाता है। जैसा कि इतिहासकार ज्ञानेंद्र पांडे ने कहा भी है कि इस उपद्रव के ऐतिहासिक विमर्श के साथ सत्यापित किए जा सकने वाले तथ्यों की बजाय अफवाहों, अटकलों पर आधारित, मनमाने, अतिरंजनापूर्ण, अपुष्ट किंतु विश्वसनीय आंकड़ों का ठप्पा हमेशा लगा रहेगा। विभाजन के संत्रास को बताने के लिए गंभीर अध्येताओं और दक्षिणपंथी राजनीतिक कार्यकर्ताओं, दोनों ने समुदायों के लोगों की संख्याओं और प्रतिक्रियाओं को बढ़ा-चढ़ा कर प्रस्तुत किया है।

पाकिस्तान से विस्थापित हुए अनेक शरणार्थी बाद के वर्षों में दिल्ली या उत्तर भारत के अन्य प्रदेशों में बस गए। इस परियोजना के तहत शोध के लिए मैंने वर्ष २००१-०२ के दौरान दिल्ली, अजमेर और जम्मू के गांवों में घूम-घूम इन विस्थापितों से साक्षात्कार किए।

विभाजन के दौरान हुई हिंसा में जिंदा बचे लोगों को लेकर ज्यादातर शोधवृत्तियां उन वक्ताओं की स्मृतियों पर आधारित वर्णन की भाषा के अनुसंधान तक सीमित हैं, जो यह देखती हैं कि बात को कितना समस्याग्रस्त बना कर प्रस्तुत किया गया है। जबकि स्रोता के सुनने की प्रक्रिया पर शायद ही कोई ध्यान दिया गया हो। हिंसा, स्मृति और भाषा के प्रति सुनने वाले की दृष्टि के बीच संबंध पर भी शायद कभी ध्यान नहीं दिया गया। भाषा के अनुसंधान के लिए वक्ता की बजाय स्रोता की दृष्टि पर ध्यान देते ही हिंसा के बोझ और हिंसा की स्मृति किस तरह के ज्ञान के निर्माण के क्षेत्र पर छाई रहती है, इसे बांटने के आयामों को समझने के लिए दूसरी ही दृष्टि मिलती है। यह बदलाव हमें यह समझने में मदद करता है कि एक साक्षात्कार के दौरान हिंसा कैसे एक से दूसरी जगह पर प्रत्यारोपित होती है। उन अनुभवों को सुनते हुए हम सोचने लगते हैं कि जिन लोगों ने हिंसा का सामना किया उन पर क्या बीती होगी।

मनोवैज्ञानिक डोरी लॉब होलोकॉस्ट में जिंदा बचे लोगों के संदर्भ में लिखते हुए बताते हैं

संत्रास को भोगने वालों की बातों को सुनते हुए स्रोता स्वयं भी आंशिक रूप से उस संत्रास का भोक्ता बनने लगता है।

लॉब का अनुकरण करते हुए यह पूछा जा सकता है कि: सामुहिक हिंसा के विवरणों को सुनना स्रोता पर क्या असर डालता है? और, पीड़ित की मनःस्थिति (यहां तक कि उसकी देह भी) कैसे जवाब देने वाले से प्रश्नकर्ता में प्रत्यारोपित हो जाती है?

मेरे लिए यह प्रश्न बहुत महत्वपूर्ण हो गए। इन्होंने मुझे न सिर्फ जनहिंसा की उस तर्कहीन राजनीति को समझने की कोशिश करने के लिए बाध्य किया बल्कि एक साक्षात्कारकर्ता या स्रोता के रूप में और साथ मैं जिनका साक्षात्कार कर रहा था उनकी बातों का पुनःलेखन करने वाले व्यक्ति के रूप में मैं जो नया व्यक्ति बन रहा था उसे भी समझने के लिए प्रेरित किया।

शोध के दौरान हुई इन मुलाकातों के परिणामस्वरूप मैं इस बात में विश्वास करने लगा कि साक्षात्कारकर्ता या अभिलेख जुटाने वालों की उपस्थिति जितनी ज्यादा होती है अभिलेखागारों में अधिकारिताओं को बनने से रोकने में उससे उतनी ही ज्यादा मदद मिलती है। इस परियोजना के संदर्भ में भी (खासतौर से उस भाग के संदर्भ में जिससे मैं जुड़ा रहा) सुनना ज्यादा प्रासंगिक होता है, क्योंकि साक्षात्कारकर्ता और जवाब देने वाला व्यक्ति इस तरह के संवाद में संलग्न हो जाते हैं जो पूरी तरह किसी ढांचे में बंधा नहीं होता और ऐसे में जवाब देने वाले और प्रश्नकर्ता दोनों के ही मन में उसकी बात को पूरा न सुना जाने की आशंका भी मंडराती रहती है।

धीरे-धीरे मुझे यह अहसास होने लगा कि यह नियोजित ढंग से सुनने की गतिविधियां, अधूरे साक्षात्कारों की स्मृतियां और हिंसक अतीत के विविध अनुभव जिन्हें में लगभग नियमित रूप से सुन रहा था, उन्होंने मेरे सपनों में जगह बनाना शुरू कर दिया है। मुझे खुद अपने लिए इन अनुभवों के विवरणों को पेश करने की जरूरत महसूस होने लगी थी, ताकि मैं जिस तरह की आत्मपरकता से गुजर रहा था उसे परानुभूति के साथ लेकिन आलोचनात्मक दृष्टि से समझा जा सके। मुझे इस बात की भी आवश्यकता महसूस होने लगी कि मैं अपने काम में स्मृतियों के पुनर्निर्माण की जिस तर्कहीन भावभूमि पर खड़ा था उसके असंगत पहलुओं का भी सामना कर सकूं।

यहां मैं इस प्रक्रिया के दौरान उभरी कुछ छवियों और प्रतिक्रियाओं को इकहरे विवरणों के रूप में नहीं बल्कि अनुभवों के उन टुकड़ों के रूप में प्रस्तुत करूंगा जिन्हें मैं उसी रूप में सुना करता था। उन्हें अलग-अलग समय में, विभिन्न भौगोलिक स्थानों पर लिखा गया है, जहां से कि उन्हें जुटाया भी गया था।

शांति बाई/चिमनी बाई, दिल्ली, २००१
मुझे अब उनका चेहरा याद नहीं। जो लोग मुझे जानते हैं वे कहते भी हैं कि मैं जल्दी भूल जाता हूं। मैं पिछली बार जब उनसे मिला इस बात को भी लंबा वक्त गुजर चुका है। दरअसल मुझे उनसे फिर मिलने की कोई जरूरत भी महसूस नहीं हुई। उनके साथ मेरी एकमात्र पहली मुलाकात ही मेरे लिए पर्याप्त थी। कहा जा सकता है कि हर लिहाज से पूर्ण। उस समय की एक छवि, समय का एक टुकड़ा मेरी स्मृति में दर्ज है, लेकिन उनका चेहरा मुझे बिल्कुल भी याद नहीं। प्रेम, ऊष्मा और दर्द, उस मुलाकात का जो मुझे याद है, उसका सार बस यही है। इनमें से किसी ने भी मेरी स्मृति को धोखा नहीं दिया है। वे सब मेरी अपेक्षाओं पर पूरी तरह खरे उतरे। शायद यही वह कारण है कि मैंने दुबारा कभी जा कर उनसे मिलने के बारे में सोचा तक नहीं।

मुझसे कहा गया था कि मैं उनसे फिर मिलूं, ज्यादा से ज्यादा बातचीत करूं ताकि उनके जीवन के बारे में और ज्यादा जानकारियां हासिल कर सकूं, लेकिन मुझे फिर कभी उनसे मिलने की इच्छा तक नहीं हुई। असल में मेरे मन में एक तरह का डर बैठ गया था। यह सच है कि मुझे खुद भी उनसे कम से कम एक और मुलाकात की जरूरत महसूस होती थी, लेकिन मैं जानबूझ कर दुबारा उस गली में भी जाने से कतराने लगा, जिसमें वह रहती थीं। मैं उस दर्द को फिर से सहन नहीं कर सकता था।

उसी दिन, जब मैं उनसे विदा ले रहा था तब ही मैं जानता था कि मैं अब कभी यहां लौट कर नहीं आऊंगा, फिर भी मैंने उनसे कहा कि मैं फिर आऊंगा और उनसे उनकी जिंदगी के बारे में और बातचीत करूंगा। उन्होंने बहुत मासूमियत के साथ मेरी बात को मान लिया और मुझे खुला आतंत्रण दिया कि मैं जब भी चाहूं उनके पास जा सकता हूं।

