BEYOND THE BINARY:  ART, TRIVIA AND THE POLITICS OF INTERPRETATION

BENOY P.J

‘And if it is a despot  you would like to dethrone see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.’

-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet.

This show of paintings by seven  artists- Ameen Khaleel, Sunder.O, Subair.M,  Siddharthan.K, Louimari Maudet, T.R.Udayakumar and  Teppo Valkama is titled ‘Traces of journey’ and highlights a recent phase in the artistic activity of these artists. The works, taken together, can be seen as various ways of addressing the complex questions of visuality, especially those put forth by an environmentalist/ micropolitical critique of hegemony.

Ameen Khaleel works  in a subdued and minimalist style utilizing  diverse materials, objects, digital images,  video clippings etc. In the work  ‘Kanji kuzhi’ (Pit for food) he refers to the old system of serving food to dalits in pits made on the ground outside, and to the place name found in many places in Kerala (at least Alapuzha, Kottayam and Idukki districts have these) which may have come from this caste practice. The work alludes to the enforced subordinate position accorded to the lower castes and the elaborate practices of humiliation that go along with it. Ameen uses sand on drill cloth and digitally transferred images with diligence to put forward a memory from previous history, and creates a visual narrative, even while sticking on to his paired down and minimal style.

In ‘Void  vessels’ Ameen works with digitally transferred images of vessels used for domestic purposes on canvas which brings forth the memories of those vessels, baskets etc, as containers used for storing, carrying  or other day to day purposes, the images of these vessels, naturally, are as  dysfunctional as a Kosuth chair or Magritte’s pipe.

The image of a ‘Fat Patriot’ inspired by Mu Boyan, is that of the limbless torso of a plump man in his underwear. The image also reminds us of the many figures of George Grosz which depict gluttunous capitalists. While it does evoke the memory of the ideological underpinnings of nationalism, it also does take recourse to a stereotyped view about the human figure, which tends to devalue a fat torso as something removed from the ‘ideal’ one, and hence somehow unfit. This complication is also one that involves a necessity for a micro level understanding of the discourses around ‘ideal’ bodies, which are also ideological constructs, and hence deeply problematic (some of the most virulent patriots from Hitler to Golwalkar were quite lean figures.)  At the same time, patriotism itself, a phenomenon that took its present form around the  seventeenth century, is also basically based on a territorial sense, which, anybody acquainted with history would know to be transient  and  subject to periodic changes.

   In the installation Ladder-I, composed of a burned and broken ladder kept against a wall and the video clipping of a man in blue dress repeatedly climbing up and down a ladder, he attempts to act out the drama of common man’s aspirations caught up in a move  towards upward mobility and the impossibility of its realization in the present. To Ameen the everyday moves for survival are of no great significance, since they are at the best delusions of a certain kind which have no material truth. The significance of strategies for survival, while of great significance to the marginalized, appear to be betrayals for other people, though they wouldn’t be reluctant to accept whatever possibilities are offered to them in their own lives. This compulsory notion that those who are marginalized should always remain so, and that any attempt at bettering their lives have to be seen as betrayal of the collective dream is a powerful tool in the service of hegemony, since it shifts the blame for maintaining an exploitative system from the ruling classes/ castes to the moral choices of the subordinated people. It also acts to ensure that  the subordination  cannot be questioned, since a radical questioning of the legacies of oppression can only be best understood by people who have also had the opportunity to get a comprehensive knowledge about how privilege and exclusion  works at various levels in a society.   To ensure that conditions of depravity prevail constantly for the marginalized and the minorities is also a way for ensuring the maintenance of hegemony.  

The landscapes in K.Sidharthan’s paintings are ones that are undergoing many changes, often with sign’s of ongoing construction works, especially of bridges etc, and mountainous forms or huge rocks pervading the environment, paddy fields, and the like. The rocks/ mountains are sometimes ones that stand heavy and unmoving, something that stands and makes rains fall or stops the wind etc; which are also sometimes perceived as blocking the way in the construction of new bridges or the ‘view’ for a bye-stander. The ambiguities in the discourses around these varied debates unsettle the existence of the very mountain and their continued presence becomes the subject of active controversies, when environmentalism and developmentalism  lock horns in conflict.

