We were born of habits
Our habitats never chose us
Into fables we ingressed
Our fables digested us
--
Looking back…
First time I felt whole
Was after I was sucked hollow
By the troll
It ate my heart, gnawed at the bones
Scooping stomach juice
Onto ice-cream cones
Liver it ate fried
Intestines raw
Of kidney it made a pie
And threw a chunk to the crow
And it burped and it picked its teeth
And we went our ways
I’ve been serene ever since
--
When you can’t define the hollow
Call it serenity
And I thought a profound sadness deserves
To be called serene
But it’s our guilt
That fills the space
Between
You
Me
And our gods
Who were serene to beginwith
A rigid burst of air between the scapulae
--
You mind! Do you mind
That the guilt is gone
And so is the local coal vendor
Our premises will be clean now
Clean and a clinical loneliness
Fluttering mindlessly
Our eyes hurt no more
Than it should in blinding light
--
A sob that escapes
A whore who regrets
Between banners
Our guilt is spread
To be eaten and faecalized
I’ve not seen your face
Since long
And haven’t faced my patience
Yet
your face and my patience
Meet between sobs
Regret is convex
I should’ve known.
To me, the most thought provoking part of this piece starts in the second last block -
ReplyDelete"Do you mind
That the guilt is gone
And so is the local coal vendor
Our premises will be clean now
Clean and a clinical loneliness
Fluttering mindlessly"
... as if the poem is trying to say that guilt was after all important ! When it was gone, and also gone was the coal vendor(collapse of capitalism?), our premises became filled with clinical loneliness, mindlessness.
So, question arises- is it then a necessary feature of human beings to carry some 'guilt' in mind in order to not tend towards collective chaos? :-)
You answer that question from a fundamental point of view - that guilt allows us to look at ourselves and reflect on what we have become.
I think, this is very true. But this is also exactly what religion exploits in order to achieve its ultimate goal - controlling societies.
Among many possible tools for mobilization, the best we have been able to choose historically has always been religion. It's amazing how religion has been able to dominate us like a remote control device, as we have always been, in general, symbol-minded enough for it, to somehow allow it to manipulate the conceived 'deepest' parts of our consciousness, our fear of the unknown, our experience of watching people die, the fundamental conflict between our sense of identity and the cosmos above. And moreover, religions, at least the massively institutionalized ones, also thrive on 'guilt', doesn't it..
Someone who is truly reflecting, will not fall into this trap. But reflection takes real courage. Most us don't have that. Most of us roll over to what we are told.
------------
This poem also makes me ask , what is god but our guilt? And what is god but our self-love?
------------- but before even starting to go there, I recall what a friend of mine was saying the other day -
"Screw you Neil Armstrong, I still love my 'chader buRi' concept. Something I was so fascinated about in my childhood, that there's a chader buRi on the moon, I am not ready to give it up just because of some scientific exploration. In fact, what's the proof that that video was not shot somewhere in a desert?".
He's not ready to give it up yet, cos then he will be 'sucked hollow' too i guess :-) .. as far as the chader buRi is concerned.
But of course, if chader buRi was to be the god, then it would've been a completely different scenario - societies would collectively feel the cosmic loneliness and its complex repercussions. But would we lose our beloved humanity because of that? One may argue we won't, in fact we will win it back. We will free it from the idea of Karma.
Karma ? So - the root of all evil is actually our battle for survival then? Cause and effect, consequence, karma - given these are fundamental truths, a bunch of people somewhere out in the hills observed that certain things are good for them and certain things cause grief, obliteration. Then they generalized their thoughts, wrote them down in some obscure, open to interpretation texts, and named it a scripture.
Since we always want to learn from history, since we always want to "predict", and be "wise", and since we are by and large chicken shits, we then begin a process of "following" the scripture with the hope to "avoid" the things that caused grief to people in the past. We begin this process of conservation, which, after the turn of a few centuries, become "holy". ... and we all know what the package of "holy" comes with - fear and guilt.
