Critically examine Amruta Patil’s Kari as a post-modern feminist graphic novel.
Comment on sexuality and gender identity as the two prominent themes in Amruta Patil’s graphic novel Kari. Does the text appropriate the act of looking or resisting the masculinist modes of seeing?
Amruta Patil’s Kari[2008] is the post millennial and new liberalization era hallmark of women studies and feminism testimony; graphic narrative that explores gender identity, feminine personhood and queer sexuality. This graphic novel is a bold and ambitious project
substantiating the retellings and recollections of the titular protagonist's memoiristic life as a queer lady of the allegorically Smog City or Bombay. Kari is exposed to the living hell and damnable existence both by her co-workers and her flatmates’ disparagement and derogation.
Kari is forlorn by Ruth after smog city’s insalubrious sewers transmogrify the site of “returning favours”; Kari adrift to ferry the raft to unclog and clean the darkest waters at night. Amruta Patil represents the black and white visual schema symbolizing the protagonist’s interior world; with colourful illustrations brought in sparsely to imply a sense of belonging and home.
This graphic novel is a fusion of magic realism and mythological subtexts. “There is no such thing as a straight woman” the controversial identity crisis of the graphic novel’s idiolect substantiates the reechoings of Olivia Laing in The Lonely City: The Art of Being Alone: Almost as soon as I arrived, I was aware of the gathering anxiety around the question of visibility. I wanted to be seen, taken in and accepted, the way one is by a lover’s approving gaze. At the same time I felt dangerously exposed particularly in situations where being alone felt awkward or wrong, where I was surrounded by a couple of groups.” “Don’t be scared [...] Death will always come to you as a friend” —----the birthday greetings to Angel reestablishes the framework of sapphic relationship through the reincarnated selfhood in the life-in-death as Kari’s acquaintanceship develops amidst looming deceasement.
Despair of a ruthless urban cosmopolitan dwelling is a decayed disfiguration except the boundless fluidity of the sea; a refuge of queer docks and beeches.
Amruta Patil’s queer gendered feminist graphic novel pictorial exposition illustrates self-exploratory adventure and fluidity of psychic spaces as the demeanour of ad-agency creative writer through heteroglossia and stream of consciousness. This experimental post-modern graphic novel resists and reprehends hypermasculinity and hegemonical heterogeneity through ink, marker, charcoal and oilbar, crayon and found images within-the-cross-over literary forms [...] the storylines/ diegesis/ mise-en-scene flows from voice over narrative style to visuals, then back to visuals again.
In this graphic novel the queer misfit heroine “trawls the drains dream after dream [and] can smell the sewers everywhere” recurrent image motif furthermore emphasizes and/or illustrates the “fluidity of her thoughts keep returning to the city’s lower intestines”. A dark cityscape having the back of Kari’s shadowy figure facing towards the readers and standing into the edge looking into the darkness of the overflooded canals with over-brimmed downpours. The serpentine space of herself ferrying the waterways as close-up shots of traveling, trawling and traversing magnifies the exploration of the self-hood and waxing and waning of her personal moons and/or the real and the imaginary.
The boatman mythical allusive subtexts interweaving in-betweenness of this earthy life and futuristic utopian reciprocates the assertion to Lazarus that “she had neither been an armchair straight, nor an armchair gay, except being an active loner.” She metaphorically espouses nothing but Ruth by her non-committal tagline to lesbianism and lushness of the peach epitomizes the fleshiness of feminine corporeality —the vagina. Grey-scale image of the panel
represents morbidity and mundanity while the colourfulness contrasts panel wit-in Smog City that offshoots epiphanic moment, reflecting subjectivity and interiority heralding the mainstream satirical gazes and alternative interpretative voices. After all, “there is no thing as a straight woman” herein, interiority as a narrative tool enables visualization of the subversive gaze of the female protagonist offering resistance to the symbolic gaze of the male order and masculinist modes of seeing.