 The heaviness and impossibility of human transactions in the highways and bye-ways of Power is the subject of many of these works. The very highways maintained for the smooth conducting of the operations of power also do create impossibilities for the articulation of the complex subordinated political subjectivities. However, as the entwined flowering of two trees indicate, there is always a flowering of the nature, in spite of all the things that block the way.

In his works in the series ‘Haunting insight’of which two are part of this show, T.R.Udayakumar works with a dialectical sensibility, attempting to look at the exploitation of mankind and nature, and the exploiters. In the first work, which is a painting in acrylic of a long piece of wood lying on a dried up river bed, one end of which is shaped into a boat, and the other end of the trunk is dead wood with huge and pretty many layered mushrooms growing on it. Five kingfishers sit perched on the central part of the trunk and various ephemera from the sea, such as shells, conches, sea anemones, starfishes etc, are strewn on the river bed. For the artist, the reshaping of the wood into a utilitarian object(boat), and its predicament as dead wood are both tragic, since the original state of it as a live and breathing presence in the environment is forsaken in both cases. The somewhat huge and ‘obscenely’ beautiul  mushroom is basically something that grows on detritus, and the presence of the many beautiful objects all around it doesn’t give it any further  embellishment. The grey, yellow ochre, black and cobalt blue colours of the restricted palette play along well with the paintings general mood. The floating milk weed (appooppan thaadi), on the other hand is a hairy wind pollinated seed, a touch of lightness and new hope(seed) in this painting. Udayan uses the image of milkweed in a similar manner in the next painting also which is the depiction of a dried up bamboo bush on which many green snakes  are to be seen, indicating a venomous , possibly animalized presence that threatens the very environment. The binary structures that give credence to many of the works in the present show, remain an important  aspect of making value- judgments and identifying opponents, organizing the visual field in these works.

Teppo Valkama’s series of untitled works (all pigment prints on canvas) are close images of various surfaces with peeling paint, marks of nails, or small holes on the surface, a door in front of which a curtain made of thick, dirty sack cloth hangs- all little facts that hang precariously between narrative and abstraction. The curtain, one may also say, maybe something that replaces a lost door, functioning at the same time as a curtain that allows passage and as a door which asks you to keep away or leave it alone, because there is no real door and the situation is fragile and difficult. These works also continue the ephemeral quality that  the works of Ameen, Louimaria  Maudet, and Subair try to explore in various ways.

The paintings of O.Sunder included in the show are done in acrylic on canvas, and are mostly done in various shades of grey except for two works titled Ammu-1 and Ammu-7, which use a more vivid palette. For the exception of one work, all the works depict  images of solitary women in various life situations. One image that stands apart in terms of the subject of the painting is that of a pigeon on top of a pillar, titled ‘Alone’ in which we see a bird sitting all alone at the top of a pillar, painted in a style close to that of a digitally manipulated photograph in shades of grey. The loneliness of the bird, however, maybe transitory and contingent, since it is simply a matter of time that it may fly off and find some company. A visual strategy that Sunder adopts in many of the works is to follow the model of a failed graphic print, where the registration of the image was not correct, so that the same image is repeated with a slightly shifted impression, a definitive strategy  to bring the notion of a generalized imprecision in assessing the significance of these women. In the work ‘She’, the second impression is totally different from the first since the image in the background maybe that of a woman, while the image in the second impression appears to be male, bringing forth an ambiguous play of gender and bio-politics.

A spate of questions are also thrown at the viewers of these works by various artists. Louimari Maudet’s works, pigment prints on canvas, which are together titled ‘cA VOUS REGARDe’ (What are you looking at?)  are images of various trivia, especially photos of torn remains of layers of posters, peeling paint, dust ,rust on images from cinema posters, wall writings, and so on. One image repeated in many of them is that of staring eye/s that may well be that of a big brother, the eye of surveillance, or one which could also be a matter of mere accident.

