Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter passed away on 24 December 2008. He was 78 and had been undergoing treatment for liver cancer. Like most Nobel prizes for Literature, the choice of the British playwright Harold Pinter has also had its share of detractors. There have been all kinds of murmurings against Pinter getting the big prize, ranging from doubts about his literary worth to snide remarks about extraneous considerations having played a role in the selection. The prize for the slyest reaction – assuming that it wasn’t the ghastly mistake it was made out to be – goes of course to the Sky Television newscaster who assumed that the breaking news about Pinter must have been to announce his demise (Pinter had taken a bad fall some days earlier) and therefore led off with an announcement that Pinter had died, before hesitating and then correcting herself to say that he had been awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature instead.

Well, to be honest, I’m not sure the word ‘instead’ was actually used, but given the bad grace with which his award has been received in some quarters, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. It’s not difficult to figure out why Pinter’s selection has been met with churlishness. On the one hand, a body of mainstream taste has tended to deride Pinter’s theatre as just so much fluff. Pinter’s departures from staple theatrical modes have often been seen as a thinning out of the fundamentals of theatre, and even as evidence of his inability to get the basics right — much in the manner of the standard joke that Picasso’s cubism springs from his lack of talent at drawing like everyone else. Pinter’s technique of conjuring up dramatic tension and menace out of thin air, so to speak, has often provoked the incredulous suspicion that is bestowed upon all innovations and departures from the mainstream.

In recent years, Pinter’s political activism has provoked another kind of ire. The ill-tempered outburst of John Simon, an old Pinter baiter, on learning of Pinter’s Nobel prize, is interesting for the disarmingly guileless manner in which it reveals the prejudice that feeds its indignation. When Simon says, “I would have gladly accorded him the Nobel for Arrogance, the Nobel for Self-Promotion, or the Nobel for Hypocrisy – spewing venom at the United States while basking in our dollars – if such Nobels existed. But the Nobel for Literature? I think not”, he exposes the burr that’s actually prickling his behind.

Evidently, what has got Simon’s goat is not Pinter’s literary worthlessness, but the fact that the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to someone who has indefatigably campaigned against American and British adventurism in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and has therefore shown himself to be of the ‘enemy camp’. Evidently, Simon’s tirade typifies the brand of opinion which wants artists to confine themselves to their work and desist from engaging in any form of activism, especially that which pits them against the weight of majoritarian opinion. (Perhaps this is why Arundhati Roy continues to raise the hackles of professional dabblers in that hallowed literary form, the Letters to the Editor.) And, evidently, Simon believes that he who pays pipers has the moral, nay spiritual, sanction to call the shots along with the tunes.

Nah, I shouldn’t trash letters to editors. For, how else could I have gleaned that lovely nugget of information, contributed by a reader to the Guardian, concerning “the sullen, deafening silence from Downing Street about the new British Nobel Laureate, Harold Pinter?” The British government’s wariness in celebrating the achievement of a countryman simply because of his vocal (and forgivably intemperate) criticism of state policy is just the kind of silence that would be familiar to Pinter, given the evocative treatment of silence in his plays. Of a piece with such silencing is an article lauding Pinter’s Nobel achievement that has been carried in the latest issue of Britain Today, a news magazine produced by the British High Commission in India. Unsurprisingly, it makes absolutely no mention of Pinter’s outspoken criticism of British foreign policy, a criticism that he has stuck to despite constant mockery and ridicule. How else can one read the title of that article, “Master of Silence”, except as a desperate act of wish-fulfilment!

Is one over-emphasising Pinter’s political stance as a factor in his getting the award and in the reactions to it? I don’t think so – and not simply because others have commented that the Swedish Nobel committee may have been inclined to favour a writer who has voiced his anti-war sentiments in no uncertain terms (Pinter has famously denounced Bush as a “mass murderer” and dismissed Blair as “that deluded idiot”), given the fact that the Swedish people too were extremely vocal in their anti-Iraq war protests. If this sounds like a slur on the literary credentials of Harold Pinter, it is interesting to see him make the same connection, albeit in a less whining tone: “Why they’ve given me this prize I don’t know. … But I suspect that they must have taken my political activities into consideration since my political engagement is very much part of my work. It’s interwoven into many of my plays.” That this is a man speaking with a modesty characteristic of the greatest writers is par for the course. But, it is unusual to find a writer who values his political conscience as much if not more than his writing, especially as even readers are often uncomfortable with such privileging.

It’s not as if Pinter needed the sympathy of political fraction. His credentials as a writer are justification enough for the Nobel award. He isn’t the writer of whom no one’s heard, as some previous Nobel awardees have been. Not when his plays are widely translated and performed in other languages; not when they pop up regularly in drama syllabi of Literature Departments; and certainly not when ‘Pinteresque’ is now staple lit-crit jargon for a patented blend of mundane but oblique dialogue, brooding silences and ineffable unease, all floating gingerly on a bed of sudden incongruity. (Anyway, what does the label “unheard-of author” mean? Surely, nothing more than the writer’s works having not been translated (yet) into English, and therefore being unfamiliar to the international publishing scene….)

Pinter is now 75 years old, with a long writing and performance career of considerable range and distinction. He has acted on stage, film, television and radio. He has written nearly thirty plays since 1957, and has innumerable drama sketches, poems and prose published in several volumes. He has directed over 25 productions of his own and others’ plays, adapted novels for the stage (notably Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past) and for film (for instance, Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Kafka’s The Trial), adapted his plays for radio and television, written over 20 screenplays (The Servant and The Go-Between, both directed by Joseph Losey, being two delightful instances), and is now so immersed in speaking out on political matters that earlier this year he spoke of not writing any more plays in order to focus his energy on such issues.

Initially, things didn’t look promising; Pinter didn’t burst in on the scene in the manner of other path-breaking dramatists. The 1956 commercial and critical success of Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, notwithstanding its combative indecorum, had suggested that British audiences were tiring of conventional fare, but Pinter’s first plays in 1957-58 (The Room, The Dumb Waiter and The Birthday Party) were received with bewilderment and hostility. (That this could happen despite the praise showered on the English premiere of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in 1955 is curious, given the several affinities that have subsequently been noted between Beckett’s and Pinter’s theatrical worlds.) It wasn’t until 1960 that Pinter had his first success with The Caretaker. From then on, plays such as The Homecoming (1964), Landscape and Silence (1967 & 1968), No Man’s Land (1974) and Betrayal (1978)established Pinter’s reputation as a unique voice in contemporary theatre. To such an extent that The Dumb Waiter, along with Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story, soon became an absolute must-do for budding thespians in college theatre societies.

Pinter’s plays revolve typically around contestations for territory. Conflicts, sparked off by intrusions into a closed space by an outside force, are conducted with a strange mix of ferocity and dulled detachment. His characters and their dialogues are rarely explicated through conventional excavations of motivation and memory, and often viciousness and pain lurk submerged beneath an evasive surface composed of guilt, uncertainty, everyday phrases and restless silences. The ‘facts’ on which these contestations are pegged are usually unreliable, for there is little that is either ‘true or false’ in Pinteresque space.

