Ironic Morissette

Perhaps I should put a bit of Alanis Morissette on my blog; not only does she have a famous song called Ironic but it also seems now that she goes around conducting tours on my birthday as well (see the date on the poster). But here is a question for all of you. In another famous song, she sings :

How about getting off of these antibiotics?

How about stopping eating when I'm filled up?

How about them transparent dangling carrots?

How about that ever elusive kudo?

Thank you India

Thank you terror

Thank you disillusionment

Thank you frailty

Thank you consequence

Thank you thank you silence

How about me not blaming you for everything?

How about me enjoying the moment for once?

How about how good it feels to finally forgive you?

How about grieving it all one at a time?

Thank you India

Thank you terror

Thank you disillusionment

Thank you frailty

Thank you consequence

Thank you thank you silence

The moment I let go of it was

The moment I got more than I could handle

The moment I jumped off of it was

The moment I touched down

How about no longer being masochistic?

How about remembering your divinity?

How about unabashedly bawling your eyes out?

How about not equating death with stopping?

Thank you India

Thank you providence

Thank you disillusionment

Thank you nothingness

Thank you clarity

Thank you thank you silence

Now comes my question : Why does India keep on coming up in this song again and again? What does India have to do with not taking antibiotics (I almost suffer from substance-abuse so far as Ibuprofen and other pain-killers are concerned; this for my migraines), about remembering one's divinity (to which I have no illusions to), and not equating death with the final end (which, for all I know, is what death is), to mention only three of her cryptic statements in this song?

Spain, My Spiritual Homeland

One of the many reaons why I feel a tad uneasy in the midst of people who 'love India to bits' is because I have known, since the time I was in high school, that my 'true homeland' is not India but Spain : the Spain of the great Spanish mystics, of Castille, of Alhambra, of the Moorish civilisation, of the Armada, and, mostly importantly, of the bloody Spanish civil war. Yesterday, I was in Luton visiting a cousin and when we were in a restaurant ordering a meal, I could not help overhearing an old man just behind us talking to a teenaged girl about Spain. This is how the conversation went :

Old Man (OM) : Young people these days are rather strange. They think that you need something grand to happen before you can plunge into the stream. And so they keep on waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting until they are dead.

Teenaged Girl (TG) : How do you mean?

OM : Well, have I ever told you how I jumped into the Spanish civil war? In the late autumn of 1936, I had gone to Spain as a news reporter for the London Times. I had gone to Madrid to take some photographs of the rebels when one evening, I saw a truck-load of the anarchists sweeping along on the way to Malaga. I cheerfully clicked away at my camera. Until there came this brown sooty truck.

TG : Who were there in it?

OM : Well, lots of the anarchists wearing red bands across their foreheads and noisily shouting slogans. But in between them there was also this frail-looking young woman with a heavy gun slung across her slight shoulders. She looked at me from the truck as it passed by me, and I felt that eternity had congealed into one long moment. And then the spell was broken, and she shouted at me : 'Death to Franco!' And the truck rolled on.

TG : What happened then?

OM : That single glance from a woman whom I did not know and whom I had never met changed my entire life. The next morning, I wrote to my editor in London that I was giving up my job, and joined the anarchists within a week.

TG : Did you never see her again?

OM : Once. Yes, once I did see her again. Six months later, I got a shrapnel wound in my left leg, and was taken to a primitive hospital run by the anarchists just outside Guernica. One morning, as I was walking around it, I saw a truck bustling in. Some men went up into it and carried a woman down in a stretcher. I went up to them and saw her, her shirt and her tattered trousers soaked with blood. She saw me too and from the gleam in her shining eyes I knew that she had recognised me at once. She managed to fight back the horrible agony that she was in, and through her gritted teeth, she shouted out again : 'Death to Franco!'

TG : What did you do after the war?

OM : After the war? Did you say, after the war? You really think that the Spanish civil war has ended? No, no, no. You see, deep inside here, this old tired heart of mine that somehow still beats to its old rhythms, the war is going on. And yes, my friend, it will go on and on until every fascist has been routed from the world. Yes, Guernica, Aragon, Castellon, Teruel, Ebro and Madrid --- all that is dead now. But inside me, the war shall last as long as I am alive. Inside my heart, the Spanish civil war has finally come home.