Magic realism in the metaphorical depiction in the parting farewell of cutting romantic cords recaptures imagination and visualizes transcendental nostalgia, memory and longing through non-containment.”My time is up, boatman. I need you to ferry me over” the rhetoric of Angel is counterfeited by Kari’s unfathomable infinity that “Don’t be scared, death will always come to you as a friend”.
Amruta Patil's Kari is available here.
I watched for provinces and states both, the wires go up and down outside the car window, always a Buick. in some places fireworks seemed to be for sale everywhere and I placidly but still curiously looked at the designs and words on signs, on walls, on box trucks parked and painted. when the sea was reached, past pastoral fields where birds formed visions in the skies moving moving moving; where infrastructure went past graveyards right in the middle of overhead highways because I suppose it’s wrong and difficult to move the dead even amidst worldly progress, and where hotels and motels lined strips,- I could hear the waves. carnival barkers hankered for attention and a ferris wheel gently touched and traversed the little heavens. I could hear crowds of people and in the night a man and a woman bumped into each other and fell in love at first sight. they were embarrassed about it,- and hardly really knew what to do. I don’t know what happened to them as the car moved on. in the north it rained and was serious and drab, melancholic, while in the south it was clear and bright and more spacious. a truck was on its side, under an overpass, and the yellow and orange and red fires, coupled w/smoke, all like Medusa’s hair aflame, scratched the air on an otherwise regular enough earth, like a small country trying to fight a larger one, the fire versus the firmament.
I liked much of the rest of the world there and felt sad for the truck and anyone hurt. almost every place I saw had industrial corridors bleak, grey, and also areas w/many units in buildings made for manufacturing and distribution. I could hear air brakes. and I think whistles. the air was thick. on the coast cargo ships slid the horizon line like ghost vessels and planes flew banners w/advertisements. the intercoastal bridge opened high, mechanically, and the world definitely and almost defiantly knew what it was doing. I looked around the stores and could smell the shirts they ironed on logos and pictures to. it’s a loud place for a daydreamer, a lost soul. yet- the rains in the morning sunlight strange and surreal were okay and somewhere still, the warm breeze must make the branch leaves to sway above grain and stone, near step and bench and water blue, in a place where later, witching hour dreams are borne, dreams one tries to remember, dreams almost sacred, dreams where one has a glimpse of a home forgotten.
“I’m like a disease that only I seem to have caught…” begins a jarring introductory soliloquy from Elizabeth Sawyer, the principal character from “Witch” as played by prolific Boston based actress Lyndsay Allyn Cox. Written by New York based playwright Jen Silverman and directed by Boston local Rebecca Bradshaw, this production is playing at the Huntington Theater’s Calderwood Pavilion/Boston Center for the Arts.
“Elizabeth”, a single woman presumed to be a “Witch” lives in what is described as a country village in Edmonton. Amidst navigating a life of persecution and vitriol saunters in “Scratch” who is the devil incarnate as played by Michael Underhill, who previously appeared in the Huntington’s production of “Man in the Ring” back in 2018. He proffers to her an opportunity for “revenge” against her tormentors in exchange for her soul, nonplused and intrigued by her leery propensity to not readily yield to his protracted cajoling particularly since some other members of the town folk have already become ensnared in his trap in exchange for their souls. This essentially marks the starting point of interest in this mordant play for the scenarios that resulted out of what could have been a predictable afflicted witch revenge story turned into a complex tale of forbidden love, lust, gender biases, challenging systemic inequality and emphasizing ideologies of “the other” in our society and daring to challenge the status quo of the power structures that has defined our lives for centuries.
“The character of Elizabeth is forcing you to look at the status quo and question it,” explained “Witch” director Rebecca Bradshaw in an interview with Huntington production dramaturg Pascale Florestal. She went on to say, “That is so important right now, to not get stuck in our own ways or in societal ways and to really think about why we do the things we do.” Ponderings that have become even more pressing during the pandemic inertia while the world was in quarantine.
