I live next to a Greek Orthodox Church. There is a gold Christ near its roof. Everyday I walk by this church and think what that image of Christ sees everyday. I know Jigar has said that all of his desires/armaans are crosses/sooli where Christ is hung again and again. But I avoid Jigar’s morbid, liver-wrenching (excuse the pun) suggestion. For one thing, I walk by this image of Christ everyday; I do not want to think of him ascending the steps of a scaffold made of my pithy desires. Other images, other lyrics, other verses have started coming to my mind when I catch him witnessing the absurd mundanity of Henry Street West. I stare back sometimes and think, those beautiful and wet eyes (chashm-e-num) could bless those lands being occupied and tormented with its bountiful gaze (nigaah-e-karam). And yet he is here, framed with a dusting of snow, reminding me of something I forgot I ever knew.
The image makes me think of those hanging bodies whose lipsticks keep shining in Faiz’s poetry. But it also reminds me of a poem by Kaifi Azmi about a statue of Christ in a busy intersection in Bombay while Vietnam is being destroyed. I thought I would translate his poem because I have decided that seeing this glimmering gold image does not beckon to the hands whose silver was shining even while being hung (as we saw with Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s “We Who Were Hung In Half-Lit Pathways”). Instead it beckons to Kaifi Azmi’s statue of the Son of Mary who stands there witnessing again and again. But the irony, we might consider, is that he is witnessing a scene from the wrong scaffold:
Ibn-e-Maryam
Son of Mary
Tum khuda ho
Khuda ke bete ho
Ya faqat aman ke paighambar ho
Ya kis ki haseen takhayyul ho
Jo bhi ho mujhko ache lagte ho
Mujhko sachche lagte ho
Whether you are God
Or the Son of God
Or just a messenger of peace
Or someone’s beautiful imagination
Whatever you are, I like you
You look truthful to me
Is sitare mai.n jis mai.n sadio.n ke
Jhoot aur khizb ka andhera hai
Is sitare mai.n, jis ko har rukh se
Ringti sarhado.n ne ghera hai
In this fate in which centuries of
Lies and deceit have spread their darkness
In this fate in which every face
Has been made faint by these silent borders (?)
Is sitare mai.n,
Raat peeti hai noor chehro.n ka
Subha seeno.n ka khuun chaat-ti hai
Tum na hote to is sitare mai.n
Na jane kya hota
Tum na hote to
Kon charhta khooshi sai sooli par?
In this fate
The night drinks the light of faces
And the morning licks blood from chests
If you were not here in this fate
I do not know what might happen
If you were not here,
Then who would have ascended the scaffold with joy?
Tum yaha.n se hato.n khuda ke li’e
Ja’o voh vietnaam ke jungle
Us ke masloob sheher, zakhmi ga’o.n
Jin ko injeel parhne walo.n ne
Chonk dala hai
Jaane kab se pukaar te hai.n tumhe.n
Please, for God’s sake, leave this place
Go to Vietnam, its jungles
In those cities that have been hung, in those wounded villages
That have been destroyed
By those who read the Bible
Who knows for how long they have been crying out to you
Ja’o aik baar phir humare li’e
Tum ko charhna parega sooli par
Go! Once more you will have to, for us,
Climb those steps to the cross
Monday, March 10, 2008
The Etiquette of a Congregation, of a Congregation of Men
My father and I used to go to the mosque every Friday until he died. We would stand next to each other and the imam would tell us,
“Brothers, shoulder to shoulder, toe to toe. Let there be no spaces between you brothers or the devil might step in.”
And we would oblige. I never really hugged my father and this was the closest we would ever get. When I was finishing high school and he died, I would still go to the same mosque and when closing my eyes to hear ornate utterances of Quranic verses like Fateha (The Key) or Al-Muzammil (The One Wrapped in a Cloth), I would feel the warmth of his shoulder next to mine. Then I would remember the man next to me is not my father at all. It is a congregant standing perfectly in line with other men, all facing the qiblah – the cubical heart of Islam which the prophet purged of false idols. And I would want to push my arm closer to his – so we can keep the devil from stepping in, so I can feel a tenderness in front of God in the very congregation he has ordained. And then we touch our foreheads to the ground in an act prostration – in union our foreheads touch the ground. And remembering that the devil can make an appearance between congregants even in prostration, I would touch his fingers that were next to mine on the carpet. But ever so slightly. This is, after all, the etiquette of a congregation – of a congregation of men.
It is odd this congregation never fails to alight certain hidden aspects of my being, of my body. Because, indeed, I have always felt more comfortable around women: With my mother, with my sisters. But in this space I would feel so right next to these bodies, taking pleasure in the subtle touches in the service of the Divine. And perhaps Divine-will can only materialize in this congregation, in the subtleties of these very touches, with our eyes closed, with our lips whispering, “Rabbi-al-aalameen” (“the Ruler of the Worlds”). And of course I could never stop myself from thinking, “Oh Ruler of the Worlds, it is you alone who has put this body next to mine, his arm on mine”. It is you alone who has made me feel his breath on my cheek when he mouths greetings of peace to the auspicious angels that materialize next to believers when we pray together. And this is, after all, the etiquette of a congregation – of a congregation of men.
And then it happened, I thought I was somehow realizing a progressive and liberated self by going to gay and lesbian clubs in Vancouver. The first time I saw them taking off their shirts, I felt such dread. I had spent a lifetime cultivating a sense of shame, of learning how to subordinate myself and my body to Divine regulations. I had cultivated a sense of modesty in front of other bodies – men or women – and of course modesty in front of the Divine. And yet they could rip off their shirts. They could go on stage. They could caress each other’s torsos. In public. On stage. In front of our gazes, in front of the gaze of the Divine. They would say I am a prude; I need to come out of my shell. To break this shell, to rip off my cloak, I had to forget these Fridays, with their subtleties of touch, with their delights of moving my body in a way God had demanded, and in a way necessarily in union with these arms next to me. But this too, after all, is the etiquette of a congregation – of a congregation of men.
What happens to those bodies who are cultivated through repeated engagements with religious rites? Specifically, what happens to the body who went to the mosque every Friday – whose being was modeled by caressing the shoulders of an adjacent believer? Are we to tell this being that his true self will be realized only when he rips his shirt off? When his cloak is stripped from him? When he can violently unlearn a type of bodily cultivation it took many years with its many Fridays to mould? When he too can caress someone’s torso in front of our gazes? We could tell him this. But it would ignore the tender modality of erotics I experienced on my Fridays. Where my self was being experienced by touching this shoulder next to mine, and by feeling his breath on my cheek. These touches were, indeed, a mode for realizing God’s immaculate plan and included types of pleasure and desire we often do not bother recognizing.
So this body has turned his back to the congregation that demands its participants to unlearn their religious and cultural embodiments in favour of its own particularist notion of self-realization. This body has opted to remain in a very different congregation of men. One where we can stand next to one another wrapped in our cloaks and still feel each other’s body pulsate with a burning desire for God’s presence. And with this pulse we can perhaps share and experience our bodies to their fullest. So do not ask me, I beg of you, to tear off my cloak. For perhaps this tearing will destroy a type of self: “O thou wrapped up in thy raiment…Remember the name of thy Lord and devote thyself with a complete devotion – Lord of the East and of the West, there is no god save God, so choose God alone for thy defender” (Quran, 73:1, 8-9).
“Brothers, shoulder to shoulder, toe to toe. Let there be no spaces between you brothers or the devil might step in.”