The artist throws a question at you, and attempts to make you aware that even trivial things of these sorts may have things to say to one who listens and observe. Many, many things, from the effects of the passage of time,  that a poster on the wall maybe hiding so many other layers of local history,  most of which had lost their initial colours and charm in the passage of time, becoming partly torn, with other posters pasted above it, disappearing, only to reappear again when the layers are torn away, as just another layer, sometimes purely insignificant, sometimes as evidence, memory etc, or just like an yearly circle on the trunk of a tree, marking the passage of time. Continuing, perhaps, the quest of  Marcel Duchamp in his work, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même), most often calledThe Large Glass (Le Grand Verre) in another context and time. Louimari Maudet’s question, then, is a necessarily contradictory one, in a sense, there is a prompting in it, that asks one to start describing or interpreting, and at the same time, it also makes fun of the onlooker’s attempt at elaboration, because you also know that the object of your gaze could well be some trivia(denotation), into which, your perception attempts to read meaning. However, the predicament of thinking of all sorts is that it always occur  within a language or system, and so the creative endeavour can at no point be reduced by discourse to that which it denotes, to the authorial intention behind the work.

I will like to elaborate further on this question with a discussion of Subair.M’s works with pigment print and acrylic on canvas with photographic images taken from the surroundings of various public and private spaces like street, market etc. In this series of works, Subair juxtaposes images of animals and birds on to the photographs of various spaces attempting to create a tension between the ‘natural’ elements and the markers of a ‘degenerate’ capitalism. The birds, bats, and cow are all engaged in acts of survival which also turn out to be acts that problematize the logic of the market  and the signs of technological progress( bats in a vegetable market, cranes in a fish market, cow eating cinema posters, crows waiting around a bio-gas plant). The alienation of the natural world from these marks of ‘progress’ where the living beings can no more collect their food from their surroundings due to the use of devices like green houses, bio gas plants that process organic waste, use of strong pesticides, and the thrust towards cleaner environs which tend to cover up all the earth’s surface, especially in cities with concrete or tiles, so that there is not much soil left for small plants or grass to grow. This crisis in the everyday acts for survival have to a large extent driven the birds and animals away from their natural means for collecting daily food and towards institutions like the market. In a broad sense, the question for Subair seems to be the articulation of a crisis in bio-politics, a politics of survival, and the decisive interventions of capital that has driven all of the natural world towards an impossible situation. Along with the predicament of other varied species, the fate of human beings also has undergone this transformation from earlier forms of agrarian life to capital intensive agricultural  production. The use of what one may call the ‘animalization trope’ in these images, and their subtle racial/caste/ gender underpinnings are interesting subtexts to this narrative of ‘bio-politics’. The increased levels of pollution of the air, water, and land has perpetuated a grave crisis with the gradual rise in temperature, spillages from nuclear waste damaging large areas permanently, the environmental consequences of the maintenance of centers of tourist and mass pilgrimage, wide use of plastic, and damaging chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides etc, and the remnants from the many wars fought all around the globe at the instigation of the Military – industrial complex, have all had most damaging consequences for earth. The works hold a somewhat cynical attitude towards these transformations and is without any considerable hope about them.

The work titled ‘No more reading’ is a somewhat crudely rendered juxtaposition of the digital image of a street where a cow is seen eating a cinema poster on the wall, standing on a pavement. The image is not exactly a photograph but a photo-montage or collage on to which the image of a cow has been painted in. It re-circulates popular imagery(Cinema posters), memory(the scene reminds one of John Abraham’s movie ‘Amma Ariyan’ where a cow is seen eating up a cinema poster at the site of a struggle.), pop criticism, certain notions of ‘bio’-politics, a problematization of ‘art criticism’ as an evaluative and discursive ensemble(the title ‘No more reading’) and so on to arrive at a somewhat innocuous and mundane visual artifact.