Playwright Jen Silverman echoes Bradshaws’s assertions that “…the question of transformation, whether or not we are capable of change, how far people will go to feel visible, to be perceived the way they want to be perceived…how we get trapped by systemic power dynamics [and] what it takes to break free.”
This is the first play I’ve seen since the 2020 Covid pandemic hiatus of well, EVERYTHING, but for this purpose, particularly the arts. Amidst challenging times like these, I truly believe that the arts proffers creative altruistic opportunities to be a guiding light in immanent darkness, a beacon of hope in all worldly madness. “Witch” sets the stage, granted it’s a stage rightfully full of questions but also lays out ample opportunities to decipher a plethora of possible answers.
Right from the onset, “Witch” casts its spell and snatches our attention with a bold and foreboding soliloquy from principle character Elizabeth as the witch. As she delivered her inauspicious speech, she radiated confidence, authority and control and I, for one, readily surrendered to Madame “Witch” and with marked accelerated heart rate– due to a fair amount of trepidation, was willing to go wherever she saw fit to take me…
One of the most important characteristics of the theater is the ability to be pliable, the ability to shift to reflect what is happening in a precise moment in time. Although this play was written in 2018, it still manages to be relevant in 2021 since we are still facing some of the same afflictions from 2018. The pandemic is still lingering on with Covid19 “variants” morphing into other more deadly “variants”, remnants of a precarious political climate since the contentious election of Joe Biden, social unrest due to a panoramic number of issues ranging from America’s reckoning with racial justice and gender gaps to abortion rights and rainbow flag communities all fighting for unequivocal equality. “Witch” becomes a buxom motif for “the other” in a society where not all are necessarily created equal. The fact that Elizabeth as the witch is played by a woman of color, a black woman in particular, was not lost on me.
Elizabeth explains how she doesn’t feel “seen”, how people make uncorroborated claims about her character simply because she’s been labeled a “witch“, much like some people make uncorroborated assertions about those who have been labeled “black” simply because they are black. Even though this play is based on the 1621 Jacobean era original play “The Witch of Edmonton: A Tragic Comedy” by William Rowley et al, it still manages to be relevant in contemporary times, underscoring our prejudices against each other, whether conscious or subconscious. It is a grievous reminder that treating some like “the other” is not a present day anachronism that should have been left in the past. It is a present day reality that we as a society is constantly railing against so that it does not become the legacy we leave behind for our posterity.
Smart effective staging that weaved in and out as if seamlessly, casting that could only be compared to a strike of lightning hitting the same place twice, which as we’ve learned is VERY unlikely, and a deliciously contrasting tension of the erotic and the demonic sort between the characters, mostly due to a devilishly handsome devil stirring the pot that will ignite towns peoples’ stealthy passions and desires.
Although the staging resembled 17th century England with a Jacobean décor, the dialogue is modern, fresh and sometimes caustic without any “fake” English accents per the request of the playwright. One particular moment of modern dialogue that brought delight and laughter from the audience was when Elizabeth boldly tells the devil that he’s been “talking sh*t” ,just to give you an idea.
This production is a bewitching Risorgimento wailing for an apocalyptic end to the status quo in a manifested sociopolitical uneven social order replete with glaring disparities. With palpable chemistry between the stellar cast, a non sequitur fight scene bringing the play to a bizarre yet touching crescendo, Existentialist ideologies amidst pandemic quarantined musings asking us to reexamine our purpose, conventions and priorities during our impromptu stillness, ostracized individuals feeling seen and known for who they really are only some of the major themes. There were some guttural laughs and guffaws resounding from the audience including myself brought about by the play’s dark comedic genius or madness interchangeably, made even funnier and even more awkward since I was seated next to an austere male audience member who tensed up annoyingly every time I dared to enjoy myself…I once read that if you don’t like something change it, if you can’t change it, you can laugh at it. Well this play proffers ample opportunities for laughter and more importantly, proffers possibilities for change in the form of a brighter more equitable future. It is a miscible concoction heralding inclusivity and equity for those living seemingly in the perspicuous margins of humanity.
