Ghalib's ghazal 18-- barzakh as a 'lazy language' compiler.

I've been  trying to think of how Ibn Arabi's notion of the barzakh might influence a poet's choice of verses for his published Divan. The notion that an early couplet might be a 'hopeful monster' or represent 'tying the knot' in a 'lazy language' - itself influences Reception, which might be thought of as a sort of bootstrapped compiler- and changes the hermeneutic circle.

Ghalib's Divan, for obvious reasons, suggests itself as the ideal candidate for this sort of exercise- but, how productive is the outcome? At least in English, one so wants to be seized of a conceit, elided or otherwise, it is precisely the poetic afflatus, or breath generated heat or tapas, which fails to be captured on the page.


Consider ghazal 18
 

shab ḳhumār-e shauq-e sāqī rastḳhez-andāzah thā
tā muḥīt̤-e bādah ṣūrat-ḳhānah-e ḳhamyāzah thā

1) last night the intoxication/hangover of the ardor of/for the Cupbearer was in the style of Judgment Day
2) up to the wine-circumference there was a picture-house of a yawn/stretch/gape 

It seems to me that the commentators miss something by taking rastkhez simply as Doomsday. The nurturing or burgeoning aspect of the word points to Ibn Arabi's conception of barzakh (limbo) as a place of imaginal growth and evolution.

Another point has to do with the manner in which the obvious conceit- viz. that the reflection of the Saqi in the wine cup causes the wine to become enchanted- is overlooked (though Ghalib considered such elision a special mark of beauty) in favor of the deeply unpoetical notion that drinkers yawn a lot..

Still the notion of Night as the hang-over of the enchantment of the lights of the Tavern strikes an experiential note.

yak qadam vaḥshat se dars-e daftar-e imkāñ khulā
jādah ajzā-e do-ʿālam-dasht kā shīrāzah thā

1a) with/through one footstep of wildness/madness the lesson of the chapter of possibilities opened up
1a) with/through one footstep of wildness/madness the lesson of the chapter of possibilities fell apart

2a) the path [that the madman had left behind] was the binding-thread of the pieces of the two-world desert
2b) the path [of madness itself] was the binding-thread of the pieces of the two-world desert

The two worlds here are the alam al amr and the alam al khalq- ie. the world of 'command' and the world of the created.
Again, Ibn Arabi's treatment of barzakh is required to make this couplet meaningful- indeed, barzakh is transformed into the individual's world line stitching his imaginal ontology together.

mānaʿ-e vaḥshat-ḳhirāmīhā-e lail;ā kaun hai
ḳhānah-e majnūn-e ṣaḥrā-gird be-darvāzah thā

1) who is a forbidder of the {madness/wildness}-walkings of Laila?
2) the house of Majnun the desert-circler was door-less

Again, it looks to me as though a (perhaps too obvious to be stated) elision needs to be made explicit- at least in English.

nālah-e dil ne diye aurāq-e laḳht-e dil bah bād
yādgār-e nālah ik dīvān-e be-shīrāzah thā

1) the lament of the heart gave the pages of the fragments of the heart to the wind
2) the memorial/keepsake of the lament was a single/unique/preeminent divan without a binding-thread

This, of course, is reminiscent of Jami picturing Majnoon as writing Lailah's name in the desert sand, which the wind then erases.

Night got drunk on the Saqi's ardor to intimate Resurrection
Fabled beauties bubbled the grape, agape at her reflection

One tread from desolation bethreads the Quran of instruction

Command & Creation, our path paginates as destruction.

The Sahara is a shack I'd  ignore as being of mean construction
Did not, on its door, Lailah's heart pound to such ruction!

That publishing Majnoon, as to Grief's Divan an Introduction
Bankrupted the Simoon, I remaindered rue deduction.

Gandhi's invisible hands- Ian Desai's ludicrous article

I came across this ludicrous article titled 'Gandhi's invisible hands' by a Rhodes Scholar named Ian Desai.

What happens is that Ian goes to Sabarmati ashram and is nonplussed to find a library there. Even more amazing than the presence of books is the fact that Gandhi had read them! Stranger still, Gandhi had a secretary, called Mahadev Desai, who had also read them! This is proof that not just Gandhi but at least one other person on his staff could read and and write!