The unnamed tension of these plays are located in such a claustrophobic, inter-personal space that Pinter’s writing has been criticised for turning its back upon the political, an impression that was confirmed when Martin Esslin included Pinter in his seminal study, The Theatre of the Absurd. However, the later plays – such as One for the Road (1984), Mountain Language(1988) and Ashes to Ashes (1996) – are more distinctly political. But, here too authoritarian structures of repression and torture are evoked rather than articulated, and filter through spare exchanges between oppressor and victim, and the slippages of memory and knowledge. Perhaps, this phase of Pinter’s writing is less a ‘shift’ from his early work than an extension of earlier preoccupations into a wider territory.

Though the Nobel citation – Pinter’s plays “uncover the precipice under everyday prattle and force entry into oppression’s closed rooms” (my italics) – celebrates the dramatist as much as it does the political activist, the writer himself draws sufficient distinction between his preoccupations as an artist and as a “political intelligence” to not let the achievements of one absolve him of the responsibility enjoined upon the other. He recently had this to say of the road he’s travelled: “In 1958, I wrote, ‘there are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal…. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.’ I believe that these assertions  . . . do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?”

In an interview some years ago, Pinter had rued the bane of British intellectual life being the mockery directed at artists who take a stand on political issues, and had warned, “Well, I don’t intend to simply go away and write my plays and be a good boy. I intend to remain an independent and political intelligence in my own right.” What lovelier spectacle can there be than this — of a dramatist, who goes on to win the Nobel Prize, acknowledging that conscientious citizenship is a more urgent cry than any artistic calling?

This article was published earlier in FIRST CITY (Dec 2006) after Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature

 

 

Suspense! – Will They or Won’t They?

A critical difference between live and recorded performances (those in cinema or television) can be seen in the way we respond to them. Namely, in the matter of applause. When it comes to other kinds of reaction – laughing, being moved, being irritated, etc – it seems to not matter whether the performer stands before us in the flesh or as a projected image or digitised signal. (Well, some of us may fight our tears and laughter in the public space of the cinema hall, while comfortably letting go within the privacy of television viewing. But, that difference is a only a matter of public rectitude; and, in any case, it makes no distinction between live and recorded performance.) Applause, on the other hand, is a category of response that is found almost exclusively within live performance.

When a show is over, you clap. Duration, intensity and manner (seated or standing ovation) provide some variation; with whistling being reserved for in-house audiences of friends and colleagues. The end result is pretty much always the same: as the house lights go up, you clap. The applause may well be tepid and mechanical; it may even be somewhat forced when performances are of indifferent quality, but you still clap. On the other hand, we rarely do that for films or television programmes — even when we have been deeply moved. The reason for this strange gap between our private response and our public gesture is obvious. Applauding a recorded performance is pointless because there’s no one there to receive the appreciation, whereas live performances exert a kind of pressure on spectators when artistes return to the stage for a curtain call. Similarly, it’s only at those screenings where someone connected with the film is present that applause is sometimes heard. Or, and this has been happening of late, when the film comes with a reputation for being ‘controversial’ or even ‘alternative’ – the applause that is then offered is usually a gesture of solidarity intended for others in the audience.

It’s obvious then that applause, as compared to reactions such as laughter and tears, is not so much a private response as it is a social gesture, a protocol of communication with those around you. At the risk of schematising the division, one can perhaps argue that laughter and tears express us as individuals or as a group, and to that extent possess the authenticity of a self-authored monologue; whereas, applause, to extend the metaphor, has more the contextual push and pull of dialogue. The fact that, barring the case of a few theatrical modes, performers and their fictions tend to carry on regardless of what spectators vocalise during the performance, indicates the unidirectional nature of spectator response. Addressed to no one in particular and in no expectation of any kind of counter-response, ‘laughter and tears’ (I’m sorry, but you’ll have to lump the phrase as a shorthand for some time) can be seen as self-articulations of the purest kind. Applause, on the other hand, occurs outside rather than within the performance, when the actor has shed his character’s clothes and comes before us as s/he is. That maybe a reason why, when viewing a performance with strangers, we hold back from what we perceive as ‘excessive’ private response and yet do not feel similarly vulnerable when we willingly demonstrate personal appreciation in the form of applause.

Applause is a socialised response in another sense as well. For, this is what you’re obliged to do for these actors who have striven to give you, if one may invert that venerable line in Waiting for Godot, ‘such a fine, fine time’. Isn’t that why many of us clap automatically at the end of a performance, even when we haven’t particularly enjoyed it? It’s what is expected of you, it’s your part of the bargain, and to not offer it at the end of a performance seems churlish. After all, ‘putting up a play is no joke, ‘we must applaud the effort and intention if not the achievement’, ‘it’s the least we can do to encourage the few who keep the flag flying’ and all that, are no doubt powerful arguments that only the culturally insensate can ignore. Such is the momentum of this socialised action that it actually takes willed premeditation on one’s part to refuse even token applause.

Though much of what I’ve been saying relates mainly to the applause that greets performances at their end, it is possible to find a similar geniality at work at other moments as well. Especially in this terrible habit of spectators clapping in the middle of a performance. Applauding during a performance is certainly not as distracting in the theatre as it is in the case of a Western classical music – remember the bemused horror that Delhi audiences had evoked during the Zubin Mehta concert several years ago? – but it is violative nevertheless. And dangerous too, for, before you know it, such interruptive appreciation becomes the norm, for performers and spectators alike. I’ve heard it said so often that Western classical music performances brook no interruption, even appreciative ones, that the implication these are acceptable within Hindustani and Carnatic music traditions has become something of a truism. However, it is equally intrusive in the latter case, especially when mid-performance applause comes to be regarded as more ‘authentic’ (it’s ‘spontaneous’, you see) than its automatic, polite cousin that shows up at the end. For, then, performers are persuaded to play to the gallery, to chop their own creation into a series of effects, and to lose a sense of the whole.

One of the problems with applause – arguably the most insidious one, for this is seen equally in its ‘authentic’ and its ‘polite’ manifestations – relates to this problem of ‘losing a sense of the whole’. What is it that we appreciate, and I’m now speaking of the theatre, when we offer applause to a performance? The text, the play, the analysis, the experience? Perhaps, sometimes; but only rarely so. More often than not, we offer applause to the performers rather than the performance, the skills on display and the effort that went into the making of the show. On the face of it, this appears consistent with the socialised aspect of applause I’ve mentioned earlier, but it is more than that. For, it is equally true of the cinema. There too we respond primarily to the actors’ performances, and only secondarily to the argument the film may be offering (unless, of course, we are students of the cinema — in which case, it is the camera-work that sets our hearts pounding!). This aspect of applause is violative in fundamental ways because it compromises the integrity and cohesion of the work itself. Applause of this kind signals the constant deflection through which performances are received, through which texts are constantly reduced into an assembly of enactments, and plays into their playing.

It is difficult for most plays to survive the corrosive influence of such appreciation. Especially such plays which are not celebratory or light in tone. If they do survive, it is because of the raw power of their texts, which not even the most enthusiastic appreciation can completely swamp. I remember one such play and one such audience when Women Can’t Wait, a solo show by the US actress Sarah Jones, was staged in the open at the IHC amphitheatre. Women Can’t Wait was originally commissioned by Equality Now! for performance before government delegates to the UN Global Conference on Women’s Rights held in New York. It toured Indiacourtesy Crea and Tarshi, NGOs working in the area of women’s rights.