The mozarella pizza arrived soon after, and I munched on it slowly. I looked out through the window and saw the orange sun going down over the fields. Who am I, I thought to myself, this Indian who feels this strange love for Spain, a land of ecstatic glories and of horrifying pain, a country thousands of miles away from his birthplace?

My Discoveries Of India

Perhaps one of the reasons why I try not to go to India too often is because everytime I am there, I am reminded in so many ways, some explicit, some subtle, of what a loser I am. Take my elder sister, Ankita, for example. I usually fly through Mumbai, and I am greeted at the airport by her smiling chaffeur, Ramu, who speaks to me in his exquisite mixture of Indian English and colonial Hindusthani : 'Sahib, Madam is saying that you are going with me in my car to her place. She is officing there.'

'Accha, is that what she is saying? I always knew she was capable of the higher things in life.'

So we go to her plush office in North Mumbai, and I wait outside for half an hour browsing through some of the magazines scattered on the glass tables. Suddenly, the doors fly open and she rushes out, wearing a neatly-pressed brown suit, cursorily glances over the vast expanses of the green room, finally spots me in the corner, and comes running towards me.

'Ah, there you are, my poor little one. Did you have a good trip? Come on, give sister a big hug now. You know what, I am so sorry having to tell you this, but I am awfully busy at the moment. I have a board-meeting in less than ten minutes. Would it be asking too much of you if you were to go along with Ramu to my house? I shall see you in the evening. Foxy is waiting for you too.'

'Foxy?', I asked, feeling rather foxed.

'Surely you remember Foxy? She is my new Labrador.'

So with Ramu I am now going to her house in South Mumbai, a good two-hours' driving away through the crowds of Mumbai, human as well as bovine. Whenever I am being with Ramu, I am always feeling that I am being in the present continuous tense.

Finally, lovely Madam arrives at 11:30 pm, and we sit down for a late dinner.

'So Mimon, what is it that you are doing these days? Still with that thing, philosophy?'

'Well, sort of. What about you? You seem pretty rushed?'

'Oh, do I? You know what, we are marketing a new product for the busy women of today who are having anxiety problems. It is called Relaxed (r).'

'Hmm. And you think you yourself are relaxed trying to sell Relaxed (r)?'

She suddenly stops chewing on her mozarella pizza and glares at me angrily : 'How do you mean?'

'No, nothing. Just forget it.'

The next evening, I fly to Delhi to my younger brother Arpan who is an executive with Morgan Stanley, and this is what ensues, more or less.

'Have you ever speculated about your future?'

'The future? Oh, well, you know my Ph.D. thesis is on time. The future is sort of non-existent. So is the past. Pretty cool, huh?'

'No,no,no. Not your kind of future. I am talking about stocks. Have you ever invested in futures?'

'Hmm, does it look like to you that I even have a future?'

Three days in Delhi, and I am ready to go to Jhanji, my village in Assam, where a woman who claims to be my aunt (I have never seen her before, though) bombards me with all sorts of questions.

'So then, Mimon, tell me one thing. Have you managed to catch a British memsahib for yourself?'

I am too astounded by her bluntness to say anything at first. Then I warily look around myself and ask her in a hushed tone : 'Aunt, hold on a minute. This is just so that we see eye to eye on this. Is it politically correct in this part of India to ask questions like that?'

'Politically correct? What is that like?'

'Oh, it's like when you are with polite people there are certain things you don't talk about.'

'In England, you don't talk about marriage?'

'Well, it depends.'

'Depends on what?'

'Depends on which side you are on. If you are a Conservative, you believe that marriage is the only way left to prevent the bad girls from going everywhere; break down the fortress of marriage and all anarchy will break loose. But if you are Labour, you believe that marriage is too much the effort to worth bothering about. Finally, if you are Liberal Democrat, you think that in a truly liberally democrat state, all marriage will wither away and we shall have the dictatorship of the unmarried proletariat.'

I look at the blank expression on her face. No, wrong move. Sorry, it is so difficult trying to remember that I have to control my mind never at rest. I pinch myself.