लेकिन ऐसा कभी नहीं हुआ। उनसे दुबारा मिलना हमेशा स्थगित ही रहा, और हमेशा के लिए निरस्त हो गया। मुझे याद है कि उस दिन जब मेरी उनके साथ बातचीत खत्म हुई उस वक्त मैं कितना उत्तेजित था और किस संत्रास से गुजर रहा था। मुझे याद नहीं कि मैंने ठीक-ठीक कब और कैसे उनसे विदा ली। मेरी स्मृति मेरे उस अलगाव के क्षण को दर्ज नहीं कर सकी। हालांकि मुझे लगभग वह पूरा क्रम याद है जिसमें यह साक्षात्कार आगे बढ़ा। उस मुलाकात के अंत की विस्मृति के पीछे इसके अपने कारण तलाशे जा सकते हैं। संभवतः इसकी अपनी व्याख्या किए जाने की आवश्यकता भी है। मैं उनमें से कुछ कारणों का अनुमान कर सकता हूं, और मुझे उनकी परवाह भी है। लेकिन मेरा फटाफट किसी चतुराईपूर्ण सफाई के साथ उनसे छुटकारा पाकर उनसे दूर खड़े हो जाने का इरादा नहीं है। मैं चाहता हूं कि उस मुलाकात का रोमांस उसी मुलाकात से उपजी हिंसा, संत्रास और तकलीफ में समाविष्ट हो जाने का प्रतिरोध करता रहे।

यह एक ऐसा साक्षात्कार है जिसे मैं उसके अधूरेपन के बावजूद हर लिहाज से पूर्ण पाता हूं। शोक और हिंसा का एक दृश्य इसी तरह के अन्य दृश्यों की तरह मेरे सामने अभिनीत किया गया और जिसे मैंने असंख्य उतार-चढ़ावों के साथ अनेक अवसरों पर सुना। फिर भी चेतना के मैदान में मैं अब भी उस एक मुलाकात की चौखट में कैद हूं। इस पाठ को लिखना मेरे लिए खुद को उस कड़ी से मुक्त करने की तरह है। ऐसा कहा जाता है कि लेखन यादों को उनमें बसी हिंसा से मुक्त करता है। हालांकि उन संत्रासकारी अनुभवों को लिखना अपने आप में बेहद पीड़ादाई प्रक्रिया है। यह एक दूसरे किस्म की हिंसा है।

धानी राम, जम्मू दयारन शिविर (मिस्रीवाला के पास), जम्मू कश्मीर, २००२
उसने कहा, “रामधारी हो जाए, सुलह हो जाए। रामधारी होनी चाहिए.” (शांति हो जाए और दोस्ती हो जाए। शांति बनी रहनी चाहिए।)

रामधारी होने का आशय उस अवस्था से है जिसमें कोई दुश्मन नहीं होता, जहां सिर्फ प्यार होता है, सब तरफ सिर्फ प्यार।

उसने रामधारी शब्द का यह अर्थ मुझे समझाया। मैं उसके साथ हाल ही बनाए गए अस्थाई राहत शिविर में बैठा बात कर रहा था। हालांकि मुझे बहुत तीव्रता के साथ यह महसूस हो रहा था कि वह सिर्फ मुझसे बात नहीं कर रहा है। वह अपनी सारी उम्मीदों और अपनी तमाम निराशाओं को भी संबोधित कर रहा था। बार-बार विस्थापन का शिकार धानीराम अपने बचपन के बारे में बहुत बात करता है। उसने अपनी मातृभाषा डोगरी में गीत गाने के बारे में बात की, ऐसे गीतों की बात जो देवी मां को समर्पित होते हैं। उसने काउड़ी के खेल के बारे में बात की, जिसे खेलना उसे अपने बचपन में बहुत पसंद हुआ करता था। फिर उसने इस बात पर अफसोस जताया कि अब तो सब लोग टीवी देखते हैं और कोई भी डोगरी में बीत नहीं गाता। जब मैंने उसे जीवन के खुशनुमा अनुभवों के बारे में पूछा (मुझे इस तरह के प्रश्न पूछने के निर्देश दिए गए थे) तब उसने कहा, मैं बचपन में खुश रहना जानता था। अब मैं खुशी को नहीं जानता। मैं सुबह खाना खाता हूं तब मुझे नहीं मालूम होता कि शाम को क्या होने वाला है। यहां सिर्फ दुख हमारे साथ हैं, खुशी नहीं।

लंबोदरनाथ, मिस्रीवाला शिविर, जम्मू २००२
मिस्रीवाला शिविर के निवासी लंबोदरनाथ की याददाश्त बहुत अच्छी है, लेकिन मुझे खासतौर से उसके गहरे अकेलेपन और उदासी ने उसकी ओर आकर्षित किया। वह अकेला रहता है। खुशी के बारे में उसने कहा ÷कोई खुशी नहीं है। मैंने कभी खुशी महसूस ही नहीं की। बचपन से लेकर अब तक कभी नहीं। जैसे देखों मैंने जिंदगी में कभी नए कपड़े नही पहने, घमंड से मुझे नफरत है।’

मैं स्वयं, सदन झा, साक्षात्कारकर्ता
हिंसा के अनुभवों को सुनने की इस यात्रा के दौरान मैं स्वयं अनेक पड़ावों से गुजरा। शुरू में हिंसा और विस्थापन के जिन अनुभवों और विवरणों को मैं सुनता था उनके प्रति मैं काफी उदासीन रहता था। मेरे पास आधुनिक भारतीय इतिहास की अकादमिक पृष्ठभूमि थी। मैं १९४७ में भारतीय उपमहाद्वीप में विभाजन के काले इतिहास से जुड़े पाठों और विवरणों के बारे में पढ़ता रहा था और अब इस संबंध में की जाने वाली शोधवृत्तियों से परिचित था।

विभाजन से जुड़े मेरे अब तक के अध्ययन के कारण मेरी जो अपेक्षा बन गई थी उसकी तुलना में मेरा सामना अब तक ऐसे प्रकरणों से नहीं हुआ था जिन्हें बहुत गंभीर हिंसा की कार्रवाइयों के रूप में दर्ज किया जा सके। अपने काम के दौरान मेरा सामना जिस तरह के प्रकरणों से हो रहा था उनमें शारीरिका हिंसा कई बार बहुत मुखर या स्पष्ट सामने नहीं आती थी। लेकिन विस्थापितों की तादाद तो निश्चय ही बहुत ज्यादा थी, और फिर जिस तरह के विवरणों को मुझे सुनना होता था वे ही मुझे व्यस्त रखने के लिए काफी थे। सभी विवरणों को बहुत सावधानीपूर्वक सुनने और जहां जरूरी हो वहां आवश्यक हस्तक्षेप के लिए सतर्क रहने के लिए मैंने खुद को काफी तैयार कर लिया था। इसके लिए मुझे अपनी उदासीनता से भी जूझना पड़ता था। जल्दी ही इस स्थिति ने अपना असर दिखाना शुरू कर दिया। मुझे लगातार जुकाम रहने लगा। यह जुकाम ठीक नहीं हो रहा था और तब मुझे इस बात का अहसास हुआ कि साक्षात्कार के दौरान जैसे ही हिंसा और संत्रास का जिक्र आता मुझे खांसी का दौरा उठने लगता था। जैसे ही साक्षात्कार देने वाला व्यक्ति विभाजन के दौरान भोगी तकलीफों का जिक्र शुरू करता, मुझे जबरदस्त खांसी उठने लगती, जो रोके नहीं रुकती थी। इस खांसी के दौरे के साथ ही बहुत थकान भी महसूस होने लगती थी। अधूरे साक्षात्कार, अस्वीकार और संभावित साक्षात्कार देने वालों के मुलाकात से इनकार के कारण मुझे बुरे सपने आते और मैं रातों को ठीक से सो नहीं पाता।

अपने फील्ड वर्क के दौरान मैंने जाना कि मेरे भीतर भावनाओं का तूफान मचा हुआ है। मेरे भीतर गुबार फूट पड़ता कभी खुद अपने प्रति तो कभी मेरे प्रश्नों के जवाब देने वाले लोगों के प्रति। मेरे मन में धीरे-धीरे यह बात घर करने लगी कि इस तरह की बातचीत में शामिल कर मैं अपने सवालों के जवाब देने वालों को फिर से उसी हिंसा में झोंक रहा हूं। मैं जानता हूं कि खुद उन्हें इस बात का अहसास नहीं है लेकिन मेरा यकीन है कि हर मुलाकात के दौरान उनके प्रति अनेक परोक्ष रूपों में हिंसा होती है।

इसके अलावा जब भी मुझे अस्वीकार कर दिया जाता या कोई साक्षात्कार बीच में छूट जाता, और खासतौर से उन लंबे अंतरालों के दौरान जब मेरे प्रश्नों के जवाब देने वाले व्यक्ति अपने जीवन के ऐसे विवरणों के बारे में बताने लगता जो मेरी राय में अनउपयोगी या उबाऊ होते, तब समाज शास्त्र में मेरे अब तक के प्रशिक्षण के किन्हीं कोनों में से यह हिंसा बाहर निकल आती। मुझे अब अहसास होता है कि मेरे भीतर इस तरह का हिंसा तब ज्यादा सर उठाती थी जब मैं स्वयं अपनी प्रतिक्रिया की प्रकृति को समझने में नाकाम रहता था, और ऐसा मेरे साथ बार-बार होता था। कुछ हद तक मेरी देह उस हिंसा को दर्ज करती थी, लेकिन उसे समझने और उसके साथ संगति बिठाने में नाकाम रहती।

