Silika Mohapatra

2011-07-07T18:26:00.000+05:30

Public Lecture by Jules Simon

2011-06-01T13:11:00.002+05:30

Department of Philosophy

University of Delhi

Public Lecture

Jules Simon

Philosophy Professor, University of Texas at El Paso, USA

Venue: Room No. 11, Arts Faculty Building, University of Delhi.

Date: 2 June, 2011, Thursday

Time: 11 AM

Title: “Rosenzweig’s Midrash and Heidegger’s Hermeneutic:

the role of interpreting art in guiding ethical responsibility

The form of Professor Simon’s talk will consist of readings with commentary drawn from his recently published book: Art and Responsibility: A Phenomenology of the Diverging Paths of Rosenzweig and Heidegger (Continuum 2011)

The Flying Boat

2011-05-26T11:28:00.001+05:30

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

2011-05-25T00:19:00.000+05:30

The artistic performance of a stage actor is definitely presented to the public by the actor in person; that of the screen actor, however, is presented by a camera, with a twofold consequence. The camera that presents the performance of the film actor to the public need not respect the performance as an integral whole. Guided by the cameraman, the camera continually changes its position with respect to the performance. The sequence of positional views which the editor composes from the material supplied him constitutes the completed film. It comprises certain factors of movement which are in reality those of the camera, not to mention special camera angles, close-ups, etc.... Also, the film actor lacks the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust to the audience during his performance, since he does not present his performance to the audience in person. This permits the audience to take the position of a critic, without experiencing any personal contact with the actor. The audience's identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera.

— Walter Benjamin

Abid

2011-05-25T00:01:00.001+05:30

Film: Abid  

Directed By: Pramod Pati 

Origin: India, 1972 

Duration: 5 minutes

Description: Unlike a cartoon film, which is a rapidly moving series of photographed drawings, in pixilation, a moving object is shot frame by frame, and then through clever editing made to appear in motion. By its nature, this movement is agile, energetic and unpredictable just like the pop art movement.

Technontology

2011-05-24T19:56:00.001+05:30

The articulation of technology uncovers at least two trends: first, it harbors an impulse to duplicate, to create phantoms. Their numbers multiply as culture evolves. To see how: Alexander Graham Bell created the miracle that is a telephone. Space could no longer constrain verbal communication because the technology for the production of phantom sound was made possible.

However, by duplicating sound and enabling it to cut across continents, the telephone not only creates a double, but also enhances reality. This, I construe as the second trend. The two are closely tied since by (a) imitating the real, technology is also able to (b) transcend the real. It transcends by overcoming the limitations of reality, its finitude: where I cannot be present, now my web-camera video stream can. Instead of having to travel to the hypothetical planet Pandora to see the exotic and magical flora and fauna, I can visit the nearest multiplex and watch the movie Avatar. The gains: easy, convenient, is cheaper, no fear of being devoured by monstrous creatures, saves the energy costs of inter-planetary travel and avoids the sheer tediousness of health check-ups. What do we lose? This is more complicated.

There is a certain irony about the phantom. While it enhances an object, it also is one step removed from the object. An mp3 file of the crock sound of a frog or the colour print-out of a red apple are duplicates not of the object ‘frog’ or ‘apple’ but of one medium through which they reveal themselves. The phantom is, at the same time, both present and reminiscent of presence. It is presence in the sense that it duplicates one or a cluster of aspects of the object, its quality. But it is never able to present an object in its completeness, and is therefore only reminiscent of presence. There remains a gap between phantom presence and the object. The object is intrinsically withdrawn, shy even and therefore technology is only able to duplicate the medium. The being of the frog and the apple remain ever so elusive. Yet we do not know what is nature of that depth which makes the object what it is.

Technology however, seems to nurture the desire to replicate what is lost with the phantom. It seeks to become the object, and hopes that by enhancing the medium it can create a mirror universe of hyper-real objects: 2D cinema progresses into 3D where one can in fact experience rain drops in a theatre, pages in e-book reader can be turned with a swift move of the finger, just like in ‘real’ world. And hence the contours of what is ‘real’ and what is ‘virtual’ alter.

La gazza ladra (or The Thieving Magpie) by Emanuele Luzzati

2011-05-24T18:47:00.001+05:30

Of Magpies et cetera

2011-05-24T18:46:00.010+05:30

I ordered twelve books this month. Five have arrived. In the sequence of their arrival:
(a) Marshal McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage
(b) Graham Harman, Towards Speculative Realism
(c) Jean-Francois Lyotard, Libidinal Economy
(d) Steven Shaviro, Connected
(e) Jean-Luc Nancy, The Birth to Presence

Meanwhile, I have been reading an assorted range of things, in bits and pieces. My (new) iPad is, most likely, the culprit. The sheer buoyancy experienced with the coming-into-being of portable (e-) libraries makes one heady.

§ In the metro train, on my way to the university, the three witches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth sang:

All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, thane of Glamis!
All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!
All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!

§ On an afternoon, post-lunch, my mother read to me Fakir Mohan Senapati’s classic Odia short story Rebati, from the collection Odia Galpamala. She had last read it as a student in high school but seemed have an accurate memory of it.

§ When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta. [Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle]

And so, I listened to Rossini’s piece on youtube and also discovered Emanuele Luzzati’s beautiful short film La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie) which uses it as the background score.

§ Couldn’t help be amused when Don Quixote sought a ‘distinguished and full-sounding’ name for his horse, who then came to be called Rocinante.

§ Then there was Guy De Maupassant’s Two Friends: Monsieur Morissot and his fishing chum Monsieur Sauvage. And I ate fish today.

§ In the notes to Old Dog Sirko from The Magic Egg and Other Tales from Ukraine, read about the ‘bandura’, an Ukrainian stringed instrument somewhat like an asymmetrical mandolin, often used to play or accompany traditional folk songs.

§ My supervisor recently suggested Tolstoy’s Father Sergius. That happened as well. It ends without really ending though. The entire story is presented in terms of ‘was’, i.e. a narration of what has happened. In the last paragraph however, ‘is’ (the present tense) makes a guest appearance. One is startled and there is a sense of incompleteness.

Indian Political Thought: A Reader

2010-08-08T15:00:00.061+05:30

Editors: Aakash Singh, Silika Mohapatra

(London & New York: Routledge, 2010).

It is a comprehensive introduction, tracing the development of the discipline and offering a clear presentation of the most influential literature in the field, bringing together contributions by outstanding and well-known academics on contemporary Indian political thought. The Reader weaves together relevant works from the humanities & social sciences — sociology, anthropology, law, history, philosophy, feminist and postcolonial theory — which shape the nature of political theorization in India today. Themes both unique to the Indian political milieu as well as of universal significance are reflected upon, including tradition, secularism, communalism, modernity, feminism, justice and human rights.