The next afternoon, I go to Jorhat where I meet one of my long-lost cousins and find her watching a 9 pm soap opera with her girl-friend. (Not that she is lesbian, of course; there are no lesbians in Assam. I mean that her friend is a girl.)

The soap opera over, her friend asks me, 'So what do you do in life?'

I am almost about to say, 'That question is a category mistake. It is like asking a fish, 'What do you do in the water'? or a bird, 'What do you do in the air?''

But no, I remember my aunt, I have learnt my lesson well, and I change tracks just in time.

'Well, it depends on what you mean by life?'

'Hmm, not sure what life is.'

'Well, you don't have to be sure about anything. Just tell me what you think life is about.'

'I am sorry, I am not in the mood right now for such heavy thinking.'

Not unsurprisingly, the conversation peters out in five minutes.

The next morning, my cousin shouts at me: 'Mimon! How many times have I asked you not to talk with my friends that way?'

'What way is that?'

'You know pretty well what that way is. I mean thaaaat way of yours. Asking people questions when they want a proper decent reply from you. Why can't you ever talk straight? What is so wrong about answering people's questions? You are just a stuffy idiot who thinks that he knows it all and can't dispense some of his precious wisdom to the masses.'

So, then, the truth is not out there, but in here, right in me. Yes, you got it right, I really am such a loser. Ankita is a high-flying woman, Arpan knows how to handle his future(s), my aunt is the expert sociologist, and my cousins all know how to talk straight. I can do none of the above. *Sigh*

What School Children Have To Say

In August 2001, I worked for four weeks with a group of around 12 high-school children in a suburb of East London. One morning, I took them out to play football (yes, the girls too), after which I put to them this question, 'So what do you think is a good teacher like?' Here are some responses :

Tanya : 'A good teacher is someone who corrects me when I am mistaken.'

Denise : 'A good teacher is kind-hearted and does not take away my play-time.'

Mark : 'A good teacher urges me to work harder.'

Tom : 'A good teacher is someone who is always joyful.'

Margie : 'A good teacher is a person who tells me funny things like, 'Everything that is a bird can fly, but not everything that can fly is a bird'.'

Dominic : 'A good teacher is someone who can convince me that what I think is impossible is not actually so.'

But It Happened

Most parents have a fanatical wish to obtain whatever is 'best for their children'. In the process of zealously trying to achieve that goal, however, some of them end up transforming their children into their silent and passive victims. So much so that these children have to go through their adult life trying to overcome, or at least to recover from, the aftermaths of the unspoken traumas of their childhood. Perhaps such children could agree with what Chekhov once wrote : 'When I was a child, I missed my childhood.'

The Paradox of 'Scientific Progress'

Although we routinely use the expression 'Scientific Progress' in various debates ranging from ecology to religion to witchcraft, it embodies, in fact, a curious paradox. On the one hand, we may believe that 'science' (especially physics and chemistry) gives us an accurate representation of the world through its laws, generalisations, and descriptions of physical reality. But on the other hand, we also believe that this representation is somehow not perfect, that there is a 'gap' or a 'misfit' between the representation and the reality, for if there were no such gap or misfit, how could we talk of progress towards a higher level of congruence between the two?

The Curious Case of a Jaina Monk

Most of you (if not all) will be more or less familiar with the various naturalist critiques of 'religion', some of which are the following.

(A) The 'Freudian' Critique : When human beings are young, they enjoy the protection of their (physical) father; when they grow older, they wish to have a (supernatural) Father to look down upon them kindly and to keep them under His cosmic wings. So they project the notion of 'God' into the highest skies, and rituals centred around the worship of this illusion develop into the routinised structures of religion.

(B) The 'Marxist' Critique : Religion is the opium that is offered by the richer classes in society to the poorer ones, thereby justifying the gross levels of inequality through the ideological explanation that the latter's misery is ingrained into the nature of reality and will be rewarded in the next life, and that there is nothing that they can do to change this state of affairs.

(C) The 'Sociobological' Critique : Religions are the social mechanisms or systems that further the replication of genes of human beings into the next generation. All human beings are concerned that this propagation be successfully maintained across time, and thereby they develop religious forms of life in order to ensure this continuation.