Life is so short and the list of questions we have is so long. My dad has started to talk like a passionate muslim for the past few years. I listen to him and wonder how this man turned into such a sufi all on a sudden. He was not like that when he was young. So, is it our desire to live?
ReplyDeleteWe simply can not stand the idea of hollow. We find it very very disturbing. We fill it up with stuff. May be it's from those stuff too that we obtain our value system, from the value system we obtain our sustainable senses of guilt.
Had there not been a value system, there would not have been any guilt so to speak, and there probably would not have been the possibility of everything going south when the guilt is gone either! .. Or is that so ? :=)
As I am writing this, my bou has started to play a song in the other room -
ReplyDelete"anondo loke / mongol aloke"
Ha ha ha :D
.... just some random thoughts Sabya da.... forgive me if I have babbled too much
Very nice, actually very very nice discussion Arghya. I feel I can touch some of your thought process. I remember, when I was young my chemistry teacher (Abdul Hakim)whom we all loved so much for his rational thinking and open mindness - all of a sudden turned into a very passionate (and aggressive) muslim. He used to come to our village and teach young muslim boys about the befefit of doing 'namaj', keeping 'roja' etc. I never understood whay it happned over the span of only few months!
ReplyDeleteRecently I am reading a book named "The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuition Deceives Us" - which I found very interesting. It discusses about some of the illution humand mind can undergo - example illusion of attention, illusion of memory, illusion of cause, illusion of knowledge, illusion of confidence etc. You can relate most of these stuff with your everyday experience. One of the most interesting part of the book was - "illusion of cause". This illusion is spread in our life all the way from our belief of God to MMR vaccination. The relative simple approach from us for drawing conclusion contributed a lot to our own downfall as a civilization. If C can be seen as an effect while A and B were present (along with many other thing), and if then C disappeared while B happen to be absent - we immediately concluded that C must have been caused by B! How wrong we can be sometime!!
Sukanta da , the book seems interesting indeed. Jogar kore poRte hobe - 'illusion of cause' .. :)
ReplyDeleteBut then again, - I guess it's more important what we do with our perception of cause, than how it is perceived.
I am sure there are many illusions our mind creates in order for us to, probably, sustain. Old illusions are replaced by new, old forms of ecstasy by new forms.
Is it a basic necessity for humans to remain deceived? Is it part of how it all works ?
After all, deception is what magic is all about. Tricking the brain into believing in something doesn't exist. And by thinking it exists - we manifest it into existence. I wonder why it's so common amongst everyone.
Arghya, sukanto-- dhanyobaad...bhaalo laagchhe toder aalochonaa... but arghya, when I meant guilt, I meant it both as a deeply personal thing in terms of both source and manifestation-- {At that personal a level you can term it an adiabatic system (thermodynamically speaking)/ isolated system...where the "societal values, concepts" are irrelevant} and also as a collective thing and found that the meaning of guilt remains same but the consequences reach polar extremes. You've already seen it from a collective angle, I guess, if you look at it from a personal angle it may actually mean the opposite... A personal striving for maturity (again on my own terms), is aided by guilt-- upto this level it was personal and then that maturity lets me see things, build relations in an altogether different manner...
ReplyDeleteaami ei valuegulo/term gulo niye bhabaar cheshTaa korchhi aar ki...
re: the hollowness and the loneliness-- I sometimes find them quite filling (dukhkho hoynaa bhaalo laage)... ekekTa loneliness eke ek rakam, ekekTa regret ekek-rakam, and funnily, ei ekakitwer cause-er opor depend kore aaynaa ekek angle theke dekhaay... Yes,I feel regret/sadness/depression all are convex feelings-- they snatch away the perspective and only reflects your face-- kintu kon portion of the face visible hobe it totally depends on the source/cause...
ReplyDeleteMy oh my, am I getting too obscure now ! (scripturistic :-) ?