And we would oblige. I never really hugged my father and this was the closest we would ever get. When I was finishing high school and he died, I would still go to the same mosque and when closing my eyes to hear ornate utterances of Quranic verses like Fateha (The Key) or Al-Muzammil (The One Wrapped in a Cloth), I would feel the warmth of his shoulder next to mine. Then I would remember the man next to me is not my father at all. It is a congregant standing perfectly in line with other men, all facing the qiblah – the cubical heart of Islam which the prophet purged of false idols. And I would want to push my arm closer to his – so we can keep the devil from stepping in, so I can feel a tenderness in front of God in the very congregation he has ordained. And then we touch our foreheads to the ground in an act prostration – in union our foreheads touch the ground. And remembering that the devil can make an appearance between congregants even in prostration, I would touch his fingers that were next to mine on the carpet. But ever so slightly. This is, after all, the etiquette of a congregation – of a congregation of men.
It is odd this congregation never fails to alight certain hidden aspects of my being, of my body. Because, indeed, I have always felt more comfortable around women: With my mother, with my sisters. But in this space I would feel so right next to these bodies, taking pleasure in the subtle touches in the service of the Divine. And perhaps Divine-will can only materialize in this congregation, in the subtleties of these very touches, with our eyes closed, with our lips whispering, “Rabbi-al-aalameen” (“the Ruler of the Worlds”). And of course I could never stop myself from thinking, “Oh Ruler of the Worlds, it is you alone who has put this body next to mine, his arm on mine”. It is you alone who has made me feel his breath on my cheek when he mouths greetings of peace to the auspicious angels that materialize next to believers when we pray together. And this is, after all, the etiquette of a congregation – of a congregation of men.
And then it happened, I thought I was somehow realizing a progressive and liberated self by going to gay and lesbian clubs in Vancouver. The first time I saw them taking off their shirts, I felt such dread. I had spent a lifetime cultivating a sense of shame, of learning how to subordinate myself and my body to Divine regulations. I had cultivated a sense of modesty in front of other bodies – men or women – and of course modesty in front of the Divine. And yet they could rip off their shirts. They could go on stage. They could caress each other’s torsos. In public. On stage. In front of our gazes, in front of the gaze of the Divine. They would say I am a prude; I need to come out of my shell. To break this shell, to rip off my cloak, I had to forget these Fridays, with their subtleties of touch, with their delights of moving my body in a way God had demanded, and in a way necessarily in union with these arms next to me. But this too, after all, is the etiquette of a congregation – of a congregation of men.
What happens to those bodies who are cultivated through repeated engagements with religious rites? Specifically, what happens to the body who went to the mosque every Friday – whose being was modeled by caressing the shoulders of an adjacent believer? Are we to tell this being that his true self will be realized only when he rips his shirt off? When his cloak is stripped from him? When he can violently unlearn a type of bodily cultivation it took many years with its many Fridays to mould? When he too can caress someone’s torso in front of our gazes? We could tell him this. But it would ignore the tender modality of erotics I experienced on my Fridays. Where my self was being experienced by touching this shoulder next to mine, and by feeling his breath on my cheek. These touches were, indeed, a mode for realizing God’s immaculate plan and included types of pleasure and desire we often do not bother recognizing.
So this body has turned his back to the congregation that demands its participants to unlearn their religious and cultural embodiments in favour of its own particularist notion of self-realization. This body has opted to remain in a very different congregation of men. One where we can stand next to one another wrapped in our cloaks and still feel each other’s body pulsate with a burning desire for God’s presence. And with this pulse we can perhaps share and experience our bodies to their fullest. So do not ask me, I beg of you, to tear off my cloak. For perhaps this tearing will destroy a type of self: “O thou wrapped up in thy raiment…Remember the name of thy Lord and devote thyself with a complete devotion – Lord of the East and of the West, there is no god save God, so choose God alone for thy defender” (Quran, 73:1, 8-9).
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Shariatic Habitus, the Modern Family and Talal Asad's Framework: How to make sense of Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi?
Talal Asad’s idea that the moral authority of the family was one of three social changes that facilitated the conditions for secular modernity and nationhood is important. Indeed when families start being seen as the defining unit of society, an idea proposed my Islamist reformers as well, there is a sort of prvitization of sharia. It starts be spoken of as personal law. This process is central to a secular formula because the place for religion is defined and it can only make appearences into the public through state law (Asad, 2003: 231).
When considering Thanvi’s discourse on the family, and especially as outlined in the Bahishti Zewar, a similar view of the family as the necessary unit for society is also outlined. And indeed this relates to how the sharia (now “personal law”) is cited to confirm the sacrosanct nature of this obviously modern household (comprised of conjugality, love, contractual equality). And though Asad rightly notes how this idea was articulated by both secularists and Islamists, he still claims that “both secularists and Islamists have taken a strongly statist perspective in that both see sharia as “sacred law.” Of course Asad is right in discussing how deemphasizing the cultivation of a particular shariatic habitus allows for the conceptualizing of sharia as “sacred” as opposed to “profane”. But his framework cannot make sense of Thanvi’s cultivation of a particular conjugal family through Thanvi’s own shariatic citations.
This is because Thanvi’s framework has a very different relationship to the state. Clearly he is not “statist” for two reasons. Firstly, the Tablighi movement is never about seizing state power nor becoming embedded in the administrative functions of the state. Secondly, the national discourse is still dominated by Hindu cultural ethos and religious reformist sensibilities. And thus though both Islamists and secularists articulate a desire to ‘englighten’ the rural masses into civility through the family as a site for moral authority – although with different motivations in hand –, there is still something about Thanvi’s discourse and context that does not quite fit. This again has to do with the national/non-national dynamics of Muslim juristic activity in India. Indeed Thanvi was not only writing in response to secular modernist Muslim Indians (like Sir Syed) who wished to bring the Muslim masses out of superstitious customs and dominance of the Ulama, but also in a context where secularist Hindu movements wished to reform Hindu tradition but also maintain an Aryan basis of the nation with the relegation of the Muslim to a cancerous limb.
So how is Thanvi’s discourse – though clearly modern – embedded within the process of secularization Asad describes? How can we conceptualize gus awkward relationship with the state’s role in assuring sharia? (Indeed this is something illustrated by the Bahishti Zewar itself. This text is beyond simply advocating the Muslim right to ‘personal law’ and confirming the family as a site for moral authority in a privatized way. Indeed the text is actually attempting to cultivate a type of habitus that continuously cites shariatic principles. This is the type of habitus, I would argue, Asad is saying is deemphasized through secularization and the privitization of sharia). These are questions, perhaps, that can only be answered through a discussion on the complex and awkward relationships with secular nationhood within the particularities of early twentieth century Deoband jurisprudence; relationships clearly not collapsible with the notion of ‘statist’ nor the idea that Thanvi wished to deploy the powers of the state to use sharia in matters of the ‘private self’ that came along with the new modern conjugal family.
When considering Thanvi’s discourse on the family, and especially as outlined in the Bahishti Zewar, a similar view of the family as the necessary unit for society is also outlined. And indeed this relates to how the sharia (now “personal law”) is cited to confirm the sacrosanct nature of this obviously modern household (comprised of conjugality, love, contractual equality). And though Asad rightly notes how this idea was articulated by both secularists and Islamists, he still claims that “both secularists and Islamists have taken a strongly statist perspective in that both see sharia as “sacred law.” Of course Asad is right in discussing how deemphasizing the cultivation of a particular shariatic habitus allows for the conceptualizing of sharia as “sacred” as opposed to “profane”. But his framework cannot make sense of Thanvi’s cultivation of a particular conjugal family through Thanvi’s own shariatic citations.