Of all these critiques, I believe that it is only (B) that comes anywhere near the target; and even (B) is not comprehensive enough to cover all cases of 'religion'. To see why this is the case, consider the following Curious Case of a Jaina Monk.

In 1965, a Jaina monk called Acarya Shantisagar voluntarily withdrew from the world in order to attain liberation (Sanskrit : moksa) from the world by ritual fasting to death.

I would urge you to reflect on that statement for a few minutes before reading on. And now, this is how one can reply to the above critiques if they are meant to be comprehensive ones covering all species of the genus 'religion'.

Counter-Argument to (A) : Though Jainism is not 'atheistic' in the sense that it believes that we human beings are essentially spiritual entities (Sanskrit : jivatman) which need to be purified through the karmic law, there is no concept of a creator God in Jainism. Therefore, a Jain cannot be said to believe in the existence of the jivatman because she wishes for a Grand-Daddy in the skies, and the Freudian critique that religion is merely a longing for a cosmic Protector misses the mark in the case of Jainism (and also, incidentally, for most traditions of Advaitic Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism).

Counter-Argument to (B) : Though the institutionalised structures of Jainism (many Jainas are rich and powerful businessmen) could be subjected to Marxist criticism, (classical) Marxism cannot explain the existence of thousands of Jaina monks (and for that matter, of Buddhist, Hindu and Catholic monks and nuns). If religion is merely a mechanism through which rich people offer a mystificatory explanation of reality to the poor, why do so many religious people themselves adopt a life of near-absolute poverty with no 'private property' to their name?

Counter-Argument to (C) : If religion is merely a system to propagate one's genes, what reproductive success or (neo-Darwinist) evolutionary advantage could Acarya Shantisagar have been hoping for when he fasted himself to death?

So the next time you come across in a book, a magazine, an internet-site or an academic journal a theory that claims to 'explain' all patterns of 'religious behaviour', apply the Shantisagar Test to it and ask yourself, 'Does this theory explain the Curious Case of a Jaina Monk?'

Explaining and Understanding

There are various types of popular statements that express a binary opposition between the processes of Explaining and Understanding, and the Agony Aunt advice, 'Men always like to explain, but only women can understand', is just one of them. To caricature slightly, it is held that Explaining is what 'dissecting/analytical' people (read men) in the 'sciences' do, while Understanding is for 'holistic/synthetic' people (read women) in the 'humanities'. Having now spent an equal number of years first in the 'sciences' and then in the 'humanities', I wonder why some people see such a radical opposition between these two processes.

I say this not because I, as a man, have obtained a certified diploma in Understanding from a feminist university (and nor do I claim to possess highly developed powers of Understanding), but simply because I believe that when it comes to inter-personal encounters, Explaining and Understanding, far from being diametrically opposed, necessarily pre-suppose each other forming a reciprocal feedback loop. (Hence the colours are inverted in this sentence, just in case you have not noticed.)

Consider this example : John and Susanne have been friends for two years now; one evening, John comes to Susanne's house and tells her that he has stabbed a man. Now the more that Susanne is able to explain John's behaviour, the more that she will be able to understand him, and vice-versa. Suppose that in reply to Susanne's question, 'But why did you do it?', John simply shrugs his shoulders and says, 'Oh, you know, shit happens', the possibilities of understanding are immediately foreclosed. Suppose, however, that John goes on to explain how he got involved in a drunken brawl, the possibilities are slightly raised, though even in this case Susanne might want to know why he, a strict teetotaller, got into such a tussle in the first place. In this case, the explanation will go one step further backwards, and potentially it could keep on moving backwards without reaching a bed-rock stratum of explanation.

The point, however, is that whether or not Susanne is able to understand John's action will vitally depend on how much of explanation she is able to provide for it; the more of the latter, the greater will be the possibilities for the former. Therefore, Understanding is not something that is added onto Explanation as an extra layer like the white icing over a birthday cake; rather it emerges intrinsically through and from the process of Explanation.