Ian records his amazement thus-'As I explored the old, dust-caked books in this startling collection over the following weeks, months, and years, a story of Gandhi’s life and work unfolded before me that diverged from the accounts I knew. The very presence of such a substantial collection of books in proximity to Gandhi—who famously espoused a philosophy of non-possession—suggested that the image of simplicity and detachment long associated with the Mahatma, or “Great Soul,” was misleading: There was clearly a hidden degree of complexity to Gandhi’s life.'

The guy is a Rhodes Scholar. He's studying South Asian history or some such shite at Oxbridge or whatever and he makes this amazing discovery- Gandhi wasn't an illiterate hobo- he owned books. What ever next?

What's next is Ian's second great discovery- viz. that Gandhi wasn't a 'solitary saint' who just one day set off to Dandi on a Salt march or whatever and then everybody just like spontaneously joined in and got clubbed to death or whatever like y'know in that film- what was it called?- Ghoulies? Ghostbusters? No... Gandhi... that was it.. and like y'know when I like went to this place in like India like where Gandhi like lived and like guess what? The dude was into books- like books, man- heavy stuff, no kidding. And like all those other skinny little brown dudes in diapers- well, like a lot of them had been to like College and were like Law students who'd dropped out, like Mahadev Desai, or Chartered Accountants who'd gone rogue, like Kumarappa- and like nobody knows about this coz ... urm... but let Ian tell the story-
'Yet the organizational sophistication behind Gandhi’s dramatic march never got a mention in the headlines the enterprise worked so hard to produce. Its invisibility was partly by design: By effacing their own efforts, Gandhi’s associates reinforced his image as a simple and self-reliant crusader. While most traces of Gandhi’s enterprise were indeed erased from the historical record, Mahadev Desai’s library is a notable exception. Gandhi’s team compiled and utilized an extensive variety of intellectual resources to support the Mahatma’s mission. Desai was the heart of this intellectual operation, helping Gandhi refine his philosophy over the course of his career and providing him with concrete information to use in his ideological struggle with British imperialism.'

What Ian Baba is saying is
1) Gandhi's disciples were self-effacing. This isn't true. People sought out Gandhi because he was the most efficacious 'reputation multiplier'.
Take Kumarappa. Why does he come to Gandhi and why does he stay? The answer is, it was a short-cut to gaining recognition. Why? In what sense? Well, he fancies himself an Economist coz he quit a good career as a Chartered Accountant and had got a Masters from Columbia in Econ. Essentially, he thought he could prove 'the drain theory' w.r.t Indian Public Finance with the result that he ignored the really important fiscal questions for the Indian economist as defined by Ranade and which Gokhale ought to have better developed. But, that was also the purpose for which ICS officers like Hume, Wedderburn and Cotton set up and supported the I.N.C.  The Servants of India has been described as similar to the Jesuit order in terms of the importance attached to turning their lodges into libraries and collecting and commissioning statistical and other works. Gandhi's novelty, and his success in reaching out to the masses, lay in rejecting knowledge of any sort. Yes, he read the books that people sent to him but his message never changed on the basis of what he read except in a negative sense- his magpie mind might pick up some new fad or factoid that complemented his general silliness- Gandhi read only to condemn the already highly developed and elaborated project of knowledge-based Indian reform.
2) The important point about the Salt March is not that it was well organized, or that, thanks to the crooked Capitalist Dalmia, it was well financed but that it was well organized and financed to fail.  This is because it's ostensible goal really didn't matter to its sponsors. They got their corrupt deal with Manchester and padded contract from Congress Ministries. The Salt tax was in fact abolished about 15 years later but it was merely a gesture which had lost all meaning. In fact, the price of salt went up, because what had been Govt. revenue turned into a private monopoly rent. Meanwhile, protests about stuff that actually mattered to people went ahead and, more often than not, were quite successful because Gandhians were told to fuck off. The bottom line is that even spontaneous and poorly organized movements can be successful provided they aim at things which genuinely make a difference to people's lives but don't pose an existential threat to the paramount power.
3) History is not- contra Ian Baba- something that gets erased by some magic marker. Ian is simply wrong about Gandhi's helpers being self-effacing rather than celebrity-fuckers. True, his Ashrams had their share of  faceless nonentities and/or schizophrenics without an autonomous identity. But, politically speaking, Gandhi's henchmen were all a bunch of self-aggrandizing sociopaths with delusions of grandeur.  Everybody in India knows about Gandhi's helpers. Indeed, Gandhi is still important to us coz of that Great Uncle or Great-great grandfather or whatever whom he used to give enemas to and who enabled our family to move from the village or moffussil town to a nice middle class neighbourhood in the big City.