In our time of globalization, people in the West are increasingly looking beyond the limits of the West for insights and teachings. It is very important and fascinating to find out what is happening today in India in terms of political philosophy. This Reader is timely and very much needed as there is simply no comparable text available...it is in fact a 'who's who' in contemporary Indian political thought.

Fred Dallmayr

A significant attempt to construct a foundational text for contemporary Indian political thought, this volume meets a deeply felt need.

Shashi Tharoor

Thirty-one pieces

2009-12-28T12:21:00.005+05:30

On a translucent unraveled afternoon

The shadow of a man at the trampoline bar

Wrote thirty-one pieces of quadrangle verse

And stuck them on the insipid grey walls

Of the colour of stale nocturnal flowers

And the aroma of crisp washed fabric

Soaked in pale yellow tambourine strokes

Like fresh, half-burnt newspaper squares

Ode to an unknown day of the week

2009-07-04T03:23:00.004+05:30

A boat 

Came along 

On an obscure day of the week 

Some say it was a Sunday 

For the translucent scent 

Of white lilies 

Yet others can’t remember 

They meet at the boxers’ enclave 

Sifting yellow calendars of oil paintings 

Old ladies peep in 

Through the limestone windows 

For a pinch of gossip 

A crack in the wall 

Desperate for a story to tell 

But it evades 

Mind plays

Amethyst Battles

2009-07-02T12:37:00.001+05:30

Amethyst 

The horizon 

Of inescapable stupor 

Sparkled with noise  

Maddening cries of sea gulls 

They obsessively hover 

Pecking at water weeds 

Hungry  

Sky daubs their racket 

Voices fade, rise in circles 

Soaking mauve strokes 

A chuckle

My Name is Red

2009-07-01T13:55:00.016+05:30

'My dear master, explain red to somebody who has never known red.’

‘If we touched it with the tip of a finger, it would feel like something between iron and copper. If we took it into our palm, it would burn. If it were a flower, it would smell like a daisy, not a red rose.’  

My Name is Red

When a cannonball nudged the moon

2009-06-29T14:35:00.002+05:30

A cannonball nudged the moon 

Powdered silver rust floats orphaned, astray 

And it does not rain 

They talk about it in hushed tones 

Waiting for a turquoise night 

But the dust envelops 

Only a robot survives 

Perhaps also a rocket launcher 

Feeding on bread crumbs 

Its greasy limbs, restless 

Serenaded by a lost somebody 

Anticipating a thunder storm 

Then, drum rolls 

Dust soar, evaporates 

A faint melancholy 

A colourless rain 

A crimson sky 

Period

The Subject of Being

2009-06-28T20:00:00.000+05:30

“…the question that has always been asked and is still being asked today, the ever-puzzling question ‘What is being’ amounts to this: ‘What is primary being?’...”

By formulating the question “What is being” in terms of “What is primary being” Aristotle takes a significant turn in bringing the “this” or the concrete (for e.g. a particular man) to the centre — because, for him, “primary being” cannot be abstract; but must in fact be the more particular and the concrete. In contrast, the movement towards secondary being would be towards the more general or the universal. For e.g., we include a particular man in the species called ‘man’ and the species itself in its turn is included in the genus called ‘animal’. These (man, animal), then, are secondary substances. The particular man, however, is Aristotle’s ground, the object of his investigation of ousia or primary being.

Aristotle’s first step towards the understanding of the meaning of being is via the ten categories which he considers as all-exhaustive in understanding the nature of things. These categories are: [1] What (Substance) – ‘Man, a horse’, [2] How large (Quantity) – ‘Two cubits long’, [3] What sort of thing (Quality) – ‘White, grammatical’, [4] Related to what (Relation) – ‘Double, greater’, [5] Where (Place) – ‘In the market place, In the Lyceum’, [6] When (Time) – ‘Yesterday, last year’, [7] What attitude (Posture/Position) – ‘Is lying, sitting’, [8] How circumstanced (State or Condition) – ‘Is shod, is armed’, [9] How active, what doing (Action) – ‘Cuts, burns’, [10] How passive, what suffering (Affection) – ‘Is cut, is burnt’ (Aristotle: Categories).

An overview of the categorial formulation illustrates that in understanding the meaning of being, Aristotle poses virtually all possible interrogatives – ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘where’, ‘when’ – and yet, it is remarkable that, he conspicuously abandons the ‘who’.

Even though Aristotle is driven towards concretion in both (a) asking the question “What is being” in terms of “What is primary being”, and (b) in offering an exhaustive categorial determination of all things in the world, he seems to fall short of the step that would yield fuller concretion. In fact, it is implausible to hold that any claims to the concretion of being can bypass or underestimate the ‘who’ of the question of being.

The question of meaning of Being cannot be isolated from the one who interrogates. In the act of asking the question: ‘What is being?’ Aristotle seems to gloss over the fact that Being is an issue for the one who asks that question. To lay it out in another way, in merely keeping to the ontical-categorial framework, Aristotle devalues the ontological priority of the question.

It is to address this skew that Heidegger’s Dasein steps into the picture. In asking the question of meaning of Being, rather than simply ‘What is Being’, Heidegger creates the need for Dasein itself and retrieves the quest for being. Dasein is that ‘being which is concerned in its being about its being’ (Heidegger: Being and Time). Da is a German word referring to place, though it also has a temporal aspect to it – ‘there/here, at this time’. Sein, on the other hand means ‘to be’ or ‘to exist’. This renders Dasein a meaning of ‘existing-there-or-here-then’. The essence of Dasein lies in its existence and not in its substance.

In his ontological framework laid out in Categories, with great emphasis, Aristotle attempts to distinguish substance from subject and yet his subject appears most substance-like, without any subjectivity. Aristotle’s main complaint against his predecessors is the absence of logical clarity of terms in their systems, but he himself doesn’t clarify what he means by a ‘subject’ and how it is to be properly distinguished from a substance, even in situations which appear to demand an explicit articulation. It is interesting that Aristotle uses multiple instances of ‘a man’ to illustrate his discussion of being in Categories, Physics and Metaphysics. But he uses it as a mere substantive ‘man’ and not as a subjective ‘man’. A particular entity like a man, the locus of primary being for Aristotle could satisfactorily be replaced by a particular table or a clay pot and is therefore dramatically different from the Dasein of Heidegger. This is because even though Dasein can be conceived of as merely ontical like a clay pot, the fact that it has the possibility to be concerned with whether its being is merely ontical (or not) is an issue for it, is certainly ontological in character.