The reverse holds too. If it so happens that Susanne does not have a certain minimalist Understanding of how a human being could get so incensed under the influence of alcohol as to stab another person, she will not even pause to ask John for any reasons; consequently, there will be no, as we say, Explaining to do. In contrast, if she does have the former, she would be more willing (more 'open') to listening to his Explanations, which might, through a feedback loop, help her to Understand him more.

In all of this, however, I have not quite brought out the ethical dimension. Suppose that Susanne is able to Understand John : does it also mean that she has to approve of his act? Here we may make a crucial distinction between understanding and moral appproval : the latter presupposes the former, but the former need not always lead to the latter. To take a more drastic example, I can spend the next ten years of my life studying the rise and the fall of the Hitler regime, offer various sorts of political and cultural Explanations for his ascent to the skies, and become able to Understand quite well what was 'going on' inside his mind without, however, giving my moral approval to his horrific deeds. And the same holds for the less apocalyptic example above : Susanne may, if she wishes to, listen to John for the next hour, absorb his Explanations and thereby Understand him to a reasonable degree, without giving up her moral belief that it is wrong to inflict violence on another human being.

Two Troublesome Thoughts, In Increasing Order

(1) This morning, I was reading through some chapters of a Mediaeval text called The Wisdom of the Prophets (Fusus al-Hikam) written by the Spanish mystic Muhyi-d-din Ibn' Arabi. The edition that I was browsing through was an English translation from a French translation from the Arabic. What if I were to spend the next two years learning Arabic so that I become proficient enough to re-translate the English back to Arabic? Would I be able to come up to the beauty of Ibn'Arabi's Arabic prose?

(2) In the afternoon, I was walking towards Sainsbury's when I saw a little girl, around two years old, being taught how to walk by her father. Now the very first question that we ask when we are told that Miss X has had a baby is whether the baby is a boy or a girl. I am beginning to wonder if five years down the line that question will become outlawed as politically incorrect (at least in the West) : why zoom down into the baby's sex (or should I say gender?) when you can ask a potentially infinite number of other questions such as 'Is it overweight or underweight?', 'Does it have two hands?', 'Does it have brown hair?', 'Does it cry too much?' and so on and on?

The Illusions of Co-Relations

There is a flourishing literature in the area called 'The Biology of Belief' according to which the reasons why we believe certain things, accept certain (possibly trans-empirical) goals, and follow certain practices can be shown to be rooted in specific cognitive structures or processes within us, and more specifically, our brains. One can broadly distinguish two positions in this context : one I shall call Strong Co-Relation (SCR) and the other Weak Co-Relation (WCR). Let me start with the latter view first with the example of Buddhist teaching which revolves around two central claims :

P1 : Existence itself is suffering.

P2 : The way out of this circle of suffering is by following the Eight-fold Path laid down by Buddha.

Now a WCRist will argue concerning people who do accept P1 and P2 that their acceptance can be co-related with the activation of certain 'domains' in the brain (or even with genes, to go down one more level into the microscopic end of the spectrum); as a corollary, in the case of non-Buddhists who do not give assent to P1 and P2, these domains remain unactivated. This does not, however, the WCRist emphasises, settle the question of whether or not one should accept P1 and P2 : this is an entirely different issue. To put it more concisely, the empirical observation that P1 and P2 can be closely related to specific brain process is a justification neither for nor against them.

A proponent of SCR will go much further than this, and will declare that this is all that can be said about P1 and P2, which are not 'truth-claims' at all. It is just that some human beings have the requisite brain-domains activated, and consequently accept P1 and P2, and that this is the end of the matter. One cannot meaningfully ask, according to the SCRist, questions such as whether or not we have any justifiable grounds for accepting P1 and P2 : we are, in a manner of speaking, enslaved to our brain-domains.

Quite a number of people, especially newspaper reporters, seem to follow version of SCR. For example, every now and then there is the occasional report in magazines that people who are 'religious' have their characteristic experiences because of a certain gene (the 'God-gene') that they possess. What is usually unclear is whether this is an expression of WCR or of SCR; if of WCR, this is surely an interesting empirical observation, but if it is SCR that is being defended here, it leaves unanswered the question of whether or not we have adequate reasons for holding 'religious' beliefs.