The play comprised a series of narrations by different women, addressed to an imagined assembly of government officials, as a reminder to governments and the people manning them that “they have promises to keep”. The women, eight in all (from India, Japan, Uruguay, France, USA, Jordan, Israel and Nigeria) spoke of brutalising aspects of their lives, made doubly intolerable by the fact of their countries’ laws providing no recourse. The fiction within which these monologues were couched was that of a rehearsal: the women were rehearsing their speeches for presentation before delegates, and in so doing, the actress presented them directly to the audience. One of the women played the role of coach and moderator, offering tips on presentation (“Speak with conviction because your audience is generally unsympathetic”; and “Smile at them. The UN people like that”), monitoring vocabulary and tone (“No, dear, I don’t think you can use that word”), and generally boosting the morale of the nervous speakers.

These monologues had interesting layers worked into them, but I won’t speak of that now because this is not intended as a review of the play. In fact, what I’m driving at is that Women Can’t Wait is perhaps not even a play. Certainly, to equate it with what goes on regularly in the name of evening entertainments does it grave injustice. Women Can’t Wait is more than a play: it is an intervention in civil space, and therefore ‘culture’ in the best sense of the word.

Author-director-actress Sarah Jones played all the women, using nothing but phenomenal shifts in voice, accent and rhythm to mesmerise us with the sensation of there being actually eight different women on stage before us. Oh yes, much has been made of a scarf that she used in different ways to contribute some visual variety, but I’m sure that had there been no scarf, it would have taken little away from the convincing textures of her performance.

Jones’ skill at bringing to life eight different speech, gestural, social, professional and economic profiles, and binding all of them into a common articulation of indignation and protest, was clearly a major strength of Women Can’t Wait. Yet, it was also a profound handicap. Jones had the audience so eating out of her hand that, in the course of the performance, it became unclear what the spectators were looking at. Take the instance of the honour killing that Hala of Jordan narrated. Her story was raw and bloody, and the silence in that packed amphitheatre deepened with horror at the calm brutality of familial honour. Yet, as the character’s voice trailed away, unable to complete her story, there was only the briefest of pauses before applause broke out and swelled — for what? The juxtaposition of the two moments – the character’s yielding to silence and the spectators’ applause – was obscene. (In hard, perhaps pedantic, terms, it was even undesirable.) But that is what Jones’ ability to present yet another character movingly and “with conviction” achieved. Hala’s story was picked clean of its emotional gore (mind you, these monologues were constructed from documented, real-life instances), and sanitised through our appreciation of a marvellous actress’ command over voice and speech.

Instances of this kind make me sometimes wonder why so much time is spent in discussing the success/failure of performances even as we ignore the equally vital question of the success and the failure of audiences.

An earlier version of this article was first published in FIRST CITY (January 2002)

 

 

Part III of the lecture delivered at the ATTIC, New Delhi

 

6. This was possible because the Fort was thoughtfully designed to accomodate public, semi-public, semi-private and private spaces. The public ceremonial areas were clearly and centrally positioned, marked out by straight axes, with formal courtyards that increased in size and magnificence, a succession of compelling gateways which no visitor could miss or ignore. On the other hand, the private areas, whether those of the Emperor and his family or of his attendant workforce, were located such that they were practically invisible. Shah Jahan’s living areas and palaceswere atop the river-side wall, furthest from the Lahori andDelhiGates of the city. Instead of being conventional huge towering vertical complexes,  they were single-storeyed pavilions, their imperial status signaled not by size but by their proportion, refinement and detailing. His private entrance to the Fort was also from the banks on the river, which was an important recreation and transportation space. In fact the siting of functions throughout Shahjahanabad celebrated the presence of the river. The Fort.s imperial pavilions on its riverside were not only located to afford stunning views across and cool breezes from the river; they were equally part of a grand spectacle from the river, their privacy unimpaired behind intricate marble jalis. This river-views were continued in the large havelis of noblemen and Princes, public and private gardens, and ghats, all of which lined the length of the Yamuna.

In contrast, the living and working areas of the craftspeople and attendants were located beyond the high entrance streets off the Main Gates in the shadow of Fort.s towering outer walls adjacent to the city. They were densely built around twisting streets, resembling parts of the city outside the walls of the Fort, yet positioned in such a way that they were shielded from the view of state visitors and even of the Emperor who, despite being the lord of the entire Fort, as indeed of the entire empire, never needed to go into these parts of the Fort which could thus develop freely. These drawings show the areas of movement of different categories of people within the Fort-the Emperor, a nobleman, a Mughal queen, and an ordinary inhabitant of the city. The Fort was thus a microcosm of the Mughal way of life. not merely the Imperial Mughal way of life.

 

Rangila celebrating Holi in the Rang Mahal, Red Fort, Delhi

 

7. Each sub-area within the Fort had its own courtyards bounded by gateways and continuous arcades that not only provided shaded areas to work, sit or walk in, but also privacy from the other spaces around them. The open courtyards and gardens also had the advantage of flexiblity; if there were more crowds such as on the Fort’s inauguration ceremonies or at Shah Jahan’s birthday celebrations or during festivals, by spreading canopies and qanats, more covered area could be easily and quickly obtained. Thus, open space was fashioned and designed such that it was used as an extension of built space. and built space shaded or enclosed open space so that it could be used effectively in all seasons. It was also because of these open areas sited in between built areas, that many of Shah Jahan.s original pavilions could stay virtually unobstructed and untouched, despite a greatly increasing population in the Fort during the times of his descendants. It was around the boundaries of some of the main courts and gardens or within many of the less visible ones that the later Mughal rulers and their sons and daughters got more structures built. The built spaces too, whether the grand entrance forecourts and gateways, or the Emperor.s own pavilions were multifunctional in use. Thus, the Lahori and Delhi gateways contained living quarters for soldiers, the Naqqar Khana Gateway not only provided a regulated entrance but also contained chambers for musicians. The Emperor.s Hall of Private Audience from wheer he dispensed justice also doubled up as a reception on the occasion of private celebrations. All these buildings that the Emperor stayed or worked in were not enclosed buildings but pavilions, a series of verandahs, which could be hung with carpets and covered with qanats, or left open to let the river-breezes in.

 

Original Proportion of Built versus Open Spaces, Red Fort, Delhi

6. Thus, the location and orientation of the buildings, gardens and courtyards that housed all these different activities, as well as their size, height and overall proportions, had ecological, functional,andaesthetic reasons. They were designed not only to impress a viewer or a user but also to be easy to maintain and to be lived in during the different seasons. They were practical as well as beautiful. As the Fort’s original design shows, the proportion of open spaces in it is far greater than the amount of built structures A large amount of these open spaces were gardens, which were designed to provide pleasant and cool spaces; they are described by contemporary historians of Shah Jahan as being planted with, ….fruitful trees of diverse kinds…interlaced with each other in such a way that they sky is not anywhere visible from under them.. They were not just beautiful to see and to use, but also provided fruit and vegetables for the kitchens. In fact, Shah Jahan is recorded to himself go and pluck fruit from his gardens with his page boys early in the morning as a diversion from his more onerous administrative duties. All these qualities make the Fort not just an epitome of urban architectural patronage in Shah Jahan’s reign, but also represent one of the finest examples of a sustainable way of planning, building, and living. Why do I say that? What can we learn from the Red Fort’s design that is relevant to our cities and towns today?