मुझे अब भी नहीं मालूम कि क्या इस प्रश्न का भाषा और संत्रास के बीच के संबंध के साथ कोई सरोकार है या नहीं, या यह हिंसा के ज्ञानमीमांसात्मक पहलू का ज्यादा सामान्य मसला है। अब मुझे अमूर्त प्रश्न ज्यादा आकर्षित करने लगे थे। मुझे इस बात पर यकीन हो चला था कि मैं अपने शरीर और खुद अपने आप को ज्यादा नुकसान पहुंचा रहा हूं। मेने एक ऐसी मनःस्थिति विकसित कर ली जिसमें मैं खुद ही हिंसा का शिकार भी होता था और उसका कर्ता भी होता था।

इतना ही नहीं, मैं खुद यह चाहता था कि कोई मुझे भी सुने।

Bant Singh Can Still Sing

Living with Terror: Dipesh Chakrabarty

Today I read this write up in Times of India. One of the significant points raised by Dipesh Chakrabarty here is about "security of populations". I was wondering how recent Mumbai attacks or for that matter, incidences of terrorism in recent decades have altered the core of democracy in which citizens always believed that they possess the right to be protected by the state. The way in which he has interlinked question of security (within the language of rights) and democracy ( and the issue of governance later in the essay) seems to offer not much than what has already been said in Indian media recently. However, in the second reading, the equation between state at the threshold of post-democracy, globalisation of concerns on issues like terrorism and the similarity of response by the state over migrant population offers lot of insights to think on the global circulation of not just people (in forms like terrorists, migrants, security/intelligence staff) but also the language of our responses. The images and words circulate across the boundaries in the manner that sometimes make us scared. Are we loosing our language to speak about particulars (place, events and people), language that can differentiate emotions and experiences...?


Living With Terror
22 Dec 2008, Dipesh Chakrabarty

The most recent Mumbai tragedy points to a general way some of the negative effects of globalisation are bringing us to the threshold of a
post-democratic age in the 21st century. Given the diverse global tensions in the world with terrorism, economic-environmental crises, and civil wars dislocating populations democratic states will increasingly tend to develop a strong security aspect in the coming decades.

The violence in Mumbai was perceptibly different from terrorist violence that India has seen before. This time the terrorists themselves wanted to create a "global" event. Their targets included many "ordinary" Indians but also the transnational elite that patronises the most well-known hotels of Mumbai, itself the most global city in India. Their technology and targets were global witness their use of Voice over Internet Protocol system to keep in touch with their masters in Pakistan or their deliberate targeting of a small Jewish community from overseas. Indian democracy has now, sadly, been ushered into a debate of the 21st century: Should democratic states become security-states as well? Security measures are, of course, no substitute for the political processes needed to heal rifts between countries and communities. But they cannot be ignored either.

This immediately raises two challenges. One is related to questions of democracy in general. The prospect of a security-state understandably and rightly concerns rights activists. Yet it is clear that the "security of populations" is itself emerging as a powerful right. In the developed countries today, it is hard to distinguish measures adopted to fend off terrorist attacks from the politics of refugees and "illegal" immigration. Of course, the balance between security and other rights cannot be decided in any a priori fashion, which is why it always should be open to debates with reference to specific contexts. There is, besides, the very important question of ensuring that the pursuit of security does not become a tool for oppression of and discrimination against minorities or immigrants. But the globalisation of this debate is what marks our times.

The second challenge arises from deep within the history of Indian politics. To have an effective cordon sanitaire against terror would require India to inject a degree of efficiency, alertness, and performance into an administrative apparatus that simply has not delivered on these scores for decades. Since the 1970s, government or public institutions in India have gradually ceased to be effective deliverers of goods and services. There is much that democracy in India has achieved by way of giving many low-caste and marginalised communities a sense of participation in the country's governmental institutions.

The growth of this politics of identity, however, has made elections into the mainstay of Indian democracy. It has distanced politics from issues of governance, and has gone hand in hand with a deepening of corruption, financial and otherwise, on the part of politicians and officials. A large number of the elected members of Parliament have criminal cases pending against them. Media reports and everyday experience suggest an elephantine, unaccountable, inefficient bureaucracy mired in self-indulgent use of resources with corruption and inefficiency often going together.

There was, for example, no effective coast guard force to intercept the Mumbai terrorists. It took the first lot of firefighters hours to respond to the fire at the Taj. It took nine hours to mobilise the commando force many of whom are usually kept busy providing "security" to politicians who often see such security as a matter of prestige. It has also been reported that a very large grant recently given to the Mumbai police for their modernisation was mostly spent on buying luxury cars and other expensive items for the use of senior officers and their ministers!

Creating a security system that will provide effective protection to the population from terrorist attacks will not be easy. Corruption follows public money in India as it does, unfortunately, in many countries, and undermines performance. Secondly, the effective functioning of any institution in India in a non-partisan manner would require that institution to be insulated from political interference. The second condition is not easily met. The required reforms thus call for a certain kind of political will that the political class in India has not quite shown in recent times.

Yet India cannot any longer avoid debates over security and other rights. The government has already announced certain measures making anti-terror laws more stringent. Some other reforms will also certainly follow on paper and perhaps in action as well. Many members of the Indian educated middle classes are angry at the inability of their government to protect them.

We do not know how effective that anger will be. If the nature of the political class remains the same, Indians will probably have to get used to living with a degree of terror the exact quantum of which is difficult to predict. One hopes though that the nation will address both the long-term and short-term problems together so that, important as security considerations are, this tragedy will initiate not just a rethink but also a revitalisation of democratic institutions in India as they cope with the challenges of this global century.

The writer is a history professor at the University of Chicago.

Dang trip

This weekend we went to the forest of Dang. I wanted to visit this forest since I came to Surat and joined CSS last year. However, the visit remained suspended. Initially, I wanted to do research on the people who live in this forest. I wanted to study how do they perceive the forest and their belongingness with the forest? In other words, experiences of the forest. I started reading books and articles... David Hardiman, Ajay Skaria, essays of my colleague Satyakam Joshi, District Gazetteers etc. But, soon I found that I did not know what I wanted to do. I was not clear why I wanted to do research on people who inhabit the jungle.
So, for quite a long time, the trip to the forest remained suspended. Finally, this weekend, me, Preeti, Akshar, Suresh and Umesh went to the forest. Satyakam was quite helpful when we enquired about how to go and where to go, whom to meet and what to do. He drew the map, contacted people on phone. Umesh happily took us inside. We went as tourists, the tank of my Maruti 800 got filled an evening before and by seven in the morning we were ready to move away from the city.
We took the Songadh route and from Songadh went inside. The Jungle was mesmerising and we stopped by a river (Gira) a water fall.

We further went to Shabri temple


and Girimal waterfall

stayed in a guest house at Uchhal and next morning while on our way back to Surat went up to Songadh fort.

a journey of about 356 kms. quite tiring but equally satisfying and filled with happines.

सोनाली और सुबिमल मास्टर की कहानी: प्रभात रंजन

एक बहुत ही अच्‍छी कहानी। प्रतिलिपी से साभार। प्रभात रंजन कई दफा बोलते जरुर थे कि छोटे शहर से आई मीडिया में नाम कमाती एक लड़की की कहानी लिखनी है।पर जो दमदार बात है वह किस्‍सागोई की करामात है। कहानी से कहानी निकले, महाभारत की तरह, कथासरित-सागर की तरह… उनके उस्‍ताद की तरह।बदलते मंजर का भूगोल, नेटवर्क का खेल, मीडिया के बाजार में अपने यादों को सहेजकर इस्‍तेमाल करती एक चालाक लड़की, एक सशक्‍त लड़की, संपादक के पद को नया आयाम देती । ये सब सहज ही दिखाई देता है इस कहानी में। पर जो थोड़ा गहरा है वह है अपराध सीरियल के फारमेट और प्रवाह में आधुनिकता से पहले की किस्‍सागोई का उपयोग।
सोनाली और सुबिमल मास्टर की कहानी: प्रभात रंजन