The staging illuminated subtle balances of light and shadow adding to the perceived nefarious undercurrent embodied within this cryptic tension filled drama. It made me think about things. I find it rather questionable how some sanctimonious humans see it fit to torment and torture “other” humans simply because they are different from them. Why not question why you may think you matter more or you matter less than your neighbor? The play argues that it is imperative that we question long established social conventions and disparate hierarchical structures of power; an ideal world would be where power is sought, power is achieved and ultimately power is shared. Is that too much to hope for in an increasingly changing world? Haven’t we progressed enough as a civilization? All marginalized “others” vying for a morsel of the American Dream…perhaps it might prove more viable to “live and let live” as the dictum goes…Is the possibility for equality such a farfetched ideology?
“Witch” speaks to the empirical manifestation of worldwide protests against societal polarities.The play basically woke me up from a long quarantined aesthetical sleep and catapulted me into the world of the occult, myth, intrigue and the communal hallowed earnest yearnings of humanity striving for something better than what is immanent; compounded by a sterling cast whose astute banter and chemistry ricocheted like a ghostly yet robust echo around the stage, making for tender magnanimous moments of artistic excellence, exhortation and pure exhilaration! This play confirmed why I love the theater…” I give this bewitching gem a 5 out of 5 stars!
Jacques Fleury is a Haitian-American Poet, Author, Educator and literary arts student at Harvard University online. His book “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” & other titles are available at public libraries, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Amazon etc…
Evoking the spirit of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs de Mal, Alex Johnson’s The Flowers of Doom whips together imagery from various sources to craft its near-apocalyptic nightmare and warning visions.
References from modern cosmology, Greek mythology, Biblical mythology, modern music, and news headlines and social issues blur together in these vivid lines. Johnson pays tribute to artists he respects, including Baudelaire, Ellyn Maybe, Kafka, and Jordan Gallader, by incorporating their imagery or through direct poem dedications. A common thread among those he admires is the ability to look at times of change with a mixture of awe and repulsion.
Poems at the beginning and end of the collection directly address current social ills such as environmental destruction, authoritarianism, racism, war, genocide, and religious hypocrisy. “Cat on a Hot Tin Horror Cast,” a relatively optimistic piece for this collection, urges the world’s people to sidestep their leaders and directly work to oppose mass murder and fight together for peace. “The Fire Anyway” champions unjustly maligned and marginalized people through the resilient character of Lilith while lambasting colonialism and the devastation of people and the planet.
Other poems in the middle fill out the collection with techno-futuristic, fairy tale, gothic, or rock-and-roll aesthetics. Some motifs recur, such as powerful and sensual femininity (the goddess Aurora in “Aurora’s Roar Against Death,” Aurelia in “Darker Matters,” and a nameless and original figure in “I Myself am Strange and Unusual”) and off-kilter musical references (“slay bells” in “Living Fast and Surveilled,” "St. Johnny Ramone” in “Radio Free Calaveras”).
The Flowers of Doom by Alex Johnson is a worthy read for its layered sensibilities as well as its messages.
The collection is forthcoming from Plasma Press in an omnibus edition with Thunderstruck by Alex Johnson and Sandy DeLuca.
Brute Questions of the Hour
The emptiness of age engulfs me now often,
With the fear of immortality of my own image-
And the world moves in the pursuit of happiness,
To embark on a profession including a sage!
A spirit that never grieves nor hopes for anything,
But promulgates enviable brutal and tattered law-
Will blow out the lights of fairness and justice,
Slanted back on an anvil to hammer out a flaw!
World’s daring greed may originate on the cobwebs,
And trace the stars, or haunt the heaven for the power-
But the question remains: Is it the dream of eternity,
And needs to be rejuvenated by a heavenly shower?
In the event of a whirlwind, protest turns into prophecy,
Profaned, plundered, and disenchanted for sure-
And the times’ tragedy will be napping in aches,
While the rift of dusk and dawn will never cure!
