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

Gift

There is a veil

And you will not humor me

The suspense is

Like a zillion seconds

Ticking in my head

Crowding my sensibilities.

There is pain, remorse and desire

For a million different worlds

For the clouds to embrace me

And make me part of them.

These mementoes, souvenirs

What purpose do they serve?

The nature of this longing

Is sinister.

The mist that forms shapes

Outside

Show me vague structures

I cannot fathom them

But I finger the water

The cold breath of a winter

That took too long in coming.

The veil still pervades my understanding

And curious unbelongingness

The triviality of the occasion

Stings and nags the receiver.

Open-ended are these conversations

Without meaning or substance.

Why cant you hold the sand

So tight so tight

That I might suffocate in it

That I might drown myself

In the acute nature of this gift.

So that I’m here no more

And than you will cease to exist

All dimensions will take all shapes

Mists, veils and acronyms on paper.

6.21pm. 9.1.08

a mail i probally sent most of you

ps- I know I know we all so hate mass mailers but please bear with me (that's the n-th time im saying this yeah?:p). Im calculating calculating-time, pace, space. I promise to mail moe personalised mails once m done (for now, the personal can wait)

Hi folks,

Howss it going? Me been hopping around the whole place these last few weeks. last 3 months have been an overload of things and needed to get away for a while. So Deli-Pushkar-Deli and than Manesar, Gurgaon for a Strategy meet to start off the first official liberal youth forum of India. those 3 days of brainstorming and agreeing and disagreeing were grueling but finally we came up with a concrete plan and also a drafting committee to form a definitive charter. once that's done (should be over in 3 months time), I will post u a note if anyone is interested in being part of the network.
As of now, here's just a link you folks can que into. http://www.asianborderlands.net
From January 16-19 2008, there will be an international conference in
Guwahati (And spread over some other states too) titled: Northeast
India and its transnational neighbours. essentially we will be
focussing on borders and the networks that exist around such areas-
issues like conflict, livelihood, policies wrt this area will be
deliberated upon by scholars from all over- Oxford, uNIV OF aMSTERDAM,
IIT, etc. Panos is collaborating for the non-academic event and right
now im just going bersek organisng and collating documentaries,
theatre groups, artists etc.

And yes, there's Guwahati FOF (Well, im co-ordinating the Liberal youth forum in Northeast but lets take it slow, step by step is the motto here) too. and all the ideas playing in my
brain-endless phone conversations with kripal (another coi-ordinator)as to how to go about it
(mr. ranjan has done the houdini on us but he;s super energetic when
it comes to the real work). I have been finding out about other youth
groups in the region and areas we can work on.
Will send you guys a structured mail once am thru with this backlog.
I might be offline from 27Dec-1st Jan so i did really appreciate if
someone smses me or something if any imp mails are exchanged.

hAVE a terrific year ahead. and though Modi has won (shucks i wanted to avoid being political here but what are we if not the sum of our existences and consciousness) lets not stop dissenting just because the votebank says we r a minority!

Cheers till next time than,

Sush

Thanks to Democracy and Barbarity!!

Though i have not much regard for vicarious communication mediums like chats and emails, i think they are a fascinating place to be. Today my Gtalk message was: first, "the contours of the chasm between Assamese subnationalism and pan-Indianism." second, a little more subversive and callous probally, "the whole concept of India is a big joke, a shameful failure". But im angry, have been angry and agitated since the Dispur incident on Saturday. I have to write something about it to let out that anger. But for the moment, this is what a right wing friend mailed on redaing my Gtalk status message.

I read ur anti-india status msg and i think it was really shameful on ur part

today u want assam to be 'freed' from India but does assam really desrve it....