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गुलजार: बिरहा की रात का जलना

vatsanurag.blogspot.com
गुलजार को रवींद्र व्‍यास के जरिये पढ़ना दिलचस्‍प भी और टीस देने बाला भी। बहुत अटपटा लगेगा गुलजार को चाहने बालों को मेरा यह कहना। मैं खुद पेशोपेश में रहता हूँ, गुलजार को लेकर। यह उलझन इक बारगी तो बयाँ करती है एक कवि के शब्‍दों की ताकत को, जहाँ अर्थोँ की बहुलता है, वह पुकारता भी है, पुचकारता भी, दुलारता भी और लतारता भी, समाज को बदलने की बहुत प्‍यारी सी लतार– चप्‍पा चप्‍पा चरखा चले…
मैं जब से गीत के बोल समझने लगा, जब से यह पता चला कि सनिमा के गीत में कोई भाषा, कुछ अर्थ होते हैं, तब से गुलजार का मुरीद बन गया। दरभंगा जैसे छोटे शहर, अस्‍सी का गुजरता दशक, मध्‍यवर्गीय शिक्षक का पारिवारिक माहौल, पढ़ने लिखने की चाहत, लड़कियों को चुपके से देखने और फिर उनके छाते की रँगों या कान के झुमके को सोचते हुए खुद में ही खुश होते मैं और मेरे चंद दोस्‍त। शेखर और भुवन में अपने को तलाशते, पिताजी के कार्ड पर लनामिवि विश्‍वविधालय पुस्‍तकालय से ए ए बेल संपादित फ्रायड के लेखन से उत्‍साहित हमलोग दिन गुजार देते, गुलजार के बोलों पर– एक सौ सोलह चाँद की रातें और एक अकेला काँधे का तिल। सँख्‍या के गणित में एक अनोखी, अबुझ अलसाया सा रहस्‍य हमेशा शेष रह जाता था, भोर के सपने की तरह। तिल है तो मधुबाला की तरह ओठों के नीचे क्‍यो नहीं, चाँद तो फिर एक सौ सोलह क्‍यों? गुलजार के यहाँ सब कुछ समेटने की जिद नहीं थी, जो बचा-खुचा छुटा रह जाता है उसके चौखट पर ठहर कर समय गुजारने की, उसके साये से लिपट कर समय को खो देने की कशिश है। एक ठहरेपन की आवारगी।
तो ऐसे में टीस कहाँ से आता है?
'लेकिन' में टूटी हुई चुड़ियोँ से कलाईयाँ जोड़ी जाती है तो 'इजाजत' ली जाती है सावन के भीगे भीगे दिनों को लौटा देने की। ये यादें हैं बीते हुए अहसासों की रवायतें जो मीठा मीठा दर्द देती हैं। लेकिन टीस तो कुछ अलग हुआ, है ना?
मेरे एक दोस्‍त ने अपने तेवर वाले जमाने में कहा, गुलजार क्राँति की ईंट खिसकाकर वहाँ रोमाँस की हवा भर देते हैँ।

Three images from the English cemetry, Surat

Sign Board of Nanpura Church, Surat

Its been a longtime scribbling on my slate. Lot of things happened meanwhile. In fact, a lot of things always take place in this busy world. But, for the city of Surat, this has been a difficult time. First the internal problems related to labour issues in the diamond sector that kept the newspapers busy. Then successive terrorist attacks in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and discovery of a huge number of live bombs in Surat. Surat was in news for quite sometime puzzling internal security, media world and the citizens due to the surfacing of 27-28 live bombs one by one within few days. Citizens are baffled asking questions like who plant these bombs, why none of these bombs explode,whether it is all done by local people or mastermined by outsiders and excuted by locals, Why Surat as location for attack, what is the motive behind placing such a big number of live bombs?
As soon as national media began airing these discovery of bombs, we began getting phone calls from relatives and friends from near and far of places. People expressing their concerns and cautioning us not to go in the market places. The fear had gripped us. The school of my three year old son was declared close. We were hooked to television news and my son began to answer phone calls by saying bombs are found without having an iota of awareness about what he is talking all about.
That phase is over now. Like earlier cases of terrorist attacks, we are left without any answers for our anxieties regarding who, why and how?
Now, we all enjoy olympic games. Media changed its gear. First the gala ceremony, then talk about some hopes, we began critical but Abhinav Bindra got a gold in Shooting and now all the states are competing each other with their declarations of awarding money to Abhinav, the sole Indian gold getter in the Olympics. Very soon, the media will flooded by storeis on who all can afford shooting range in their homes; why India has produced only one gold so far; questions ranging from infrastructures, state's role in promoting sports, class dynamics etc.
It is raining heavily and a lot of rural and suburban areas of Gujarat are already submerged by water.
my son sings
rain rain go away
come again another day
little johny wants to play
rain rain...

Yesterday was Sunday. In the evening I ( along with a friend, Suresh) thought to go to Pandesara, a working class migrant locality primarily inhabited by people from Orissa, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Once upon a time, STD phone booths were defining features on the landscape of these localities. Now, these booths are accompanied with money remittance channels. This one offers transferring money through Internet to any villages falling under the list of districts. Here the list is populated by places of eastern Utter Pradesh and Western Bihar, historically a region supplying labour to sugar plantations of Fiji, Mauritius, Caribbean islands. Then to Jute mills of Calcutta and tea plantations of Assam. Time changed railway came and Mumbai and then Delhi became the destination. Surat is also not a recent entry.

Mainay Uss Say Yeh Kaha

A fine piece of poetry.

From a reader-list@sarai post by Mahmood Farooqui and
http://reddiarypk.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/celebrating-jalib-main-nay-kaha/

Celebrating Jalib: Main Nay Kaha

“Main Nay Kaha” is a satirical poem by the famous leftist poet Habib Jalib called “Musheer” (Advisor). Jalib wrote it in response to a conversation he had with Hafiz Jalandari during the time of Ayub Khan’s dictatorship. It remains just as fresh and valid today.

This poem has been put to music by Laal (Shahram Azhar & Taimur Rahman) a new Pakistani music group dedicated to resistance music and poetry. Shahram Azhar and Taimur Rahman are also political activists of the Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party and their poetry, music, and activism constitute an integrated whole the essence of which is always revolutionary. The CMKP has been an integral part of the lawyers movement and the movement for democracy in Pakistan.

The music video contains real images of events in Karachi, London, and Lahore during the tumultuous period between December 27th and February 18th. The song and video were recorded on a shoe-string budget of one session each.

This video and song are connected to a documentary on a journey through a life-changing period in the history of Pakistan. The journey begins in Pakistan on the eve of the assassination of Benazir and the ensuing grief, violence, and carnage. The film maker travels to London to discover a group of young activists organizing protests against Emergency rule. Following these activists full circle to Pakistan, the documentary captures the events around the 2008 elections. The film thus captures a moment in the life of Pakistan, from Benazir’s assassination to the elections, through the lens of young activists. The documentary by Widei Films will also be released shortly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPsr1RnEfWo

Credits:
Habib Jalib - Mainay Uss Say Yeh Kaha
Shahram Azhar - Vocals
Taimur Rahman - Music
Mahvash Waqar - Backing Vocals
Taimur Khan - Director Producer
Dita Peskova - Assistant Director
Jamie Mill - Recording Director
Laal & Taimur Khan - Music Producer
WIDEi Films - Production Company

How do I Love thee? Let me Count the ways

I have a spiral red diary. It is a collection of coloured leaves of thick papers. The person who gave it to me said that printers and binders keep them as a sample to show their customers and allow them to pick their own choice of paper for the book jackets. It is made out of recycled (and probably Khadi paper) giving a roughness that fascinates me. I started writing poems and scriblled on this diary. This one from Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), I first read in The Hindu sunday suppliment long back. It was declared by the writer of that piece as one of the most romantic poems of the last century.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
------Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861).

Ramblings on Surat

Maps(i)
Maps often act as a prelude to marvelous encounters. These are disguised as adventurous geographic explorations aspired to encounter unknown territories with secret zeal to conquer and rule. Maps are at times an outcome of such encounters with other geographies and cultures. Navigators travel across the world to bring home the map. Maps are also traveling objects, as a circulating artefact across the globe(ii).Ours is also a story of one such map and its circulatory regimes, a map of Surat city, produced in circa 1730, currently preserved in Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum in Jaipur, copied and translated by a Japanese scholar who also sent a copy to us in the Centre for Social Studies, Surat.(iii)
A fascinating map for its attention to detail and also for its visual appeal, this map is a part of those over two hundred maps existing prior to the nineteenth century mainly of the north western, central and western parts of the subcontinent about which Susan Gole has drawn our attention recently(iv).The pre-colonial characteristics of this map are significant also because what Kapil Raj has argued, ‘maps were not culturally part of the Europian land traveller’s vade mecum until well into the nineteenth century’(v).
The timing of the production of this map then becomes crucial demonstrating one of the most fascinating cartographic illustrations coming from the second quarter of the long eighteenth century.However, before proceeding further on the historical context of this map we need to keep in mind the thinness of the collaborating historical evidences. For Hiromu Nagashima, the map was ‘drawn within the several years around 1730’. The basis of his argument is accounts of certain prominent individuals of this city around this time as mentioned by a legendry historian of this city, Ashin Das Gupta. Refering to Das Gupta, Nagashima writes,
“Mulla Abdul Ghafur, the biggest merchant of Surat in those days died in 1718 and his son also died very soon and the latter’s son, Mulla Muhammad Ali succeeded him. According to Das Gupta, Mulla Muhammad Ali built a mosque at his residence in 1723 and he fortified Mulla Abdul Ghafur’s wharf at Atwa at latest by 1730. The green building at his residence on the map seems to be the mosque(No.79). Mulla Abdul Ghafur’s garden with fortified walls and gates is seen at Atwa on the map (No.21). This fortified garden seems to be the fortified wharf mentioned by Ashin Das Gupta. Mulla Muhammad Ali died in 1734. Therefore, the map must have been drawn at some time between 1723 and 1734”(vi).
The years around 1730 (when this map was drawn) was also a time of whirlwind in the history this city, the subject of this cartographic endeavour. While the beginning of Seventeenth century witnessed high prosperity for Surat and we come to know that 112 ships were listed as using the port in 1701. The value of Surat’s trade, in Das Gupta’s calculation was over Rs.16,000,000 in 1699(vii).In 1946 the total turnover mentioned in an extensive memoir on the trade of Surat by Jan Schreuder, directeurof the Dutch company was Rs. 4,545,606 roughly amounting a quarter of the former figure of 1699(viii).The first half of the eighteenth century witnessed a rapid decline of Surat. The causes of this decline were rooted in a cluster of historical factors—decline of three Asiatic empires ( Mughals, Safavids and the Ottomans leading to the decline of long distance trade networks, Maratha raids disrupting the regional supply routes and in this manner form a Asian story giving way to the rise of British dominance by 1750. The years around 1730 thus come before us forming a middle ground in this story of this city, this region and the Asian story(ix).
Coming from such a crucial historical context, this map of Surat then potentially contains a story that can be told in either manner. It can be a narrative of decline that followed after Indian trade and merchants gave way to Britishers in the second half of the eighteenth century. This can also be about the city of Surat with its Asiatic trade network, about a city that it was at the time of its zenith and also about the romance of wealth that went into the construction of the Surat, its built environment and its city- spaces. However, the question is how we want to interpret this map. It also depends upon how to look at this map from circa 1730, a historical trace, a circulating artifact, another cartographic representation with its own set of rules and grammar or a code to enter into the city of Surat. A historical trace, a code of/from the past, ultimately a code to the city of Surat. The question is also about the historical nature of this trace, this code and about the historical nature of the codified city of Surat itself. Away from the historical, the complicated question is also to ask what does this code coming from one particular time, this trace of the past offer for an understanding of the contemporary city life of Surat. How to meaningfully engage with the traces of the past to understand the experiential understanding of the contemporary city? How to bring the historical and the contemporary close to each other without necessarily allowing analytical hierarchy while dealing with each of them? The map of surat from circa 1730 appears in this respect both as an entry point as well as a site demanding some analytical depth to understand the code, the map and the city. Can we walk in the city following these traces from circa 1730(x)?