For Aristotle what is most characteristic of substance is the fact that although it remains, notwithstanding, numerically one and the same, it is capable of being the recipient of contrary qualifications. He claims:

There is a sense in which material passes away and comes into being, and there is a sense in which it does not. As that in which a thing is, the material does in its own right suffer destruction (for that which is destroyed is in it, namely the deprivation), but as what is by way of potency, it does not in its own right suffer destruction, but is necessarily indestructible and ungeneratable (Aristotle: Physics).

In the Physics he says, further:

Necessarily everything concordant comes into being from what is discordant, and the discordant from what is concordant, and the concordant is transformed by destruction into the discordant and this is not any random one but one that is opposite (Aristotle: Physics).

Therefore the movement between actuality and potentiality, in other words— change — is seen by Aristotle as that which is the most distinctive trait of a primary being (Aristotle: Categories). In spite of the fact that even by the end of Physics Aristotle continues to grapple with whether ‘the thinghood of the thing is the form or what underlies it’ (Aristotle. Physics), there is a seeming emphasis on the possibility of ‘what a thing can become’, namely, its form. That the substance of a thing is its form is a claim that is both accepted and rejected in Metaphysics. In Chapter 17 of Metaphysics one encounters “a new beginning” where form and matter, which were so far elements, are radically transformed into principles. The primary being of a thing then becomes for Aristotle its nature – the inherent impulse or power to develop and change into ‘what is’.

Although some features of objects are not their primary being, those that are primary being are natural and are established by nature; hence the nature of a thing is clearly its primary being, and it is, not an element, but a principle (Aristotle: Metaphysics).

The question of ‘what is primary being’ then shifts from what its substance is to what its function or final cause is. Natural phenomena, for Aristotle, are characterized by their purposeful movement toward becoming themselves, and that is the ‘form’. Form is thus not a pre-existing static ‘idea’ into which the world shapes itself. Rather, form is motion, the motion of natural phenomena from potentiality to actuality.

* This is an edited version of the original article.

A Silhouette

2008-09-28T19:39:00.000+05:30

A limestone wind
He smiled and said
Rising beyond
The scarlet skies

The grass struggled
Slashed and torn
A naked canvas
Whispered along

Running with a wind
Dodging shadows
Only a silhouette
I could see

White brush strokes
Over a purple kite
Dust flew into
A hundred eyes

A Burnt Tree

2008-09-14T00:28:00.003+05:30

He did not take the staircase 

For fear that the thread of piano keys 

Would play the breaking news 

A song with but one sharp note 

Knocking the doors with glass frame 

People whisper; they might see 

A fire alarm could go off 

Who was smoking? They will ask 

Would his innocence convince them 

Especially on an afternoon like this 

When even leafs on the tree smell burnt 

Would they not suspect?

The Blind Boat

2008-07-19T19:52:00.004+05:30

Grey are the clouds. Grey is the sun 

As silent as a game of Dumb Charades 

The wind strangles a silent howl 

Lest they think she is awake  

The blind boat vanished last night 

We rummaged the alleys of silver city 

A giant umbrella over our wet heads 

A reluctant Nakata on our side  

Somebody on the corner street whispered 

‘A pretty red polka dotted umbrella’ 

Flattered but shy to admit so 

We mumbled some gibberish prayers  

Maybe the stupid finder of lost cats 

Can talk to storm-torn boats 

We suspect more since he says he can’t 

For we know boats are cursed cats  

To the south of the river of mirrors 

We thought we saw a red sail 

But the blind boat could not have dared 

To look at its own face

There was a sudden movement in his dull eyes 
As if he had heard an old lost song 
Believing. Disbelieving. It amused us 
But assured. We sighed and returned

A Glimpse

2008-07-13T19:17:00.004+05:30

And the white swamps 

Won’t they answer? 

If I asked 

Why she refused 

The song of a ruffling wind 

When the harbor was lit 

With beautiful oil lamps 

Awaiting a glimpse 

Of another night

Our Own Dear Mad Hatter

2008-06-15T16:01:00.003+05:30

The Mad Hatter limps, slowly

Across the wet patches of sand 
His wound gives away, a scarlet 
And wooden crutches trail along  

Crossing over the bridge, by the wall 
Where the portraits are neatly hung 
He croons his beloved Cheerio song 
Nobody knows whence he came from  

There’re days when he laughs by himself 
Gazing at golden-yellow fields of corn 
Afternoons when scarecrows are sleepy 
And the sparrows too tired to rob  

They clap their hands when they see him 
Children from other side of the bridge 
They never throw stones, only chuckle 
While he plays his role of a mad man

The Rise and Fall of Masks

2008-05-30T21:06:00.002+05:30

She thrust forward her clenched palm 
The answer was a handful of red soil 
Dust seeps through, flies in their face 
Plastering the cracking paint on their masks  

Rains have come. White ants run amuck 
Terrified by whispers of damp courtyard walls 
Snake and ladder is a favourite this season 
They play pretending their voices don’t quiver  

Water drops patters on the rusty tin roof 
Wind weaves into it a silver resonance 
Of noisy night insects and creaking doors 
She looks at the clock. They do not dare

Weaving the Rainbow

2008-04-15T16:42:00.006+05:30

Her skin was like the winter morning sun. Drops of water trickled down her waist, meandering through her wet black hair, as she brushed them. It looked like a scarlet day to her. If not for the fallen red leaves, and the vermillion on her forehead it could have been a blue day. She could sense the colour of each day, and guessing it was her favourite pastime on mornings like this one. When she was younger she used to collect dry leaves and poems. Later her interests shifted to dreaming if their beauty was real. Now, she was a dream herself. The window in the room across the bookshelves had white panes. Mist enveloped the glass in cold darkness and with dawn it dripped down, leaving traces of an anxious night. The ruins of the stone wall and the crippled tree next to it were her most beloved gazing spots, when she sat at the window. They had witnesses the colours of her deepest reflections.

Nameless

2008-02-18T21:11:00.004+05:30

The voyage awaits a nameless sky

She had promised to come 
To sing a lullaby 
Somewhere 
Perhaps in a windy January 
But she spent the month 
In playing with the wind 
Perhaps to forget 
The promise of the voyage 
That waits still, to name her 
And yet she chose to remain

 Nameless

Snow

2007-12-22T18:29:00.001+05:30

It was a snow painted December.

Street lamps exposed their wrinkled snow faces. 

The mask of twilight could no longer conceal them, or their white stories. 

A pale leaf quivered and the gulls screeched, piercing the stillness in the air. 

The mist was rising as children got ready for their bed-time stories. Silver stories.

He took the road to the house with the creaking window.

The whiff of the waves and an intoxicating wind swept his brown hair.