In the initial injunction in the title, as well as in the composition of the work is a somewhat  ‘open’ posture of rejection  of any attempt at ‘reading’ the work (which is also seen as the cows eating up of a poster for want of better food) which is seen as a threat because reading renders the artist’s attempt recognizable, thereby also bringing on political sanctions etc., or neutralizing it by taking it out of its immediate context and examining its socio-political and aesthetic ‘connotations’ within the vast repertory of visual images everywhere. This posture of rejection, one may see as an instance of what is called the ‘intentional fallacy’ at work. Subair do not attempt to render the space in a naturalistic manner (the ‘tilted’ angle at which the ‘ground’ is placed may well make the cow slide down the line), and the pavement appears to be a wall separating the cow from the earth which could provide it with nourishment, while  the standing wall has also  become one large narrative space, a screen on to which the story is projected. Since the very act of the cow is a mundane and everyday event, which is also at the same time a recirculation or regurgitation of a past political moment, a ‘citation’ as in much of academic art, which could come in for various reasons, sometimes to keep alive the memory, sometimes to tell a new tale, or maybe also to infuse the trivial event with some additional glory by making a spectacle of the ‘history’ of the gaze and the cultural capital/ connoisseurship which could discern and perceive these intricacies. It is interesting to note that the site of this ban/ taboo (the work ‘no more reading’) is, at its very inception, always already discursive, rendering the order to desist from reading altogether impossible. The ban or taboo, as elsewhere, is, more than anything else a mark made at a site of contestation, at a place where differences of opinion persist, and where the debate has so far run into a stalemate for want of better insights, or where the articulation of hegemony has forcefully made a truce ( sealing the debate which was showing potentials of overturning it) favourable to the interests of Power. Popular consciousness retains the memory of the reaching of this ‘threshold’ with the recirculation of its marker, the taboo around which the debate had stumbled or was arrested by the workings of authority. In spite of, or precisely because of this injunction, the processes of thought are always in constant circulation around this site, and the various subjectivities involved constantly trying to overcome the stalemate through fresh insights and ever new conceptual frameworks that could help move beyond the double bind.  The first ban, one should also remember, was the one that had thrown man out of the paradise, and was one initiated by corporeal and religious authority, instituting the regime of mediations between man and god, creating segregations and binary logic, hierarchy and the like. With the institution of the taboo and the binary logic within which an apriori heirarchization and opposition of conceptual categories was promulgated (good/bad, sacred/profane, pure/ impure, idea/matter, beautiful/ugly, positive/negative and so on..)  the equivalence accorded to conceptual categories and worldly actors in paradise was overturned (remember the notion of equality that shines through the instance of the story of iblis in the Koran- Iblis is the angel who had refused to bow to Adam, because he couldn’t accept the equality accorded to Adam since he was made of mud, the primary injunction being the apriori rejection of hierarchy.). The trajectories of thought that followed in the wake of the authoritarian interests underlying binary formulations could never  move beyond hierarchy because, in a binary the opposition maintained between categories was set in place to ensure the secondary status of the supplement, which was seen as incapable of becoming equivalent to the first part. There are junctures in history at which the balance of power shifts decisively and degrees of equivalence make their appearance demanding a cancellation of the binary system through a move towards more complex formulations. The notion of kaliyuga, then, is such a threshold at which the old binary order would work no more, and the society has to move on to a more complex articulation. The institutions of worldly power try in every way to avert this eventuality, which could only mean that the egalitarian paradise is about to be regained, and will want the world to go back through another loop of time, for which they violently attempt to curtail the ascendance of multivocality, the new regime of speech, and even the binary system in which there is still a place for the other, albeit in a secondary position (which has already shown its weakness and is about to be replaced by more complex structures), and go back to a system of stricter taboos and univocality (Advaita). Univocality is basically a system of pure deception(Maya) because it is a system of thought that would like to deny the very existence of thought, because thought is always and necessarily a move beyond a singularity, a move between two or more points, but the world of Power is no more ready to accommodate the binary which it had so far used because it had exhausted its utility and had already started showing signs of succumbing to a more complex conceptual and worldly system. Buddha and his sangha, on the other hand are the evidences of the ascendance and existence of such a new regime, a regime in which everybody can attain their endarkenment(project of common good), a move beyond good and evil, not exactly Neitzche’s, since it was still premised on the binary formulation of materialism/idealism and had to inevitably give way to nihilism, but of a Buddhist variety as seen in the Dhammapada:

”If your mind is not troubled,

If your thought is not perturbed,

If you have left behind good and evil,

Wakeful, you will have no fear.”