This is because Thanvi’s framework has a very different relationship to the state. Clearly he is not “statist” for two reasons. Firstly, the Tablighi movement is never about seizing state power nor becoming embedded in the administrative functions of the state. Secondly, the national discourse is still dominated by Hindu cultural ethos and religious reformist sensibilities. And thus though both Islamists and secularists articulate a desire to ‘englighten’ the rural masses into civility through the family as a site for moral authority – although with different motivations in hand –, there is still something about Thanvi’s discourse and context that does not quite fit. This again has to do with the national/non-national dynamics of Muslim juristic activity in India. Indeed Thanvi was not only writing in response to secular modernist Muslim Indians (like Sir Syed) who wished to bring the Muslim masses out of superstitious customs and dominance of the Ulama, but also in a context where secularist Hindu movements wished to reform Hindu tradition but also maintain an Aryan basis of the nation with the relegation of the Muslim to a cancerous limb.
So how is Thanvi’s discourse – though clearly modern – embedded within the process of secularization Asad describes? How can we conceptualize gus awkward relationship with the state’s role in assuring sharia? (Indeed this is something illustrated by the Bahishti Zewar itself. This text is beyond simply advocating the Muslim right to ‘personal law’ and confirming the family as a site for moral authority in a privatized way. Indeed the text is actually attempting to cultivate a type of habitus that continuously cites shariatic principles. This is the type of habitus, I would argue, Asad is saying is deemphasized through secularization and the privitization of sharia). These are questions, perhaps, that can only be answered through a discussion on the complex and awkward relationships with secular nationhood within the particularities of early twentieth century Deoband jurisprudence; relationships clearly not collapsible with the notion of ‘statist’ nor the idea that Thanvi wished to deploy the powers of the state to use sharia in matters of the ‘private self’ that came along with the new modern conjugal family.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
jigar mai.n khalish!
Sometimes I wonder how to make sense of the shakhsiat (personhood) of Akhtari Bai Faizabadi (Begum Akhtar). She cannot be like the rest of us, her burning jigar has brought too many tears to simply be one of us. She could be that old figure of the pari – the Indo-Persian ferry who displays her adaayei.n (charms) for ephemeral moments to the crazed (joshi, majnoon) lover.
Like Akhtari Bai, the pari is associated with wine and intoxication, as well as song (naghma-e-pari) and perhaps even dance. For instance, the famed dance school in Lucknow under Nawab Wajid Shah was called the “pari-khana”. But Begum Akhtar cannot be collapsed with a pari-like presence because her ghazals are so heart wrenching that it is not the fareb (cheat) of her soon-to-be-disappeared adaayei.n (charms), but it is a sense of violent disembodiment and embodied destruction.
Yes this is all very dramatic. I want to discuss how these two aspects of listening to Akhtari Bai (disembodiment and embodied destruction) – two aspects that make it often impossible to stop listening – that make it impossible to collapse with a fairy-like presence. Indeed she is something entirely different. But first, to unpack her shakhsiat as revealed through the Brilliant Jigar Moradabadi’s words:
Qayamat kya? Ye ae husn-e-do-aalam hoti jati hai
Ke mehfil to wahi hai, dilkashi kam hoti jat hai
What apocalypse? This “o-beauty-of-both worlds” keeps happening
Well the congregation is the same, but it becomes less and less attractive
When Begum Akhtar questions, “what apocalypse” she does so in a way that taunts you. Her raspy, powerful voice is mocking a certain important tautology we cling to. But then the way she stresses mehfil and almost lets go at the dilkashi reveals a sort of tired, discouraged abandonment of will. That, well, the congregation stays the same, but something in me (here the embodied destruction) makes it impossible to enjoy it any longer.
Wahi mekhana-o-sehba, wahi saghar, wahi sheesha
Magar aawaaz-e-noshanosh, madham, hoti jati hai
The same tavern and company, the same wine-cup, the same glass,
But the noises of consumption (eating/drinking) become more and more quiet
This haunting couplet does something slightly different in revealing Akhtari Bai’s shakshiat. Having said that, it still falls into the trope of “embodied destruction” because the speaker knows the mehfil is the same. The sounds of consuming (eating, I almost picture animals pulling flesh from limbs) is dimming not because it is actually dimming but because the speaker is no longer capable of hearing these noises of activity (of the garm bazaari). But this does not mean the mehfil is less attractive because it is ‘quiter’ – this is a laughable proposition. But nor is being less able to hear the congregants’ activities necessarily a negative thing – perhaps the sounds of consuming are themselves so revolting that not being able to hear them is itself a kind of karam – grace from God.
Wahi hai shahid-o-saqi, magar dil bujhta jata hai
Wahi hai shamma, lekin roshni kam hoti jati hai
Of course this couplet largely confirms the theme of embodied destruction because, again, the self (shamma) is the same but its light (personhood) becomes more and more dim. And perhaps, again, this is not a ‘negative’ thing because the shamma’s light – when the self has been abased and disgusted by itself – could reveal the presence of an always morbid and disgusting scene. Of course the heart slowly dying even though the cup-bearer and witness are still present confirms this inability to be in one’s skin. It is also important to note how by the end of the ghazal jigar notes that the light was the same all along.
To switch lenses a bit, we see how the following two couplets reveal a violent disembodiment where the subject is being torn into bits (hisse) and also where the self frighteningly becomes more and more estranged from its appointed positioning (muqarrar). The result is heart wrenching. I have no time right now to delve into commentary, but I think these lines do their own ‘justice’. One hint: remember to focus on the power of sorrow and how becoming estranged from it is a type of impoverishment. And also, one has to notice that the little hisses (pieces) of the self do not have the same ‘amount’ of happiness as the hole but each piece has an ironically more unhappy being.
Tabiyat in dino.n begaana-e-gham hoti jati
Mere hisse ki goya har khushi kam hoti jati jati
My state these days is becoming a stranger to sorrow
The happiness present in each piece of me, though, becomes less and less
Wahi hai roshni, wahi hai zindagi, Jigar ye haal hai apna
Ke jaise zindagi se, zindagi kam hoti jati hai
It is the same light, the same life, Jigar, this is your state
As though from life, life became less and less
*just think of this ghazal’s brilliance. Each couplet revealing that the aalam, the state, is exactly the same. But then claiming that something has happened – something has happened that makes it impossible not to see the gruesome nature of our distractions. And how things are dimming, they are not disappearing. You are just becoming more and more estranged, more and more discontent (but a sort of subtle and dim discontent) so nothing can bring you piece. And you can no longer even dwell in the glories of sorrow.
Like Akhtari Bai, the pari is associated with wine and intoxication, as well as song (naghma-e-pari) and perhaps even dance. For instance, the famed dance school in Lucknow under Nawab Wajid Shah was called the “pari-khana”. But Begum Akhtar cannot be collapsed with a pari-like presence because her ghazals are so heart wrenching that it is not the fareb (cheat) of her soon-to-be-disappeared adaayei.n (charms), but it is a sense of violent disembodiment and embodied destruction.
Yes this is all very dramatic. I want to discuss how these two aspects of listening to Akhtari Bai (disembodiment and embodied destruction) – two aspects that make it often impossible to stop listening – that make it impossible to collapse with a fairy-like presence. Indeed she is something entirely different. But first, to unpack her shakhsiat as revealed through the Brilliant Jigar Moradabadi’s words:
Qayamat kya? Ye ae husn-e-do-aalam hoti jati hai
Ke mehfil to wahi hai, dilkashi kam hoti jat hai
What apocalypse? This “o-beauty-of-both worlds” keeps happening
Well the congregation is the same, but it becomes less and less attractive
When Begum Akhtar questions, “what apocalypse” she does so in a way that taunts you. Her raspy, powerful voice is mocking a certain important tautology we cling to. But then the way she stresses mehfil and almost lets go at the dilkashi reveals a sort of tired, discouraged abandonment of will. That, well, the congregation stays the same, but something in me (here the embodied destruction) makes it impossible to enjoy it any longer.
