Books read in 2010

Language has a dominant effect in the knowledge level of various people and community. I had not read a single book in Hindi this year. That is a sad part of weakening of mine cultural roots in the zeal to know about the other cultures of the world.

The native language (like Hindi) gives us the culture root but the foreign language (English) only open the new doors of business and learning for most of Indians. The advantage of reading or writing in a second language – that it gives a diversified view of the world. There is a good chance that a foreign language makes a native culture as inferior, and mold learner to look down on his past and fundamental things like beauty, art, and politics as ‘a wasteland of non-achievement’. With the time, this educated person begins to understand himself and his culture through the eyes of the foreign concepts, categories, and judgments. Before too long, the native turns into a proxy for his foreign with a native face. I remember now that Bhagat Singh had aptly said that real independence would not come to us if Brown Sahibs replaced white Sahibs.

Writing in English is just a tendency where one assume that views will be given more importance and the outbound reach will be international. The staggering of regional conflicts of language can be well overcome by adapting international language as our own. This comes as a heavy cost as the power of observation reduces a great deal if one doesn't know the language of even his ecosystem.

But what is the use of language if it does not liberate person's soul from the bondage of tyranny and discrimination. A language is only tool to pass down ideas but it may lead one to either exclusive and elite position ( via English) in majority or neglected by dominant majority as voice of enemy or preexisting culture (Urdu).

While I don't read for the sake of it, still I prefer to read more on blogs and e- magazines than books. May be it is due to concentration deficit syndrome born due to facebook. I am enlisting the names of books read by me in 2010 with their background and my feedback. Ratings are highly personal.

Tao: The Golden Gate, Tao: The Pathless Path and When the Shoe Fits :- Osho

The Argumentative Indian  :- Amartya Sen - English- 7.5/10
A slow reading is required for this work of cultural and economic depth of Indian intellectual history.

Letters from Burma :- Aung San Suu Kyi - English- 9/10
Description of peaceful resistance and endurance of the people of Burma by her leader.

Connect The Dots :- Rashmi Bansal - English- 9/10
Collection of the inspiring tales of 25 entrepreneurs from humble background.

The Tipping Point  :- Malcome Gladwell -English- 8/10
An out of box look into the phenomenon of social epidemics.

Imagining India :-Nandan M. Nilekani - English -8/10
A good book showing development of Infosys at par with the Indian growth story.

The Sunil Gavaskar Omnibus- Sunny Days, Idols and One Day Wonders :- Sunil Gavaskar -English- 8/10
Cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar memoirs, what more else is left to say.

Infidel :- Ayaan Ali Hirsi - Dutch (Read in English)- 10/10
A brave, inspiring and beautifully written life story of girl evolution from dutiful Islamic child into a freedom fighter.

Creating A World Without Poverty: Social Business And The Future Of Capitalism:- Muhammad Yunus and Karl Weber - English - 8/10 - Best and inspiring book on the social business.

The Motorcycle Diaries:- Ernesto Che Guevera- Spanish (Read in English) - 7/10
An adventure story of two boys that makes one a rebel legend of 20th Century.

The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid :-C.K. Prahalad - English - 8/10 - With the innovative ideas towards the eradication of poverty, this book focus on the emerging markets business development.

Poetry of Protest - 2

Tyrants always recognize the explosive potential of literature. An apparently harmless piece of text with simple words have power to make a common people realize his/her rights and dignity. I remember this year 2010 for mine introduction to Faiz Ahmed Faiz's poems. The book Dast-e-saba (The breeze’s hand) begins with a short introduction by Faiz himself, a small polemic on the responsibility of the artist. ‘The poet’s work is not only perception and observation, but also struggle and effort,’ Faiz writes :

A full comprehension of this ocean of Life through the live and active ‘drops’ of his environment depends upon the poet’s depth of perception. To be able to show this ocean to others depends upon his control over his art; and his ability to set in motion some new currents in the ocean depends upon the fire in his blood and the zeal of his passion. Success in all three tasks demands continuous toil and struggle.