First, that despite being the favoured  residence and the prized patronage of the  richest ruler in the medieval world, the  Red Fort was planned and detailed to  be socially inclusive.It was designed  not just as a residence of a monarch but  as a miniature city with all the positive  opportunities for economic, social and  cultural interaction that a city affords.  Everyone, even the poorest of the  inhabitants was a stake-holder in the Fort.  Visually, and spatially too there was no  bar between the direct axis linking Shah  Jahan to his people.instead of the  ramparts and barbicans that block the  Fort from the city today, originally a  bridge lead straight from the Chandni  Chowk to the Lahori Gate, and further to  the Emperor’s Throne of Justice in the Diwan-i-Am

 

Diwan-i-Am, Red Fort, Delhi

Secondly, the Fort’s design was ecologically and environmentally  considerate.there was no unnecessary  wastage of resources-instead of the  stretches of high-maintenance lawns that  pass for gardens today, the Fort.s vast  gardens were essentially orchards; they  worked as productive areas as well as  places of pleasure, entertainment and    repose; they moderated the micro-climate and  used only the optimum amount of precious  water. Even the water in the fountains used  to cool and decorate the Fort.s pavilions and  its gardens, or in the imperial bathing  chambers was recycled.either for irrigation,  or for watering animals, or for cooling the  public parts of the Fort. The palaces of the  Emperor and his family as well as their grand  entrance sequences which were a succession  of forecourts and gateways were all  multifunctional in use.they could equally be  used for people to gather, for administrative  work, for court ceremonial, as well as  circulation spaces.

Thirdly, the Fort’s design was an example of further development of the traditional  indigenous courtyard typology; where not  only were the proportions of the built and  open spaces of the highest order but where  utilization of space was maximized despite  constructing a minimum number of built  structures.

 

Original court and garden boundaries superimposed on barracks and later construction,Red Fort, Delhi

And finally, the Fort’s design displayed  those qualities which make design truly  great, where no element is superfluous or  extraneous. None of its structures and  spaces was designed as simply utilitarian  or purely decorative. Each component of its  design.whether the form or detail of its  gardens, pavilions, forecourts, gateways or  colonnades was both useful and beautiful; the  form, structure and decoration in them could  not be separated from each other.  These are some of the original  attributes of the Red Fort, beyond just its  immediate form, that need to be recognized  and conserved. Conserved not just as empty  shells but as an act of celebration that restores  the same qualities of inclusiveness, of concern  for people, for the environment and for  material and human resources that Shah Jahan  and his builders did. While the different layers  of history which have left their mark on the  Fort, make it a site of great historical interest,  its principal value in terms of world and Indian  heritage continues to stem from the cultural,  architectural, associational and artistic value of  its original design. It is thus imperative to  ensure that the potency of its original design is  physically conserved and communicated. In  fact, the Fort.s ingenious planning and    

Shah Jahan

May the Emperor of the world, Shah Jahan by his good fortune,

The second lord of felicity

In the royal palace with great magnificence,

Ever be like the Sun in the Sky.

As long as foundation is indispensable with the building,

May the palace of his good fortune touch the highest heaven.

© Anisha Shekha Mukherji

 

Image Credits:

1. Photo: Lahori Gate, Red Fort, 1997

© Snehanshu Mukherjee

2. Plan: Lahori Gate

© Nikhil Joshi, Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

3. Mid-19thC drwg. of Lahori GateBy

a native artist (From the Dehli Book commissioned

by Sir Thomas Metcalfe)

4. 18thCentury Plan of Red Fort

Courtesy: The Oriental and India Office

Collections, British Library (Add.Or.1790)

5. Plan: The Red Fort

Extant structures highlighted in a detail

of the Map drawn by an Indian artist in the mid-

19th century

© Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

.6. Plan: The Red Fort

Showing proportion and profile of built and open

structures before and after the destruction by the

British in 1857

© Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

7. Photo of Red Fort and its environs

from Jama Masjid, c. 1870, Courtesy: OIOCBritish Library, photo 2/3 (76)

8. and 9. Panorama of Red Fort

Drawn by Mazhar Ali Khan, Courtesy: OIOC British Library

10. Portrait of Bahadur Shah Mid-19th

century, (From the Dehli Book commissioned by Sir Thomas Metcalfe)

11. Interior View of Diwan-i-Khas

(From the Dehli Book commissioned by Sir Thomas Metcalfe)

12. Aerial ViewLahore,Agra, and Delhi Forts, Courtesy: Google
13. Detail: Diwan-i-Am Ceiling, Red Fort,Courtesy:Victoria and Albert Museum, London
14. Detail of decoration: Taj Mahal and Diwan-i-Am, Red Fort,Courtesy:Victoria andAlbert Museum, London
15. Miniature of Red Fort, Luckhnow

artist, 18th century

16. Red Fort:RiversideView (From the Dehli Book commissioned by Sir Thomas Metcalfe)
17. Rang Mahal, Red Fort: Emperor Muhammad Shah celebrating Holi, Courtesy The Bodleian Library,Oxford
18. Mid-19thc Plan of Red Fort: Open spaces shaded Black© Anisha Shekhar Mukherji
19. Photo: Diwan-i-Am, 1997

© Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

20. Superimposed Plan, Red Fort

Original courtyard and gardens superimposed on later barrack and road construction, © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

21. Shah Jahan’s Portrait 18thcentury watercolour

CONCLUDED

 

 

Text of the paper delivered in the Seminar at the India International Centre on 13^th April 2009

Architectural Sketch of The Monastery of The Russian Orthodox Church– serko.net

I would like to explore the role and relevance of liberal education in India today with my perspective of studying in nine schools in different parts of India, and my exposure to professional architectural study and practice. It is evident that our attitudes and our abilities as thinkers, policy makers, and politicians are inevitably shaped by the direction of the school education that we have received. As parents and teachers we orient our children to an unquestioning faith in ‘modern industrial’ technology and in a single-minded focus on jobs, so that most of them, like the post-graduate students to whom I teach ‘Research Paper’ in the Department of Industrial Design, grow up to be young adults with a stupefying belief that there are standard ‘correct’ solutions that they must ‘follow’. Conversely, I believe that architecture can be an important tool in tangibly communicating and making many aspects of basic education come alive, especially to school students.¹ We may also draw direct parallels between school and architectural education – in both of which there are many things to teach, divided in different ‘subjects’ for ease of assimilation.

At first glance, formal architectural training as a specialized professional course dealing with the application of knowledge, seems to be far removed from the domain of liberal education as conventionally understood. However, if from the different definitions put forth, we consider Liberal as: ‘looking to the broad or general sense rather than the literal’² such a criteria is already present in architecture – which is in a sense, a microcosm of different fields. This inherent strength of architectural education has been recognized in Italy. Though a small country, I am given to understand that at one time it had four institutions that taught architecture, each with ten thousand students. And what do these forty thousand graduates in architecture do? Only a fraction practice as architects or designers. The rest study architecture because they believe that it is the best education they can receive.