Wahi mekhana-o-sehba, wahi saghar, wahi sheesha
Magar aawaaz-e-noshanosh, madham, hoti jati hai
The same tavern and company, the same wine-cup, the same glass,
But the noises of consumption (eating/drinking) become more and more quiet
This haunting couplet does something slightly different in revealing Akhtari Bai’s shakshiat. Having said that, it still falls into the trope of “embodied destruction” because the speaker knows the mehfil is the same. The sounds of consuming (eating, I almost picture animals pulling flesh from limbs) is dimming not because it is actually dimming but because the speaker is no longer capable of hearing these noises of activity (of the garm bazaari). But this does not mean the mehfil is less attractive because it is ‘quiter’ – this is a laughable proposition. But nor is being less able to hear the congregants’ activities necessarily a negative thing – perhaps the sounds of consuming are themselves so revolting that not being able to hear them is itself a kind of karam – grace from God.
Wahi hai shahid-o-saqi, magar dil bujhta jata hai
Wahi hai shamma, lekin roshni kam hoti jati hai
Of course this couplet largely confirms the theme of embodied destruction because, again, the self (shamma) is the same but its light (personhood) becomes more and more dim. And perhaps, again, this is not a ‘negative’ thing because the shamma’s light – when the self has been abased and disgusted by itself – could reveal the presence of an always morbid and disgusting scene. Of course the heart slowly dying even though the cup-bearer and witness are still present confirms this inability to be in one’s skin. It is also important to note how by the end of the ghazal jigar notes that the light was the same all along.
To switch lenses a bit, we see how the following two couplets reveal a violent disembodiment where the subject is being torn into bits (hisse) and also where the self frighteningly becomes more and more estranged from its appointed positioning (muqarrar). The result is heart wrenching. I have no time right now to delve into commentary, but I think these lines do their own ‘justice’. One hint: remember to focus on the power of sorrow and how becoming estranged from it is a type of impoverishment. And also, one has to notice that the little hisses (pieces) of the self do not have the same ‘amount’ of happiness as the hole but each piece has an ironically more unhappy being.
Tabiyat in dino.n begaana-e-gham hoti jati
Mere hisse ki goya har khushi kam hoti jati jati
My state these days is becoming a stranger to sorrow
The happiness present in each piece of me, though, becomes less and less
Wahi hai roshni, wahi hai zindagi, Jigar ye haal hai apna
Ke jaise zindagi se, zindagi kam hoti jati hai
It is the same light, the same life, Jigar, this is your state
As though from life, life became less and less
*just think of this ghazal’s brilliance. Each couplet revealing that the aalam, the state, is exactly the same. But then claiming that something has happened – something has happened that makes it impossible not to see the gruesome nature of our distractions. And how things are dimming, they are not disappearing. You are just becoming more and more estranged, more and more discontent (but a sort of subtle and dim discontent) so nothing can bring you piece. And you can no longer even dwell in the glories of sorrow.
Friday, May 25, 2007
The feeling in the Kidney and the lipstick clinging to the scaffold
My neglected little blog…
I think one of the reasons I do not find the time to post very often is that the letter ‘m’ is broken on my keyboard. So typing certain sentences (like ones with my name) are a bit more difficult.
And a healthy dose of writer’s block.
One of the things about Faiz’s poem about the sooli is that what happens when something dead is given a sort of ‘forced life’. I am speaking of the lipstick. I know in his poem he is referring to the lipstick of the beloved not on the scaffold from the distance:
“tere honto.n ki laali lapakti rahi”
But when I first read the poem, I had been certain the lipstick was actually on the one being hung. So the image:
The qatl-gah (the field of murder)
A row of scaffolds (or crosses actually)
The pale green grass and perhaps a hill or two in the background
The body hanging
The lipstick shining bright
So bright
This is the image I had. And though texts can have polyvalent meanings, I know my reading contradicts the underlying message in the poem: how new lovers (of Resistance) will still come forth since the beloved revolution’s ornaments are still dazzling. But my ‘misreading’ (oh how Derrida must cringe!) gave me something so powerful to think about.
But Faiz’s imagery (or this misreading of his imagery) did not provide something entirely like Ghalib’s idea that springtime is just autumn with henna on. This is because for Ghalib the ornamentation is a cheat; it is simply hiding how there are only lasting sorrows in this useless world. Faiz, on the other hand, is perhaps saying that the lifeless body does not have to be useless; that there might be nothing ‘lifelike’ about most of us anyway. The common shakhs, going through the motions of existing, can wear lipstick and we do not think twice of it. But a dead body – one that was killed on the fields-of-murder for carrying for the Banner towards the eves of oppression – is seen as a morbid irony to be wearing the lifelike surkh of laali. A type of brilliant agentless agency. Perhaps we are being challenged not to think in terms of tragedy or to think in terms of some liberal notion of ‘hope’ (that is collapsible with Progress) but to actually think critically about what constitutes ‘existing’ and what constitutes ‘rot’. How can the rotting but living shakhs fit so well the surkhi of laali and yet the laali of the murda – of the dead and rotting body – be so foul or ironic to us?
But that is garbage and simplistic. What really appeals to me in this little image is the taunt of death. Inviting me. Smiling at me. With her reddened lips. Something lies beyond that scaffold, something that has brought this mukhtasar tabassum (abridged smirk) on her lips before she is covered for evermore.
And this turns Ghalib’s autumn in a whore’s garb completely upside down. Indeed the bits of ornamentation she wears is not supposed to obscure the underlying (and more serious) sorrow. This is because Faiz implies there is no essence underlying the body being hung. Instead, the ornamentation is itself both the sorrow and the taunting invite because since this shakhs is dead, we cannot be cheated into thinking this exterior ornament is actually expressing some true(er) interiority. How can there be such an essential interior when the shakhs is dead?!
Indeed, she was slain on half-lit paths.
****
I am sitting here in the dark again. With this ghazal by Kaifi Azmi sung by Begum Akhtar on repeat. With this bloody cup again. My head hurts. Once more it repeats:
Itna to zindagi mai.n, kisi ki khalal pare
Hasne se na ho sukoon, rone se kal pare
Jis tarah hans raha huu.n mai.n pi pi ke ashk-e-gham
Yuu.n dosra hanse to kaleja nikal pare
Muddat ke baad, usne jo di lutf ki nigaah
Jee khush to ho gaya, magar aansu.n nikal pare
Oh in such a long life, to have someone to provide a distraction
No peace from laughing, but I gave up crying yesterday
The way I am laughing right now, drinking these tears of sorrow
Oh if someone else laughed such, his kidney would come right out
After ages did he offer the pleasure of his sights
This self became somewhat happy, but tears still rushed forth
I have mentioned this before in reference to not being able to translate the liver (jigar) into english. But in this situation, Begum Akhtar mentions the kidney. The kaleja. When I hear her say kidney, there is almost a part within my body I can feel tingle: Laughing and laughing in such a ridiculous way after drinking and drinking these tears of sorrow – that my KIDNEY might just pop out. It gives me goosebumps, but I can feel what she means.
But what happens when body parts cannot be translated? How are those parts experienced? We never say liver in English to mean the repository of feeling, nor do we use kidney to refer to pride or the source of virility (see what I mean now – laughing after drinking the tears of sorrow and the organ of virility just falling out if it was someone less accustomed to shame (ie. A shakhs other than Kaifi)). So would it be clichéd and simple to say that body parts are culturally experienced or even culturally produced? Oh we are too accustomed to poststructural thought to think this is any kind of new idea. But I think what this song does is something else:
Is it possible that only those privy to certain idioms of Urdu can actually experience certain words within certain parts of the body (or have a feeling one thinks is actually eminating from an actual part of the body)? Is it possible, then, that certain bodies simply cannot experience certain organs or certain feelings because there is no textual basis for those feelings? Do we even have the same human body? So when Kaifi is laughing at the irony of his virility:
That if it was a being less accustomed to shame, he would have his organ of virility (kaleja) fall right out, but since he is so accustomed to laughing uncontrollably while drinking the tears of sorrow, his organ of virility, ironically, stays in tact.