Again, he heard those songs. They were songs of a snow December.

Beyond the brick slabs, huddled in wild thorny lilies was the window.

Snow is the colour of this day, when I write to you.

I have worn a red scarf, to paint it with many hues.

The burgundy of forest vines, scarlet from forgotten autumn leaves.

Yes, it is a snow painted December.

Vermilion

2007-12-02T23:32:00.000+05:30

Winter

2007-11-28T11:59:00.001+05:30

Unstrung shoe laces 

Dragged along the pavement 

At the red violin hour 

Of a cold winter morning 

When the scent of a pale mist 

And a strident radio 

Whispering, the rhythm 

Of her mad breathlessness 

The black-white crosswords 

And a bottle of mulish ink 

The wind soaked her dress 

On a street swelled with broken stones

Dusk

2007-11-25T01:19:00.000+05:30

On a stormy fifth floor

2007-11-23T16:26:00.001+05:30

The white surf 

Nudging their feet 

Swirling and dancing 

They whistled along  

There was a mist 

And the midnight sun 

Of dry wind stories 

On a stormy fifth floor

Tempest

2007-11-04T13:40:00.001+05:30

An incensed surge 

On the day of the tempest 

When far she walked 

With the howling wind

Beyond the deluge 

Of an insane inferno 

The yellow wax shadows 

Laughed at her

Who is the Good One?

2007-10-25T15:13:00.002+05:30

When Meursault in Camus’ The Outsider says “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know”, we are left aghast! Why? Why does Meursault’s existence become absurd and meaningless to us if he doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral? Why do we feel uncomfortable? There is something peculiarly uneasy about the situation.  

Meursault, as it appears to the society in which he is living, refuses to participate in ‘human-ness’ by displaying a disinterest in the ‘natural’ behavior expected of him. The question strikes: Is Meursault human, or to be specific, is he a ‘good’ human? To us, on the face at least, the answer seems to defy our universal understanding of what it means (conventionally) to be human or to be good.  

In Plato, the reason why we know that ‘X is white’, for instance, is because we know that X participates in what he would call the Form of whiteness. Is the wall in front of me red? For Plato, such a question can be answered only through recourse to the idea of participation between the universal Form and a particular instance of it in the world. The Form is thus that which provides intelligibility to our perceptions, consequently turning out to be not only the cause of all our knowledge of objects, but also the cause of the very existence of all things. 

“Then that which provides their truth to the things known, and gives the power of knowing to the knower, you must say is the idea or principle of the good, and you must conceive it as being the cause of understanding and of truth in so far as known…” (Plato, The Republic)

“Similarly with things known, you will agree that the good is not only the cause of their being known, but the cause that knowledge exists and of the state of knowledge …” (Plato, The Republic)

Given that Plato conceives of this intimate relation between the universal and the particular, let us ask the question: how would Plato judge Meursault? Would he make an ethical judgment?

The idea of the Good is crucial here. Goodness demands that the particular is faithful (to the extent of possibility) to its description/Form. This faithfulness is manifested at the same time as both ethical and aesthetic, like the portrait of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray) that shrivels and hideously changes into something aesthetically repulsive completely coinciding with the moral degradation of the man himself. The portrait may be used as a metaphor for the world of Becoming: that what is visible and thus dealing with the aesthetics of particulars— prone to change and decay. Being, on the other hand, is the realm of the intelligible (Beauty of Forms), which remains unchanged in its pure and pristine form. The goodness of a thing is a function of the internal order that it displays by virtue of its permanence, beauty and unity of Form. A good table for Plato will therefore manifest that beauty.

It seems then that the universal is the ground of the particular in so far as the latter successfully participates in the former. In the quest for a unifying principle to provide intelligibility to the Heraclitean world of flux, Parmenides postulates ‘The One’ or ‘Being’ as the only thing ‘that is’. Plato takes up this ‘Being’ and constructs, as it were, the realm of Forms. But where Parmenides and Zeno in postulating the ‘One’ end up denying the ‘many’ or the particulars, Plato retains them. In Plato’s ‘Divided Line’, Heraclitus finds a place in the perishing particulars, while Parmenides is accommodated in the universal, unchanging Forms.

In criticism of his theory of Forms, Parmenides offers a dilemma to young Socrates. The dilemma of participation in Plato’s Parmenides is of the structure of an exclusive disjunction. Parmenides argues that given Socrates’ claim that there is participation of particulars in Forms, it must either be in whole or in part. Parmenides uses the reductio argument to show that both the disjuncts are equally unacceptable and have to be rejected. In effect, the idea of participation itself has to be abandoned.

The notion of participation, however, is crucial as it is related to knowledge itself, especially, if by knowledge we mean what remains unchanged in the Parmenidean sense. The dilemma, therefore, presumes that the idea of participation cannot be given up as long as the reality of Forms is retained since the particulars, by means of participation, are our only access to the reality of Forms which represent a higher realm. At the same time, the existence of participation attempts to threaten the very essence of Forms, namely their unity and indivisibility.

Perhaps then Plato will find it hard to answer the question we pose to him: Is Meursault good? The knowledge (or the ascription) of the good is based on the foundation of participation. If there is no participation, then the idea of goodness will not apply to the particular. In this case, it would be difficult to account for the way an individual can be called good if he cannot participate in the Form of goodness.

But even if participation is granted in its vague way, the particular can only aspire but can never fully instantiate the Form. The Form of good is the perfect ideal or the archetype which is never achieved by individuals. For instance, one can never draw the perfect triangle. “…a square in itself is what they speak of, and a diameter in itself, not the one they are drawing…” (Plato, The Republic). There can merely be a striving towards good. One can then make a moral judgment only in terms of degrees or a gradation of participation. There are grades of goodness depending on their degree of participation to the Form of good. In fact, it appears that to even call the Forms ‘good’ is tautological. The concept of goodness cannot be applied to Forms in a strict way, because there is nothing to set this goodness against. It is the particular that can be relatively good or bad by virtue of the extent of its faithful representation of the Form. Humans can be good or bad, because they are a gradation in relation to the Form.

In setting out to examine, then, whether Merseault is good, one can make initial claims about whether he is relatively good only vis à vis other members of the category of ‘human’, since a moral context is essential to make a moral judgment.

In Merseault this context is the society that seems to condemn him as an outsider resisting to conform. But perhaps Merseault can be rescued if we see him as an ‘outsider’ to the community (the conventional definition) alone, but not necessarily an ‘outsider’ to the Form of good. It is possible that other human particulars are not following the Form of good. Thus the outsider (to society), may well have internalized the Form of good, and therefore it would be rash to say that for Plato non-conventionality was necessarily an evil just because the individual did not participate in the universal conventions. What convention says is good, in a moral context, may not necessarily coincide with the Form of the good. One could argue, therefore, that one can prioritize, in Plato, the relation between the individual and the Form—not one between the individual and the community—because the community may well be engaging in immoral acts. This leaves us with the option of looking at the participation of an individual with the Form alone, unmediated through society, or conventional definitions.