One even as a writer also needs to give real direction to the country’s future—rather than posing neutral as a bystander. Poems and words are written to promote the values of equality, freedom of speech and human rights. Poetry is not any partisan propaganda. A person belonging to any political spectrum of nationalists, secularists, liberals, and leftists is moved by the power of poetry.

1- Resistance Songs of IPTA: A Revolutionary Legacy :- Sumangala Damodarane is collecting, archiving, reviving and documenting IPTA protest music. Members of this progressive artists association had written, composed and sung songs in many Indian languages.



2- Jugalbandi: Indian Ocean’s common minimum programme :- Indian Ocean member give us insight of the act of balancing politics and music in India’s best-known progressive band.

3- Amardeep Singh who teaches post-colonial literature at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania has made notes on the role played by Arabic poetry in the uprisings.

Protest poetry and music sometimes rises to the surface during popular uprisings, crystallizing popular sentiments -- one thinks of Victor Jara in Chile, Nazim Hikmet in Turkey, Faiz Ahmed Faiz in Pakistan, or Woody Guthrie in the United States. At times like these, the right poetry and song doesn't merely describe how people are feeling; it can actually act as an intensifier that guides a protest movement, helping it spread and solidify.

4- The Poetry of Revolt : Elliott Colla ,an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University tracks about the actual poetry that has played a prominent role in the outset of the events at Egypt.

Poetry of Protest - 1

I am remembering the scene in the movie "Dead Poet's Society" where Prof. John Keating was inspiring his student with the beauty of poetry : We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer: that you are here; that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

While most prefer to be didactic and dry in order to make a large statement at the expense of beauty, it is only one side of the coin. There is a passion, emotions, connectivity and power contained in the poems and songs of the people. Poems are sometimes frivolous and pretentious but are written with the Streams of the subconsciousness. The personal turmoil with the experience and observation of grimed reality make poems full of universal appeal. Free versus with the words flowed create a typhoon in the minds of freedom loving people.

Poetry is to create awareness, to create the desire for dreams, social justice, gender equality and to stand up for the downtrodden. To be a poet is dare to give voice to the silent victims witnessing endless suppression, discrimination and violence. To people like Neruda and Faiz, art is for the life and not just for art’s sake. Poems were never meant to be retained but often they end up to recited and remembered without even the efforts of the academia. As they are sing and enjoyed by the people, they created meanings more than if they can do on the paper.

Men are agents of self interest with a will to do good for others. No doubt people always began in good faith against power but insensibly, commitment by commitment, when not aware of dangers of owning power, individuals will become entangled in a web of lies, falsehoods, deceits and perjuries, until they lost their souls to the power. It is necessary to understand the larger ways that discourse supports power and also the larger movements for/against power in the reference of the culture. In the next part of this essay, we will move towards examples of protest and poetry in the real word.

Culture of resistance

While illusions of reform is creating a ground for revolutionary environment, one needs to see the relation between establishment and the unprivileged ones. Everywhere in the world, people are not suffering from an excess of civil disobedience, infact suffering from an excess of civil obedience of few elites. The case of protest and violence are heavily related.  As Johann Hari mentioned about effects of protest in the UK that has far reaching effect and it is true for all over the world : -

"There is a cost to this chilling of protest. Every British citizen is the beneficiary of a long line of protesters stretching back through the centuries. Every woman reading this can vote and open her own bank account and choose her own husband and have a career because protesters demanded it. Every worker gets at least £5.93 an hour, and paid holidays, and paid sick leave, because protesters demanded it. Every pensioner gets enough to survive because protesters demand it. What what your life would be like if all those protesters through all those years had been frightened into inactivity? If you block the right to protest, you block the path to progress. You are left instead at the whim of an elite, whose priority is tax cuts for themselves, paid for with spending cuts for the poor."