The micro level contestations which such an epochal mobilization could have initiated, which would render all authority contestable, then, one may say, is the threshold of/to the paradise, the land without taboos, without criminals, the land of equality, freedom and the profound equivalence that rests on God. Maveli nadu, was one such paradise, which could not be suppressed by Power, and had become a space of infinite grace.

THE METHODIC PYTHON

The lethargic python had finished its food and wriggled a short distance before going to sleep behind the walnut chair. Its present day mate, the viper, moved about agitatedly and tried to figure out what to do with this huge and bulky torso that had by now reduced itself to three distinct stages, namely, eating/ tasting, wriggling and sleeping. She was conscious that she had moved in with him because she knew that he had some extra food left every day and that since he was asleep most of the time, or wriggling, as usual, that would have spared her the ordeal of having to put up with husbandly rubbish for an undue amount of time. And since she knew that he had by then acquired methodical habits,  that his schedule was already so tight, that he wouldn’t be able to wriggle away too far, but would soon fall asleep, with his mouth half open and bits of smelly saliva oozing out of it. It was of some convenience to her because she had left home for some purpose and did not want to explain things plainly to him till there was a better understanding between them, and also, till she was ready for it. During the initial phase, she had found it somewhat comfortable, because the arrangement seemed  that perfect and she knew that the python was a nice and hospitable person, and very well versed in all things to do with worldenomics, which made things  much easier for her. She had left home in undue haste, had very little luggage, and had just barged into that house which she knew was of a kindred person, a friend. He was also not too hesitant to lent her the comfort of his house, because he could easily figure out her need for a place to stay, and seemed to know that she did not wan’t to explain things too much at that point.

The python had a little one, and his wife had left him for some reason, which also gave her some opportunity to baby sit, which also gave her some alibi to be useful, without showing off too much. The viper knew that she looked thin and had a somewhat workable poison sac, which she had acquired after her rude awakening into the world. She had tried to maintain a very pleasant countenance all through her young years, and was mild and quite attractive in her own ways. But then, somehow or the other the world had rudely jolted her out of her complacency  and it was no more possible for her to live in her own home without risking, what she had then come to realize, was her own freedom. This was the general context in which many people, especially women had to move out from their own houses in the area to better pastures in which at least some modicum of freedom could be maintained. She also had other reasons to keep it a secret, because her father was an influential person in the police force, and hence she couldn’t easily move out and about without risking being recaptured by the family and security networks. She knew that she was safe there, and that the secret could not be divulged without undue risk, and that no other family would easily take her in, but that the python would do so, not out of any great philanthropic intent, but because he had some sense of propriety and would understand the predicament of a young woman who had to leave her home and was not to be seen in the open. The python, as some of her friends had observed was not too shy at taking food, and so it had some imagined prospect of  having a dish of viper if it offers itself, though he was averse to having any without due consent. His wife, she had come to learn, was still around, but since they had already escaped the ‘family’ business, and had settled on somewhat libertine grounds.

For her, she was not very sure why she was there also, since the people who had instructed her to go there  were also very secretive and could not further divulge much, considering the tough situation that was at hand. She had escaped home to avoid the prospect of the caste based barter of marriage, also secretly toying the idea of meeting her lover, who she knew did really like her though she had never talked to him privately, even though they knew each other somewhat through common friends. She had expected her common friends who were also vipers like/unlike her to help her out on this count, but the situation was such that this lover of hers, a person of some repute in the county was looked up to as a valorous lover, well known for his frivolity, frugality and lasciviousness, apart from being a jack the ripper of all sorts of cultural antiquary, mockery and the chancellor of adultery. So, most of their common friends were also in love with him even while otherwise married, and were not very eager to divulge much information on this count, or felt that he was too lecherous to be accommodated, or took it as her private issue which had nothing to do with them. She had expected her father the police officer to do whatever was possible within his purview to stop them, and had no illusions that there was any limit to his brutality, because she had known him from her childhood and was well aware of his hierarchic micropolitics and potential  for the most violent genocidal behaviour , if his caste and family honour was at stake.

