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Works and Curations

Friday, May 8, 2020

Between Thakur and Tagore - Exploring the Gaps

Between Thakur and Tagore - Exploring the Gaps - Image creation courtesy Abhrojit Boral


There is a possible valid perception that Bengali ( which can sometimes be Bangali or Bong)  culture cannot get out of its fixation on Rabindranath Tagore. One can read this sentence in two ways. The first reading is simply unfolds as 'a significant section of the population of Bengal iconise Rabindranath, his life and his works possibly at the cost of other important cultural icons. The other reading could be that 'though we refer to him as Thakur, we always choose to iconise him as Tagore and this reimagination is crucial for how the Bengali bhadralok imagines itself. It is this second reading that I would like to explore further in this piece.

Why do we call him Tagore? Is it because in mass culture Thakur  is more associated with a god or a Bollywood stereotype of the rapist zamindar? 'Thakur' the sound and it's resultant cultural reflections are in fact all symbols of what the modern Bengali bhadralok has been trying to move away from. In fact, with the Tagore family ( called the Thakur Poribar and their Jorashakho residence referred to as  Thakur Bari)  moving into Calcutta and choosing to officialese the Anglicization of their surname  ( technically not a surname but a zamindari title)   into Tagore, is an early marking of the cultural formation of this 'new' bhadralok elite. Tagore also helps to gloss over the realities of the opium trade and large zamindaries which were the source of wealth for the family.  Strangely this leads us to realise that the name is actually Rabindranath Tagore and Bengalis (and Bangali) referring to him as Robindronath Thakur are to be taken as authentic sources of pronunciation just like one would if a certain man was referred to as Aomitabho Bochon. (The same man in the same culture is referred to as Amitabh Bachan on more formal moments). So when Bengalis formally present Rabindranath to the world (which of course includes us too), there is a preference to call him Tagore? I don't really know.

This could bring us to consider how M.K. Gandhi is widely respected and celebrated as Bapu. It proves that if a culture has political faith in a nickname, then it can become dominant and popular. Even in Gujarat where there are so many 'Bapus', if one says Bapu, then Gandhi with his smile, daandi and bald head comes to our mind. It is quite possible that the modernist distancing from the politics of Thakur resulted in modern Bengali culture having more cultural faith in Tagore.  Of course in all this, there is also a story of the modernist Bengali identity formation heavily borrowing its algorithm from British cultural coding.  (with more influence from the alleged school of romanticism.) (Also, one can go on to observe that the formation of Gujarati middle-class identity owes much less to the British colonial culture.)

In all this one cannot forget that as Rabindranath began his leap into the domain of the 'universal mind' (a journey for which a clear direction begins to shape up from the 1910s). the poet was very disturbed by how the urban bhadralok culture of Calcutta was shaping itself.  In fact, towards the end of his life, this had become one of his deepest source of sadness. He tried and planned everything he could lay an alternative path to the colonial-style elitism and cultural parochialism and urbanism that was becoming central to the class identity of the Bengali bhadralok. He was worried that this Calcutta centric Bengali culture was colonising Shantiniketan and damaging the essential cultural fabric of his alternative path. Especially Tagore's lineage within the eastern bhakti tradition and his affiliation with fakirs like Lalon Fakir have been disappearing from both history and memory.

Since those years the path taken by the Bengali bhadralok has been further and further away from the paths explored by Tagore. If one had to draw an exaggerated caricature, then the contemporary  Tagore worshipping Bengali will find parallels in gambling drunk Punjabis worshipping Nanak. Maybe we do not want to acknowledge that we have made Tagore into a god (Thakur) or a .....(I should not utter), and every time we say Tagore we mask Thakur.

Suddenly it seems that though I started this piece will be focused on the second reading of the first sentence, the focus came back to the first reading.  It feels that one was 'drawing a line' and then sees a circle appearing. What is a circle? but a line that loves itself with bliss.

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Ode to Dr Lorna Breen

Just a minutes silence 
And the world moves on
They are calling you a hero
So that they can sleep at night
They make heroes out of sensitive souls
So that they can sleep at night
'She was truly in the trenches of the frontline'
Your father said
But he might not be able to sleep tonight

You saw too much death they say
You worked too hard they say
That's why you harmed yourself they say
That for me is taking your strength away
But they need words
And then
Just a minute's silence 
Just a minute's silence 
And the world moves on

Were you dying for a hug?
Your hands to be held in a loving touch?
Did it pain when you felt all alone?
They make heroes out of sensitive souls
So that they can sleep at night
They are calling you a hero
They are calling you a hero
So that they can sleep at night
I hope you are sleeping alright 

We know by now
Frontline workers are left to die
Like the hapless infantry
Sent into the enemy lines
To die in the frontlines
Or to die many deaths within
Each gets a minute's silence
Or a gold plated tin medal
And the world sleeps on

You loved Salsa they say
And skiing through the snow
You loved your father I know
Like him, you became a doctor too
You loved Life I know
For you saved so many lives 
I hope you can love yourself now
For, I have fallen in love with you. 