As undergraduate students at the well-known School of Planning and Architecture, we were taught many subjects, which left little time for leisure or boredom. Yet, practically all the emphasis was on transmitting skills or information such as: ‘how to draw perspectives, how to resolve issues of space and function in a building or a town, how to solve problems of load transmission in structures, how to describe the difference between North and South Indian temples, how to design with the principles of “modernist” architecture.’ And though the varied curriculum included art, science, and humanities, these disciplines did not tie up to a whole. I remember my inability to understand why we had to study sociology and the young Sociology Professor’s extreme discomfiture in trying to explain. Sociology was taught in isolation much like the joinery details which we planed and sandpapered in the carpentry workshop without ever using them to produce doors, windows, boxes or any object that demonstrated how they added up.

Also implicit was the contention that European or American ‘modernist’ methods of construction were desirable for students in India to learn, and that vernacular or classical Indian forms and spaces may be looked at as history, but have no place in contemporary architecture. As an instance, if we, after a study visit to the villages of Himachal Pradesh, visualized our designs in timber, this was lauded as an understanding of the context. But the timber details we were expected to follow were those standardized and set forth in British building manuals almost a hundred years ago, not local traditional wood details. Questions such as – ‘is the architecture we build appropriate to our culture, or is it elitist and redundant? Is there anything beyond the expression of our individuality and creativity that we need to consider?’ were posed sporadically, and more often in the student’s canteen than in the studios or lecture rooms. Today, they seem to have become even less of a concern than they were fifteen years ago. Thus, even with a scope of subjects that more nearly approaches ‘Liberal education’ than any other field of higher study, contemporary architectural training appears to comprise of ‘indoctrination’―a dangerous synonym of education―rather than fostering a discernment of fundamental principles and an engagement with ethics. Are these qualities relevant to architecture? This question, can be answered by looking at the environmental or climatic disasters that most contemporary buildings create today. The ornamental palms and stretches of lawn instead of the indigenous plants or shady trees that pass for landscape design; the size and form of cities which make them almost impossible to negotiate without the use of fuel-guzzling cars, the superficial and similar copies of popular international building trends – are all a reality before us.

Thus, it seems clear that though a wide-ranging curricula beyond narrow specialized information should find a place in technical, vocational and management education, this by itself is not sufficient. We also need to redefine the concept of ‘liberal education’ – which as we commonly understand is something bequeathed to us by the Western world. A wide-ranging study of the Classics, the Arts or the Sciences untainted by obvious motives of profit, may not necessarily make us adhere to the true meaning of Liberalwhich is defined as ‘willing to respect and accept behaviour or opinions different from one’s own’³ or to its synonyms of ‘progressive, tolerant, unbiased, enlightened, impartial’.

Did we have a tradition of liberal education in India before the advent of western education and can we draw any lessons from it? It appears that we did, at both a primary and higher education level. According to the research of the Gandhian historian Dharampal,⁴ even in ‘the greatly damaged and disorganized India’ of 1800, indigenous teaching was more widespread and vastly superior to that of the British. The physical environment under which Indian schooling took place was less dingy and more natural. The methods were effectual and economical. The composition of the students in schools was inclusive, with Sudras and lower castes predominating. Though higher education in Theology, Metaphysics and Law seems to have been dominated by Brahmins in the nature of professional specialization, other subjects such as astronomy and medical science were studied by scholars from a variety of backgrounds and castes. The results of research and study appear to also have been quickly disseminated in many sections of society.

This, in many ways indicates the existence of a more liberal society than that of present times. What are the shortcomings that prevent us from achieving such objectives today? Considered in the light of architectural education, these are, briefly:

1. a method and content of teaching that is almost exclusively centred on a western modernist orientation, with a guiding principle that rejects the application of history as superfluous.
2. an inordinate emphasis on dissemination of skills to the detriment of knowledge or issues.
3. a stressing of abstract theories without encouraging their ‘application’.
4. a fragmented, linear and compartmentalized way of learning that prevents overall comprehension.

Is there a paradox here? First we say, that specialization is an incomplete and therefore unsatisfactory way of looking at the world and dealing with it. Yet when we attempt to teach many things, we separate them into different subjects for practical reasons. Therefore, can there be only two situations―one, to know in great detail about only one subject, or two, to know about a great many subjects but still as separate systems of knowledge? Is this true of other fields of education in university/schools too? The answers may be forthcoming, if we look at some of the questions we need to ask, with respect to conventional formal education:

1. How do we teach?
2. What do we teach?
3. Who do we teach?
4. Who teaches?

In all of the above, the common feature at present is the attempt at standardization. We teach students without awakening a holistic interest in learning or linking back individual ‘subjects’ at the level of understanding different world views. We emphasise one single, standard way to design/way to research/way to cure as the only correct way, in direct contrast to the idea of the liberal. We use a syllabus that we standardize, rejecting ‘pre-industrial’ social, spatial, scientific or artistic systems as ‘backward’ without even knowing their features. We enroll students from a ‘standard’ economic and social stratum and we employ teachers of a ‘standard’ profile. As the noted scientist J.B.S. Haldane – who himself did not have a degree in science – reminds us ‘…Srinivasa Ramanujan, India’s greatest mathematician since Aryabhatta, had no degree and would thus be disqualified from teaching in an Indian University were he alive today’.⁵ If our efforts are aimed at promoting standard products who replicate ‘standard’ answers, then how can we expect creative, independent-thinking and responsive children or adults? It appears that the first step then is to reform this ‘standardization’, which at best insulates, and at worst divorces us from our local contexts. It neither fosters respect for others nor for the natural environment, and not even the knowledge of our own strengths and weaknesses, which is the real basis for self-respect.

School education today, particularly the CBSE, stresses isolationistic instruction of theory to the exclusion of application. Despite the experiments in playway education in some mainstream ‘progressive’ schools, children are inundated with theoretical information from the earliest years of school or at the latest by class four or five. Even in Environmental Science – a compulsory subject of late – the method of assessment is to test knowledge about organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, rather than on helping students to understand the implications of everyday actions on the environment. The overriding emphasis today on computer-assignments as an educational tool, is a part of the same isolationist view which cannot apply the lessons of environmental science to other subjects and certainly not to daily life! As an illustrative example, here I would quote the experience of a progressive and famous public-school, which sought professional advice from a leading energy-institution on how to reduce cooling costs and make its new buildings environmentally appropriate. The advice that the school received was impressively detailed and voluminous, with results from high-technology monitoring equipment and insulating techniques. But it incredibly did not mention the basic fact that the North-South orientation of the proposed buildings was incorrect, and till this was corrected they would inevitably absorb maximum heat! This reveals the absurd ‘blinding’ that such technocratic and isolationist attitudes breed.

            How should our education, technical, vocational or otherwise, remove such a ‘blinkered’ vision? Dr Zakir Hussain wrote an article in 1961 in the journal Nayee Talim,⁵ which may summarize all the objectives of a truly liberal vision for centers of education, ‘To train students for taking responsibilities of various social tasks…to expand the areas of knowledge…to include broad-mindedness in its students, to inspire the students to live a life of goodness and truth’. Thus, the national goal of education, whether we call it ‘liberal’ or anything else, should first open a method of enquiry for its students to judge situations, to formulate their actions, to evolve into good human beings, not to produce individuals whose sole aim is to earn more. The world is not standardized, it has unique solutions to different situations, which despite being different are all linked, and affected by all actions, great and small. The only way to understand the world is through self-realization which may begin with, but does not end, with formal education.