The python prided himself for having wriggled through all the four rooms of the house, though the viper found herself more or less confined to the babies room, virtually stranded there without a second place to go, and the by now monotonous task of feeding, washing and clothing him. She soon realized that the python had his steady flow of eateries, brought from the choisest baker’s and confectioner’s of the county,  and had also  developed an elaborate taste for boring academic music, thought about himself as a connoisseur of the elite arts, and had developed the habit of giving satsangs in his special room dedicated to himself. He also prided himself of being almost everything in the political, social and cultural universe, carrying a veritable sneer on his face about those very people for whom he seemed to be arguing the case, as well as for those opposed, which she found to be somewhat boring and stiflingly offensive. One day when the baby was sleeping and she trying to figure out the complications of the situation by dismantling the baby’s bicycle and trying to reassemble  it, her elder brother who was a doctor by profession and was somewhat licentious as regards caste and sexual morals sent her a message that he would like to see her. On her advice, he came around while the python was in his after food siesta, they exchanged a few words secretively, and her brother explained to her a few things.

“One thing is sure , dear sister, as long as you remain a virgin, has the image of a chaste person, and is yet unconnected to your lover, our father would never let you go  to him- especially because he is involved in some  movement for equality , which he abhors like anything. And I have made some enquiries about your lover, he seems to be a very sexually licentious person, almost a pervert. So it seems to be a tough situation for you- on the one hand, even if you come back to the family you know how it is with him-  he hates you now like anything for having destroyed the family name, and you know that you wouldn’t be safe with him at home also because he may well  kill you off just to prove himself right and to regain some of his lost pride. And I know that you would not like to do it also. The condition of your lover, for all that I know, is absolutely tough- because father with his resources has mobilized all possible forces to avert the future occurance of such an event in the  entire country, and the many worlds,  and is holding him in tough conditions by mobilizing all people around him, and even within the family, restricting movement and contacts  and spreading all sorts of rumours around him and so on. As for your condition, he seems to be little aware of it, and I don’t even know whether he will be ready to take you in even if you meet him.”

“That he will, I am sure”- she said without further thinking about the actual dimensions of the problem.”

“And you know- many women are actually interested in him, and he is also aware of it, and may even be said to have some interest in them, though he has not actually taken any, and I think he is not very well off, and doesn’t even  seem to have any intention to be well off, even though he seems to be somewhat well educated, which are all situations very complicated for you. Moreover,  I have heard that he abhors chastity in a woman, because he seem to have some fear about giving the pain of the first penetration to a woman. Coming to think about it, I can also see that the easiest way out for you will be to make it public that you are a woman of loose morals, which, when it becomes public will make your father discard you, and will make him move away from your lover also, since it will seem unnecessary to pursue it any further, since the damage is already done. If this can be done, then we can also try to move in and find him for you, this lover of yours, in whose house, as we know, his political allies have  induced a person as his wife for protection and control without his knowledge , because they had come to know that some very affluent people antagonistic to his politics were trying to destroy him by destroying all his connections etc., and also that many women had been seen roaming around in his county enquiring about his whereabouts- which they found scandalous and highly perverse. “

“Say who?” – the door suddenly opened and the python entered, looked  around and silently withdrew from the scene with glaring eyes and a suspicious sneer on his face.

The viper and her brother found themselves in a ridiculous position, because she had intended to introduce her brother to the python if he had come around, but now, since he had withdrawn so fast, felt  that he may have misunderstood them. The viper did go around looking for him, but surprisingly for her he seemed to have left the house for them and moved out for the sake of  civility for the time being. They both felt disturbed that they could not explain things better to him, especially because they were brother and sister and felt that it was wrong that they  were misunderstood .

But then, as for the python, it was obvious that all understanding was at least partly a misunderstanding also, and that very often an understanding could only be made by clearing up some of the misunderstanding. And he thought that the   lack of understanding between him and viper could be easily cleared up when she was ready for it, and that till then he could wait, since it could not be rushed. He was curious about why she had come to their house, in particular, unless there was some reason which prioritized him over others as an option for a woman in her condition. He had no illusions about himself in this regard, because he was well aware of the flows of his own desires and from that had made certain observations about the world  which he knew somewhat well by having gone through all the rooms of the house. He had no pretenses of his being an angel, was a inquisitive/complacent teacher, somewhat perverted himself [which he tried to hide a bit] from the public by keeping some decorum and some timings, like holding his vegetarian eating habits and timings perfect, [though the bakers knew well that he preferred the dishes when some egg, micro organisms, worms or even beaf was secretly added to it without his knowledge.], his satsangs were mostly done in the evenings, and the discourses went on till about nine. After which he had home food and retirement benefits, as usual.

