New year Greetings

Here's to welcoming a new year, with all its possibilities and here's to marking new beginnings!

This blog was a small beginning, but now I want to take this further.
Share your musings, and publish your thoughts at my new blog HERE

This attempt is dedicated to writing that exposes hidden layers, opens new arguments and new thoughts that will re-define comfort zones.
Thanks for your support as always :)

nothing profound

When do u become an adult? I have answered the question for myself: its when you learn to live with your mistakes, without letting them over-whelm you, when you accept your limits and still want to fight for what you have got: cos winning is not the goal anymore, when you learn to let go and stop asking why, sometimes there are no answers.

Trapped!

Watched ‘Lawn’ last week – a theatre/dance performance and an evocative portrayal of human desperation. Three Australians are ‘caught’ in an apartment- tied down by their banal existence. The dance portrays this angst in body and spirit. The play begins with the three of them walking around the apartment- each lost in their own tasks, tidying compulsively, stapling peeling wallpaper, or grumpily eating breakfast.

As they proceed to dress up for what seems like a typical day in the city; slowly the insanity unravels. They are trapped- in their bodies, by their language, in the limited space, and in their restricted lives. Their need for freedom surfaces in remarkably moving metaphors. There are theatric monologues, and stylistic contemporary dance routines, all in the context of a usual day in their lives. They long for their sunny, wide-open lawns back home in Australia, perhaps a longing for familiarity and being closer to their identity.

Was it just the feeling of being trapped indoors due to bad weather (the play takes place in Berlin, in winter)? Was it more insidious than that? The language of migration and up-rootedness was strong- especially with the language snippets, of communication and being gagged. Yet another theme is that of Kafka and his classic ‘Metamorphosis’- banality, sacrifice for family/society, the entrapment of the individual or just existentialism. But then there were so many layers to the performance that I could write an essay on it.

After the intense experience that lasted exactly 80 minutes we came out feeling alive and jolted. On my way back and later I continued to wonder- Are we all prone to the feeling of being trapped? Do we experience the same desperation in our everyday lives? How do we reconcile it? To me, the show signified the search for our dream- to some it’s the big house, or something else which they long for, to some it’s the fame or just the idea of a family. Without it and when we lose sight of it, we are lost- just getting through the motions.

Photo courtesy- David Kelly, The Courier Mail

Thanks but no thanks

A night at the theatre, I was reminded once again why I wouldn’t watch a Hollywood movie, definitely not pay for it!
Watching in the wee hours of the morning a movie titled-‘Thank you for smoking’, I wondered what people took back other than the few good laughs(due credits to the screenplay). It was almost easy to miss the propaganda of America, writ large in the persuasive, glamorous, oh-so-adorably human portrayal of Nick Neylor-the lobbyist. But forget that for a moment, even if I were to discount the Hollywood-American dream love affair, I was alarmed by the logic of-who cares if you are right, if the person in front of you isn’t. What about all the other stands that do not include a yes and a no? Why does everything have to be pro or against something? And most importantly, why do we simply issues to for and against?!
Leaving the arguments alone, the movie managed to glamorize the defense of a not-so defenseless clan of MNCs. As ridiculous as it sounds, the sheer wit of the movie made it sound almost like the rescue of a poor lost kid. My issue is with precisely this power of the mass media, this almost unconscious brain-washing that dilutes the issues underlying the powerful multi-national corporations. While defending the tobacco companies Nick does not mention how these companies leverage their power and sustain their profits, or how the companies ensure their status by paying peanuts to the tobacco farmers in some poor country elsewhere? This will lead to a larger argument which I am sure everyone has heard about sometime, about globalization, and free trade and the like.
Coming back to the questions raised in my mind, I was wondering when issues began to be simplified, maybe it’s a purely political thing- of wanting people to choose who they support. If social issues serve no more than a bargaining chip for political power, where are we headed really, I do not know.
In any case, the movie may be worth its money but somehow to me it was a sour reminder of all things that were going wrong, or just a wee bit unbalanced.

One rule fits all

This is the first time I am venturing to say something colored in national, international politics on this blog, taking issues with the conventional death penalty stance. I wish to do this by highlighting the parochial thinking frames that come with it.
The law is undeterred in Singapore when it seeks to eliminate drug dealers. This got me thinking about some issues that hardliners of the law choose to ignore. When they punish a crime, does it make sense to de-contextualize it and merely judge the act itself? Is the criminal only guilty or non-guilty; is there a grey area in between? If so, what extent, and what parameters of guilt needs to be proven? Is intent a measure of guilt too?
The ordinary yet well-hyped case of Australian Tuong Huan is a case to be studied. I do not intend to sympathize with his circumstances because of my anti-capital punishment stance; however I would still put forward the notion of a context. Doesn’t a marred life due to refugee status and the subsequent metal trauma of dislocation, lost identity deserve any consideration when judging a person like Huan? The convenience of a law that is above such concerns not only simplifies legal procedure but also encourages gross simplification of human beings to fit standards, stereotypes or values. It’s hard to point a finger at one culprit of ethnocentrisms, racial discrimination, religious eccentricities, but by making laws as unbending, all powerful and prejudiced against human differences, we are not making life any better.