Power and greed have made the world a platform of war,
And the humanity bereaves in brooding silence and fear-
While the thoughts about immortality have come to a halt,
Ans the fangs of distortion and terrorism swallow the tear,
How will the future reckon and reflect with the man,
Against irreconciliation and brute questions of the hour-
And the dumb terror will rise and crawl to rule the world,
From the peaks of only artificial intelligence (AI) tower!!
“Milestone”
December 26, 2023Hillol Ray, D.Litt., Ph.D. (Doctor of Humanity), D.Phil. (Theology), Ph.D. (Honoris Causa), D.Phil. (Nigeria), D.Litt. (Morocco), Poet Laureate, Author, Translator, is an Environmental Engineer with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Dallas, Texas. He is listed in Who’s Who in Asian-Americans, Marquis Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Science and Engineering, and Who’s Who in the World. His books “Wings of Time” and “Metamorphic Portrait” were recently released.
https://bwesner.wixsite.com/hillolraypoetry https://bwesner.wixsite.com/hillolraypoetry/e https://bwesner.wixsite.com/awards-2016-to-2030
Monet & Oscar: The Essence of Light
Oscar Meets Monet
Oscar Bonhomme’s palms sweated as he crept from the warm kitchen filled with the spice-laden aroma of frying sausage mixed with the smell of aromatic, dark coffee into Monet’s yellow dining room.
He’d used what little money he had to purchase new work clothes for his first day on the job. He twisted his still-stiff brown woolen cap between his sweating fingers as he glanced at his reflection in the picture glass to see if his pale skin betrayed his stay in the military hospital. Did his slight frame and frail stature look well enough for rigorous gardening work? No one would believe he was once tanned, muscular, and robust. Did his prematurely graying hair and the red circles around his eyes reveal the trials he had endured at the front?
Although thirty-four, he felt and looked much older.
Oscar summoned his courage, pulled from somewhere deep inside himself as he did when climbing out of the trenches and facing the enemy. “Bonjour, Monsieur Monet.”
No movement. The newspaper Monet held did not lower. The first salvo had fallen short.
He fired off another. “Bonjour, Monsieur Monet.”
Still no response. Second salvo, off-target.
Perhaps Monet was hard of hearing. Oscar added more powder and fired the third shot as he shouted, “Bonjour, Monsieur Monet.”
The paper lowered to reveal piercing black eyes and a long white beard stained yellow with nicotine. Monet resembled the newspaper photos Oscar had seen of him—short, stocky, and with an intense gaze that seemed to miss nothing around him. His hands, with translucent skin and heavily veined, looked muscular and tanned, befitting a painter who mainly worked outdoors.
Monet stared at Oscar as if trying to remember who was this invader of his dining room and disturber of his early morning coffee. He wore an English herringbone wool suit buttoned at the neck, with just an inch of white ruffled shirt cuffs showing at the sleeves.
At last, he spoke. “Who are you?”
He sounded irritated.
Oscar drew in his breath and squared his shoulders to make himself look the part before responding with, “I’m your new gardener, Monsieur.”
Monet frowned. “I don’t remember you. Who hired you? Why should I hire a gardener in the middle of the winter?”
Oscar stammered as he gathered enough breath to reply. “You… You did, Monsieur. Yesterday. At least, that’s what I was told.”
He gripped his newspaper tighter, shook his head, and frowned. “So, what are you doing in here? This isn’t the garden.”
“Madame Blanche asked me to meet you here before dawn to carry your paintings for you.”
“Humph!”
And with that, Monet raised the paper again. Oscar remained standing in the doorway, unsure whether to stay or go.
Oscar stood twisting and untwisting his cap and wondering if Monet would dismiss him, fall asleep, or begin their first day together. Could this cranky old man be his father? Probably not. But he might know who is.
Since it was his first day on this new job, he remained to see what would happen next.
