The Great Victorians

The Victorians don't get a good press nowadays : stinking, smelly, retarded, fanatical, depressed, repressed, imperialistic, and patriarchal bastards. However, one Victorian whose works I have read quite extensively, Leslie Stephen, was someone whom you couldn't easily fit into any one of these 'types'. (Incidentally, Stephen was the father of the feminist (?) Virginia Woolf. Though whether Woolf recognised him as her father is, of course, another matter.)

A book that I am reading these days has the following to say about Stephen :

'A man, rugged and uncompromising, yet sensitive and diffident, pure-hearted, single-minded, melancholy in temper yet capable of high spirits and irony, inveterately industrious, a stubborn climber of Alps as well as mental peaks ... In him, the passion for salvation had been transmuted into the quest for truth and intellectual deliverance, so that instead of 'What shall I do to be saved?', the question had become, 'What shall I think to be honest?'. Till the end of his life, he was continuously engaged in a mental fight, in strenuous grapplings with the riddle of the painful earth, and in bearing, as best as he might, the 'heavy and the weary weight of this unintelligible world'. It is hard to believe, from the tone of his writings, that he found much joy or consolation in what he wrote, but he was by nature a Spartan, and he did not look for such things. George Eliot's phrase about the need to do 'without opium', and 'to live through all our pain with conscious, clear-eyed endurance', seems to me applicable to him.'

Implications

I often reflect on the (unintended?) implications of what we say and how we behave. Here is one, for example. When I was in St Stephen's (Delhi), I was once solving one of those differential equations that pester you if you take a course in Imaginary Numbers (not to be confused with 'imaginative numbers', that's another kettle of fish). One of my classmates was reading a novel, probably one of Marquez's, and another one was browsing through the newspaper.

The first looked up from his book and said to the latter : 'Can you look up the word 'trite' in the dictionary?', and the second complied.

Three years after this happened, I was sitting in a bus one day when this incident flashed through my mind, and I began to ponder on the implication of his asking the question, 'Can you look up the word 'trite' in the dictionary?' before asking the more charitable one, 'Do you know the meaning of the word 'trite''?

Was he then (unintendedly?) implying that his other friend would necessarily not know the meaning of the word 'trite', or that he had a poor vocabulary?

The Ironic Imperative


What leads to the evolution of a human being into an ironist (assuming, of course, that we are not 'born as ironists')? Every ironist must speak for herself on this one; in the following, the one writing this post reflects on himself.

He has to write, and not merely write but also live, as an ironist for there are two absolute principles governing his existence which being equally absolute are locked into a mortal combat with each other, a combat for which there can be no temporal resolution.

Principle 1 : 'I am human, and nothing that is human do I consider alien to myself'.
This Principle explains his antipathy for what he has elsewhere on this blog denounced as Tribalism, irrespective of whether this is the inward-looking Tribalism of the Family, of Society, of Language, of the Academy, of Culture, or of Nationalism.

Principle 2 : 'To remain human I must, sooner or later, take sides, and this will not only lead me to associate myself with some groups more spontaneously and more closely than the others, but, on occasion, even to reject the company of some human beings. I must, that is, operate with a working-definition of what configurations of views, beliefs, and practices I consider to be non-human, or even anti-human, and this might sometimes constitute a violation of Principle 1.'

For example, he would rather be with a mob of foul-smelling left-wing pyromaniacs than with a coterie of clean-shaven right-wing demagogues, while being aware that this solidarity is, from one perspective, just another Tribalism; again, more often with hot-tempered anti-Establishment anarchists than with intellectually-redoubtable pro-Establishment constructivists, knowing only too well that anarchists too have a lamentable tendency of setting up their own parochial (micro-)Tribalisms.

Thus, he must always write and live in the broken middle which is the shifting arena and the grey zone between these two warring principles. Consequently, beneath the cadences of his ironic prose there lie seething an anarchy of the mind and a turmoil of the heart that are seeking to find some rest in that ever-mobile in-between space between the two principles. Some of his readers, however, might want to 'pick up' on Principle 2 and argue as follows : 'But why take sides? Why do you not just float around breezing through life, not bothering to find out who/what is right and who/what is wrong?', and to this, he makes the following reply : 'It is impossible in principle not to have any views, explicit or implicit, of what constitutes the 'Good Life'. And these views, whatever they are, will set up some gradation, latent or expressed, of what is right and what is wrong in the light of that postulated Good which is hoped to be achieved, either in the present or in the future'.