Ian's conclusion is 'The real magic of the Mahatma was not a trick of popular charisma, but in fact a deft ability to recruit, manage, and inspire a team of talented individuals who worked tirelessly in his service.'
This is daft. Firstly, Ian has not named one person whom the Mahatma actually went out and 'head-hunted' or otherwise recruited. People came to him for their own reasons. The Mahatma tried to 'manage' people but failed. There is the story of Kumarappa refusing to pay the Ashramites the inflated per diems they demanded out of the Bihar Relief fund. Gandhi intervened- not to get his Ashramites to reduce their monetary demands, but to get the Charetered Accountant to pay up and shut up. But a C.A is a C.A, even in Gandhian guise. Kumarappa stood his ground. So some other fund was tapped for the Ashramite's expenses. Had Gandhi been a good manager, his Ashrams would have been profit centers rather than bottomless money pits. True, he was fucked in the head- but if Scientology can make money why not Gandhian Ashrams?
Gandhi's disciples, properly so called, weren't talented. They were nut-jobs. They didn't work tirelessly. They sat around spinning yarn. Gandhi loved these goof-balls coz- narcissistic hypochondriacs that they were- their function was to constantly waste his time by demanding yet more worthless medical and dietary advice, thus permitting him to picture himself as a sort of Medical savant rather than the deeply provincial politician that he actually was..

Ian totally misses the point about Gandhi. His notion of Hind Swaraj was one which 'made room for the zamindar and the maharaja'- how? Simple! By keeping the British around- but morally debasing them as nothing more than his periodic jailers and turnkeys.
True, Gandhi sponsored a boycott of foreign textiles- he could scarcely fail to do so since it started while he was still in South Africa cuddling with Kallenbach- in any case, his financiers wanted it- but he resolutely opposed a general boycott of British goods or, in fact, any measure that would have hit British financial interests in a manner that had not already been negotiated without him.
Though a fully paid up nut-job, he was less silly than almost anyone else- at least, from the British point of view.
He was 'a loyal seditionist'- recruiting soldiers for three of Britain's wars was just the beginning of his service to the King Emperor. The English speaking people- if not the Indglish speaking people- owe him a debt of gratitude.
But, perhaps, that is Ian Desai's point.The historical record has been erased. Not the sort of record kept by the Gandhi Foundation or the Indian Govt. or responsible historians- no, the other sort of historical record created by kids cutting stuff out of magazines to create collages in Schools unable to actually teach them how to read and write and like mebbe someday do rithmetic.

Come to think of it Prof.Raghavan Iyer, too, was a Rhodes scholar and wrote his shite book on Gandhi in Santa Barbara Cartland.

Jamnalal Bajaj- Gandhi's adopted son.

'Not long ago, as the Gandhians in the Gandhi stronghold Wardha region were opposing the development of large heavy industry, one could hear people making comments about their bad fortune that of all the areas available in India Gandhi had to choose theirs to settle in, and as a consequence, because of his many followers in the region, they will not have the development projects which would give them and their children work opportunities.
With all the Gandhian institutions which have grown up in this area, why is this not a model of Gandhian utopia? Why is Sevagram still just a dirty Indian village? Why do the locals consider the Gandhians still in their midst as irrelevant, or at times worse?'

Why blame Gandhi for everything? The person responsible for that shit-head setting up shop in Wardha was Jamnalal Bajaj. Like Birla, Bajaj had the right stuff to be a great industrialist. But he fell harder for Gandhi's silliness and ended up looking after cows or something equally shit-headed.


Is there like a khap panchayat Indian Industrialists belong to that makes it obligatory for them to endorse utterly silly ideologies in proportion to their capacity to enrich themselves?

Cliodynamics- Is Britain on the verge of Revolution?

What is worrying about the ongoing political ferment in the Arab world is not that the Pentagon's 100 million dollar computer model failed to predict it but that a sort of reductionist 'cliodynamic' logic is being used to explain something which is of little fundamental importance and marks no seminal change of significance.
This is a link to an article by Peter Turchin, towards the end of which the mathematical biologist smugly warns of an impending revolution here in Britain caused by Tony Blair's thoughtless attempt to raise the portion of young people in higher education to 50%.
Since a 'credentialing crisis'  (i.e. an unsustainable number of people seeking academic qualifications so as to secure a slice of a diminishing pie) is evidence of a Ricardo-Malthusian crunch, Turchin, with a bland indifference to cause and effect, has pointed the finger at Tony Blair for whatever the horrors the future has in store for us- tumbrils crammed with merchant bankers on their way to guillotines manned by Deleuzian Dance Archaeologists or  Post Colonial Sports Therapy Majors- another reason, surely, to just canonize the guy already without bothering too much about burying him first.