Is it possible to do all this by being primarily dependant on western systems of living and learning? No. Segregation and fragmentation, specialization and confrontation were inherent parts of the method of inquiry in the western tradition even before industrialization put this into more glaring view. As Chaturvedi Badrinath writes in The Mahabharata An Inquiry Into the Human Condition, a look at the history of philosophical thought in the West shows that ‘…when systematized into an ism, the various explanations of the human condition had fiercely rejected each other…But although fiercely rejecting each other, all these isms have one thing in common – a logic which fragments human attributes into irreconcilable polarities, and then assumes either the one or the other is the reality, and constructs its world view wholly on that, or the logic of either/or’.⁷

In fact, unlike much of western thought, indigenous methods of inquiry seem to lend themselves more easily to holistic and wholesome attitudes to learning. The difference between these two world views – the exclusionary and the inclusive – is manifest in the answer of some Brahmins three centuries ago. Asked a question on a subject as personal and emotional as religion, by the French traveler Francois Bernier, this is what they had to say:

‘We pretend not,’ they replied, ‘that our law is of universal application. God intended it only for us, and this is the reason we cannot receive a foreigner into our religion. We do not even say that yours is a false religion: it may be adapted to your wants and circumstances, God having, no doubt, appointed many different ways of going to heaven.’

Bernier on the other hand, could not understand this point of view. And this is what he had to say: ‘I found it impossible to convince them that the Christian faith was designed for the whole earth, and theirs was mere fable and gross fabrication’.⁸

So how does all this translate into education today? Does it mean a change in the method of teaching? In the content? In both? In our present assessment and evaluation procedures? Practical demands of time, space and resources imply that there will be some amount of specialization as one proceeds on the learning path, and it would never be possible to teach everything about everything. We must also recognize that in the learning curve of individuals, society and civilization, some amount of specialization is the natural path of evolution. A Benarasi weaver whose remarkable skill and creativity we treasure as heirlooms, does not learn pottery or till the land. Were he to do so, he would have neither the time nor the skill to fashion his intricate weaves. Yet, this specialization does not divorce him from his natural or cultural context or knowledge base. He traditionally operates within a societal framework, which creates a need for his skills and which provides him with sustenance to develop these. Today, such a societal and cultural framework is missing. It can only be regenerated if even in specialized training at any stage of education, the emphasis is general, and the composition of our curricula and our teachers is inclusive. Colleges in their dissemination of specialized education must encourage students in theoretical and practical instruction, which is balanced and engages with cultural and social issues. Such holistic education would help students obtain a more complete understanding of the world, and avoid mindsets like Bernier’s that reject everything unfamiliar, as false or untrue.

How shall we practically achieve this? By completely rejecting western systems of education or thought? By limiting study to only indigenous traditional systems? Certainly not, since that would be continuing the same exclusivist view that is the main deficiency of our education today. All education must develop an enjoyment of the process of learning, and an engagement with the natural world. The analogy may be likened to a baby, whose first efforts are aimed at resolving the objects seen, heard or felt in the immediate vicinity. This is how we are genetically coded to grow. A knowledge of local systems and sympathy with the natural world, will help to comprehend larger systems or those from other regions or cultures. As Winin Pereira clarifies in his book From Western Science to Liberation Technology, ‘It is the traditional methods of research, development, dissemination and use that are still relevant, not necessarily all brought forward pieces of knowledge’.⁹ Thus, primacy to indigenous traditional systems of learning in formative years, should help, not inhibit enquiry and direct experimentation in other systems–whether non-indigenous, non-mainstream, conventional or unconventional. The spirit of inquiry and analysis can be furthered and coupled with an understanding of the universal and natural worlds, to eventually lead to creative, contextual, humane theory and practice.

Thus the policy formulation with regard to liberal education should be that:

1. Theoretical instruction instead of remaining abstract,must link learning to real life, illustratedthrough stories and examples(most people, especially children love stories, and these are invaluable in explaining even complex notions of philosophy, conduct, etc. as the Mahabharata and much of our traditional literature demonstrate).
2. The proportion of practical instruction must be increased,and must connect to nature. Students should be encouraged to work with their hands, and learn by ‘doing’ so that satisfaction and a sense of achievement are the incentives to learn, not marks.
3. Both theoretical and practical instruction, must include dissemination and discussion on traditional and indigenous knowledge, through an active involvement of non-mainstream disciplines or cultures – such as folk artists, craftspeople, writers in indigenous languages – rather than just conventional academics and theoreticians. Educational experiments, such as the one where a flower-seller and her five year old daughter, were instructors to Class Six students in the Padma Seshadri Bala Bhawan in T. Nagar in Chennai for three days,as reported inThe Hindu, should be widespread.¹⁰
4. There should be an optimum size beyond which the classroom and the educational institution must not grow. Large sizes and centralization necessitate standardization for ease of management, consume greater resources, and take away the emphasis from learning to administration.
5. The present system of evaluation,based on marks must be replaced by one based on grades.

 It is not as if these problems or the suggestions offered have not been recognized or enunciated before our time. The experiments in school and college education at SriNiketan and Santiniketan by Rabindranath Tagore and in national education as envisioned in Mahatma Gandhi’s NaiTalim, did this almost a hundred years ago. Why have these experiments failed? Why they been largely forgotten or sidelined by mainstream education? If individuals of such political, intellectual and moral stature such as Tagore and Gandhi were unable to make a difference despite actually setting up schools and universities that applied visionary principles, is it likely that we will be able to do so? Even today, there are some institutional and private efforts committed to unconventional or non-formal methods of learning. The reason that these efforts were and are unable to make a dent in society or permeate through larger sections of it, is largely due to the Government’s unwillingness to promote these as valid ways of learning. This sort of education does not fit the official notion of development. The idea of development as perceived by the government is still the Nehruvian one which in essence is the western industrialized model, a model which as argued earlier is incapable of accepting, like that of Bernier’s mindset, any other path to an alternative development option. Therefore, the only way for a change to happen, is for the Government, as the overall authority responsible for running the country, to realize that the present notion of development is flawed. It must, as must we all, recognise the necessity of liberal education and endorse holistic teaching and evaluation methods. Rather than setting up new competing institutions, we need to transform our existing institutions at every level and decentralize. This implies a great deal of consensus-building through interaction, discussion and cooperation which is no doubt difficult. But it is not impossible.

In my teaching of Research Paper, by no means sufficient in providing complete answers – especially when compared to the work of more experienced educationists – there has been a partial success in the students’ ability to link abstract design and real social issues or to express themselves openly with conviction. Most of the students comprehend that the state of the urban poor and homeless in our cities today, are as affected by the disappearance of traditional livelihoods as with the plastic or metal products designed such that they can only be made in large mechanized factories. The students also realize that ostensibly beneficiary schemes of large-scale export of handicrafts may actually hasten their extinction by promoting standardized production possible only in ‘factory-like’ situations. However, the focus of their lessons in other subjects or in design studios, even when actuated by themes such as ‘socially relevant design’ invariably leads them to modern, mechanized engineering industrial designs. Their site visits are to factories or large multi-national firms where they foresee themselves working in the future, not on an apprenticeship with master-craftsmen. Most typical urban professionals feel they have no other option, since alternative choices do not eventually assure them of economic security. Here again the government has a larger role to play, not in terms of subsidies or grants, but in recognizing indigenous economic structures as valid, inclusive and wholesome. This would be therefore “in-sync” if the government-supported education system would become more holistic.