Kaifi actually triggers a horrible feeling just under my ribs. Almost like when someone scratches his or her nails on a chalkboard – but actually inside my torso. So this is beyond the cultural experiencing of the body; it is the textual life given to an actual organ of the body. These are feelings one not privy to the idiom of the kaleja simply cannot experience. My body is not merely socially produced or socially trained in this situation. Rather, my body is a site where a certain textual familiarity opens and closes the very experiencing of my inside.
Oh decorate these eyelashes with your tears! (yup, paki synthesizer pop offers its own fair share of ‘textual idioms’)
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
not even (translation of last week's poem)
on the lips the letter of the poem (ghazal) does not even come
on the lips the prayer to God, not even
one chance for sorrow for an appointed time
that pleasure for four days, not even
ready the instrument, bring the wine forward
the pleasure of the sin of wine lasts, not even
this seems a dark night, so take off the veil
there is the moon, the darkness prevails, not even
now i am so anxious for the state of morning
but naive for the wait of the morning breeze, not even
well, usamah, what type of being are you?
no peace in the day, the night brings sleep, not even
on the lips the prayer to God, not even
one chance for sorrow for an appointed time
that pleasure for four days, not even
ready the instrument, bring the wine forward
the pleasure of the sin of wine lasts, not even
this seems a dark night, so take off the veil
there is the moon, the darkness prevails, not even
now i am so anxious for the state of morning
but naive for the wait of the morning breeze, not even
well, usamah, what type of being are you?
no peace in the day, the night brings sleep, not even
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
bhi nahi
lab pe harf-e-ghazal aati bhi nahi.n
lab pe khuda ki dua aati bhi nahi.n
aik fursat-e-gham chand lamhe ke li'e
voh lazzat chaar din ki bhi nahi.n
saaz chero, khum-o-subuu barha'iye.n
lutf-e-gunaah-e-saaghar rehti bhi nahi.n
yeh siya shab hai, to pardah nikaal'iye.n
shab-e-mahtaab hai, itni siya bhi nahi.n
ab aalam-e-subh pe itne mushtaaq hai.n hum
saba ke intizaar pe itne naadaan bhi nahi.n
kher, usamah, tu bhi kiya shakhs hai?
na din mai.n chen, raat mai.n neend bhi nahi.n
lab pe khuda ki dua aati bhi nahi.n
aik fursat-e-gham chand lamhe ke li'e
voh lazzat chaar din ki bhi nahi.n
saaz chero, khum-o-subuu barha'iye.n
lutf-e-gunaah-e-saaghar rehti bhi nahi.n
yeh siya shab hai, to pardah nikaal'iye.n
shab-e-mahtaab hai, itni siya bhi nahi.n
ab aalam-e-subh pe itne mushtaaq hai.n hum
saba ke intizaar pe itne naadaan bhi nahi.n
kher, usamah, tu bhi kiya shakhs hai?
na din mai.n chen, raat mai.n neend bhi nahi.n
Monday, April 2, 2007
some clips and pics
some clips my cousin took in allahabad, lucknow, delhi and bombay.
God this makes me so nostalgic.
Pictures:
(My parents' university)
Lucknow (with my cousin's family):
Allahabad:
My mom's house from the street (the grey and white haveli)
Matam/Juloos for Muharram in the alleyway behind the house (Roshan bagh)
Bombay mall and cousins anticipating Rhithik Roshan (seriously ignore his commentary!):
God this makes me so nostalgic.
Pictures:
(My parents' university)
Lucknow (with my cousin's family):
Allahabad:
My mom's house from the street (the grey and white haveli)
Matam/Juloos for Muharram in the alleyway behind the house (Roshan bagh)
Bombay mall and cousins anticipating Rhithik Roshan (seriously ignore his commentary!):
Thursday, March 29, 2007
you cannot adequately translate 'jigar' into 'liver'
i will not sleep then
and see what you have left for me
these images you littre my dreams with
these sighs a sleeping man can never breath
and your liver will ache
those other lines are lost
let me tell you one thing
spring is here
and i must mourn
the passing misery
and the coming grief
and see what you have left for me
these images you littre my dreams with
these sighs a sleeping man can never breath
and your liver will ache
those other lines are lost
let me tell you one thing
spring is here
and i must mourn
the passing misery
and the coming grief
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
The New Radical Prude Manifesto!
A Radical Prude Manifesto: The poetics of a shame nexus
Usamah Ansari
One of my favorite lines from any novel is in Mirza Ruswa’s classic novel Umrao Jaan Ada written in the 19th century. Ruswa has a sort of obsession with his protagonist, a dancing girl and courtesan called Umrao Jaan. Her fame, Ruswa tells us, resonates farther than the ringing of her anklets. His story revolves around Umrao telling her life story to Ruswa while he faithfully takes down her every word. Of course the setting is a beautifully urbane Lucknow with its intricate Persianate Urdu and impeccable manners – and dancing girls. There were a lot of dancing girls. Anyway, at a key point in the novel, Umrao Jaan says to Ruswa that if she sits with him too much she will be shamed (here using the word ruswa, which both means shamed and is the nom de plume of the novelist). She is not the shame-saturated subject but is instead playfully worried that she might be its target. He rebuttals with a couplet:
Why have you come and met Ruswa (shame) with boasts of love?
Now I will leave you not until I have shamed (ruswa) you
Umrao replies:
Whether conversing (guftgu), preaching (zahid) or arguing (bahes)
No one whispers about someone without that someone doing something
The subtleties of suggestiveness, the playing with shame, the tempting and the tempted (both the poet and the whore interchanging these roles) is not a part of the sort of inciting to speak of sex that many of us feel the need to engage in. We seem to be convinced that our sexes are something ‘good’ and nothing to be ashamed of. Indeed the very idea of maintaining shame tends to signify an anachronistic backwardness because we are told that sex exists in us; we need to liberate it from the confines of prudish tradition. Though poststructuralism has helped problematize this, we still emphasize speaking about ‘it’ (where, when, how much, what position, what toys, was there food, two guys, four girls, tell me, tell me, I need to know). We still feel somehow liberated in categorizing every part of our bodily expressions and trying to compete with how shameless (besharam) we can get. We make subcultures about them (oh he is in the leather scene). Now everything is about measuring pleasure (well, does he know where your such-and-such is? Can he please it? Does she know how to? Have you shown him?).
But I long for a prudishness. Where would Ruswa (shame) and Umrao (the whore) be without shame? Their playfulness is centred around a network of propriety. Indeed Umrao’s rebuttal refers to the joys of shame, but at the same time hints Ruswa to do something if people are going to talk. This talking, though, is not going to be the kind of sex-as-project we seem to be obsessed with. No, this talking is infused with moral codes and, of course, shame. But their very poetics is based on the presence of this shame, knowing that people might hint at what they will do, but this doing will always be whispers cloaked in obscurity. When we are no longer shameful – when we are in no way prudes – then we miss this critical and fruitful play so central to the kind of desire, affection and intimacy we see between the poet and the whore.
And so we need to reconsider how we think of both shame and shamelessness; how the former we link to repression and static traditionalism and the latter we link to liberty, freedom and the erotic. But can we not conceptualize shame in any other way? I am claiming no one ‘has’ shame but that shame is a condition for relationships that are produced through the circulation of signs that have the effect of producing the ‘shamed’ surfaces of bodies.