I think you are hardly being scripturistic...for, you perfectly make sense :-) .. You have such a wonderful ability to think clearly, you will make a bad scripture writer.
Delete...but that isn't the point of this poem i understand.. it was me who was taking it to a different direction.
ekTa jinish bhabchi bikal theke - how can people manage to perform planned murder. ... usually we label them as psychopaths, or they way they are depicted in pop culture,... a boy sees a bloody murder in his early childhood.. he develops a 'dark' side in his mind ..
This is a cliche.
Does anyone possess the ability to commit manslaughter?
... again i am moving away from poetry I guess... forgive me..
hehe....
ReplyDeleteSabyada,
ReplyDeletehya - personal level e beparTa ekdom onno rokom hobe. ami bujhte parcchi. ami ashole guilt ke personally na dekhe onno angel theke dekhchilam ar ki. Guilt in a closed system, i.e., guilt that was not induced by social values, but rather by personal observation can definitely aide in change, personal development in one's own terms.
regret dorkar ache.. amar mone hoy .. i don't know what it means to ascend to a higher personal level, may be because i have simply not attained one, and may be because it's not a concept, it's a deed. I am feeling lost in side a bubble that I reached after bursting one before..
ReplyDeleteOnce again, a lovely thought-provoking poem and Sukanta & Arghya - great discussion. Sukanta-r baiTaa sambandhe aagraha janmaalo. Keep the torch buzzing...
ReplyDeleteDude ! Are you contemplating murder ! :-) I beleive it doesn't take a psycopath to kill... Remember Cain & Able ? Killer-ape theory ?
ReplyDeleteI personally believe, every human is capable of murder (not manslaughter, First degree bloody murder)... Ashoka was not a typical psycopath, and history is full of examples-- Society changed it all-- fear is a factor, education is another (an education that teaches that murder is heinous/ a sin)... take any child for example-- these guys are killing machines, they kill for the sake of curiosity-- they will torture animals -- My son (when he was 4) used to tell me -- why don't you drive over that dog etc... I had to slap him one day and say-- does that hurt ? It hurts way more when you die-- had to teach him that everybody feels pain-- even an insect-- and he's now gone soft (in a good way)...he takes care of injured birds and so on...
Sex hormones actually help in growing compassion etc...(excess of testosterone is bad though)...I believe all good emotions have a female sexual undertone (estrogenic: males have estrogen too, much less though)...
Boss, ki bolbo ! bhaalo theko
ReplyDeleteOOPs Cain and Abel !
ReplyDeleteRe: Scripture ! as Reverend (!!!) Terry Pratchett put it-- "all the scriptures were written by saints, travelling through deserts surviving on mushroom and cactii :-)
ReplyDeleteCain and Abel ! ... yes.. I remember the story.. :-)..but i find Damien's (i.e. Hesse's) interpretation more fathomable than Bible's or its upgrades..Can I share ? Damien while talking to the scared Sinclair -
ReplyDeleteDamien: "...The first element of the story, its actual beginning, was the mark. Here was a man with something in his face that frightened the others. They didn't dare lay hands on him; he impressed them, he and his children. We can guess--no, we can be quite certain--that it was not a mark on his forehead like a postmark--life is hardly ever as clear and straightforward as that. It is much more likely that he struck people as faintly sinister, perhaps a little more intellect and boldness in his look than people were used to. This man was powerful: you would approach him only with awe. He had a 'sign'. You could explain this any way you wished. And people always want what is agreeable to them and puts them in the right. They were afraid of Cain's children: they bore a 'sign'. So they did not interpret the sign for what it was -- a mark of distinction -- but as its opposite. They said 'Those fellows with the sign, they're a strange lot'--and indeed they were. People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest. It was a scandal that a breed of fearless and sinister people ran about freely, so they attached a nickname and a myth to those people to get even with them, to make up for the many times they had felt afraid--do you get it ?"
Sinclair: "...And do you believe that the business about killing his brother isn't true either?"