I would like to end with a quote from Harsh Mander in an article on a different context, but which I believe can be a guide to what we hope to achieve from this seminar, or indeed any action we do, any work we contemplate, any change that we envison, whether in education or in life: ‘Gandhi offered us a “talisman” to use in moments of doubt and confusion. He asked us to recall the face of the poorest, most defenceless, powerless man we have encountered…We must ask ourselves whether what we are attempting has meaning for this person.’¹¹

Acknowledgements;

The ideas expressed in this paper have been greatly clarified and extended by discussions with many people, particularly Snehanshu Mukherjee and Badri Narayanan, both insightful architects committed to teaching and learning. The experience and attitude of Chitra Dhariyal and Madhu Pandey, in dealing with the challenges of teaching secondary and high school students, and the optimism of the artist and writer Shakti Maira, transmitted as much in his conversation as in his writing about art and education, have made me rethink notions about how I deal with the development of my five year old daughter as well as my methods of teaching college students. Finally, I believe that we can only find answers to many of our challenges in education today, even in this greatly changed and changing world of the 21^st century, if we look at the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, and many others of their generation.

 Notes:

1. Architecture gives an insight into the living conditions, methods and materials of construction, concepts of time and culture of previous generations. In fact, some countries in the world are already experimenting with using architecture as a tool for teaching school children.
2. Chambers Dictionary
3. Oxford Dictionary and Thesarus (Indian Edition)
4. Dharampal, The Beautiful Tree, Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century, First Published by Impex India 1971, Republished 2000 by Other India Press, Goa, in association with SIDH Society for Integrated Development of Himalayas, Mussoorie
5. As quoted in Rabindranath Tagore, Philosophy of Education and Painting, Devi Prasad, National Book Trust, India, Creative Learning Series, First Edition 2001, New Delhi
6. The Hindu Tuesday, April 7 2009, ‘Polymath who shared the fun of science’, Vidyanand Nanjundiah.
7. The Mahabharata An Inquiry Into the Human Condition, Chaturvedi Badrinath, Orient Longman 2006, p.10-11.
8. Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mughal Empire, p. 328
9. Winin Pereira, From Western Science to Liberation Technology, Earthcare Books, Kolkata, first edition 1993
10. The Hindu Tuesday, April 7 2009, ‘The hands that craft and create’, Priscilla Jebaraj. The report also mentions that CBSE has already worked out a syllabus in handicrafts for an elective course in Classes 11 and 12.
11. The Hindu Sunday April 5, 2009, ‘BAREFOOT, The silent tragedy of hunger’.

 

 

Who Cares?

Anyone who believes exponential growth
can go forever in a finite world
is either a madman or an economist.

                            —KENNETH E. BOULDING

 

Scientists hold

the age of the Earth

is about 4.5 billion years.

Human civilization

hasn’t yet entered its tenth millennium

but has already fucked up the whole of it.

Who cares

the generations to come,

the preservation of life,

the health of the planet?

To put it bluntly:

who cares about the future?

All that occupies our mind is today,

tomorrow morning at most.

Who bloody cares

the species reduced to extinction,

the savage deforestation,

the toxic air we breathe,

the sea reduced to a dump?

All we want to be concerned about

is the latest in next-generation mobiles.

To hell with all the rest!

Why should we care?

Why us and why now?

It’s our turn to spoil the world!

All in all the Earth is only a fleck of dust

revolving around a gigantic furnace

and liable to incineration any moment.

Who fucking cares

this doggone solar fart we inhabit?

previously unpublished

 

A Dispute On Modern Physics

Fairy hands at work—

unwavering realm of perfection

claiming room, bliss is what it brings.

Blank night, after the journey, the price

to be paid. And the trivial stands as high

as the peaks of thought. The yardstick’s

different, as is what’s sought, restyled,

displayed on stage. The mundane.

Invisible divide. Cosmology.

The key to cognizance,

to all that out of darkness

can’t be accessed. Light appeared

over one life ago and you’re still blind,

no … deprived of eyes! More snow collecting

on glacial basins, new ice forming, but you don’t

belong to ecstasy. The realm has plenty of time, if

not enough to rescue you from the platitudes of

certainty. So—Boltzmann, Maxwell, Planck,

Einstein, Dirac. Their true identity and

what their blood was really about

I strive to grasp, wasting ink

and hours away. I won’t

succeed and—I believe—neither

will fairies ever speak to me. Yet what

about your grounds? Is there a point of yours

or anything consistent beyond what little I can see?

Indeed, anything you trust in or your erratic soul is after?

previously unpublished

 

Abscent

She has fled.

Gone like morning breeze

suddenly dying out

at the rising of the disk

above the horizon.

All she has left

are fragrant silences,

a speckled looking glass

and a vintage bottle of champagne

forgotten in the fridge.

What is taking her place

is faint light,

soaked in mugginess,

barely filtering

through the shutters ajar.

And heavy air,

smelling of heated water

exhaling from the scorching tar.

Her killing scent

killed by the miasmas

of the mushy streets,

and by sugary forgetfulness.

first published in Main Street Rag (NC)

 

Fall

After one has walked in the sky

higher than the highest clouds

glorified in the purest light,

it’s hard to find oneself squashed on the ground,

floundering about through soggy black earth,

groping in the dark in search of a way,

whatever way away from shame.

Now that such glare has been your undoing,

you clumsy beastie puffed up with pride,

don’t swear at the soil you’re worming on!

That which is sticking to your hair,

lodging under your nails,

slipping into your eyes,

well—that’s no filth at all,

but your only possible salvation.

So don’t despise what may appear the direst place,

indeed the nastiest one for you to fall onto,

as from such empty height

there’s nowhere else where you could stop.

And from the earthworms you touch

feeling around enshrouded in blackness,

from the tacky grains teeming with secret life

that cover your body throughout

have yourself obtain your nourishment.

Now you have to place your trust

in your most pristine senses and basest instincts.

And be sure,

once you and this mold are one,

you’ll no longer wish to bask in that infinite light.

Nevermore—in the misleading purity of heady altitude.

Here you landed, here you belong.

So weak, so blind, so lost,

and yet—you still don’t know—

so unprecedentedly strong.

First published in Chitron Review

 

As I Watch

Presenter’s power point scans, spans
As moments un-peel time
And the words,
bold and blank,
bleed
Slipping in ribbons of
silence
Around dark bodies in gray places,
Tongue-tied brick walls,
Faces, gazes…
Around foggy features
And thousand-tongue frozen gestures.
As blank words scream in soft silence
As faded wounds
bleed
in dark silence
Through the valleys of the past
Through the allies of the cast…

As I watch
Oh, as I watch in darkness…

Copyright © Donia Gobar

 

 

 

No Retakes!

 

“It tricks, it teases
It smiles, it ceases

It hurts, its insane
But they say no pain, no gain

It is love, it is compassion
It is Jealousy, it is full of passion

It never fails to surprise
What if at times I pay heavy price

Love the way it unfolds its mystery
Rest everything is captured in memory called history

Although in this life there are no retakes
I am profoundly proud of my mistakes!”