\http://www.ibnlive.com/news/guwahati-residents-strip-beat-up-adivasi-women/53043-3.html

and whr will that end tommow u may ask guwahati to be a free state and then someone would come around

and say that pan bazar shud be an independent country

I wrote back just now in a rush, while shuttling between the edit table (am working on a documentary on migration and labour equations in Central Asia after the break up on the USSR) and my comp. I know what i will paste here might sound rash and hurried but whatever it is, it is definitely not fabricated.

hi u,

well, im not ashamed of how i feel and what i say though i might not be licensed to say that. and talking about all the stuff from mainland India is all fine and you dont really have to send me an IBN live url to check what is going on in Assam. i have been and will be actively a part of the developments of the shameful horrendous mob riot that took place near Dispur (the administrative capital of Assam) in broad daylight. Im ashamed as an Assamese and very agitated. A curfew was announced in many areas following the riot. But that same eve at 7.30 pm we called a meeting, Assamese civil society representatives if u please (though i still feel that a couple of NGOs, intellectuals and indigenous groups donot represent any civil society unless the people proactively take a step) and passed a resolution around 9. 30pm./ we have seen how the national and local media have portrayed the whole incident giving it hues and images of various orders, and instead of controlling the situation, giving fire to this delicate symbiotic relationship between the tea garden workers and the other people. and yes what happened that day was essentially a class thing. what the local residents did was try to suppress an identity that is as much part of Assam as anything else. and now the Jharkhand govt is trying to gain political mileage outta it. So there, am not throwing dirt at India (anti India msg u said). i hold myself responsible for the sorry state of our nation as well as my fellow citizens. and like i said, you donot know the politics of the Northeast. anyways, the Centre is busy trying to convince everyone that we r a homogenous species. and man, we r amazingly heterogenous. so the idea of a nation state is something that needs to be studied and critiqued. a federation mite b an alternative. i am not too sure. m not talking of independence without the shite that goes along with it. but i am saying, it's time we started discussing alternatives!

I hope you understand me a lil better now.

and i will probably write something on the incident coz only than this anger will subside, this helpless feeling swelling inside me. i heard that phrase twice the other day from eye witnesses "ppl killed each other like cats and dogs". wow. all for violence are we?! there's Modi in Gujarat savagely eliminating an entire breed of people, there's bomb blasts in UP coz nobody cares, Nazification of this country had long begun. the crevices are just starting to get wider.

Take care and think about it.

Fate-igued!

These last three months or so have been a whirlwind of insane activity, people, work, travel and herbs that elevate the less mundane waking hours. This last one week I decided to grace my shack with my solitude and OCD. There has been conflict. And very many contradictions. Lately, I have felt pulled to the very last vestiges of my "sheer energy" by folks and peers. I maintain it all very well, most of the time. But sometimes a voice inside talks to me (am i schizo?) and tells me to go away, far far away. And take it from there. Tiredness is a state of mind, I presume, if you dont add the physical drudgery and the constant swirling white noise in the brain. But than I get emotionally haggard at times and than familiarity has this twisted way of revealing new things, trying to precede what lies in the vague future. Astrologers and tarot card readers act a savvy catalyst to all wanting to hear and evade the impediments set by Fate (harrowed fate that!). And we become mere puppets in this orgasmic understanding of divinity's ways! haha
Man, if i start on those lines now, i can possibly go on for an hour, applying logic and common sense to wallet-pinching astronomically priced gem stones.

I am half mad, so they say. Now, who are these "they"? I probally dont even know how they look like or what their last names are. But am i irreverant to speak thus, about divinity's camouflaged way! (Hats off to Divinity and the sundry rituals that go along with the whol brouhaha).

AS for me, I guess surviving is an art i have learnt the hard way but learnt it proper. And if my fate decides to play spoilsport, i will play along and probally let all things take their own time to reveal their worth to me.

There is conflict, contradiction but there is also endurance and beauty!

So long than.

Presenting Radio Clash I

On Photography

Aspirations have different manifestations. And some manifestations give birth to creative license. What exactly is creative license? And who do we define as an artist in a world of people trying to break away from the clichéd forms of entertainment and livelihood to express a more primitive urge. The urge to create, give form and to share this passion with peers and critics.