Another point one might make is that since revolutions tend to massively worsen the well being of those they mobilize, and since the cancerous growth in Further Education in this country has created a generation of debt-slaves- it is safe to say that deflationary pressures, or higher real interest rates at any rate, are likely to be the outcome, unless, of course, cliodynamics really is as silly as its name suggests.

Recreational incontinence & the new 'rave' culture.

Much has been written about stress-related incontinence in the board room- what about recreational incontinence, especially amongst the 35 to 55 cohort?
A quick Google search shows that the phenomenon is more commonly viewed as a corollary of the Permanent Income Hypothesis, rather than, as is all to apparent from even a cursory glance at the dribbling backsides of the sort of people who turn up at middle-brow book signings, the equivalent of the 'rave culture' of the '90's.  Clearly, what is happening is that G3 and G4 enabled mobile telephony has permitted the creation of 'flash mobs' who 'have a party in their pants' under the guise of getting Vikram Seth to sign his latest puerility for them.

Personally, I blame David Cameron.
That boy aint right.

My struggle against Eurocentric Aesthetics.

The hegemonic nature of Eurocentric aesthetics is responsible for the bizarre paradox that images of slim good looking females in bikinis  have come to be considered more 'sexy' than pictures of me reaching deep into my jaddi to scratch my low slung bollocks not just by White people but also, now, by people of Color- that too even by middle-aged, heterosexual, bahishkrit samaj, Indians like myself.
How can we explain such a truly diabolical outcome?

As Ranajit Guha said 'within every thinking Indian there occurs a silent struggle between Gandhi and Marx.'
But Ranajit is now considered a hottie and constitutes the one-man Reeperbahn of Vienna, where- kidnapped by Nazi human traffickers- he blamelessly resides.
In a sense, then, Ranajit has been appropriated by that exploitative Eurocentric Aesthetic which also constitutes as its alterity those not considered hot, like myself, who thus are promoted from subaltern status to full membership of the bahishkrit samaj (externed or ostracized community)
How did this come about?
My contention is that both Gandhi and Marx became totally Eurocentric, the former when he lived up the road from me in Baron's Court, the latter when he was buried in the very cemetery where I lost my virginity to a hirsute Maltese sixth former from the infamous Parliament Hill School for Gargogyles. Well, actually, I didn't lose my virginity to her- she merely muttered mutinously against Dom Mintoff while I damply held her hand- but, as I was subsequently assured, she certainly would have deflowered me had I fed her the packet of pork scratchings and half can of Tizer that made a transaction of that sort de rigeur amongst Trotskyite young women of that generation and milieu.

Clearly what is needed is a new episteme of lok-avidya- indigenous urm...knowledge?- that can restore me to 'ultra-hottie' status while relegating that dumpy little Aishwariya Rai Bacchan to her proper place as like maybe a Micro-biologist or Econometrician or something.

The above picture of me, wearing janeo and jaddi, appears quite different to people who have surrendered to a Eurocentric aesthetic.
Indeed, the rot has set in so far that my recent movie- Anal Cherries III- was rejected by the Indian Film Censors on the grounds that it was pornographic despite the fact that if contained nothing but me in my veshti & angavastram declaiming Tagore in a hilarious Bengali accent.

clientism vs. consumerism

I think it was Mahatma Gandhi who said 'The Earth produces enough to satisfy every man's need for clients, but not enough to satisfy the greed of even a single of those clients if they start to think like consumers and realize that they're paying through the nose for shitheads like me and you to patronize them, therefore we must all condemn consumerism and eating nice things and wearing nice clothes and medicines which actually work and other such godlessness because  it is just not environmentally sustainable- people like you and me would go fucking extinct if we don't all work together to fucking squash this consumerism business right now.'

President Kennedy, on the other hand, said in his inauguration address 'Don't you be fucking coming to me now I is Pres. saying 'what can you do for me?' That's not the fucking question you should be asking yourself. Ask instead ' what can I do for the Pres. now he dun got himself elected and owns the country and gets to fuck anybody he wants to in the ass?'"

This is the very simple message we should be getting across to our youth today. Obviously, by youth, I mean Rahul Gandhi.