He looked around the room after one, two, three, four, five minutes with no response. Yellow was the theme color. Even the chairs and light fixtures were Provence yellow, as his mother called it. Monet seemed obsessed with the color yellow and eating, by the looks of the dining room with its multiple sets of dishes and an abundance of silverware.
The odd prints that hung on the walls perplexed him. They were most unusual and not yellow. He saw dozens of them depicting an assortment of Japanese people in native costumes through scenes of Japan. They reminded him of photos his Japanese friends in San Francisco had shown him. The prints featured plants and animals that he didn’t recognize.
Oscar scratched his head and thought, why would one of the world’s most famous Impressionist painters have these Japanese prints on his walls instead of his art or that of his colleagues?
Lying in the hospital, he had dreamed of what he would do when he was released. He never imagined he would work in one of the most famous gardens in France. This job was the start of his new life; he was excited and frightened to be here.
Curiosity was getting the better of him as he walked around the long table, examining the prints. Each one seemed more colorful and stranger than the one before, and someone had labeled every one with the artist’s name. He made a note to ask Monsieur Monet about the prints. They must have been significant to him if they were hanging in his dining room. Undoubtedly, he would have dictated the decoration of this space, the essential room for entertaining.
Finally, Monet’s hand emerged to crush out his cigarette in his overflowing ashtray. He lowered his paper, rose from his chair, and shuffled to the door.
“Are you coming?” he threw over his shoulder.
Caught off-guard while still staring at the prints, Oscar felt he was a puppy following its master and hurried through the door after him, down the steps, across the garden, past the cart, and into the massive darkened studio.
“Put these in the cart and follow me.”
The paintings looked to be in various completion stages, and Oscar assembled them back-to-back so as not to smudge the fresh paint. Later, he’d need to add wooden partitions between them to keep them safe. Equal measures of fright and honor washed over him as he quickly managed this chore and set off behind Monet in the pre-dawn.
Once outside, his inquiry about where they were going received no response—Monet lived up to his storied reputation as a reluctant speaker. Oscar acknowledged his role was to obey commands and keep silent.
After some minutes struggling with the loaded cart down the garden pathway, up a hill, across the railroad tracks that divided the two pieces of Monet’s property, down an embankment, and across a bridge, he stopped beside Monet at the edge of the water lily pond. Oscar was sweating and exhausted.
Monet chose the first canvas of the day. It proved to be large and awkward to place on the easel that Oscar set up under the umbrella used to shield Monet from the sun or rain. He settled on his stool and prepared his palette with paints, squeezing first one tube, then another. Monet allowed no distractions. Speaking was a distraction.
Oscar’s lungs burned from the exertion, his breath short and choppy. His arms and legs hadn’t worked so hard since he’d left the front. It would take a lot of gardening to get his body back into the shape it was when he worked for his mom at Golden Gate Park.
He stepped back to take in the scene Monet was painting. The pond covered several acres, encompassed by trees, flowers, and shrubs. They’d crossed over a Japanese-style bridge covered with bare wisteria branches. It was still winter, and the famed water lilies were waiting for the season when they would again cover the water’s pea-green surface.
But that was not what Monet was painting. Instead, he captured the fractured light on the water’s surface and the rays filtering into the depths beneath them. No ground, no sky—just the water and the willows interwoven in patterns of colors and shapes. He looked to be painting the essence of the light that moved on the surface of the pond.
It was not the typical garden scene Oscar had studied in landscape design classes at college. The lily pond represented a living canvas upon which the sun painted a constantly developing picture, just, he supposed, as Monet had designed it. His Japanese gardener friends would say it felt reminiscent of a Japanese garden, but this one held far more prolific planting. Monet had covered every inch with stocks and petals of exotic and familiar domestic plants.
As the sun changed positions, so did the subtleties of light on the water. When the light changed, so did the colors. And so did Monet, who switched to another painting location.
“Let’s move down the path. Follow me.”
“Oui, Monsieur.” Caught up in the scene, he had nearly missed Monet’s command to move on. “I’ll pack up and be right there.”