Damien: "Oh, that's certainly true. The strong man slew a weaker one. It's doubtful whether it was really his brother. But it isn't important. Ultimately all men are brothers, so, a strong man slew a weaker one: perhaps it was a truly valiant act, perhaps it wasn't. At any rate, all the other weaker ones were afraid of him from then on, they complained bitterly and if you asked them: 'why don't you turn around and slay him, too?' they did not reply 'Because we're cowards,' but rather 'You can't, he has a sign. God has marked him'."
@the mushroom eating theory: the ones i used to do is quite ordinary in their quality then :=). I must try. Nomadic pagans have always been masters of poetry and music of their time..their works are nothing short of *captivating*
ReplyDelete@Children are killing machines: This is so true.. I have a friend who works at Best Buy. I asked him about the types of video games that are sold the most in children, he replied - the ones that involve most killing in the most graphic (3D) way.. heheh... I observed some of these kids too.. when they are controlling that slayer using their finger tips who`s going about killing everyone on sight.. their face changes, they are as engrossed in the game as they will ever be on anything else in their life it seems.. they love it
ReplyDeleteArghya, great ! Hesse-er kon work theke eTaa ? aami poRini...It makes sense... but it does prove the point right ! every human can be a killer. just ekekTa samay-er Je perspective, Je outlook (Ja requirement theke aase), taaropor base kore institution maanush-ke value dyay... technically Jaaraa ei values naa mene nijer ichche moto kaaj kore -- these guys are termed sociopaths which is not same as a psychopath...
ReplyDeleteNomadic pagans ! Yes, those guys were brilliant ! Although they had a strict code of conduct too....
Sabyada,
ReplyDeleteIt`s an excerpt from - 'Demian' ..[spelled it wrong earlier]
yes- it does prove the point. It makes me wonder too -I mean, I don't know, may be there are other animals who kill themselves once in a while too, but, I am wondering about the volume of killing :-)...so.. it's a completely humane feature to carry an instinct to kill ..
* * * You start by killing a bird, you finish with killing a man * * *
Humayun Ahmed er ekTa mojar uponays poRechilam - "jokhon gieche dube ponchomir chNaad"... ek lok onek din dhore plan kore tar wife ke khun korbe. tar por khun kore. plan motabek. er por tar to do list e thake kibhabe corpse take manage korbe etc.. kintu rat joto gobhir hote thake, tar bhitor bichitro manoshik obostha toiri hote thake. she dekhe tar wife khaTe boshe ache.. take Dakche..kotha bolche.. etc etc.. mane, 'repentance' takes the better of him... ultimately she nijei police call kore dhora daey...
golpoTar ending khub shada maTa - it's very pleasing and catchy for the readers to think that humanity prevailed easily. kintu amar dharona survival instinct is more grave. khuni dhora dite chabe na.. joto lonely-i feel koruk - he will try to cover up or run (practically as well as psychologically).. unless of course he has or fabricates an idea of a 'greater' justification..[well in that case it may not even be termed as 'murder', as by definition, murder is 'unlawful' killing, not just any killing]..
abar - tumi jemon bolla - sociopath - 'Pulp Fiction' er Jules ebong Vincent - the way they are portrayed... completely ruthless killers, they are carrying on intensely intelligent conversations while committing 'heinous' crimes :-]] -
It is a very very strong shackle that value systems can put around us. And for useful cause too. The usefulness is true, but it feels as though we need veils around it to allude to. As if there must exist some form of complexity-buffer between us and usefulness to ascertain conformity. I want to quit my job and go back to school to study AI. But at the same time, I am scared - I have already developed an acute interest in a mechanical world view - will I not be aggravating that? Will I not be developing what Sukanta da was pointing out as "illusion of cause" in everything? That would suck!! Not talking about poetry, rather simply the day to day living... I firmly believe we are are a bunch of very restless creatures making wrong choices all the time - choices of deeds, as well as during the points of branching in inductions and deductions in our typical ways of thinking