Earlier on, in his initial years he had tried all sorts of philanthropic ad- ventures including UG philanthropy and e-will, but had soon found that however hard he tried nobody seemed to have believed him beyond a point, except for the bakers and confectioners, who also, as it seems had certain vested interests in him, because he was a good eater, and at least some of the dishes enjoyed him. For the rest of the world his satsangs and taped conversations were a matter for regular fun and the frolicking sounds made good for the bad music that he played out of redundant aesthetic ‘taste’ which he had acquired from some of the marquises of elite dens.

As for the rubies and pearls around him, as he would call his women folk, the python was a man of some inspiration for some time, but after a certain period they usually discovered too many consistency problems  in his arguments, because he obviously preferred certain shapes to others, opted for certain comforts and privileges which he did not want everybody to share, and so on. The musical community abhorred his taste for bhajans, and for Meera bhajans in particular, since every one around him including Meera had realized that he had a flavor for eulogies and a deep hatred for plain truths, which showed somewhat clearly that though he viewed himself as a liberal, this Kishen was not too liberal with his Gopi’s nor with other claimants to their favours, be it from his own tribe or elsewhere. Seeing that the most high brow of all art accrued to him there were at least some people around him who had started to shave off their brows altogether and go in for all sorts of ‘vulgarities’ and ‘inanities’ developing such bad taste that even an ostrich- which was said to be capable of devouring stones, thorns and broken glass- would have found itself to be too tame. But their logic was clear enough- they preferred gaali beejaas to eulogies, did not think that their taste buds were anymore developed than that of other people, and had a deep suspicion of their own ‘tastes’ so that they picked up a new taste for something or the other from somewhere or somebody every once in a while, and had no qualms at looking for it everywhere, including in drugs, porn or whatever they came across. One such guy would constantly qoute a bit from a book of poetry which he knew was an opiate of the masses, since it said plainly in its title “Leaves of Grass”:

‘I contradict myself,

I am many,

I contain multitudes”.

The viper looked around into the room and wondered whether she should try her fangs and poison sac on Mr. Python, who would have beaten a Pynchon in his game no doubt, if only he had bothered to write a novel  or two in/with his tasty tongue. By now she had also lost her initial admiration for him because she had found him to be a windbag of definite proportions, no different from the other locally available ones, or even worser for its pretensions- not any less, not any more. She had found more details about his coiffure while staying with him, because after the chance meeting with her brother she noticed certain attitudinal changes in him, felt his burning eyes on her skin, a definite change in his gait, and could hear a definite murmur going on in his head. “Who is she? Where is she coming from ? Why is she here? What are her future plans?’  which she expected him to ask her any moment, even though  she could soon see that he would rather avoid the uneasy anticedents of such questions by opting  not to ask them.

And one day, out of schedule, while she was in the bath and the baby was sleeping, the viper heard a certain rustling in the room, and as she came out o the bath in thin stockings and a towel tied around her hair, she found him in the room, gazing intently at the kid.  She felt relieved that he had decided to break the ice between them and found his presence non obtrusive, because in front of him she now felt a comfort as when she was [she imagined] with her lover, and the  nudity of her thighs and angles did not matter.

‘Huh, huh! “ she said. He turned around slowly to look at her with his greedy eyes, and she could detect a movement between his thighs, as if he were naked below his dhoti.  She tried to take away her eyes and move on to the clothesline, and immediately felt that he had felt a regret for it, for having given away a secret intent which he did not want to publish. It w as then that his wife came in, found them together, and laughed out aloud:

“ So you are still into the two-some game at home, while we all seem to have moved well beyond that school time obsession.”