For example, how is shame emanating from inside any particular body in the conversation between Ruswa and Umrao? Instead, What if shame as a feeling is circulated in that dynamic animating both bodies and thus subsequently entering each other into a polyvalent and rich relationship of shame. So the symbols that signify shame are not somehow inherent to the gendered bodies but when they enter into this complex nexus of shame, their affective dynamics (the way her body and utterance causes a certain reaction in his and vice versa) are actually producing the surface of the subject outlined by shame. This, I think, is powerful to consider because beyond resisting essentializing feelings/symbols like shame in particular bodies conclusively, we can also see how our subjecthood-in-the-shame-dynamic emerges from affect. And, subsequently, shame is being employed not by ‘tradition’ to control ‘the shamed’ but is instead animating that which it names, providing multiple spaces of emotive lucidity and terms for shame-ridden practice. This shame-ridden practice need not be thought of as backward and anachronistic. Indeed the subtle play and the suggestive depth of their dialogue is dependent on this practice.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
shame
"tabassum bhi, haya bhi, berukhi bhi!" (a slight smile also, a bit of shame he shows also, and then sudden despondency)
Besharam - to be without shame (shameless) - is the condition, we are told, of liberation. To ‘have’ shame is to be cloaked in backward mores. My bare body - subject to the elements, cold and dejected - then becomes the liberated object. Though it is easy to probelmatize this liberal conceptualization of agency and tradition, I am thinking of doing something else. I am claiming no one ‘has’ shame but that shame is a condition for relationships that are produced through the circulation of signs that have the effect of producing the ‘shamed’ surfaces of bodies. Of course this is tied to the idea of affect and affective economics popularized by the brilliant Sara Ahmed.
So when I used to bother Shabista by saying her husband is going to be handsome like the popular cricketer those days (and whose name I forget), she would cup her hand and put it straight over her face. The subtleties of laughing and smiling would obviously lie beneath this cupped hand. And when she asked “Usamah Hindustan mai.n aik bhi larki nahi pasand a’I?” I would do virtually the same thing but instead of cupping my face I would instead lower my gaze and smile ever so slightly.
So where is ‘the shamed’ subject in this dynamic? Is it housed in either of our bodies and is emanating from within? Of course the Muslim feminist notion that women are seen to embody disruption (fitnaa) seems to confirm this logic of embodiment. But what if it is something else? What if shame as a feeling is circulated in that dynamic animating both our bodies but also entering each other into a polyvalent and rich relationship of shame. So the symbols that signify shame are not somehow inherent to our gendered bodies but when we enter into this complex nexus of shame, our affective dynamics (the way her body and utterance causes a certain reaction in mine) is actually producing the surface of the subject outlined by shame. This, I think, is powerful to consider because beyond resisting essentializing feelings/symbols like shame in particular bodies conclusively, we can also see how our subjecthood-in-the-shame-dynamic emerges from affect. And, subsequently, shame is being employed not by ‘tradition’ to control ‘the shamed’ but is instead animating that which it names, providing multiple spaces of emotive lucidity and terms for practice. My lowered gaze and her cupped mouth have the type of possibilities only poets can muse on.
Mujhe choR de mere Haal par! Tera kiya bharosa hai chaaragar
Ye teri nawazeshe mukhtasar, kahi dard ko barha na de
Oh leave me at my state! What faith do I put in you my healer
These abridged favours of yours might just extend my grief
So go ahead and strip this subject from its ‘layers of shame’
Its black cloak
For you think you will remove the shame you claim lies within
Isn’t this a bitter irony then? You claim it lies within
And yet you want to decloak that which is outside
How likely your plan will fail
For the shame is present already
And has created the very body you seek to free from it
Sunday, March 18, 2007
parda-e-saaz
this is disgusting . i am problematizing a woman of colour's strategy with some stupid white man. It is true, and i cannot justify this, just dont show anyone.
i am just so annoyed with this feminst obsession with the self. at this blood-clot spoken word thing yesterday, the poetry was often bordering on prposing self-managing by illustrating to the audience the innermost secrets (raaz); once it is out there and she is consious she is out there; well isnt this a form of knowledge that can be used to control the self? I thought the movie by Dolores, however, was superb. i hope her daughter goes to jannat.
but i will say that these people have no shame. it is not that women in particular should have MORE sharm-o-haya than men - though, of course, this is usually how it works (and i am not saying that gendering shame is inherently problematic either). but telling an audience intimate details is not somehow liberating the self. it is producing the self in a manageable way. this is not to say these experiences they describe are essential and not themselves socially produced. but they are something you can put inside your pardah, something we dont need to base our politics on to have any kind of legitimacy. so this challenges the post structural notion that our interiorities are our exterior actions (performative actions) that serve to hide their very geneaology (as to posit a true interior) by claiming that my black cloak (oh black shawled one!) does not posit the inherent truth of what it conceals but nonetheless provides a space of signs and symbols that refuses to be used in a way (through bodily encantations) to conceals their geneaology and claim their essential emegence from ' the inside.' afterall, they remain behind my black cloak. This is entirely different than bodily citations that posit an inherent truth to the 'interiority' they fabricate. So i propose we do hide things sometimes. for the sake of decency, for the sake of PROTECTING OUR SOULS from the power of knowledge and the knowledge of power.
this could be like the parda-e-saaz (the hidden part of the musical instrument that produces the heavenly (instead of worldly) notes):
i am just so annoyed with this feminst obsession with the self. at this blood-clot spoken word thing yesterday, the poetry was often bordering on prposing self-managing by illustrating to the audience the innermost secrets (raaz); once it is out there and she is consious she is out there; well isnt this a form of knowledge that can be used to control the self? I thought the movie by Dolores, however, was superb. i hope her daughter goes to jannat.
but i will say that these people have no shame. it is not that women in particular should have MORE sharm-o-haya than men - though, of course, this is usually how it works (and i am not saying that gendering shame is inherently problematic either). but telling an audience intimate details is not somehow liberating the self. it is producing the self in a manageable way. this is not to say these experiences they describe are essential and not themselves socially produced. but they are something you can put inside your pardah, something we dont need to base our politics on to have any kind of legitimacy. so this challenges the post structural notion that our interiorities are our exterior actions (performative actions) that serve to hide their very geneaology (as to posit a true interior) by claiming that my black cloak (oh black shawled one!) does not posit the inherent truth of what it conceals but nonetheless provides a space of signs and symbols that refuses to be used in a way (through bodily encantations) to conceals their geneaology and claim their essential emegence from ' the inside.' afterall, they remain behind my black cloak. This is entirely different than bodily citations that posit an inherent truth to the 'interiority' they fabricate. So i propose we do hide things sometimes. for the sake of decency, for the sake of PROTECTING OUR SOULS from the power of knowledge and the knowledge of power.
this could be like the parda-e-saaz (the hidden part of the musical instrument that produces the heavenly (instead of worldly) notes):
Rose, Nikolas. Governing the soul: The Shaping of the Private Self.
Rose reveals that contemporary forms of power/knowledge are obsessed with the “programmes, calculations, and techniques of the government of the soul” (9). Thus modern society is characterized by the translating of the human psyche into spheres of knowledge and different technologies (“human technologies”) that have made it possible to govern subjectivity through the norms that ground the authority of these knowledges and technologies. I will firstly discuss the novelty of the modern forms of engineering the human soul. Secondly, I will discuss Rose’s problematizing of socio-critique as a lead in to his discussion on government.
Rose discusses how our personalities and subjectivities are not actually private but are objects of power and intensively governed. Thoughts, feelings and actions do not simply emerge from within us but are socially organized and managed. This is not a new thing in itself. There are, however, three aspects of the management of the contemporary self that are novel. Firstly, the subjective capacities of individuals have been incorporated into the aspirations of public powers (1). Thus subjectivity has entered into the calculations about problems and policies of the state and the nation, and has thus put the soul of the citizen directly into practices of the government. This has led to the regulation of the conduct of citizens by acting on their mental capacities and tendencies. The second novel aspect is found in how subjectivity is a central task for modern organizations that mediate the space between private lives and the public concerns of ruling. Finally, there has been a birth of an expertise of subjectivity where a whole set of new professional groups have emerged to be specialists in the engineering of the human soul and have produced “relations of authority over the soul” (3). This has produced new obsessions around understanding and evaluating ourselves.