Photography is an artistic medium that lends a definitive shape to viscous images that otherwise get lost as our eyes move away to admire and analyse other issues. How do we suspend this animated display of life, color, people, culture and places? The camera becomes a sort of heightened metaphor through which we can freeze these very many details of the world that stretches before our physical selves and immediate environment.

I am no photographer but I am passionate about the medium and slowly picking up the nitty gritties of the trade. The lens fascinates me though I hesitate to give free play to all that I view and perceive, and perception is so essential to everything I see and internalize. Because perception adds meaning and a content to the otherwise hazy cloud of thoughts that constantly flow in my veins.

Travelling has been a passion for as long as I can remember. Give me an adventure, a journey and I will be game. The sights and sounds, the smells and shades, life in motion and fractured beginnings and endings! The lessons of unlearning and the search for cognition through conflict, error and inertia.

And that’s where the camera becomes a mate- a mute renderer of all things plausible, mundane or avant garde.

10 oct, 2007. 18.36hrs

On Writing

All things reveal themselves to me as if I am a conspirer in the vast scheme of things that constitute what is chaos theory today. I feel and I know, I touch and I feel, I write but than again, what do I write? Writing has to be a consistent endeavour. To rephrase Samuel Johnson's words, An amateur, Sir, should keep his writing in constant repair. Scrutinize, abuse, critique and compose like a madman. Gibberish is gibberish because we understand the frivolity of the whole text, while we read through. But any exercise in attempting a piece of writing, gibberish or otherwise, should not be futile. Writing a page every morning, is it so difficult? I ask myself. But that was a rhetorical query I suppose. So many things to express and yet I fall short of proper words and shy away in the veil of metaphors that might make sense to me but what is writing if no one reads it, attempts to reach his own meanings and than finally delivers his verdict and tosses it away. Well, the esteemed reader might even save the article of writing to read, re-read again at his own pace. But I come back to square one again. What is the point of endlessly cribbing about the paucity of time and the mundane nature of a comfortable life when I can cry out in words, release myself from all that binds me and fellow human beings? I might not be doing much at all but at least, I will have a reference point to come back to when I question all that I have been taught to accept.

The search proceeds…

10.10.07, 18.48hrs

A workshop of five days on TV Training for young journalists of the Northeast region (that bloody clichéd definition again!). and it’s intensive, grueling, information-overload and than some more. Per diems and cocktail dinners, that’s what fascinates some of them. While others try to unlearn and yet cant resolve the conflict that thinking individuals experience in short, spastic bursts of restlessness. I go through the motions of the first three days with a spring in my step though occasionally my eyes burn, my back hurts and I catch the flu. I keep to myself on certain hours and than again, I go wild with a forgotten vibrancy at moments that catch me unawares too. And the creative energy within me keeps pestering me, driving my mind loco and compelling me to seek out my own moments of white noise.

I try to channelize my stream of consciousness. Ah, consciousness! The bane of human beings. And I scoff at established notions of feminity and folks think I am just a rebel without a cause. I wish I could explain them about all the colors I see and all the ideas that fool around in my head as I sit on the pot blankly gazing at the white tiled wall in front of me. I wish I could debate libertarianism and Dadaism with some like minded drifter. I wish I could be articulate enough to discuss and question political ideals. But some things have to wait and some things are more private ofcourse. And yes, prince charming, I never was searching for u. I am just dreaming a living dream. This life has never been enough ever, has it now?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"To me the only success, the only greatness, is immortality." - James

Dean, quoted in James Dean: The Mutant King, by David Dalton ( well indeed! Haha)

Air conditioned hospitals and heart surgeons with multiple degrees from fancy universities eloquently spell out the many benefits of a long life. Who the fuck wants a long life now!!! I remember the debates I had with my pa about smoking. He tried to reason it out with me. And I listlessly said, “Health is dispensable”. I don’t hold the same views today. You see, I learn from moment to moment and though I have always been an existentialist I like to see the larger picture and the larger picture doesn’t look so bleak (no thanks to doomsday prophets). And I don’t realy care about many things, many things that make life worthwhile I guess. But the things I care about, I feel too passionately and as I wait for a proper understanding for essentials, I still think pride isn’t a bad thing. As long as it hurts no one else. And as long as I am still open to exploration. Who wants to buy immortality when mortality can be so multifaceted and revealing.