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Written in pain and in love for Dr Lorna Breen,  (ex) chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital. 











Sunday, April 12, 2020

Coronavirus India | Has Kajodi Reached Home? | Our South Sudan Moment





Photographer - Salik Ahmad -
Captioned: 90-year-old Kajodi trudges home 400 km away amid coronavirus lockdown.
Published in - https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/india-news-90-year-old-kajodi-trudges-home-400-km-away-amid-coronavirus-lockdown/349525


Many years ago, the Wanted Series initiated the dialogue on ethics in photography. A seminar was organised at Max Muller Bhavan Delhi in collaboration with Goa-Cap and Askar. Subsequently, the Goethe Institute at New Delhi tried to formulate a working group which would explore the question of Ethics in photographic practices. A large seminar was followed by a couple of close think-thank meeting, and then we all disappeared. Going back to the conversation that we generated, I remember being numbed by the impossibility of it all. Yet, ethics as praxis and as a concept metaphor has always remained important to me as a critical tool while looking at (looking through) any cultural act or artefact. In today's world, we can no longer hold on to the notion of a 'Universal Good'. Over the years my notions of ethics have been shaped by moral negotiation processes, red-flagging arbitrariness or manipulation.



 Kevin Carter, 'The vulture and the Little Girl',  first appeared in The New York Times on 26 March 1993. Image taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_vulture_and_the_little_girl 


'The Vulture and the Little Girl' is perhaps one of the earliest instances in recent memory which threw up grave questions regarding ethics in photojournalist practices.  Initially, Carter claimed to have come upon the scene, snapped a few photos, and then chased the bird away. 

 "You won't believe what I've just shot! … I was shooting this kid on her knees, and then changed my angle, and suddenly there was this vulture right behind her! … And I just kept shooting – shot lots of films.  Silva asked him where he shot the picture and was looking around to take a photo as well. Carter pointed to a place 50 m (160 ft) away. Then Carter told him that he had chased the vulture away. He told Silva he was shocked by the situation he had just photographed, saying, "I see all this, and all I can think of is Megan", his young daughter. "   (https://joesackcom.wordpress.com/2019/08/01/the-vulture-and-the-child-what-happened-next/

These were Carter's immediate words to his colleague João Silva, (a part of the Bang- Bang Club specialising in reporting from conflict areas). However, Carter eventually admitted that he watched the scene for about twenty minutes, waiting for the vulture to get closer to the boy and hoping that it would spread its wings for a more dramatic photo. After the vulture refused to move, Carter finally chased the bird away

Salik Ahmad's ' 90-year-old Kajodi trudges home 400 km away amid coronavirus lockdown' succeeded in spotlighting the effect of CONVID lockdown on the migrant labourers of India, apart from photo narrating plights of victims during the conflict, it also bears similarity to Carter's image in the use of dramatic foreshortening and depth-of-field. There is one crucial difference and this perhaps reflects the culture of consumption in our times. The readers of Outlook and the online viewers of the image raised no question regarding the fate of Kajodi. How did the photographer intervene in a human capacity? Did he (even) offer her some water to drink? Has Kajodi reached home?

 Many years ago…in the early 90’s Cater and New York times had to face these questions and these questions made the photographer and publication realise that lines between being a photographer and being a human being could not be blurred beyond a point. Carter’s eventual suicide about 5 years after taking the photograph should not be directly linked to the psyco-emotional impact of 'The Vulture and the Little Girl'.  He had seen enough morbid violence and death in South Africa and Sudan for any sensitive soul to be deeply affected.

Contrary to perception, photojournalism has an uneasy relationship with ‘truth’. The ‘girl’ from South Sudan turned out to be a boy, and Carter framed the shot to maximise the impression that this disaster was taking place in the ‘middle of nowhere’ where in reality it was on a runway with her parents just a few minutes away in a place surrounded by UN workers and journalists. In Salik Ahmad's work, I do not know if her name is really Kajodi, is she really 90 years old? Is her village really 400 km away? Such details get lost in the spectacle of a tragedy and conflict generates. In a way, way beyond truth, this is a work in the politics of representation. 

Photographers easily forget that their subject matter is (at least) an equal collaborator in the economic and cultural capital a picture produces. They also (always) forget that they are very much a part of the frame, that they exist within the photograph and not outside it. If political photography and photojournalism want to break through the structures they critique, these realisations are important.











Saturday, April 4, 2020

It is not Coronavirus it is your Desire


Many of us do not understand this lock down, we don't know what is beyond the plateau of a flattened curve. Right now we are like clockwork. When pushed to work for the sake of our and social survival we do so till be collapse -  then when told to stop work for the sake of our and social survival, we are trying to do so until we collapse. This is my  take - 1 in my personal attempt to understand this code.