In a recent address Akbar Ganji, a representative of the Green Movement in Iran, characterized history thus: “Human history has been interpreted in many ways. I read this history as a sustained course of struggle for liberty—the struggle of slaves, women, people of color, the poor, the disenfranchised, of religious minorities and dissidents of various sorts, to rid themselves of the tyranny they have endured.” In a history of the revolutions in Paris, there is a provocative phrase: “The time of the oppressed is by nature discontinuous” – apparently there is more truth in it than any statement made about victims of power

Often war/violence is assumed as the last resort of the problem, but the first approach that the establishment prefers. The authority of state lies in the allowance of violence given to the state by the people. When the state tend to use violence against its own people, it loses that sanction and trust of masses. The opposite violence born due to the protest catch society between two poles. History has shown us that US authorities have started to talk with Martin Luther King, Jr. because Dr. King’s alternative appear moderate by comparison across all the political spectrum, stretching from Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.
 
Violence is not some abstract or theoretical question to be puzzled through. It’s simply part of life and protest also. And that doesn’t mean you participate or don’t participate. It just means that you deal with it.  A decision to resort to violence is not something to be undertaken without great care—and stated in terms that were addressed to reasonable people. Great  leaders like Nehru and Mandela have felt the historic obligation to make a stand and to define it. That is why once an independence  or prime aim of revolution was achieved, most of the sensible leaders elope with the peaceful democratic movements. Arundhuti Roy recently quote an apt statement about nature of violence  : It would be immoral of me to preach violence unless I’m prepared to pick up arms myself. It is equally immoral for me to preach nonviolence when I’m not bearing the brunt of the attack.  

Bohemian Rhapsody

The ones who do speak up in mainstream are irrelevant and noisy and the ones who could be relevant are quiet, unheard or ignored. It feels so good when you support and promote a project from the heart and later mainstream adopt and accept as its own. Same feeling is coming for the film 'Udaan'. I always have a gutsy feeling that big dreams of marginalized individual will bring monumental changes in India one day. There is a cynicism and lethargy attached in learning and doing of mainstream traditional institutions and people. Only few with passion are free from TBTC (Too Busy To Care) syndrome. The only difference between a professional and an enthusiast is that an enthusiast is willing to take risk and accepts deferred gratifications whereas a professional does not want to take the risk, and wants to be rewarded immediately. Leave apart these talks of others and come to the hotchpotch walk of my life;

As, the famous poet Al-Bayati moved between his homeland and the rest of the world. "I've always searched for the sun's springs," he said, "When a human being stays in one place, he's likely to die. People too stagnate like water and air. Therefore the death of nature, of words, of the spirit has prompted me to keep traveling, so as to encounter new suns, new springs, new horizons. A whole new world being born."

I don't travel much and has a monotonous work schedule in the life. While returning from office, I always watch the dusk. The sunset ignites the idea of mundane life, transient time and a deep urge for existence. I go deep inside and many questions are born in these vague moments of thoughtlessness. I transcend into an awkward reality with an invented illusion of abstract values. I always feel amazed that these moments shape up with/without purpose.

Life is somehow unfathomable by common mind. Each set of idea is countered by equally forceful reason and evidences. I observe the past from a deterministic point of view, where causes lead to effects. While world is more probabilistic in nature here outcomes are driven by invisible or chance events. So, how analysing the past can help me in documentation and drafting theories and making hypothetical narration about tomorrow. While the other part of brain argues that present is not entirely a random walk in the contingent—culture renders some steps more probable than others. Thinking of an individual is shaped by its surrounding. Inseparable from all narratives is a particular instantiation of politics, identity, and culture.The dilemma of split thinking continues...

In the time when everybody is in quest of high salaries, why I am tending towards some decent job with relaxation ? And in place of adventure and fun, why I am busy in learning about culture and development ? I make writing and reading as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music. Amid infinite space, no echo is heard and the questions of soul remain unanswered.