The question now is: Will “goodness” make sense in the absence of the canons of good or the way others have laid them out for us?

Even before we set out to explore this question, it strikes that the way a subject relates to its Form appears to be of a different kind from the relation that exists between an object and its Form. The subject can choose to deviate from its Form, while the object quite obviously cannot. Isn’t this what the existentialist demands in the first place? This brings us to the point then that objects must be different from subjects, which is why the discourse of ethicality even applies to subjects. For Hegel, the centre of objects which determines them concentrates into a point outside themselves called gravitation (Hegel, The Philosophy of History). Subjects, on the other hand, have their centre within them in their freedom which allows them to move towards an infinite possibility of recreating value for themselves.

Kierkegaard therefore severely criticizes the claims to generalize behaviour of individuals in terms of descriptions or predications, and he is upfront against the determination of subjects. This would, however, be unacceptable to Plato for whom the Form determines the particular in all cases, and who provides no explicit privilege to the ‘subject’ as against inanimate objects. An essentialist reading of Forms brings out a certain determinism in values.

Existentialist angst can be seen as emanating out of the obligation to conform to canons of good or essences that community simply bestows on us. The absurdity of a meaningless universe results from this conflict. The existentialist is trying to fight that very curb on freedom, on the one hand, by pursuing to destroy existing ideals and values, but more importantly, on the other hand, by aiming to recreate and redefine ethicality.

However, it seems that the ‘Other’ is a pre-condition of that act of redefining or recreating. Merseault is an ‘outsider’ precisely because there is a society which allows him to develop that identity. In either case, the ‘Other’ is important. Merseault wishes to break the boundary of what it means to be good. In other words, he is setting out to redefine the good for himself, and, in the process, for others. To postulate deviance of this sort, however, now brings us to the radical point that forms are amenable to change. This would be clearly devastating for Plato’s theory of forms.

Ethicality makes sense in the context or the discourse of the ‘Other’ which may manifest itself in the “Form” of conventionality! In this sense, deviance is central to morality, and yet it requires that there is a prior moral code that allows a person to indulge in it, to recreate values for oneself. The unmediated relation between the individual and the Form cannot be fully understood. It is convention that defines things for us. To define something good or bad we need conventionality, because a pure absence of that leaves us with nothing to set the deviance against. Morality can only be defined in terms of the ‘Other’ and that ‘Other’ becomes available in a society –in the context of a conventional morality (what convention defines to be the Form of good).

Socrates, for instance, represents the incorrigible urge to question things that have been taken for granted, the supposed adversary being conventional morality. In all his honesty he was convinced of his own moral righteousness. He says in The Apology: “And therefore, Athenians, I say, whether you acquit me or not, I shall not change my way of life; no, not if I have to die for it many times” (Plato’s Apology, stanza XVII). The question that arises before us is whether Socrates was in fact guilty of the crimes charged against him. The answer appears rather ambiguous. If we seek to resolve this peculiar complexity, we may have to look at three different hypothetical situations:

1. Socrates has done wrong but believes that he has done right. Here the idea of right would be that which is conventionally right, and Socrates has done wrong in so far as he has neglected it.

2. Socrates has done right but Athenians who put him to death believe he has done wrong. In so far as Socrates was rationally convinced that he is right, he was not morally at fault. Athenians however working within confines of conventional morality believed he was wrong. This points at a kind of conflict of principles.

3. Socrates has done right and Athenians who put him to death know so, but put him to death for extra moral/legal reasons. For e.g., they might have wanted to get rid of Socrates, who had humiliated them in public by demonstrating their ignorance.

Nevertheless, it might be said that in a way Socrates was rightly put to death in the Apology because within the context of the Athenian State, it was the ‘right’ thing to do. Society makes the philosopher who is then expected to retain the Form of the city (which has made him or her). At the same time, what is given also enables the philosopher to recreate canons of “rightness” by deviating from the given. In either case, the identity of the self or subject is characteristically reinforced in the presence of ‘Others’.

The Forms for Plato flow down from the Form of the Good: going from the most general, abstract and objective to the most particular and subjective. All particular Forms are subsumed under more general Forms, and all Forms are finally subsumed under the Form of the Good. For Plato it is the universal which provides meaning to any thought construction, and thus his movement is from up to down. However, we are taking an Aristotelian turn here, in saying that it is the group of particulars as defined by convention that concretizes and characterizes the Form. These are our only access to anything intelligible. It is convention that is available to us, is our access to morality or any explanation of good.

To conclude, it can only be a ‘subject’ that deviates from a Form, precisely because it is a subject and not an object. But the subjectivity of the subject is reinforced only by the presence of the ‘Other’. It is the matrices that the others create (to which the subject belongs) which make our moral judgments intelligible. When we are defining morality, we are taking conventionality as a standard within a given context. For us, that is the “Form” of goodness— which we either strive to instantiate, or deviate from so that we can recreate and redefine values. It emerges that the Good is both static as Parmenides’ Being and vacillating in Heraclitean flux. It is stable within the boundaries of a given context; at the same time it is potentially dynamic. To return to the question we began with, the ‘good’ of Merseault cannot be judged in absolute terms. The ethicality of his being is a function of a dual perspective—one from within the “Form” bestowed by the community (in which he may be wrong) and another from outside it (in which he may be right). In effect, Merseault is our Socrates who is condemned and yet perhaps adored.

"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself — so like a brother, really — I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate."

— Meursault in L’Étranger (Albert Camus, L’Étranger).

* This is an edited version of the original article.

A Green Caravan

2007-10-23T13:33:00.001+05:30

The tormenting roots 

Of a red deodar 

They sail across deserts 

And silver mirage 

Ploughing lumps 

An auburn earth 

I hear songs 

Of a green caravan 

Of Moon Songs

2007-10-15T02:53:00.001+05:30

The gulls cry out 

Drenched 

In the trembling waves 

On a crystal night  

The tattered red sail 

A bystander 

To the moon songs 

Of yesterday  

That frozen leaf 

Buried amid seashells 

And scarlet dust 

By the ruddiness of her palm  

Condemned perhaps 

Or adored? 