But it might be asked : 'Why this irritating concern with adequate reasons? Is it not simply a reflection of your 'academic' bias that you must seek such reasons in the process of believing in anything?' In reply, I submit the following considerations. Take the case of a man called Rana Pratap who believes that men are inherently superior to women on all counts, and that it is essential for the maintenance of public order that husbands should beat their wives once a week to ensure that they do not cross their proper bounds. When you point out, from various angles, that this belief is grossly unjustified, Rana Pratap immediately starts talking like a SCRist and gives you the following riposte : 'See, Madam, you believe that it is wrong for husbands to beat their wives, and that is because domains A, B, and C inside your brain are activated. But I believe that it is right to do so, and that follows from the phenomenon that it is brain-domains X, Y and Z that are functioning in me. Neither you nor I are 'right' or 'wrong'; we are simply performing our actions in co-relation with our brains.'

If you stil believe in SCR, try to formulate a response to Rana Pratap that does not, explicitly or implicity, raise the issues of 'adequate reasons', 'justification' or 'good grounds for belief'. It is therefore an unwarranted leap of logic from saying that Beliefs S, U, Y, or P are co-related to brain-domains WE456, KI764, PO9878 or GF554 to declaring that the questions of whether Beliefs S, Y, U or P are 'true' or 'false', 'justified' or 'unjustified' can be thrown overboard. Indeed, translated into political action, SCR can become a potent tool for defending the status quo : 'I shall continue to beat my wife because my brain-domain WB123 says so; I do not need any adequate reasons to justify my belief.'

According to Italian media reports, our new Pope Benedict XVI has moved into the Vatican with two of his cats. With his earlier career dogged by controversy, he has wisely settled on cats. One only hopes that with so many cats around, the Vatican does not go to the dogs.

On English Puns

My fascination with the English language has a lot to do with the fact that it allows me to relish the various puns that one can create in it by using the same word in more than one sense to refer to sometimes quite unrelated entitites. Here are three of my favourite examples.

(A) Mind Matters is the title of a website. The beautiful thing about this title is that it can be 'read' in more than one way. First, you can take the word 'mind' as a noun and the word 'matters' as a verb so that it means : the mind is an important 'thing'; second, you can take 'mind' as adjectival to the noun 'matters', so that this time you read : topics associated with the mind.

(B) Trojan Horses From Paris is the name of an essay. Now if you are a lover of Greek epics, you can read this in a straight-forward manner : Paris is the name of the King who stole Helen and started the bloody mess which led to the Trojan horse being used in the battle over Troy. However, this essay is actually a criticism of French postmodernist theory, and 'Paris' literally refers to the capital of France and not to the Homeric anti-hero.

(C) Class Struggles is the name of a sociological report. If you are a Marxist, you shall immediately start thinking of socio-economic classes and all their clashes. However, the word 'class' in this report literally means school-classes, and 'struggles' to the difficulties of children in moving from one lower school-class to a higher one. A beautiful pun, really.

On Patronising

One the greatest plagues in some circles of Western society is the devotion that some people have developed towards political correctness so that it has become very easy for them to miss the wood for the trees (or the trees for the wood?). Take the notion of 'advice', in particular. The classical idea of friendship in the world of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages was a mutual relationship between two people who were willing not only to 'walk with each other', 'have a laugh', or 'enjoy a quiet sunset together', but also to correct one another. Today, of course, we would be extremely wary of 'correcting' anyone, even a friend, fearing that the response will be : 'Oh, just shut up and stop judging me, will you?', 'Thank you very much, I have had a very bad day today, and I don't need your shit right now', 'Do we have to go through this right now? I mean, I am seeing my psychiatrist in less than ten minutes and I am already running behind schedule', and 'I am not having this conversation with you'.

All of these can be summarised in the neat slogan : 'Don't patronise me!'.

Perhaps it is wrong to 'patronise' other people by giving them advice. I wonder, however, whether it is possible to consistently adopt a 'non-patronising' attitude towards the world. As a matter of fact, most parents in the world necessarily have to be patronising towards their children : they have to know what is best for their children, and have to be sure which school, what type of education, and which medium of instruction is the most suitable for them. They sometimes punish their children, in fact, beating them rather cruelly, shout at them to 'correct' them saying that this shouting is in their 'best interests', and enforce all sorts of absurd regulations on them (for example, 'Return home before it is dark', which usually means, in large parts of the world, 2 a.m. for a boy and 7 p.m. for a girl).