He carefully removed the canvas from the easel so as not to smudge the wet paint, placed it back in the cart, and secured it for the brief journey around the pond with the easel, stool, and umbrella. Once he’d arrived at the new spot, he repeated the set-up routine, and Monet was once again ready to continue with a different canvas.
This time, Oscar watched the creation process more closely, so he didn’t miss the time to change locations. He observed every detail of the painting to understand how light affected the scene Monet was painting.
He set ten canvases up in ten different locations over the morning. After several tedious hours, it was time to pack up for the journey back to the studio. The light at noon proved too harsh for the effects Monet desired. After unpacking the cart, the time came for him to begin the job he believed Monet had hired him to do.
Monet led him into the Grande Allée of trellises, down to the bottom of the garden. The trellises supported pink roses intertwined in their metal arches. He explained how he wanted the rose canes trimmed. Oscar shook his head in annoyance, if not disbelief—as if he hadn’t done such a menial task before. Then he realized Monet had no idea what his new gardener knew or didn’t know. He was used to working for a perfectionist, his mother, after all. Monet couldn’t be any more exacting than she was.
Clearing the trellises of dead rose blossoms, diseased leaves, and dead canes took all afternoon, and he did not finish. Usually, he didn’t trim climbing rose canes, but Monet knew best how he wanted things done. Oscar was ready to head back to the room he’d booked in a local boarding house. His arrangement with Madame Blanche, Monet’s daughter-in-law, was he would work ten to twelve hours a day but have evenings and weekends free to do as he pleased. This would give him time to research the Impressionist painters his mother had met in the south of France. According to her, one of them was his father. That’s the most she would tell him.
Joe Byrd's Monet and Oscar is available here.
DEMYSTIFYING THE IDEAS OF GOOD AND EVIL: HUMANIZING PHILOSOPHY
Dr Jernail S. Anand
Whenever we think of the idea of good and evil, we tend to invite higher forces into play. Good has a vast penumbra, so does Evil and it takes no time that the scenes of heaven and hell start dancing in our imagination. Life is not such a serious matter that every moment we try to jump into the vortex of philosophy, and our forehead remains furrowed with lines of care and anxiety. It is another thing the lovers of mystery want us to remain on tenterhooks, always in the fear of gods, always keeping not only fingers but our minds crossed. In fact, life is not a simple mathematics in which 2 plus 2 becomes 4. Life tends to mystify us, and it is this mystery which fills us with incertitude, so that there is a lot of suspense which keeps the eyes winkless and minds, restless.
Loss of Simple Joys
It is not essential every time to turn our eyes up, and feel we are being watched. If we know there is a CCTV camera overseeing us, it makes us cautious, and we tend to lose the naturalness of our actions. This is what corporate systems want to make of us: lose our naturalness, lose our natural joy, they want us to become fear-filled puppets, dancing to the remote dictates of an invisible master sitting far away. It is this simple joy whose loss has cost us dear. We are living under the shadow of two great forces. One is the divine schemata, which has been kind to human beings. And the other is the corporatia, which is essentially unkind and based on human exploitation. Workings of both the systems tend to mystify humanity, and keep them on tenterhooks. We are afraid of gods, and we are afraid of the demi-gods of the earth, displeasing whom can be an instant disaster.
Giving the go by to Philosophy
I started with the idea that it is possible to lead simple and happy lives without referring to higher philosophy all the time. We can come down to simple equations in order to find out what to do and what not to do. Although it appears our actions are super directed, yet we should not forget that we may not be the directors of our destiny, we are actors. Even if we have been given a written text, yet something has been left to us. It is how well we can perform. Here, it all depends on our powers of delivery. All the men are equal. The only difference is how they deliver.