II

The very first thing that strikes any onlooker in this map is two tier walls. These walls that encircle the city on the map, where do they lead us in our engagement? They guide our eyes while looking at this map, how to extend this gaze? How to explore remnants of these walls, if there exists any? Is there any trace left in terms of the experiences of these walls, physical structures, memories, narratives. At the first instance, it appears that the ring road (which has a considerable influence on the spatial experience and organization of this city) follows the outer walls and remnants of both the walls can be found either physically or in memories and narratives (textual or pictorial). One of the tasks then is to follow the walls.
The predominance of the walls in medieval town planning also leads us to the question of (in) security as walls were primarily to guard the city. But there was also a chor darwaja properly delineated on the map. The representation of chor darwaja then also provides as a clue to explore different kinds of spaces that were kept open within the medieval logic of security and town planning. What does this mean to us while thinking on the issue of town planning and security, regimes of legality and practices that make these regimes porous in contemporary urban life?(xi)
Where do these gates and doors lead us in a city like Surat? Old houses, localities and street patterns can be one way to walk through these gates? Another path could be to look at disasters like flood, fire and plagues and ask the question of town planning, security and walls from the vantage point of catastrophy.
On the other hand, these gates also point towards the other, the excluded, the outside of the city and we find ourselves in gardens, graves, burial grounds and cremation grounds. The city had a number of gardens (i.e. Dutch mentioned as baari baldez, French, English, Armenian, baari Hazi salih, baari Allah Baksh’s, Mullah Abdul Ghafur’s garden etc. Gardens or orchards are mentioned in the map as baari) that also find their place in the map under consideration here. Ashin Das Gupta informs that “the garden houses round the city were locations where Europeans and Indians would presumably meet as normal human beings living together in a town. This life was not reported in the official papers”(xii).These gardens were also provided on rent(xiii).We come across (we have specific reference of Dutch factory here) ‘a considerable amount of money’ shown every year in the council's books as having been spent on maintenance’(xiv).Das Gupta’s account indicate gardens as a kind of intermediate space, a non-place revealing heterotopic characteristics, an other space of Michel Foucault(xv).This opens up at least two specific trajectories for further exploration. Firstly, can we actually call these medieval gardens as heterotopic spaces, places that were both part of the city life and yet outside the everyday-ness of urban nature of the city? And if so, then secondly, we need to ask about the contemporary nature of these ‘other spaces’ when the city has expanded and incorporated these gardens at least physically within its fulcrum. In more focused manner we can pose the question, what is Dutch Garden in the memory and life of Surat, a ‘zero mile’ with a Post Office as the sign post? The shift of focus from looking at the gardens as historical sites to treating them as sites of memory and everyday life also allows us to understand the temporal nature of these sites and may further lead to the ways in which spaces loose their functional charm and over the course of time remains no more than fossilized spaces devoid of earlier life spirits. This may be the case with water bodies like tanks (i.e. Gopi Talab) and step wells. One can argue that these water bodies are alter ego of earlier gardens. Earlier gardens were ‘other spaces’ now, these non-functional water bodies are parts of city’s ‘other spaces’.
The frame of heterotopias also allows us to look at spaces and places associated with community of Parsis in fresh perspective. Environments of Parsi Sheri or the small township at Udhwada (located not far from Surat), dastur colony, locked Parsi houses all point to the otherness of these locations. These locations invoke images of different times, an island in the middle of the busy urban centre, a time warp.
Heterotopic nature of these locations may open new ways of looking at these places but it may not offer an adequate framework to understand the multiple functions and multi-tiered imageries of these locations. At this stage one can only hope that these forays can open up inner gates of Surat. Other spaces leading to another city, a hidden city. Thus, by calling hidden city, the idea is to reconstruct the experiences of city life from the perspectives of those communities (like Parsis, Vohras, Sufis), with variable stakes in the city ranging from their memories and histories to communities with relatively recent journeys into the city (marathi speaking migrants from neighbouring regions of Maharastra)(xvi).In this manner, hidden city is a metaphor for a whole range of urban experiences that are either invisible in the dominant discourses and practices in this city or about memories of this city that have lost their charm. In a way, hidden city is about archaeology of experiences leading to a whole gamut of social space and physical terrain that are difficult to locate at any given moment and terrain but are available simultaneously in the past and the present, memory and history, experiences and representations, shared and fractured realities of Surat. A city that was once upon a time multi cultural and cosmopolitan in true sense of the term(xvii).A city that was called as ‘Babul Macca’, the Gateway to Macca.
The biggest challenge for any such exploration is the question of approach, how to approach a subject that is neither explained only from the methods of historical research (the relation between history and memory obviously raise this question) nor can it afford to detach itself from historical enquiries into the past(xviii).The challenge is how to recover and where to locate those experiences that are neither consumed by the history nor been able to sever its past ties. The other question related but hitherto not given due consideration is the domain of the experience itself(xix). How the spaces of Surat are experienced, lived through and enter into the realm of the memory? This experiential city spaces with their narratives (of desires and sufferings and a whole plethora of emotions) would be different from the production of space as the concept has been deployed by Henry Lefebvre in his seminal work, The Production of Space(xv). In the case of Surat, the question would be, does experiential city escape the legacies of the historical city or does it comply with the historical, the remembered and the forgotten pointing us back to the memory and the history? Does the binary of the historical and its other exhaust the possibility of recovering the experiential? There may be many more questions and ways of looking at the experiential but the relevance of asking them here is also to find a way for any engagement with the contemporary city. The difficult challenge is how to locate the contemporary without voiding it but also without inhabiting it completely with the agency of the history. Does this mean that enquiry into the experiential will be located in the liminal and fragile analytical frame at the threshold of an analytical frame itself.

Notes

i. A large part of this essay began with a conversation with Prof. Biswaroop Das and around a map of Surat (c.1730). We talked on a number of issues in the evening of 6th February 2008 at CSS. We started this conversation in quite a random manner with an objective of seeking a way to engage meaningfully with this map.