Rose questions the paradigm of socio-critique. Though he acknowledges its importance in revealing the rise of new knowledges and techniques and their role in legitimating domination, he claims that this paradigm implies that the knowledge of subjective life is false or lacking. This becomes an epistemological critique that misses how new regimes of truth are installed by the knowledge of subjectivity (4). The socio-critique paradigm also makes subjectivity an essential feature of the person where by the focus is on constraints to the freedom of the individual instead of seeing how modern knowledge and expertise stimulate subjectivity to promote self-inspection and self-consciousness, and how this maximizes intellectual capacities while producing individuals that are “free to choose.” Thus these modern knowledges/expertise actually forge alignments between the techniques of power and the values and ethic of democratic society.
Friday, March 16, 2007
descending the hill; ye ajeeb alam
on the bus today, while coming down the usual fog patch on hastings street, i thought:
"where on earth did I just come from"?
well it is called a university, of course. but what was i doing there?
1) i was wired on coffee (my heart beating fast, my skin getting clammy, my legs shaking)
2) i was preparing for my tutorial
3) i was reading my self-interested readings for the day (Adorno, Nikolas Rose, more Butler)
4) i was wasting about two hours on facebook
5) i was teaching my tutorial and almost died listening to them speak of 'jihad' and 'development'
but what else was happening?
1) the cleaning lady was cleaning the stairs, she is the one who never looks up at you. it is the most powerful thing. it flies in the face of those progressive types that try to 'chat' with the janitorial staff to make themselves feel a little better vis-a-vis their positioning in the university's political economy. this woman is brilliant, she just does not look up. she doesnt give you the oppurtunity to redeem yourself. it makes me feel so disgusted/disgusting i dont know what is what.
2) people are sad all over about nassim. but it seems so far away that i cant really touch it anymore. my mother talked to sajjad aunty today. she said nassim's father was quite a wreck. i dont know what to say.
then i realized how absurd this all is. how absurd it is to be sitting on this shiny non-real looking piece of tin with an ad for a teeth bleachening system on the outside. with GIGANTIC windows that dont really offer a scene. with clouds that you actually have to drive through. and me sitting here with this little mp3 player staring out of this shiny metal can with windows-and-n0-scenes. trying to remember what i did earlier to try to maintain some grasp on 'reality'; to try to remind myself that I am here, i am here, i am here, i am not a misspelling chalked onto the universe (ghalib), i am here, i promise you, i am here. Then the rediculous cloud passes and the autoshop and marble statue store become visible once again. i have arrived.
but then i read something i liked. something i remember reading a while ago and copying down five times in different doodle-scripts on my binder. something i translated into urdu and then couldnt understand what it was originally saying.
"maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are"
oh foucault, what have you done here you little shit. yes the twin forces of totalizing and individualizing, yes the production of subjectivty, the giving of breath of subjecthood. how selfish of you to come up with such a notion. what would you know? saying to dislodge the project of 'sex-desire' from 'bodies and pleasures' is somehow going to pull this breath from my lungs? that somehow this managed, known and transversed being is somehow going to be unliberated-liberated from being engulfed by the strategies of knowledgepower hiding the genaeology of that which it posits as real - that which is posited as my real being?
but i am here, i am sure of it.
"where on earth did I just come from"?
well it is called a university, of course. but what was i doing there?
1) i was wired on coffee (my heart beating fast, my skin getting clammy, my legs shaking)
2) i was preparing for my tutorial
3) i was reading my self-interested readings for the day (Adorno, Nikolas Rose, more Butler)
4) i was wasting about two hours on facebook
5) i was teaching my tutorial and almost died listening to them speak of 'jihad' and 'development'
but what else was happening?
1) the cleaning lady was cleaning the stairs, she is the one who never looks up at you. it is the most powerful thing. it flies in the face of those progressive types that try to 'chat' with the janitorial staff to make themselves feel a little better vis-a-vis their positioning in the university's political economy. this woman is brilliant, she just does not look up. she doesnt give you the oppurtunity to redeem yourself. it makes me feel so disgusted/disgusting i dont know what is what.
2) people are sad all over about nassim. but it seems so far away that i cant really touch it anymore. my mother talked to sajjad aunty today. she said nassim's father was quite a wreck. i dont know what to say.
then i realized how absurd this all is. how absurd it is to be sitting on this shiny non-real looking piece of tin with an ad for a teeth bleachening system on the outside. with GIGANTIC windows that dont really offer a scene. with clouds that you actually have to drive through. and me sitting here with this little mp3 player staring out of this shiny metal can with windows-and-n0-scenes. trying to remember what i did earlier to try to maintain some grasp on 'reality'; to try to remind myself that I am here, i am here, i am here, i am not a misspelling chalked onto the universe (ghalib), i am here, i promise you, i am here. Then the rediculous cloud passes and the autoshop and marble statue store become visible once again. i have arrived.
but then i read something i liked. something i remember reading a while ago and copying down five times in different doodle-scripts on my binder. something i translated into urdu and then couldnt understand what it was originally saying.
"maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are"
oh foucault, what have you done here you little shit. yes the twin forces of totalizing and individualizing, yes the production of subjectivty, the giving of breath of subjecthood. how selfish of you to come up with such a notion. what would you know? saying to dislodge the project of 'sex-desire' from 'bodies and pleasures' is somehow going to pull this breath from my lungs? that somehow this managed, known and transversed being is somehow going to be unliberated-liberated from being engulfed by the strategies of knowledgepower hiding the genaeology of that which it posits as real - that which is posited as my real being?
but i am here, i am sure of it.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
the monring breeze jolted me
Nassim Mobasher passed away today. 24 years of breath and one moment without. what questions is she being asked now? how young to be asked to account for her mukhtasar deeds. and they are not even in this city, they seem an eternity away.
I know we are not to understand God's plans, but what kind of plan is this? I know she does no one zulm (oppression), but then what kind of torture is this? I know Nassim is returning to the beloved from where she came, but what kind of separation is this? I know he is the most high, the most wise, but what kind of blindness is this?
oh the morning breeze (naseem) came today
through the ajar door
ruffling my hair
pulling out my sighs
harassing the last leaves clinging to trees
turning them red
before they hit the ground
ae khuda! what is this you have done
some of her writings
I know we are not to understand God's plans, but what kind of plan is this? I know she does no one zulm (oppression), but then what kind of torture is this? I know Nassim is returning to the beloved from where she came, but what kind of separation is this? I know he is the most high, the most wise, but what kind of blindness is this?
oh the morning breeze (naseem) came today
through the ajar door
ruffling my hair
pulling out my sighs
harassing the last leaves clinging to trees
turning them red
before they hit the ground
ae khuda! what is this you have done
some of her writings
http://www.muslimwakeup.com/main/archives/2004/08/writing_and_dan.php
http://www.muslimwakeup.com/main/archives/2004/07/chador_and_toot.php
http://www.muslimwakeup.com/main/archives/2004/05/books_and_every.php
http://www.muslimwakeup.com/main/archives/2004/06/felt_up_in_tehr.php
http://hotcoals.org/?p=30
Friday, March 9, 2007
faiz-o-saba
I know i was supposed to finish that post on Ghalib and Surayya, but i will do it tomorrow. Indeed my reading two-books-a-week policy, plus planning the defense, plus marking has kept me quite preoccupied. But i was struck today reading this in my snazzy black shalwar-qamiz number:
daman mai.n hai musht-e-khak-e-jigar, saghar mai.n hai khoon-e-hasrat-e-mai
lo! hum ne daman jhoRdiya, lo! jaam olTa'e dete hai.n
on my skirt* is the fist of the dirt of my liver (heart); in the goblet there is wine made of the blood of my desires
fine! i will shake out my skirt; fine! i will overturn the wine cup too
*of course skirt cannot be taken so literally. It often refers to virtue (as in, i will save my skirt [I will save my virtue]). But the image of a skirt's creases collecting the dirt of the inner most cavernous sediments (from the heart) being overturned by simply standing up and shaking out the skirt is quite jarring. Though the idea of the bloodied wine of desires being over turned (because, afterall, the innermost sediments have already been lost) is a bit more cliched.