Irony, therefore, becomes, on this blog at least, a mode of passionate engagement with the world that he shall call 'stragetic optimism'. It is strategic because it is pervaded by a deep sense of the fragility of goodness and is aware of how we must work in and through the irreducibly tragic dimensions of our existence, but it is optimistic because it never loses sight of the fragility of goodness and seeks to keep alive the conversation between all those who are united in a search for this goodness, at once manifest and elusive.

In conclusion, therefore, to be true to Principle 1 and Principle 2, he has the following note for his readers : 'The Transparent Ironist would wish to have many followers, but all his followers should first iron themselves out.'

The Final Word

The Ironist is not a special kind of a human being.

But.

But every human being is a special kind of an ironist.

Being Gay Is Anarchic

Pope Benedict has condemned, yet again, same-sex unions as fake and expressions of 'anarchic freedom' (such a delicious phrase!), claiming that these threaten the future of the family. But as if that was not bad enough, he goes on to declare : 'Matrimony and the family are not, in reality, a casual sociological construction or the fruit of specific historic and economic situations.'

I could hardly disagree more.

Just a quick note about the change in the tag-line for my blog under The Anarchy of Thought (see above). For a long time now, I have heard people voicing anti-Establishment sentiments from a variety of standpoints and for a variety of reasons. Excellent, for in my own ironic ways, I am for the solidarity of the shaken.

However. However, I believe that this struggle must begin with ourselves and with people in our most immediate vicinity for otherwise it degenerates rapidly into a masquerade for our power-seeking, individual as well as collective.

Hence.

Charity begins at home. Perhaps. But then so does the long revolution against the Establishment.

An Algorithmic Cross-Section Of The Ironist's Mind

The College

To walk down the corridors stinking of cologne and after-shave just before dinner as people rush into the bathroom for a quick shower after basketball.

To roam through the hallways as a bunch of over-fed people mill around the Principal's noticeboard discussing the state of the nation and formulating policies for steering it through the world-market.

To stand on the dark grass courts, lightly covered with the winter's first dew, staring at the blinking stars behind the tower of The College.

To wait until the clock strikes 2 : 00 am to go to the dhaba for a tryst with hot tea and a bread-omelette while the rest of the world sleeps.

To wake up in the morning to the distant gongs for breakfast and feed oneself on toast, strawberry jam, scrambled eggs, and cold coffee.

To arrive just in time for the 8: 45 class and sleep through it trying to understand how there could possibly be a 8:45 in a world full of God's mercy.

To laze around in the cafe after lunch, drinking nimbu-pani with a spot of black salt and complaining how the dhaba crowd was spoiling the college's intellectual atmosphere.

To watch the shady day scholars trying to polish their speeches for Shakespeare Society's annual production.

To stroll around the chapel and read the epitaph of the forgotten Cambridge man who started it all.

And to keep on coming back to The College in more ways than one years after it happened, and keep on writing about it in ways both direct and devious, even while knowing that those who have never been there will probably not have the faintest clue as to what this post is about.

Vedanta For Beginners

The following non-localised and undated conversation between the Transparent Ironist (TI) and his aunt Anondomoyi (AA) took place at the level of the Super-Mind. (It is non-localised and undated because this level is beyond spatio-temporal limitations.)

AA : Over the last two years, I have gradually come to lose all interest in this world of mice and men. I therefore deliver myself to your feet so that I may drink therefrom the ambrosia of the celestial message of the eternal Vedanta.

TI : As for the men, I can understand. Pretty nasty creatures, those miserable thingies. Indeed, I am surprised that it took you 48 years to lose your interest in men. But why the mice? How do they come into the picture?

AA : Ah, you don't know what havoc mice can wreak on the harvest. Last month, they ate up all the wheat and the rice we had stocked up in the barn on our family estate in the countryside. I am now fed up of all these worldly concerns. I seek the bliss and the tranquility that you speak of in your texts of the timeless Vedanta.

TI : Yes, Mother.

AA : Mother? I am not your mother!