ii. See Kapil Raj, “Circulation and the Emergence of Modern Mapping: Great Britain and Early Colonial India 1764-1820”, Claude Markovits, Jacques Pouchpedass and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds.), Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia 1750-1950, Permanent Black, Delhi, 2003, pp:23-54. He has highlighted “the ways in which the circulation of competencies and objects, and the attempts to control this circulation, contributed to the emergence of modern-day map literacy and culture. By providing an alternate account of the cultural and political history of the construction of geographical knowledge and practices based on historical evidence”, he has shown “the untenability of the claims of recent social historical scholarship that European and Indian scientific practices were radically different at the time of colonization, that ‘western’ science was introduced into India by the British as part of the ‘civilising mission’. Indeed, the case of the geographical exploration of British India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries provides a good illustration of the way in which British and Indian practitioners and skills met around specific projects, how they were reshaped and the modern map and its uses co-emerged in Idnia and Britain through the colonial encounter”. Kapil Raj, Ibid, pp:26-27.
iii. See Hiromu Nagashima, “On a Map of Surat ( a Mughal Port Town) Drawn in the Former Half of the 18th Century”, Nagasaki Perfectural University Journal, vol.40, no.2, September 2006.
iv. See Susan Gole, Indian Maps and Plans from Earliest Times to the Advent of European Surveys, Manohar, Delhi, 1989; cited by Kapil Raj and Hiromu Nagashima.
v. Kapil Raj, Ibid, p.29.
vi. Hiromu Nagashima, ibid, pp:1-2. In the absence of any external collaborating evidence about the map, this internal semiotic reference will be difficult to defend for the authenticity of the production years of this map. But, here, the authenticity about historical chronology is not the objective of engagement hence, we can safely rely on Nagashima’s analogy.
vii. Ashin Das Gupta, Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat C.1700-1750, in Ashin Das Gupta, India and the Indian Ocean World: Trade and Politics, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2004 ( 1979), p.326 and p.19.
viii. Ashin Das Gupta, p.19.
ix. Also see P.J. marshall, “Introduction” to Ashin Das Gupta, Ashin Das Gupta, India and the Indian Ocean World: Trade and Politics, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2004, pp:vii-xx.
x. Following de Certeau, ‘walking’ as a metaphor has been quite a power one in the study of the city in the last couple of decades. See Michel deCerteau, “Walking in the City”, Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, Berkley, 1984, pp: 91-110.
xi. An English traveler who officiated as Chaplain of the English Factory at Surat from around the middle of September 1691(?) to 1693 writes that “The entrance into the city is by six or seven gates, where are centinels fixt continually, requiring an Account, upon the least Suspicion, of all that enter in, or pass out of the city”. J.Ovington, A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689, edited by H.G. Rawlinson, Oxford University Press, London, 1929, p.130. This travelogue describes the life of Surat quite vividly hence a great source of information about this city during its heydays.
xii. See Ashin Das Gupta, “Pieter Phoonsen of Surat, c. 1730-1740”, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 22, no. 3, Special Issue: Asian Studies in Honour of Professor Charles Boxer. (1988), pp. 551-560, here p. 559.
xiii.Das Gupta, Pieter Phoonsen, p. 556.
xiv. Das Gupta, Pieter Phoonsen, p.560
xv. See Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces," Diacritics , vol. 16, Spring 1986, 22-27.
xvi.Unlike other communities mentioned here those affiliated with different Sufi orders do not form a coherent social unit. In fact, they are mentioned here because of their distinct association with some of the city spaces and also for a possible line of enquiry on the ways in which religious practices and city spaces negotiate and shape each other. See Peter Van Der Veer, “Playing or Praying: A Sufi Saint's Day in Surat”, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 51, no. 3, August, 1992, pp. 545-564.
xvii.By multi cultural pasts hovering over to the present city, the particular work in my mind is Ashis Nandy, “Time Travel to a Possible Self: Cranganore, Cochin, Jews, Zamorins”, Time Warps, Rutgers University Press, Delhi, 2002, 157-209.
xviii.On history and memory see Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Leiux de Memoire”, Representations, no.26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter Memory, spring, 1989, pp: 7-24.
xix. See Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History: Essays on the Destruction of Experience, Translated by Liz Heron, Verso, London and New York,1993, particularly pp: 11-64.
xv. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Blackwell, MA, 2007 (1974).

वैष्‍णव जन: Narsinh Mehta

वैष्‍णव जन तो तेने कहिए
जे पीड़ पड़ाई जाणे रे ।
पर दु:खे उपकार करे तो ये
मन अभिमान न आणे रे ॥
सकल लोकमां सहुने वंदे
निंदा न करे केनी रे
बाच काछ मन निश्‍चल राखे
धन धन जननी तेनी रे॥
समदष्‍टि ने तष्‍णा त्‌यागी
परस्‍त्री जेने मात रे ।
जिह्‍वा थकी असत्‍य न बोले
परधन नव झाले हाथ रे ॥
मोह माया व्‍यापे नहि जेने
दढ़ वैराग्‍य जेना मनमां रे ।
रामनाथुं ताली लागी
सकल तीरथ तेना तनमां रे ॥
वणलोभी ने कपट रहित छे
कामक्रोध निवार्या रे
भणे नरसैयों तेनु दुरसन करतां
कुलएकोतेर तार्या रे॥
–नरसिँह मेहता।
This is a famous poem, a prayer close to Mahatma Gandhi's heart. Few words are not spelt here properly as I was unable to type 'dri' properly. please read 'samdrishti', 'dridha' instead of 'samdisti' and 'didha'.

do we need you?

Do we need you?
a painter told herself
the dilemma was within but soundboard elsewhere
who? a viewer, a market, a tradition, a history
the memory of that smell of colours on the canvas
she felt that toxic impulse... a seduction by colours
assured presence... she did not need you,
you ruin her territory,
her toxic impulse,
her seduction
but why am i making it, faking it,
why getting seduced
why need colours, the canvas
had you not been there
I had a canvas, colours all over within me
why another seduction, another impulse?
I needed you to see my colours,
to market my impulse,
a tradition to whisper that my impulse is mine and not others
this was reassuring
but she felt a loss,
cheated,
kidnapped by someone else.
Then came an author, an actor and she who declared she is not an artist...

a love song from film, Ghulami

I often wonder why does one like what one likes. Why do I like certain song, certain film clip, a painting, a particular food , certain smell.... why? One can go into psychology of taste or into philosophy, into human behaviour...the choice is endless. But, that may kill the romance. so why to bother... The question will remain--why do we love?
While deleting certain files from my desktop, I suddenly found this clip. One of my all time favourite songs. This particular song clip is from a Bollywood from J.P.Dutta's debut film "Ghulami"( Slavery), 1985. The film was a good portrayal of rural north India, set in the backdrop of Rajasthan. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089201/usercomments

I do not know what attracts me in this song. Is it the music( Laxmikant Pyarelal), the lyrics(Gulzar), the mise en scene , Smita Patil( my favourite who died too early), MithunChakravarty's facial expression and subtle movements and last but not least a not so successful (yet powerful) actress Anita Raj. I can associate traits I like but...
In the song, it is a story of a road, or more precisely about a bus journey, a halt... a couple, a dancer, old dilapidated fort, an incomplete structure , a ruin standing in the desert, a sunset... kabhi kabhi shaam aise dhalti hai, jaise ghunghat utar raha hai
tumhaare seene se uthataa dhunyaa hamaare seene se gujar raha hai...
The film highlighted rural exploitation, caste and poverty. In such context, bus, road, love all become metaphors for resistence and escape. Escape in the form of migration was the dominant mode of resistance against local landlords harsh situation throughout pre-colonial period and even later on. But how does love and resistance meet each other?
As a form, this song can be broadly placed with lambi judai or lamhe's morni baagaan maan boli raat maan. this should not be in terms of the lyrical meaning structures but in terms of their regional flavour, a mixture of rajasthani folk along with mainstream Hindi bollywood music. In these songs, one finds a longing, in hindi it is 'hook'. This 'hook' stretches certain lines as if calling a beloved who is far. The distance sometime represents physical distance, physical absence of beloved quite often it is a metaphorical longing, it is a search of love, of proximity of closeness even within those sitting close by, standing side by side...wo aake pahalu main aise bethe, jaise shaam rangin ho gayi hai...
This is also available at youtube at
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=ztSfGWhwiio

waiting women: 01

Stickers significantly shape urban visual landscapes. They are in front of our eyes: on the back of an auto-rickshaw, inside it ahead of driver's looking glass, on street dividers, on the mirror of street barbers, on tea shops. Themes depicted in these stickers encompass a wide range of cultural and political events, vocabulary and processes: from Kargil war to explicit sexual couplets. The form of these stickers is often standard and these are produced with digital printing tools suggesting its mass production, an organised economy of production and marketing and a consumer base. This image is part of my "waiting women series" purchased from Delhi ( Rs. 3) from a retail seller. Here the caption is "when would you return home".

The building behind I P Mission School, Surat

An old building speaks a volume of the history, inharits the romance of the past and stands as a witness in the dock of the contemporary.

an obara behind I P Mission school, Surat

Few days back, we had a long conversation with Kazmi couples. We wanted to interview someone who knows this city and has lived here for a long time. We were told to contact Kazmi's and the couple not only agreed to talk but insisted that they would visit us in the Centre for Social studies, the place where I work.
During this conversation he suggested us( me and Prof. Das) to see Obara near I P Mission school. He thought that this might be the place to board ships for the Haz to Mecca and Madina. Surat was know as "Babul Macca", the gateway to Mecca.
It is too early to conclude the equation between this obara and the Haz pilgrimage. But, this bylane was full of history. Just behind IP Mission school, this narrow lane takes you to the river front of Tapi. There are old buildings, dilapidated and empty with court scriptures written on their old wooden doors.
On the river front the only functional building you find (apart from stray converted residential houses) is a Hanuman temple. The walls providing a frame to this riverfront and the entry gate all look like quite an old structures.
However, what caught my attention most was this old marble tablet dating back to 1934 informing us that a Parsee gentleman transferred this property to Surat Municipality. The warning comes alongwith this declaration prohibiting domestic animals' movement around this place.
Written in Gujarati, this begins with 'Shree' (a hindu religious marker) follows with 'Pak' and 'Ahurmajda' representing Islamic and Parsi traditions of writing. Is this a layered tablet along religious cum communitarian lines or is this a layered past that comes in this form of a marble tablet. There were other three longer tablets on the walls of the locked house. But the camera quality did not allow legible snaps of them. Probably next time.
I want to know the place, this lane, their inhabitants but also like to know more on the word 'obara' or 'obaro'.