None of this is an argument in favour of patronising; indeed, patronising is quite often used as a smoke-screen by people with a holier-than-Thou attitude towards the world. However, once we declare in the name of political correctness that 'all things are equally holy' (or what amounts to the same thing, that 'all things are equally profane'), that will mean, among other things, the end of parenthood as we know it today, since an essential component of parenthood is 'correcting' children by giving 'advice' to them. Some people may not have any problems with that; but those who are worried about this prospect need to do some rethinking as to whether it is always wrong to patronise other people. (Or you might say that it is right to patronise children because they are not 'people'. Well, just wait until the Childrens' Rights Movement gets under way in another ten years : your children could drag you to court for patronising them.)

On My Unhappy Consciousness

An old wise man called Hegel coined a phrase called the Unhappy Consciousness, which, he said, is a consciousness that knows itself to be one but is at the same time divided and is at variance with itself. For some years now, I have felt myself to be living with an internally contradictory Unhappy Consciousness with respect (at least) to two things : the British Empire and little children.

First, I have a great love and an incurable nostalgia for Victorian and Edwardian England, the vanished England of majestic castles, of dreaming spires, of the Queen's English, of English wit, and of the local pubs selling bitter ale. Indeed, sometimes I wonder if I would have cared at all for Gandhi, Tilak, and Nehru and that whole gang if I had been living in pre-Independence India : I might probably simply have gone off to Simla to drink high tea with the Company clerks; play tennis and polo with them; listen to Haydn, Mozart, Elgar, Purcell, and Vaughan Williams; and read my Byron, Keats, Spencer, and Mill, blissfully (or deliberately?) unaware of the horrors of Chauri-Chaura and Jalianwalla-Bagh. And yet, I suffer from a powerful Unhappy Consciousness : my socio-political views come closest to the movements that are encompassed by the umbrella term New Left which is one shoot of neo-Marxism that was developed in the 1960s by Marxist thinkers in opposition to Stalin. For a developing 'neo-Marxist' like me to confess to a love of Victorian England and its 'High Culture' would perhaps be the ultimate and the most unspeakable heresy, one for which Chairman Mao or Premier Kruschev would have had me shot without a second thought. Thus in my Victorian moods I am always aware that all the glories of England were built with native cheap labour ruthlessly expropriated from the colonies, and yet even after having digested all of this Marxist historiography, I still find myself yearning for the age of the Great Victorians, them in spite of their imperialism, stuffiness, near-misogyny, and high-handedness. (Perhaps I need to be sent to come 'Correction Centre' in the Siberian mines from which I shall emerge after five years thoroughly cleansed of my politically-incorrect hankering for the dead Victorians.)

Second, little children. This morning, I was walking through the market-square when I saw a little girl (probably around six years old) looking after her little brother in the pram while their mother was trying to buy something from a nearby stall. The boy started whimpering and the girl hurriedly tried to comfort him by giving him her gaily dressed pink doll. I watched mesmerised for about ten minutes, standing rooted to the spot. There was something, as divine as it was humane, about that scene in the centre of the noisy and crowded market-place under the hot noon sun, as if it were an enclave or an oasis of peace in the middle of a desert of mortal apathy. And yet, my Unhappy Consciousness will not allow me to wax eloquent in this manner on that scene, for I know only too well what I am going to say in another mood about that little girl and her brother. I will announce, from the ramparts of the Academy, that this is just how little girls are conditioned ('indoctrinated') from an early age to believe that it is their socially-sanctioned duty to grow up to become mothers and spend a life-time mothering their children. Thus I want to see the little girl just as one human being caring for and empathising with another human being in pain, but want as I might, I simply cannot bring myself to do so without the 'gender-issue' emerging into my mind. My consciousness breaks into two once again, and this internal division produces a deep lingering sense of unhappiness; I seek a soothing wholeness, even knowing that this completeness is not to be found in this divided world of ours.