They are songs 

Of another sapphire trance 

The Violet Hour

2007-10-11T18:10:00.001+05:30

And again the rainbow melts 

Indigo droplets trickle down 

And a clock strikes the violet hour 

The silent gale rebels  

Like green silhouettes of fall 

Carried by the hoary river 

Through idyllic blue mazes 

Blotching yellow sand deserts  

Afloat, they fear nothing 

Not even the orange shadows 

Chasing carved footprints 

On a lull red twilight

Canopy

2007-10-09T14:50:00.000+05:30

Red Ants

2007-10-03T17:04:00.001+05:30

You don’t like red ants 

Crawling over the sugar canister 

Dragging their countless sticky feet 

To slices of thick syrupy mangoes  

They are ciphers of a sweet summer 

Hot, humid days of the patio pickle 

Golden in their sweltering splendour 

Staining grandmother’s tender fingers

Silver

2007-10-01T01:08:00.001+05:30

You said you want the silver waves 

And a handful of feathery clouds 

Impossible, I said. And you cried. 

Across the stilted dinner table  

Why did the shadows have to lie? 

That fragrance which made you heady 

Not for the footprints on a white sand 

Stripping the bouganvilla of its ecstasy  

And then again on that sapphire night 

The Cheshire cat, in her best playact 

Blinding your eyes with the moonlight 

Deceived you in her silver trick

The Gaze

2007-09-27T20:49:00.000+05:30

Barrenness

2007-09-24T20:53:00.001+05:30

The wild river sings 

Some song of agony 

A silver moon weaving 

Stained glass mosaics 

The sand crystals marvel 

At the distant neon lights 

And a scarlet sky stares 

At the far away barrenness

Derelict

2007-08-26T19:15:00.001+05:30

She found a newspaper 

From yesterday’s wasteland 

Drunken yellow it was 

Like the rutted street 

An orange tear 

Condemned to a dream 

Like an impossible crossword 

Of furrowed lines 

Piercing 

The golden leaf

Colour Caravan

2007-07-28T22:07:00.001+05:30

Forsaken
A wasteland
Of succulent cacti
Cadaverous earth

Stifling and sunburnt
Desert jasmines
The rhapsody
Of dream deceit

The sunken bridge
Some feather quills
A colour caravan
On a friday night

Cobwebs

2007-06-07T16:12:00.001+05:30

This Illustration was done for Aruni Kashyap's poem Cobwebs which was read out as a part of the Poetry Reading Session, 19th SAARC Writers' Conference.

Yellow Walls

2007-06-01T19:31:00.000+05:30

Vulnerable
Like the yellow sari
And scuffled claret
Woven strands

In anticipation
A trodden wall clock
Annulled, abandoned
Yellow walls

She must

2007-05-21T20:00:00.000+05:30

A misty boulevard
From yesterday's dream
Breathless cobwebs
She didn’t believe

Sickly sweet
Smouldering vines
The mermaid's pain
Wreckage, crime

A patch of cloud
The sparkle of dust
A fidgety night
Yes, she must…

A fluke

2007-05-20T17:38:00.001+05:30

If not for the concrete shards 

And tattered metal railings 

It wouldn’t be an ugly night 

With creaking wooden doors

Sand, mortar, abyss

2007-05-17T23:32:00.000+05:30

Rotten bricks
On a summer afternoon
When the willows droop
And the canopy thaws

The cawing crows
On the window ledge
A trance of sonnets
And broken glass

A rusted leaf
Parched and veined
Buried in a book
Of falls and myths

A screeching siren
A game of chess
Sand, mortar, abyss
Lightening strikes

Refuge

2007-05-09T21:17:00.001+05:30

A banished stranger, his frozen eyes 

A slave to the wild parched shadows 

Like the silent night that slithers across 

The water waltz on a dreamy night

A Rebel

2007-03-27T19:21:00.001+05:30

In an intoxicated troika 

She sat crouched 

Her lilac frock fluttered 

A pale feather flew past 

And she smiled

Storm

2007-01-28T13:56:00.001+05:30

The stealthy vine skulked 

Veiled in grey cinders 

Swelling and swallowing 

A storm, tinted hoary ash  

On days when there’s no rain 

Just raging sand & the dry wind 

Lavana’s dream is all that’s real 

Yes, there will be a fiery storm

Hush...

2007-01-19T01:52:00.000+05:30

Skirmish

2007-01-19T00:55:00.001+05:30

The idiot got scalded again 

Contours of a ravaging fire 

Now adorn his burnt palm  

He attempted fighting a battle 

Not fearing the massive red deluge 

Or the banality of a desert dream  

It was like the Russian Circus 

Where the red nosed clowns clap 

When tigers leap through burning rings  

Suddenly he stumbled upon himself 

In a world of mockery, and he laughed 

Laughed like a clown, at the mad pain

Defiance

2006-12-16T19:45:00.001+05:30

The Genome floats 

Like a maddened nomad 

Rootless, and outlawed 

Yearning confinement in 

A wrangling chromosome 

Roving in the scarlet sand

Camouflaged

2006-12-02T19:15:00.001+05:30

At the traffic signal today 

As my weary eyes dawdled 

For a minute and another half 

Across the road, on the wall 

Of a defunct movie theatre 

Stained with chewed betel 

A black & white film poster 

Rain washed, torn edges 

Of a faded yellowing paper 

Camouflaged in solitude

Contortion

2006-11-27T20:00:00.000+05:30

A Bottle of Black Ink

2006-11-12T21:37:00.001+05:30

She wanted to paint today 

Not caring for the wind 

Stroking her russet hair 

But the colours teased her 

They refused being moulded 

A brush in her fingers quivered 

There was a storm in the air 

She could smell the wet earth 

A hundred skylights awaited 

To witness unleashed ink drops 

Dribbling on the white sheets 

Why? She just couldn’t paint today

Absconding

2006-11-05T15:23:00.000+05:30

When?