अपने अलबम से

लाश आधी से अधिक जल चुकी थी और अंधेरा छंटने लगा था. सुबह होने में अभी कुछ देर और थी. जब मैंने उन दोनों को नदी के तरफ से आते देखा तब एक स्नैप बनकर रह गया. वह दृश्य एक जलती हुई लाश से उठती आग की लपटें, पीछे बहती हुई बूढी-सी बागमती जिसे हमलोग उन दिनों अपने हॉफ-पैंट भिगाए हुए ही पारकर जाते थे, नदी के पार पके हुए धान के खेतों की कतार और बांयी ओर से चढान चढते हुए दो स्त्री आकृतियां - एक छोटी एक बडी अौर लंबी चाल में एक प्रकार की सुस्ती जो कुछ तो भोरूकवे की अलसायी प्रकृति के कारण थी और कुछ इस बात की गवाह थी कि दूरियां तय करने के बाद उनकी टांगें थक चुकी थी.
और भी अनेक रूपों में मैं इस स्नैप को पढता रहा हू/ स्मृति के आईने में. इस फोटो के बिम्बों ने मेरे अकेलेपन का इतना अधिक संग निभाया है कि मैं इसकी व्याख्या कर सकने में अक्षम हू/. हर बार कुछ नए शब्दों के साथ, एक नए नजरिए से. पर यहां आपके लिए यह फोटो एक शुरूआत मात्र है. कहानी को आगे जाना होगा. जिंदगी को बहते जाना होगा.
मेरा ईत्ती से परिचय मारियाना के ही कारण हुआ. उस फोटो के बाद शायद इसी रूप में बात आगे बढायी जा सकती है.उस सुबह के बाद मैं रोज सवेरे श्मशान के काली मंदिर के चबूतरे पर बैठ उन दोनों के आने का इंतजार करता. वो आती, मेरे तरफ बडी क़ौतूहल से देखती और फिर चली जाती. तीन चार दिन ही गुजरे होंगे कि एक सुबह जब मेरी आंखें बेसब्री से उनके आने के रास्ते पर केन्द्रित थी पीछे से एक बडी सुरीली अंग्रेजों के से उच्चारण में एक आवाज और एक निश्छल हंसी सुनायी पडी, 'अो वीग
मैन व्हाट आर यू डूईंग हियर?' उसका नाम था मरियाना. मुझे रंगे हाथों पकड लिया गया था. इसी पकडे ज़ाने का उत्सव था ईत्ती की हंसी. अपने बांये हाथ के चार उंगलियों से मुंह को ढांपे अपनी हंसी को छुपाने की नाकाम कोशिश करती हुई ईत्ती इस नाकामयाबी के कारण मानो शरीर का सारा खून उसके चेहरे पर आकर जमा हो गया हो.मोर की स्वच्छता, नदी के तरफ से आने वाली तेज हवा का झोंका और एक हाथ से मुंह को ढंकते हुए दूसरे हाथों से चेहरे पर फैल आई बालों को पीछे करती मुझे एकटक देखती हुई ईत्ती. न रूकने वाली हंसी हंसती हुई एक लडक़ी. मैंने बाद में ईत्ती को कहा भी था कि मैंने उसकी वह हंसी फिर कभी नहीं सुनी.
मारियाना की हंसी एकदम से अलग सी थी. उसकी हंसी को एकदम से पा लेने को मन आतुर हो उठता था. वह शायद हंसना जानती थी. ईत्ती की हंसी में स्वयं ही समा जाने की, हो जाने की उत्कट आकांक्षा हुआ करती थी. मानो उसी हंसी में खुद को पाने की इच्छा बलवती हो उठती हो.
ईत्ती मारियाना के मकान मालिक की लडक़ी थी. मारियाना, उस साल 13 अप्रैल को उसने एक हिदायत के साथ हंसते हुए अपनी उम्र 26 साल बतायी थी. उसी दिन मैंने पहली बार जाना था कि लडक़ी से उम्र पूछना असभ्यता की निशानी है. मारियाना, जिसका शुध्द-शुध्द उच्चारण शायद ही मैंने कभी किया हो, एक फ्रांसीसी उपन्यास लेखिका थी. भारतीय श्मशान की पृष्ठभूमि में एक प्यार की कहानी लिखने आई थी. उसके साथ आया था - रोजर, उसका बॉयफ्रैंड. मैंने उन्हें देखकर ही सीखा था कि स्त्री-पुरूष बगैर शादी किए भी साथ-साथ एक कमरे में रह सकतेहैं. उसी कमरे में शांत दोपहरों को मैंने बहुत से अनसुलझे रहस्यों को हल होते देखा था. मारियाना को मैंने अपने और ईत्ती के सामने ही कई बार बेझिझक कपडे बदलते हुए देखा था और इस दौरान मैं शुरू में चुपके से, कनखियों से और फिर बाद में बेधडक़ ईत्ती को देखा करता था.
रोजर स्वाभाविक रूप से मेरे लिए कवाब में हड्डी था. एक नृशास्त्री (एंर्थोपालोजिस्ट) जो भारत में मृत्यु संस्कारों और श्मशान की संस्कृति का अध्ययन करने आया था. मारियाना ने मुझे बताया था कि उनमें कोई प्यार का चक्कर नहीं है और काम की समान प्रकृति ने ही दोनों को निकट कर रखा था.इतना सब कह चुकने के बाद वह एक शब्द और जोड देती, उसका तकियाकलाम - 'अंडरस्टेंड' (समझे बुध्दु कहीं के). मानो वह कुछ समझता ही न हो. मानो सारा ज्ञान और सारी होशियारी गोरी चमडी में ही हो.मुझे मारियाना के इस शब्द से नफरत सी थी पर जिस अंदाज से वह 'अंडरस्टेंड' कहती और अपनी पतली पतली लंबी उंगलियों से उसके बालों को छितराकर रखदेती, मैं अदा का दीवाना सा हो गया. नफरत करने के बाद भी मैं इंतजार करता कि कब मारियाना की लंबी बातें खत्म होंगी, कभी न खत्म होने बाली बातें, और कब एक गहरे सांस लेकर व जल्दी से बोलेगी, अंडरस्टेंड. और फिर उसके बाल
मुझे बडा अजीब सा जीव लगा था रोजर. बहुत छोटी-छोटी और अत्यंत सामान्य से प्रतीत होते क्षणों और बेकार के चीजों को अजीब सी नजरों से देखा करता वह. ऐसा लगता मानो उस श्मशान के दीवार के पास दूर तक फैले चीटियों के घरौंदो से कोई जीन निकल आए. यदि एक वाक्य में कहा जाय तो रोजर बुध्दिजीवी बनने का नाटक करने भारत और दरभंगा आया था. मुझे विशेषत: उसके वाहियात से लगने बाली बातों से नफरत थी. इन बातों को वह बडे भारी भरकम अंदाज में पेश किया करता. यूं तो वह मुझसे कम ही बातें करता था पर उस दिन पता नहीं कौन-सा भूत उस पर सवार हो गया था. मुझे बैठाकर जीवन के रहस्यों को उद्धाटित करता हुआ बोला - जानते हो जिंदगी एक किताब की तरह होती है - Life is like a text, Culture can be read as a text too. फिर एक लंबा मौन. मुझे इस लंबे मौन से बेहद चिढ थी. लंबे मौन के बाद रोजर को सहसा मेरे कुपात्र होने का एहसास हुआ. Just leave it You won't understand... तुम समझ नहीं पाओगे अभी.
पता नहीं क्या समझता था मुझे - एक छोटा बच्चा. और फिर ऐसा क्या दर्शन था इस वाक्य में. मैंने भी तुरंत कह दिया कि उसके ब्रह्म वाक्य में ऐसा कुछ नहीं है जिसे मैं न जानता होऊं यह तो बच्चा-बच्चा जानता है कि जीवन एक किताब के समान होता है जिसे कहीं से किसी भी रूप में पढा जा सकता है, अनुभव किया जा सकता है और वह हंसने लगता था. मानो मेरा, मेरे उम्र का और मेरे ज्ञान का मजाक उडा रहा हो. फिर अचानक से गंभीर होकर एक जिज्ञासु छात्र के रूप में उसने मुझसे पूछा - ये ब्रह्म वाक्य क्या होता है? और मैं उसका गुरू बन बैठा.
रोजर की हंसी ने मेरे दार्शनिक मन को विद्रोह से परिपूर्ण कर दिया था. उसकी हंसी को मैंने चुनौती के रूप में अपनाया और अगले ही दिन घाट के सीढियों के कोने में दुबके-दुबके मैंने अपनीग्यारहवीं कविता पूरी की - जीवन और पाठ को समर्पित.
जब कविता पूरा कर सर उठया तो अहसास हुआ कि किसी की आंखे बहुत देर से मेरी कविता को पढ रही है. यह और बात है कि न तो उन दिनों में ही और उन दिनों को याद करते हुए न ही आज भी मुझे इस बात में रत्ती भर भी शक नहीं है कि वे आंखें मेरी कविता से अधिक मुझे पढ रही थी. ईत्ती मेरे ठीक पीछे खडी थी और मैंने पूर्णता के साथ उसे चूम लिया था. एक निश्चिंत और प्रगाढ अौर प्रथम.
पर यह चुंबन रोजर और मारियाना के चुंबनों से सर्वथा भिन्न था. मैंने शांत दोपहरों में दोपहरों में जंगले के पीछे से उन दोनों को चूमते हुए कई बार देखा था. वे ओठों पर चूमते थे. पर मेरे लिए ईत्ती के गाल अधिक पवित्र थे. उसके गोरे चेहरे पर कब सिंदूरी आभा आती और कैसे उसके गाल लाल हो उठते यह मेरे लिए रहस्य ही बना रहा .मैंने अपनी एक कविता में उसके गालों के लिए सेमल के फूल की लालिमा की उपमा दी थी.ये और बात थी कि उन दिनों की यही एकमात्र कविता कभी पूरी नहीं हो पायी.
खैर, उस दिन छाया लंबी होती गई पर लम्हें मानो थमे रहे. रक्त रंजित कपोल पर छोटे-छोटे दो गङ्ढे. अपनी उष्णता से मैंने उन गङ्ढाें को परिपूर्ण कर देना चाहा था. शेष एक स्मृति जिसे शब्दबध्द करना मानो अपने अतीत का त्याग करना.शब्दों में बयान कर देने के बाद स्मृति निज नहीं रह जाती. और मैं अपना यह हकछोडना नहीं चाहता.
ऐसी थी ईत्ती और अब रह गया है कुछ बिखरे से चित्र - एक चेहरा जिसे निरूपित करने में बार-बार अपने को अक्षम पाता हूं. पंद्रह-सोलह साल की उम्र जिसकी कसक आजतक अपने में पाता हूं. उसके लंबे पैर और सफाई से कटी हुई नाखून जिससे मुझे हमेशा अपनी गंदगी का अहसास होता रहा और इन सारी छाया, प्रतिच्छाया के ऊपर कहीं बहुत भीतर तक समाया हुआ अहसास एक गंध उन दिनों की. एक गंध उन दो शरीरों की. ईत्ती और मारियाना.
एक फोटो है आज भी मेरे पास.और उस फोटो में ईत्ती है और मारियाना है.उस फोटो में मैं नहीं हूं पर वह मेरी फोटो है. मैंने उसे चुराया था रोजर के डेस्क से. रोजर को उस फोटो को रखने का कोई अधिकार नहीं था. मारियाना से मैंने कहा था अपनी इस चोरी के संबंध में. और एक दिन उसने मुझसे बडे शांत और स्थिर आवाज में कहा कि रोजर को पता था कि वह फोटो मेरे पास है और मैंने उस फोटो को फाडक़र उसके हजारों टुकडे क़र बागमती में बहा दिया था. ईत्ती मेरे पीछे खडी होकर उन टुकडाें को देखती रही और फिर उसके आंखों में आंसू आ गए. ईत्ती जानती थी कि मेरे पास उसका यह एकमात्र फोटो था. मैंने उसे समझाने की बहुत कोशिश की थी कि टुकडाें में बह जाने से फोटो नहीं खत्म हो जाते. मैंने उससे ठीक-ठीक यही कहा था कि मेरे पास यह फोटो सदैव सुरक्षित रहेगा. इस कागज के फोटो का अंत होना जरूरी हो गया था. रोजर को पता था कि मैंने फोटो चुराए थे. रोजर जानता था कि मैं इस फोटो को देख रहा हूं.इस फोटो में ईत्ती थी और मारियाना थी. मैं इन दोनों को देखते हुए था और मुझे देखते हुए रोजर था और रोजर की आंखों से पीछा छुडाता, भागता हुआ फिर से मैं ही था और मुझको भागते देखते, कायर और अपराधी घोषित करती ईत्ती की अश्रुपूरित आंखें थी और सब देखते हुए, भोगते हुए मैं हूं. निपट अकेला मैं. अपने ही अनुगूंजों में उलझा हुआ. स्वयं को पीछे धकेलते, स्वयं से पीछा छुडाता मैं.