When I was in class 8 (?), I understood what a virus is. Clearly it cannot be Chinese or Muslim, cause virus is not even a living cell. In fact like it is more conceptual; like religion and nationalism, viruses are not free-living; i.e., they cannot reproduce and carry on metabolic processes without a hosting on living creatures, but once they do find hosts then they can manipulate host behaviors to create environments in which to thrive and spread. My biology teacher had explained that viruses were not 'living beings' thus they cannot be killed, that's why we still had flu...explaining how vaccination and building anti bodies were the only hope. (Right now I will avoid looking at this as a political metaphor).

Since then a lot of water has flown under many bridges that I have crossed. HIV came, made the word virus a household name. I understood the danger, yet felt safe in my middle class cocoon. Safe sex was doable, and the media made me feel that HIV happened to either the rich or the poor...the middle class were to be worried about cancer...which was not a virus (though I was scared for my friends who pushed sugar). Many years later, SARS came in. My partner and I were thrilled! Chicken prices came crashing down we feasted for a whole month! Of course misplaced nationalism had a role to play in this act of bravado, as Indians our immunity was supposed to much higher, one of the great perks of living in one of the dirtiest nations. On a more serious note, I did begin (re) looking at the research around viruses, specially because governments and corporate started investing in cures.

Then one by one these cure/vaccine research projects began to shut down. Suddenly an old frustration, (which I felt heavily in my class 8 but never really expressed) began to rear its head. How come humans have made so much scientific  progress taking us from moon to Mars and beyond, to make nuclear weapon and power plants, to do pretty much anything...but could not cure us of common flu. Slowly it became clear that the answer to this lay in the priorities of funding. The pharmaceutical industry would actually lose money if some commonly available cheap drug was produced which could cure the flu.

Cut to the season on 2019-20, the times of COVID-19. The initial reaction was almost similar to SARS...and then like an avalanche it began to spread and take over. Before we knew it, February was over and by March, the world was entering into its lock down phase. Initially, my mind went numb. Much energy was spent in checking into my resources. Checking up on relatives, friends, students. Then the emotional stress of the lock down, coupled with the stress of 'work from home'.

The first trigger for me was the crisis of the immigrant contractual laborers being homeless, stateless and criminalised. The brutality that is unfolding in lockdown  situations globally and the normalisation of it all is unparalleled in civil society in the post WW-2 period. It slowly began to dawn that  COVID-19 had scared even the capitalists in power. Which seemed strange and confusing. After all we had seen so many epidemics. Also, contagious diseases like tuberculosis had also affected and killed the rich but there was never such a panic in such a large scale. Then of course in India we have had dengue for years now, so may people die every year post monsoon...but even in the most dengue ravaged, mosquito infected zones there has never been a lockdown.  What exactly was happening now? How is COVID-19 different ?

The clues (unsurprisingly) came in from the USA and (once) Great Britain. Led by Donald Duck and Boris Jonson, these two countries (along with Brazil and Turkey) have resisted the lockdown mode the most. Choosing the normal flu containing technique of evolving herd immunity and treating only  the severely ill and  quarantining the known infected were the measures taken up...and this turned out to be a severe misjudgment and is today costing many lives. But why did these measures fail so drastically? What pose does COVID-19 contain that it continues to overwhelm all our social structures?

The answer blows not in the winds of COVID-19, but in the winds of our Desire. Or rather on how our desires and our capitalist social structures have co-produced each other. After the WW 2, and the wave of decolonisations we had the space and time to imagine a new world order. We ended up voting for governments and policies which has led us to stick pile so much nuclear weapons that the world can be destroyed many times over. We have dreamt of taking vacations on Mars, designing all kinds of cosmetic makeovers, dreamt of destroying Pakistan, invested in Formula 1 technology...bullet trains, statues....

So we created a world with excess capacity of nuclear and non-nuclear ammunition, but a world where ventilators are scarce. Yes, it is that simple...we are under a lockdown, medical and para medical personnel putting their lives at risk, contractual workers are being left to die...because the world has a shortage of ventilators.

COVID-19 is mimics the commonest flu in the manner in which it spreads, making it highly contagious.  At the same time about 20 percent of infected people would need intensive medical attention and among them a sizeable portion would need ventilator support. So what COVID-19 essentially does is to expose a deep glitch in the system which is just not geared for community health crisis, or any kind of health crisis which outside the sphere of the pharmaceutical industry and its profit making. Most of us will survive the COVID-19 even if we catch it...but clearly the system will not. This lockdown, is an attempt by the existing capitalist machinery to save itself from collapse.  It is never your health that they are worried about.


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also, do read -

  • https://www.marxist.com/italy-the-coronavirus-epidemic-is-an-emergency-but-capitalism-is-the-real-disaster.htm
  • https://www.quantamagazine.org/viruses-have-a-secret-altruistic-social-life-20190415/
  • https://www.britannica.com/science/virus