2006-11-04T16:32:00.001+05:30

Just can’t recall when…  

Perhaps it was last winter 

Whilst I was still trying to 

Draw the droll duck-rabbit  

The picture…incomplete 

On the wrinkled white sheet 

Not an extra drifting stroke  

Yeah, perhaps it was then, that 

I had sharpened my pencil last 

And the pale imbecile eraser 

Had grown fidgety with the dark

The Saga of a Black Hole

2006-10-23T23:17:00.001+05:30

The sails sunk beneath 

An amethyst horizon 

With the seductive scent 

Of burnt silver petals 

That descended again, 

Another ceaseless autumn 

The creases on my palm 

Imitate the uprooted tree 

The saga of a black hole 

Remains unfinished, still

Escape

2006-10-16T23:45:00.001+05:30

Smudged with charcoal 

He rubbed his fingers 

On the cracked plaster wall 

But, the shadows still 

Chased him down the alley 

Escape…ah! impossible

Convergence

2006-10-10T17:58:00.000+05:30

Fireflies

2006-10-09T00:02:00.000+05:30

A cavalcade of fireflies
Thronging about the lantern
Sadistic smell of kerosene oil
Spilled on the rugged floor
The patter on the tin roof
Intensifying every moment
I poured white poster paint
Over the wilting branches
And drenching myself with
The stillness of the dark
Created an undevised illusion
An absconding arid mirage

Decussating

2006-10-06T17:36:00.000+05:30

Trance

2006-10-04T20:51:00.000+05:30

The yellow light
Clouting my pupils
And striking the retina
Eclipsed the reverie

Humming Ol’ 55
A voice bypassed me
The torch flashed again
Tearing the hazy billows

Sshh…the night is asleep
Unaware, the river of blue trance
And floating spectral clouds
I turned the light off

Inquisitive

2006-10-04T14:57:00.000+05:30

Windy Dreams

2006-09-25T19:15:00.000+05:30

I draped myself with

A beautiful misty night

Tied loosely about my neck

A silken scarf of windy dreams

How many?..Infinite

2006-09-10T23:45:00.000+05:30

Together in the Litterbin

2006-09-10T22:55:00.000+05:30

The crushed Coke can
Two last drops still lingered
In that red metal crap

Bits of a tattered letter
Torn off the spiral notebook
Stained with brackish tears

A throttled cuddly toy
Which had spend its nights
Next to a blue-eyed baby

A rotting banana peel
The old vendor had sold them
At Rs.20 a dozen

The conked out flower vase
Still vivid in the eyes of the potter
Who had smoothed its cambers

A puppy yelped
She had once wanted to live
A life of contentment

2 O' Clock

2006-09-09T11:48:00.000+05:30

The Forest Resort: Jageshwar

The Gaze

2006-09-09T09:44:00.000+05:30

Playing the nucleus
Of its own life-cell
Adroitly entwined strands
And the spider awaiting
To petrify, beware
Don’t look into it’s eyes

Plunge

2006-09-07T16:27:00.000+05:30

Thunder...

2006-09-05T16:00:00.000+05:30

Thunder struck at twilight
The sky roared stridently
And a sapphire inferno arose
Revolting, the oceanic waves

One massive surge after another
They crashed against each other
Splashing against the passive shore
Before undulating back into infinity

Among the woven corals reefs
Lay a devastated shipwreck
Its decaying wooden planks
Still in a vain hope of rescue

A sail fluttered somewhere
Ivory painted Moby Dick howled
The lighthouse beamed its torch
The mirrors reflected and sparked

A slight murmur of the waves and
Slow gasps of the sea persisted
Until a moonlit blue night arose
From behind the silvery clouds

The Five Elements

2006-09-02T10:58:00.000+05:30

White, Black, Grey and Red

2006-09-02T10:53:00.000+05:30

Nauseating white puffs
Hovering in the shadows
The tepid grey ash
And a red glint in the dark

The Solitary Reaper

2006-08-31T19:39:00.000+05:30

This photograph was taken in Binsar.

Waiting for Godot

2006-08-31T19:21:00.000+05:30

A Tragicomedy by Silika Mohapatra
[With due apologies to Samuel Beckett]

Characters: Estragon, Vladimir. The extension building. The tree of enlightenment. Morning.Estragon, sitting outside XA, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting. Vladimir enters.

Estragon Dhananjay: (giving up again). Nothing to be done, dude! There’s water in my lungs and the soccer field awaits me. Please don’t let out the secret that the best compliment I ever received was that I can’t even kick a football!! And I am also clueless about Kant, or was it Can’t?
Vladimir Swapnil: (advancing with wide strides, busy in his own thoughts, sporting a torn kurta). I'm beginning to come round to Althusser’s opinion. And I resumed The Struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Estragon.) So there you are again.
Estragon Tania: Am I? Oh yes, I am in college today for a change. I fell from a bike and my foot was fractured and I got asthma attacks and then I was operated upon, after which I got viral infection and then…..
Vladimir Silika: I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.
Estragon Sonali: Yeah! I was sleeping in my room in Rud South and thought would never wake up again from my deep slumber.
Vladimir Nishita: Together again at last! We'll have to celebrate this. But how? (She reflects.) Get up Estragon, I want to embrace you.
Estragon Dhananjay: (embarrassed and flushed). Not now, not now please.
Vladimir Swapnil: (coldly). May one inquire where Her Highness intends to spend the day?
Estragon Sameera: In the Nescafé of course. Because there’s not a single page left in the notebook now where I used to write down numbers to kill time, when the teacher lectured in the class.
Vladimir Nishita: (gloomily, lost in thoughts). It's too much for one person. (Pause. Cheerfully.) On the other hand what's the good of losing heart now, that's what I say. I should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties, when he was young, not that he looks old now.
Estragon Sameera: Ah stop blathering and help me with this bloody thing, this mobile.
Estragon Sonali: Taking off my boot. Did that never happen to you?
Vladimir Silika: Boots must be TAKE-EN-OFF every day, unlike classes. I'm tired telling you that. Why don't you listen to me?
Estragon Dhananjay: (feebly). Help me!
Vladimir Nishita: (concerned). It hurts?
Estragon Dhananjay: Hurts! She wants to know if it hurts!
Vladimir Swapnil: (angrily). As if no one ever suffers but you. I'd like to hear what you'd say if you had what I have. I carry the burden of the well-being of millions of people.
Estragon Sonali: But why don't you help me with Descartes, Berkeley blah blah blah and my boots?
Vladimir Silika: Nothing to be done. It’s the end of the year now… (Estragon with a supreme effort succeeds in pulling off her boot)
Silence.
Vladimir Nishita: Where was I . . . How's your foot?
Estragon Tania: Swelling visibly. I am limping.
Estragon Sameera: (She turns to Vladimir.) Let's go.
Vladimir Swapnil: We can't.
Estragon Tania: Why not?
Vladimir Silika: We're waiting for Godot.
Estragon Dhananjay: (despairingly). Ah! You're sure he was here and that it was this morning that we were to wait?
Vladimir Silika: He said Saturday 8:40. I think. I must have made a note of it. (She fumbles in his pockets, bursting with miscellaneous rubbish.)
Estragon Sameera: But what Saturday? And is it Saturday? Is it not rather Sunday? Or Monday? Or Friday?
Vladimir Nishita: He didn't say for sure he'd come.
Estragon Sameera: And if he doesn't come?
Vladimir Nishita: We won’t come back tomorrow.
Estragon Tania: And then the day after tomorrow. And so on. Yes, let's go.
Vladimir Swapnil: But we must wait for Godot.
Vladimir Silika: (voice drowning in sounds of receding footsteps) Yes, we must.