I wrote this story long back for my hostel magazine( Mansarowar Hostel, Delhi University). This was also published in "Mandal Vichar" a journal for social and cultural change from Madhepura, Bihar(now it has an online site too ).

a trbial sacred symbol from Dang, Gujarat.

While driving down from Saputara for Surat, I clicked this image. Saputara is a beautiful place though heading towards rapid commercialisation. This is a mid way between Surat and Shirdi. Located on the hilltop in the second largest tribal district of the country, Dang, this is the only mountainous holiday spot in the south Gujarat. It is around 160 km from Surat and has some descent stay options for the tourists. You get freshly plucked strawberries that women sell there very cheap. The other side of the mountain falls in Maharashtra and famous for grape cultivation, vineyards. Nashik is around 90 kms from Saputara.

locked letters: writing on the street with a chain and a lock

I came to Surat for the first time to appear in an interview. This is was for the post of assistant professor at the Centre for the Social Studies in late 2006. In Delhi, it was winter season. In Surat, there was no cold and I enjoyed a lot. I had lot of time at my disposal that I used to walk in the city. During one of those walks I saw these letters written densly on the walls, on the street divider and spread almost everywhere.

After a long gap, today morning I captured some of the images and one is posted here. This is on the road that connects Bhatar chaar-rashta to Majura Gate, Surat.

ignorant city

For sometime, I have been fascinated by writings in the city. These writings I find on the walls, on public notice boards, the shade of the bus stop, on school desks, on the toilet walls of public utility rooms, in trains, on the back of the seat in public bus... They are everywhere. City appears as a slate, a writing pad meant for these writings. This image is of a wall on the Rajpur Road,Delhi. Right next to this wall is a school and students have used the wall to give shape their creativity.

on archives and history

"The question of Experience can be approached nowadays only with an
acknowledgement that it is no longer accessible to us. For just as modern man has been deprived of his biography, his experience has likewise been expropriated(13)".Agamben's language is seductively simplistic. Both Agamben and Foucault (Agamben is here with Foucault as he is considered as post-Foucauldian scholar and also because he himself has acknowledged Foucault a lot) have declarations. However, while Focault's declarations are at the cost of human experiences, Agamben places the experiential at the centre stage of his scholarship. These days I am reading Giorgio Agamben,"Infancy and History: Essays on the Destruction of Experience". I am not going to summerise Agamben's argument
but would liket o cite him without engaging with him here. He writes
that "the expropriation of experience was implicit in the founding
project of modern science( 17)". He argues that "the idea of
experience as seperate from knowledge has become so alien to us that
we have forgotten that until the birth of modern science experience
and science each had their own place"(18).He further writes that "in
its search for certainty, modern science abolishes this sepration and
makes experience the locus--the 'method'; that is, the pathway-of
knowledge"(19). We may walk with Agamben but not now. Agamben is
referred here as he strikes at the core, breaking the singularity of
the question , something I have learned from his earlier book,
"Witness and the Archives"a dn something that I am trying to when
engaging with the question of memory and the archives. Namrata was
deadright when she pointed that I am trying to meet both ends and
also rightly observed that I go wild. This is where I wanted to
reflect on self-obsession. this is important if I lack it I will lack
the experience of listening ( something that remains my anchor while
engaging with the issue of archives and the memory). Again I am not
going into details demonstrating the relevance of self-obsession or
whether this is the right word to deploy as a methodological tool
when like me all the researchers go back almost mechanical way to
recordings and experiences of listening to recover details. The key
difference lies in experiencing our own attempts of recovering
details and the manner in which detailing influence the self of the
researcher. Self-obsession is an obsesseed engagement with the self.
it is experiencing the self at specific moment and for specific
purpose. But how does it help to understand the relationship between
memory and the archives. Something I keep working on and I do not
have any readymade answer to it.
For some time I have been thinking on the relationship between memory
and the archives. This concern is an outcome of my earlier work,
documenting lives of those who underwent the trauma of partition of
Indian subcontinent during 1946-1950. The project was aimed at
documenting lives and making an archive (the project was initiated by
Ashis Nandy at CSDS, Delhi). I worked as field researcher in that
project. At this point, I am interested to understand
a. how ideas and notions of the archives circulate and practised
outside the disciplinary domain of history;
b. linkages between the domains of experience and the archives;
c. how archives are perceived and parctised in non-western pasts.
any suggestion, comment, reference is welcome.
warmly in disagreement and opening up the debate beyond the
omnipresent history,
sadan.

response to Surat:entry in the city

On 1:21 pm 01/11/08 " Shivam Vij शिवम ् विज् " wrote:
> Dear Sadan,
>
> I think any analysis of the Pushpa TS poem must keep in mind that it
> is part of a series of eight odd poems called "Very Indian Poems in
> Very Indian English". It is important that all of these poems be read
> together; that challenges many notions that reading Pushpa TS in
> isolation brings along.
>
> best
> shivam