Water on Water

water paints waves
of water on water
loops of light spread
over the gently
rolling surface
trembling air
stirs gentle motions
threads of luminous
brilliance collect
in rainbow colors
from a distant sun
to weave a lucid web
over the blue

bounty and beauty
water ever alive
there and always there
at the edges of the seen

Bodies

the wisdom to forestall
the shattering of bones
shadows on an X-ray

the naked body
lying on a vacant shore
lying on inland soils
tenderly overgrown
with apples and grass

the flight of nightbirds
of seabirds soaring
over the waters

the wisdom to forestall
the shattering of bones

The Dimension of Desire

To hold you tight
finally
to hold you

with half closed eyes
scrutinizing the future
searching for hope
always searching

Internet and Handy
as Dimensions
of hope

To observe
always more keenly
disappear
farther and farther away
till I reach the land
following you
the land of desire
always following you

Pray to some wise god
whoever s/he may be
hidden from us
and equal for all

and to the angel
who appears out of focus
on all the picture
who mocks me
hanging from the cornice
above which there are
only stares of cold stars

To hold you tight
finally
but where are you?

Forgetting

How easy it is
to forget you
your hands your lips
on my body

How easy it is
to get lost
in the daily chaos
that separates us
and each from himself

stuck
in a grey world
submerged
in ugliness

A world that knows not
the trembling
of glowing bodies

A world
without an instrument
to measure the vibration
of a kiss on my breast

that burns on me today
with your absence

I want a Date

I want a date with your mind
want to sing on the roving sands
where thoughts run rampant
with desire in a high tide of fun
spun surf spraying threads of sun

I want a date with your mind
to laugh at the day’s dismays
indulge in ‘come what mays’
and chant to the sinking sun
the cradle songs of yesterday

I want a date with our bodies
till sleep will separate all
but our thirsty revolving skins
embracing love-crazy planets
in dreams uniting us
again and again

Red Carpet – A Haiku Cycle

The dreams you told me
I embroider in secret
I stitch them in sleep

I stitch them in sleep
in the middle of a room
dreams hard to come by

Dreams hard to come by
since I live you by dreaming
I crave every word

I crave every word
and every secret nuance
a verse from the heart

A verse from the heart
now a calm reassurance
the world has vanished

The world has vanished
I, the magic carpet and
the dreams you told me

The Hourglass Moment

This is the moment to
turn the hourglass around
time had run through
it had almost run its course
now we’ve found each other
round the bend lies the new

life made from of the same
trickling grains of sand
that viewed from upside down
seem more magnificent

As from a kaleidoscope
shaken again and again
emerges beauty and order

unforeseen just like you
and yet seen as the light
in your eyes

I will only smile
and abide by this light
between us that shines
at a might of hunger and love

This is moment
time has been found
a time that was run through
this is our moment
to turn the hourglass around

Afternoon

The sun puts the clouds
on the table
between the glasses
and the crackers
a piece of luminous sky
between floating smiles

bits of today’s heaven
come down to us
as a light
right here looking into
each other’s eyes

Fingering

What I had under my fingers
Third down over the thumb
Though it didn’t at first make sense
Is still under my fingers
Decades later as I listen to
Glenn Gould playing
Bach’s Italian Concerto

My fingers remember
The lonely contemplative
Voice of the second movement
Ranging is small second steps
And big sixth or seventh jumps
With my fingers not jumbled
But behaving sagaciously
As though the music
Had been written for them

And it was

How Animals Move

Placid or doomed
nervously pacing the fence line
swishing their tails
the chewers the sighers the scratchers
those who bicker and fuss
and those who just stare
those who roll in the grass
those who cry out curdling the air
who seem to lug their bodies
home to nowhere
all the way home

And some
who in their strange tongue
call out to me

Going South

Do I know the way home
when the way home for me
is to go far out
into the world

of summers and springs
holding onto a suitcase

I carry all that’s mine with me
says the philosopher
and it means
carry very little, only

for the humblest needs
of body and mind

Mining the world
with mine eyes and ears
and other given senses

Mining friends’ eyes and brows
the knowledge of their town
their laughs
and meeting their friends

Mining the world
maybe
with a sixth sense
and maybe even going south

Haiku

the morning rising
on the edges of the seen
asks us for the dream

~~~

I write always write
I’m writing to remember
writing to forget

if it flies, let it
sing in rain and shine, let it
fly out of your hands

you see some red leaves
and you think of fall before
summer ever came

small world an absurd
cage of words, my rattling bones
haunted by desire

we are like mayflies
like insects caught in amber
happy one moment

your shadow when you
arise dances on my walls:
the house is happy

~~~

we can’t see the moon
it has not reached us yet
and would be useless

 

 

Those People

Those were the people who
with tiny boxes filled with fine sugar
would go in search of anthills
They would scatter seeds on terraces
for birds to feed on.

They would get troughs of water
made outside their houses for
thirsty animals passing by.

and before eating their own meal
They would set aside a portion for cows and
other creatures.

They wouldn’t let anyone pluck a single leaf from the trees
after sunset
lest the resting trees be disturbed.

They would start conversations on their own
and ask strangers for introductions
They would heartily help those in need

and if someone asked them for directions
they would gladly
escort the person to his destination.

and if at some odd hour a lost traveler
happened to come to their
door they would provide him with
food and a place to rest

maybe such a species does still exist
in some remote village or hamlet
I wish it were possible to create a museum for them
So that generations to come would learn that
This too was a way of living.

 

Quelle Persone

Italian Translation of L.S. Bajpai’s poem by an Italian Poet: Antonio Blunda

 

Quelle erano le persone
che con minuscoli cassetti
colmi di zucchero a velo
andrebbero in cerca di formicai 

spargerebbero i semi su terrazze
per nutrire gli uccelli.

metterebbero trogoli di acqua
costruiti fuori dalle loro case
per gli animali assetati che transitano.

e prima di mangiare il loro pasto
metterebbero da parte una porzione
per le vacche
ed altre creature.

Non lascerebbero che nessuno
cogliesse una singola foglia dagli alberi
dopo il tramonto
affinchè il riposo degli alberi
non fosse disturbato.

Inizierebbero le proprie conversazioni
chiedendo a stranieri di presentarli

Aiuterebbero di cuore coloro che lo necessitano

e se qualcuno chiedesse loro di guidarli
essi lo farebbero volentieri
conducendo la persona a destinazione.

e se all’ora più casuale
ad un viaggiatore disperso
capitasse di giungere alla loro porta
essi offrirebbero cibo
ed un posto per riposare

Forse una tal specie ancora esiste
in qualche remoto villaggio o borgo

Vorrei che fosse possibile creare un museo per loro
così che le generazioni venissero ad imparare
che anche questo
era un modo di vivere.

(Traduzione in italiano: Antonio Blunda)

 

Great Joys and little sorrows
Yesterdays and tomorrows
Shall now be just a memory
Of snow, flowers and shadows
Of friends that held hands often
And loved us, prayed and hoped
When we like light in darkness
Just groped, groped and groped
And now that time is here
To kiss and say good bye
I will miss this little garden
And days of Roses and wine
But home is where the heart is
And in my heart you will remain
And my heart shall be home to you
With all the pleasures and pain
We’ll know what were our losses
We’ll know what was our gain
In this home of many wonders
We will sit and then talk again