Two more lines (these are two lines from the poem "Sheher-yara.n" (my beloveds of the city). I just want to mention the two uses of the term saba (morning breeze). We all know Faiz was obsessed with the word saba (remember, "kis jaga reh ga'i saba? subha kidhar nikal ga'i!"), but I have never noticed a poem use saba in one poem with such strikingly different effects:
ae saba! shayad tere humsafar ye khoo.n-nak sham
(oh morning breeze! maybe your fellow-traveller is in fact this blood-soaked night?)
ja ke kehna, ae saba! ba'd az salaam dosti
(go and say afterward, oh morning breeze! by the greetings of friendship)
daman mai.n hai musht-e-khak-e-jigar, saghar mai.n hai khoon-e-hasrat-e-mai
lo! hum ne daman jhoRdiya, lo! jaam olTa'e dete hai.n
on my skirt* is the fist of the dirt of my liver (heart); in the goblet there is wine made of the blood of my desires
fine! i will shake out my skirt; fine! i will overturn the wine cup too
*of course skirt cannot be taken so literally. It often refers to virtue (as in, i will save my skirt [I will save my virtue]). But the image of a skirt's creases collecting the dirt of the inner most cavernous sediments (from the heart) being overturned by simply standing up and shaking out the skirt is quite jarring. Though the idea of the bloodied wine of desires being over turned (because, afterall, the innermost sediments have already been lost) is a bit more cliched.
Two more lines (these are two lines from the poem "Sheher-yara.n" (my beloveds of the city). I just want to mention the two uses of the term saba (morning breeze). We all know Faiz was obsessed with the word saba (remember, "kis jaga reh ga'i saba? subha kidhar nikal ga'i!"), but I have never noticed a poem use saba in one poem with such strikingly different effects:
ae saba! shayad tere humsafar ye khoo.n-nak sham
(oh morning breeze! maybe your fellow-traveller is in fact this blood-soaked night?)
ja ke kehna, ae saba! ba'd az salaam dosti
(go and say afterward, oh morning breeze! by the greetings of friendship)
Friday, March 2, 2007
Suraiya, Ghalib and the most perfect balcony scene imaginable
Azhar got back from India yesterday and brought with him various films I had requested. The 1954 film Mirza Ghalib is among these. It is one of my favorite movies and contains my favorite actress, Suraiya. The film is loosely based on the life of Mirza Ghalib, and adds the necessary figure of the whore-lover; that oft-cited trope of tragic poet, enchanted whore and self-destruction. I wish to examine one scene in particular. I think the following scene, with Ghalib’s famous “nuktacheen hai.n gham-e-dil”, is perhaps the most perfect scene in all of Bollywood ghazal scenes. Asad ullah Khan Ghalib is walking down an old Delhi laneway (the notion of which is infused with an idea of ‘Muslimness’) when he hears the whore-figure of Suraiya sing his own ghazal. Though at first he wishes to ignore the song, when his own she’r reminds him of a spell that cannot be broken and that cannot be avoided, we learn he has become entrapped in the hena-clad hands of Suraiya. Aur, andaz-e-naghma kiya hai?!
But first a few notes on the packaging of the vcd. Though the film is in black and white, the makers of the vcd jacket have added colour to a scene of Ghalib and Suraiya with the moon in the background. But what gets to me is how there is no Urdu anywhere on the jacket. Though Bollywood movies used to always have writing in both Urdu and Hindi, the Urdu has been disappeared. And yet Ghalib is the greatest (arguably) poet in Urdu’s history. Thus the hegemony of a Hindi/Hindu/Hindustan kind of discourse is so powerful and able to maintain its positional superiority that it can appropriate Mirza Ghalib’s figure while purging it of its disruptive or subversive elements (that is, Urdu). Indeed the very presence of Urdu written in the decadent nastaaliq script is a sort of disruption of dominant Hindu-based state projects that have tirelessly attempted to disappear markers of ‘Muslimness’ like Urdu. To add insult to injury, the actual vcd file has ‘Mirza Galib’ written instead of ‘Mirza Ghalib.’ I have mentioned before how the disappearing of ‘the Muslim’ in India has been tied so deeply to the erasure of the letters ghain غ , khe خ , and qaf ق . This process is particularly insidious because it can maintain words within Hindi’s lexicon that have an Urdu/Persian root while divorcing the Islamicate roots of this origin (and thus these particular sounds become markers of non-indigeny and must be removed). The vcd jacket, then, is enacting a form of textual violence that strikes at my very core.
It is laughable that Urdu’s greatest icon could have his name spelled ‘Galib’ instead of ‘Ghalib.’ But when I watch this scene and remember this as one of my favorite Ghalib ghazals, some of my sorrow-filled dread at the beleaguered position of Islamicate cultural modes in India is quelled, ephemerally, of course. And so I must translate the poem itself:
Nuktacheen Hai Gham-e-Dil Usko Suna’e Na Bane
Kya Bane Baat Jahan Baat Banaye Na Bane
Pointed is the sorrow-of-the heart that it will listen not
What kind of speech is this that where the speech is to be made it is not
Maein Bulata To Hun Usko Magar Ae Jazbaa-E-Dil
Uspe Ban Aaye Kuch Aaisi Ke Bin Aaye Na Bane
I call him, indeed, but woe these emotions-of-the-heart
If only a spell would make him compulsively come, without being asked
Ishq Par Zor Nahin Hai Yeh Woh Aatish `Ghalib'
Ke Lagaye Na Lage Aur Bujhaye Na Bane
There is not much emphasis on love, this is that flame, ‘Ghalib’
That in trying to keep it is not kept, in trying to douse it is not doused
The scene, what a scene! Like a divine sort of clockwork; the perfect angles, the sullen whore (who becomes the bulbul), the poet enthrawlled by the rendition of his own poem. And yet he knows this is a cheat, it is, afterall, only his words echoing. There is so many things going on, but what is amazing is the field of view (the nazara) is constantly following the song wafting down from the balcony to the lane below. Indeed the image of Suraiya perched atop an intricate balcony is quickly complimented with her father coming down the steps, just as the song closes. Thus the climax of the ghazal is reached when the camera finds Suraiya and the ‘decline’ is when he descends the stairs.
But I wish to focus on three particularly rich aspects of this scene. The first is Suraiya as the bulbul. Secondly, I wish to examine the idea of enactment. That is, can the poet’s words ever actually exist without them being uttered by the sullen whore? It is not enough to say that the signifiers will have deferred or unstable meanings, but I question if the very possibility of signification (the very ability for the poet’s loathsome breath) is mediated by the bulbul presence (non-presence cf. Derrida) of the whore. Finally, I wish to examine how this can be linked to my own interpretative translation of a misra in this ghazal: “What kind of speech is this that where the speech is to be made it is not.” This will provide some potentially illuminating insights into speech not as embodied action but something that is rendered through the circulation of affective relations (cf. Sara Ahmed).
…But, dear friends (mere aziz dosto.n!), I must sleep. I will finish this post tomorrow. Aik lamha khuda dete hai din main jab din-hi se ajnabi ban saku. Shab-e-intezar dhalti hai jab neend mujhe koi dusra gham se aashna kar deta hai.
[To be finished tomorrow.]
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