They move.Curtain.

[This appeared as our Class-writeup in Yearbook 2006]

Where Am I?

2006-08-26T15:50:00.000+05:30

Cassé Sablier

2006-08-26T10:03:00.000+05:30

[The Broken Sandglass]

The hourglass finally exploded today
A barrage of melting silicon particles
Thrust themselves on the tinted world
The solar system has 8 planets now

The dried rose hummed its last tune
An old guitar let its strings unfasten
As cobwebs rebuilt their obscure design
The surreal suddenly became real

The confounding snake-rope interplay
No longer appeared odd, outlandish
The realm of possibility stepped beyond
The threshold of furious imagination

Flight of freedom

2006-08-24T21:13:00.000+05:30

The Broken Lens

2006-08-22T19:03:00.000+05:30

We passed a solitary tree
Another deserted platform
And a lonely electric pole
On the unrelenting train

A dust fell into my left eye
Two tears swiftly ran down
The bright orange neon light
Turned them into pearls

There was nothing I could see
Except the wooden chessboard
And it’s black-white blocks
As parallel lines converged

Just then a feather flew past
Wind gushed in my face, I wondered
Why the black-white don’t merge?
Into a mystic shadowy gray

It was five minutes to one
I overlooked the directions
And forgot my destination
Just left behind, the broken lens

On the train to Kathgodam...

The Battle of Blue and Red

2006-08-08T19:01:00.000+05:30

Her Egotism

2006-08-08T18:46:00.000+05:30

The bulging veins of
A crenate beech leaf
Wanting to explode
And dissipate her ego
A vain narcissism
Fettered her forcibly
To a dead stilted fork
Beaten off the trunk

Amalgam of hues

2006-08-06T12:41:00.000+05:30

Trepidation

2006-08-06T12:09:00.000+05:30

On the terrace were
Broken patches of cement
There I tripped twice
Got unconscious the third time
And woke up from a dream
Seized a piece of red brick
Hastily, as if time would impede
Scribbled nonsense on the floor
Forgot now what it meant
Those words which spoke to me
People said I was delirious
Not realizing the exigency
Even I don’t quite understand now
But when I go to the terrace
A trepidation dwells in me
Lest I should trip again
And it all comes back
Like a flash
And I dash downstairs
To grab all I have

Dancing Anklets

2006-07-22T16:40:00.000+05:30

Raindrops on my windowpane

2006-07-07T14:28:00.000+05:30

Piercing marine water beads
The subtle hint of yellow light

A feral, fiery, fearless fervour
The diaspora of sallow crystals

A gushing cascade surging ahead
Rummaging the sodden foliage

I heard the twinkling pitter-patter, and
Raindrops gathered on the windowpane

Incandescent

2006-07-01T01:13:00.000+05:30

Being

2006-06-30T22:39:00.000+05:30

All around the cloudy brook
And the dowdy tattered houses
Was a hush, after the squall

By the volcanic campagna
Were clusters of scarlet Poinciana
As if emulating an old dead hearth

But conspicuous also, the signs of being
Stanch, struggling to emerge anew
The honest elfin olive sprout

The Daybreak Express

2006-06-18T15:38:00.000+05:30

Today in the early hours of morning, when eyes just crave for few more moments of snooze, I found myself on a train that was never going to stop. To reach its very first station I had to outlive myself. Suddenly realizing the severity of the situation, I began to dread this boundless journey. But abruptly the train stopped and I was rescued. The amusing part of the dream was that all along when I had presumed the train to be moving, it was in fact stationary. Don’t know what I was dreading, the stillness or the motion?

Later sifting through TV program guide I read about a movie called the ‘Midnight Express’ telling the story of young Charlie Foster and the overnight express train rerouted through his bedroom. The midnight express showed the lengths a six year old boy would go to in order to get a good night’s sleep.

Verdant Cover

2006-06-16T21:45:00.000+05:30

The silence

2006-06-16T18:43:00.000+05:30

The russet carcass
Of dead deodar

Burnt leaves strewn
By the stone altar

Kaleidoscopic sunrays
Decussate the gray sky

The clumsy puerile liana
Clasped the yellow birch

Not a drone, but for
The whoop of a bird

An awful cry piercing
The hollow silence

On a rainy night...

2006-06-14T20:01:00.000+05:30

Metamorphosis

2006-06-12T21:56:00.000+05:30

There was wretchedness in my eyes
Over their banality and triteness

So I let the pale marble balls go wild
And rolled them over the glassy floor

At first mystified and then utterly thrilled
I watched them spin and sway in ecstasy

The metamorphosis was unanticipated
And all at once I found myself gazing at

Flamboyant, two little butterflies
Flapping their quivering wings

Majestically dappled & mottled
Dashing across the purple vines

The Deceptive Wave

2006-06-08T18:14:00.000+05:30

Bronze Bells

2006-06-07T13:38:00.000+05:30

Myriad assorted bronze bells
Clatter in the midst of the dale
Some minute, others colossal
The echoing resonating cluster

Dangling from the broken ceiling
Sculptured for immortal existence
But mortal hands stroke the chimes
For human hopes and aspirations

Unborn

2006-06-05T18:33:00.000+05:30

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aren’t Dead

2006-06-05T16:29:00.000+05:30

Dark fluttering clouds
Swept past the pines

Mammoth raindrops
Splashing against, my

Polka dotted umbrella
Painted red and white

Bits of broken glass
Liquefied to deceive

Pierce yeti’s giant feet
Smearing the snow red

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
Aren’t really dead

Hues

2006-06-04T14:34:00.000+05:30

Conch Shells

2006-05-30T21:31:00.000+05:30

The conch shells lay abandoned
On a fragment of the sallow shore
The veiled flecks of golden ember
Smouldering the wet sand granules

The jade ocean weary of struggle
Yielding itself to the revolting red
Melting into an obstinate yellow
No this is not my dreary trepidation

Floating

2006-05-07T17:29:00.000+05:30

The Crossbuck

2006-05-02T19:33:00.000+05:30

The sign post indicated a crossbuck
I stopped for a moment and gazed
The faint whistle steadily grew lucid
As the clattering engine made way

With the rusting red iron peeling off
The coarse surface of bogie no. nine
Clumps of back coal huddled together
I watched the freight train bypass me

Today was the day of the inevitable
I had wanted Godot to accompany me
He is still waiting there for my advent
But I changed my course to defeat fate

I dribbled with scattered grey pebbles
Bemused again at the failure of the trial
Thrusting myself on the rock-strewn lane
I smiled as I heard another vibrating rumble

Mosaic

2006-05-01T17:46:00.000+05:30