Identities

Lines,

drawn everywhere

on this map.

And every other.

Lines,

become entities

and identities.

i cease to exist.

Lines,

become fate

and religions;

The trees and rivers

are not free.

The margins,

the marks,

the signs on the doorpost,

those uniforms, those bamboo toy rifles

and filling personal information on a form.

Captivated, suffocated,

smothered by ourselves.

-sushmita kashyap (20.34 hrs. 25march 08) Identities

The concept of borders, the spaces and times involved in building one, have always enigmated philosophers and sociologists at large. In our post colonial set up, the invisible lines on the margins of land has more than ever taunted us-urged us to realize ourselves as peoples and races and civilizations. But words like “ethnic” and “tribal”, that the world at large uses to define indigenous populations and civilizations reveal so little and yet camouflage such wide worlds.

(The species has been harsh on one another- too many excesses, the ants would say. Community building, that word’s such a joke; in our more civilized (/less barbaric) and comfortable-technology generations. The ants can teach us some community building, that reminds me!)

The idea of a country, regardless of its size, without the compulsions of the harsh intrusions of development, is so liberating. So utopian also. Than maybe we will understand ethnicity and people-their lives, their desires, their habits and their workings, their gods, cultures and loyalties.

-sushmita kashyap. 25march 08