10.10.07. 19.20 hrs

FROM THE HEIGHTS

           By F W Nietzsche

      Translated by L A Magnus


                 1.

MIDDAY of Life! Oh, season of delight!
                My summer's park!
Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark--
I peer for friends, am ready day and night,--
Where linger ye, my friends? The time is right!

                 2.

Is not the glacier's grey today for you
                   Rose-garlanded?
The brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread
And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue,
To spy for you from farthest eagle's view.

                 3.

My table was spread out for you on high--
                Who dwelleth so
Star-near, so near the grisly pit below?--
My realm--what realm hath wider boundary?
My honey--who hath sipped its fragrancy?

                 4.

Friends, ye are there! Woe me,--yet I am not
                  He whom ye seek?
Ye stare and stop--better your wrath could speak!
I am not I? Hand, gait, face, changed? And what
I am, to you my friends, now am I not?

                 5.

Am I an other? Strange am I to Me?
                Yet from Me sprung?
A wrestler, by himself too oft self-wrung?
Hindering too oft my own self's potency,
Wounded and hampered by self-victory?

                 6.

I sought where-so the wind blows keenest. There
               I learned to dwell
Where no man dwells, on lonesome ice-lorn fell,
And unlearned Man and God and curse and prayer?
Became a ghost haunting the glaciers bare?

                 7.

Ye, my old friends! Look! Ye turn pale, filled o'er
                With love and fear!
Go! Yet not in wrath. Ye could ne'er live here.
Here in the farthest realm of ice and scaur,
A huntsman must one be, like chamois soar.

                 8.

An evil huntsman was I? See how taut
              My bow was bent!
Strongest was he by whom such bolt were sent--
Woe now! That arrow is with peril fraught,
Perilous as none.--Have yon safe home ye sought!

                 9.

Ye go! Thou didst endure enough, oh, heart;--
               Strong was thy hope;
Unto new friends thy portals widely ope,
Let old ones be. Bid memory depart!
Wast thou young then, now--better young thou art!

                 10.

What linked us once together, one hope's tie--
              (Who now doth con
Those lines, now fading, Love once wrote thereon?)--
Is like a parchment, which the hand is shy
To touch--like crackling leaves, all seared, all dry.

                 11.

Oh! Friends no more! They are--what name for those?--
               Friends' phantom-flight
Knocking at my heart's window-pane at night,
Gazing on me, that speaks "We were" and goes,--
Oh, withered words, once fragrant as the rose!

                 12.

Pinings of youth that might not understand!
                 For which I pined,
Which I deemed changed with me, kin of my kind:
But they grew old, and thus were doomed and banned:
None but new kith are native of my land!

                 13.

Midday of life! My second youth's delight!
                 My summer's park!
Unrestful joy to long, to lurk, to hark!
I peer for friends!--am ready day and night,
For my new friends. Come! Come! The time is right!

                 14.

This song is done,--the sweet sad cry of rue
                 Sang out its end;
A wizard wrought it, he the timely friend,
The midday-friend,--no, do not ask me who;
At midday 'twas, when one became as two.

                 15.

We keep our Feast of Feasts, sure of our bourne,
                Our aims self-same:
The Guest of Guests, friend Zarathustra, came!
The world now laughs, the grisly veil was torn,
And Light and Dark were one that wedding-morn.