It is a globalized world on paper, yet they bicker over national identities of criminals. The political coloring of the whole issue has been extremely misleading. The attack on Singaporean government because of its non-liberal political system is often an excuse to attack the famed PAP and its saga of economic success. The world seems to be at peace with US executing its 1000th criminal; the liberal political system has not stopped them from executing human beings. Thus the pro Huan campaign is far from being purely humanitarian, it is highly politicized, made into an international issue, often at the expense of the issues that the incident is capable of eliciting. These issues of law and civilization, of proving punishable guilt, of dehumanizing effects of law, remain as relevant today as they were 100 years ago when feudal law, imperialist empires existed. Is it better today than back then?

Writing about writing

I sat with a computer staring out the window on a rainy afternoon, lazy to step out of my comfort zone (my little room).Inspiration failed to strike, and I was musing over the lack of a muse.
I wondered why I wanted to write. I thought of all the ways that people spend an afternoon such as this, and I wondered why there are so many books in the library. Like all normal thought processes that refused to follow any sequence but let’s get back to my earlier question. Thinking about why I wanted to write got me thinking about why anyone would want to write.
Traditionally all writing was marked with politics of class, gender, and other divisions, it still is. Writing comes with a notion of sophistication; it even becomes a way of gaining an identity (as one can see from the proliferation of female writings since the advent of feminism). And then there were the few who write to protest, to kindle thinking, to speak out their doubts and to pose questions. Could writing ever be free of an agenda? Are you as a reader aware of it? Is it possible that I may unconsciously put forth an agenda in this writing? A simple yet quite limited answer is a no, maybe not and a yes respectively.
As always I am posing questions that I know I can’t fully answer. These are some random strands of thought that you have encountered too. I will leave it at that and come to it in a round about way, by talking about being critical.
If that word sounds a bit negative, I don’t blame you. In fact scepticism of critical approaches has been scrutinized endlessly even blamed as unhealthy. It replaces the sense of security, coherence, and debunks faith. Faith to me appears to be the most amazing human construct, it makes control, politics, culture appear uncomplicated and natural while re-assuring the insecure social being that man is. Critical approaches are essentially about breaking comfort zones of beliefs, be it political, cultural, or philosophical. I am not valorising critics as a group but in fact I am drawing attention to the act of criticism.
We are critical in our ways, more now than before, simply because of the proliferation of information around us and the increased awareness of alternatives. Insular societies don’t exist; we are engulfed in an acute awareness of multitudes of possibilities, wallowing in choices. But the catch here is to be aware of the act of criticism so that it doesn’t become a means of securing the opposite of what is being criticised. I am talking about self-conscious criticism.
Being critical is an answer for the questions I mentioned earlier, freeing the writing of agendas, not missing it while reading it, and writing with an awareness of what is being written. Back to where we started people write in and around this web of criticism of society, culture, other writings, about history and the future. There are no simple stories, stories don’t just exist in an ontological sense, they cannot.

We had a problem in differential equations that attempted to describe a formula for the 'tendency'of love between Romoe and Juliet. The property used being the increasing and decreasing quality of liking and how it was associated to that of the latter's likes. I was amused then; it was added spice for an otherwise altogether dry topic (I take full responsibility for that statement/opinion).
It’s not totally amusing on reflection; it seems to be part of something bigger-our latest obsession with reason. It is easier now to understand how the books like-'why men and women think differently', seem to be bestsellers everywhere. It makes life simpler to know why, once again a concrete hypothetical support to base our life on. We are ready to dismember emotions, to dissect humanity (or the lack of it) we won't stop until it all fits into a clear logical whole. We pursue reason beyond reason at times.
Not to be judgmental of our scientific tendencies, I only wish to be wary of where to stop trying to reason. Perhaps this is not entirely our fault; the economic system supports our reason for reasoning. When profit maximized is the important driving force there is little room for humanitarian or social obligations. What is more alarming is the fact that individual needs are being homogeneous in our drive to satisfy the order of capitalism. At some level the emphasis on individual has narrowed down so much that we are losing focus We are perhaps forgetting the fact that individuals are not separate of the social whole, more importantly they retain their set of emotions and feelings irrespective of the environment they are put in. Individualism and socialism are and will always be complementary. In a way socialism and democracy are but imperative for the existence of each other. But we don't have to wait for society to take it up; we can start a step closer to home. How do we act? Are we entirely logical all the time? If not why should there be a reasonable way through everything? In a world that is bizarre in its composition and dynamism how can things be run purely by reason?
Easier said than done, I tried imagining this axiom enacted in real life. I realized that problems arise when we forget the non existence of any axioms in the first place. These words I am writing now make no sense unless they make you feel the need to know why I write them; you can forget the words and not follow a word of my argument. But if you are wondering why you are still reading them, you have taken the step I was talking about.