It is important to see how an ordinary man acts in his life. He does not bring in Mahabharata or Ramayana, nor does he remember Upanishads. He only remembers simple lines from Baba Farid and Guru Nanak, and performs his daily tasks. At the most he justifies what has been done to him, by the theory of ‘Karma’ without reference to what Lord Krishna said, because it is too much of steam for ordinary intelligence. It may be surprising, but it is a fact that ordinary men are a happier lot, than people like you and me, who are always obsessed with philosophy. We are always scared of the falling skies, while these people know how to survive when skies have fallen. They have survived through centuries. Philosophy has no other source than the story how these common people have suffered and survived. They not only understand the philosophy of good and evil in their very simple ways, rather they are the fodder of philosophy. There would be no philosophy if the ordinary people cease out of existence.
Demystifying Human Life
I am talking of demystifying human life and de-philosophizing human actions. There is one philosopher after millions of men who have really suffered this life. The philosophers are men who are essentially unhappy souls, who fail to find any happiness in the systems which afflict mankind. Happiness, joy, certitude, - all are absent from the combined forces of the philosophizing squad. The thoughts of evil, and lack of joy are permanent guests in the yellow tents. While on the contrary, happiness knows it is the simple hearts of ordinary men where it can have its joyful stint. No philosophy can disturb them when things go wrong. If the wheel of a car is punctured, the most normal act for an ordinary man is to get it mended and move on. But, it can be a cluttering moment for a philosopher, who would start on a journey into the stars, and try to see, why he had to face such a tragedy.
Resting Philosophy Under the shade of a Banyan Tree
Let us now leave philosophy to itself. Let it have some rest under the shade of a banyan tree. Let us move into the people who are busy in their workaday life. They leave high philosophy in the temples where they shed a penny or two from their pockets. Now, it is for the gods to keep pondering over their destiny while they are out to script it out in their actions. I would call it the Krishna Squad or the ‘Vasudhaiva Katumbakam’.
They know life is short, and will not be repeated. So, they think men should do good deeds. An action which gives you happiness, is always good. Sometimes, their goodness is waylaid, and, in that black hour, they are made to turn greedy. Even then, they do not turn the pages of scriptures. They suffer for their follies. Sometimes they fight also, they are sent to prison, from which, they emerge without learning any lesson. They again indulge in morally unsound practices. This is ordinary humanity. The way it is. They act and suffer and that sets the equations right. And nothing more. They do not bother about happiness. They do not bother about suffering. They have no idea there are angels hovering over them, or devils working inside them. They are just human. Good or Evil. They don’t mind. The education which they got was full of flaws. It talked about honesty, goodness, and happiness. But, the real life made heroes of fraudsters and politicians. They are confused what to accept : the scriptural truths which lie unproved, or the bare facts of life which stand in front of them in brutal truth.
No Thinkers, Only Actors
Ordinary men are no thinkers like us. They are actually actors. So, it is only in their actions that they have to make or break their destiny. They know what is happiness. And they also know what is good and what is not good. As I have said earlier, happiness has the longest stay in poor quarters. It signifies the fact that it is among the ordinary people that the idea of happiness sustains. It has no interest in philosophers, mystery makers, and even demi-gods who keep pontificating on goodness and happiness ad inifinitum.
Author:
Dr Jernail Singh Anand, President of the International Academy of Ethics, is author of 161 books in English poetry, fiction, non-fiction, philosophy and spirituality. He was awarded Charter of Morava, the great Award by Serbian Writers Association, Belgrade and his name was engraved on the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. The Academy of Arts and philosophical Sciences of Bari [Italy] honoured him with the award of an Honourable Academic. Recently, he was awarded Doctor of Philosophy [Honoris Causa] by the University of Engg and Management, Jaipur. Recently, he organized an International Conference on Contemporary Ethics at Chandigarh. His most phenomenal book is Lustus:The Prince of Darkness [first epic of the Mahkaal Trilogy]. [Email: anandjs55@yahoo.com Mobile: 919876652401[Whatsapp] [ethicsacademy.co.in]
Link Bibliography:https://atunispoetry.com/2023/12/08/indian-author-dr-jernail-s-anand-honoured-at-the-60th-belgrade-international-meeting-of-writers/