TI : Indeed, you are not. You see, when we speak to each other, we cannot make a distinction between the lower case and the upper case, can we? I have called you Mother, not mother.

AA : You mean Mother?

TI : Yes, indeed, Mother. Mother with the upper case 'm'.

AA : But why call me Mother?

TI : Because you have passed the first test, and you are well on your way to crossing the next hurdle before you attain the supreme, undecaying, and unchanging bliss of enlightenment.

AA : What is the first hurdle? And which is the last one?

TI : The first one is this world of misery, this veritable jungle of a thousand desires that lead you astray. No woman who has become so exhausted of the pleasures of this world that the very thought of these pleasures fills her mind with disgust can come to the school of the heavenly Vedanta. By becoming a mother, that is, a woman who has given life to finite beings, you have crossed the initial ford. Now you shall become a Mother by withdrawing into yourself the life that you have given out, and thereby shall attain the ultimate truth that you are hankering after.

AA : You mean, once I was a mother, and now I shall become a Mother.

TI : Yes, once as a mother you gave life, but now as a Mother, you shall become Life Itself.

AA : But there are still so many questions that remain unexplained in my mind, clamouring for an answer.

TI : Fear not, O Mother, to speak them out to me!

AA : When my husband died a year ago, why did I endure so much grief?

TI : Such O Mother is the fate of all ignorant beings.

AA : Ignorant?

TI : A woman who sees only plurality in this world goes from death to death. But she who sees, underlying all these men around her, nothing but Life Itself will not seek to grasp one of them, nor when she is dissatisfied with him, another one, and so on in a never-ending frenzy of acquisitiveness. Rather, she will freely give up all attachment that she might have to any of these men, miserable thingies anyway, and become Life Itself.

AA : So I, in my ignorance, thought that my husband had died, not knowing that he, in his deepest essence, is Life Itself and is therefore beyond death?

TI : Indeed, O Mother, at this rate you won't need me to give you this discourse on the secret of the Vedanta.

AA : But do you mean to say that all these men around me do not exist?

TI : They do, O Mother, but only at the lower level of plurality. Ignorant beings that they are, they repeat the same cycle in their lives, running after one woman after the other, and even then their thirst is not slaked. But those men who see nothing in these manifold diversities of women but Life Itself are able to overcome this evanescent realm of transience and attain the highest level.

AA : And what is there at this highest level?

TI : That O Mother, I dare not speak of! My tongue is not equal to the task of describing to you the bliss that one attains there. What great beauty, infinite glory, and unspeakable joy!

AA : But now I have a question for you.

TI : Fear not O Mother, to speak out to me!

AA : How do you know all of this? You have not attained that level, have you?

TI : Indeed, I have not. That's why I am an Ironist, you see. I can only obliquely direct you towards what lies there. Do not mistake my finger for the moon that the finger points to.

AA : But how do you know that the moon that you speak of is 'out there'?

TI : Oh Mother, how much you ignorant beings love to go round and round in riddles! The moon you speak of is not out there, it is in here.

AA : In here?

TI : Yes, whatever is in here is also out there.

AA : So when I am established at that level, can I come back and check on you to tell you whether you were right or wrong?

TI : Ah Mother, when you attain that level, there won't be any 'you' left to do the reporting!

AA : But how do I know that what you are telling me right now is true?

TI : You don't. But, you see, neither do I know whether what I am telling you is the truth of the matter. You simply have to take it on trust from me, and hope for the best!

At that moment, aunt Anondomoyi's teenage daughter barges in, throws her school-bag on the sofa, and switches on MTV playing Guns and Roses. The long strains of 'November Rain' fill up the room, and the Transparent Ironist closes his eyes and pricks up his ears to listen to his *all-time* Fav rock song.

Aunt Anondomoyi watches him, awe written all over her face, loudly exclaims : 'My, this little boy is truly on his way to enlightenment. Fancy that, a teacher of the Vedanta in our own family that is going to hell day by day! Who would have guessed that that we possess such a bright star of our dynasty? He must have been born through the cosmic penance of some great sadhu', and then shouts to her daughter at the other end of the room : 'Ankita! Just come here! He is so unlike you! No attachment at all to your American MTV, or to your stupid Runs and Goses! I wish you could be at least one iota like him!'