She turned over to the viper and said: “so you can also move on now, lady, because you know that you cannot take in here a brother of yours, or a lover, and if anybody has to be taken it is him, and maybe the baby boy, for whom also he thinks that you are a plaything. “

“Haha” the viper laughed.” And he still has not asked you the questions that you would like him to have asked, and you have never attended one of his satsangs!”

“I am not altogether innocent,” she said- for I have overheard a few of them while I was watering the plants, and knew it to be no different from a Nun’s  priests tale!”

I remember having read this line somewhere: “Satan dresses up in a high-priests garb in the saintliness gained from his sins”, - so that his work is made easier.” The wife added in, breaking a big lie that she had held in her hand into pieces.

“I am removing this poison sac from myself now” the viper added,” for I had no intention to carry it, but I knew you  had one, even if you have seldom shown it. And now that I have seen it, I know you too have a poison sac and a forked tongue, like all others, and other people also have seen it. Now I am trying to change it into a honey sac and I am trying to move on further, because this seems to be a useful device , for I am in love, and am seeking my lover.” She moved in closer to the python and gave him a kiss on his lips, right in front of his wife.

“Huh……….” He stepped back, taken aback and fuming a little for having been exposed to the world in a new light.

“I take back this honey sac which was given to me by god, this love for the other in which everything is permissible, and have by now removed all that was poisonous in me and in the world. Now I can kiss it with a new love, born out of pain and suffering, but still so sweet and beautiful. So now earth has become a paradise for me, and I am sure you will all meet me there soon.” She whispered.

ELEGY(AHH..) WRITTEN TO SOME ' PASSIONATE' PAINTERS

There were some passionate painters
Who would never manage to buy a canvas
Even if they were rolling in money-
So passionate were they that they would quip
Every four months or so:
'I need to buy some brushes, some paint,
And I will still do it,
There is no doubt about it
And there is no need to hurry, anyway"
Then they would go on and on about
Some Bacon or Giocometti
Or the long list  of 'masters'
Whom thy seemed to have mastered
But they still couldn't find time to paint
And did not feel any need for it
Since so much has already be done-
And obviously they didn't have much to do there.

And obviously, the other sort of shabby creatures
Who were seldom called painters
Unless in scorn
Who in their thread-bare clothes
Would carry along a piece of charcoal
Or a small pen and sketchbook to draw.-
The painters of Altamirah or Ajanta
Could have been from amongst them
Or a painter from Mandla or Bastar
Who stays  in a one room house in Bhopal
And creates  his little wonders
In spite of being of no name or fame.
Those one may call
"The hunger artists"
Who though they may not have visited Hungary or France
Still had no other way but to paint.
They may not mention their passion
Because it was closer to a hunger or thirst,
So physical and material
And could no more be done away with
With some convenient theory
About the meaninglessness of art.
Because it was with painting that they tried to overcome
The meaninglessness of their present
And because it was with painting
That they were still attempting
To create some meaning
At least for their lives
If not for others.

A FALCON OF UNKNOWN MESSAGES

Sometimes on the street
A lonely ray passes through
A half smile, signs of the secret rivers
Flowing under your skin
Rising up for a moment
To change the sheen, a flapping of the eyelid
Taking one into the maze of the as yet undiscovered
And a sandstorm of passion and rage
The fumbling,
Confusion,
Quarantining, medics prescriptions,
A thousand voices that had opened up a world inside
A hidden wave emerging from nowhere
That bends one and throws him under.
The long kicks of a blocked half-back
Language chasing its own barriers
A speed of thought
A stampede, shouts and abuses
Tell tale vehicles
Probing sounds and devices
Of a million mouthed saviour
And his tentacles garnered from everywhere
Moving about
Turning everything and everyone
Inside- out.
And the antagonists recourse to
Hell fire
And scorching everyday doses of innuendo-
But there was a fire in so many hearts
One that could not be put out
And wafts of smell that came from everywhere
Going places
And a flower that had grown too large
To be hidden
The need for long walks
A faltering, dis-ease
Trips in crowded trains
Discussions at the toddy shops
Trucks and bus loads of mindless abuses
Resistances to the household boxing pits
Where brother was pitted against brother
And sister against sister.
The cafes and places where
Fascists lunged at Lovers
Forbidding the primal
Need for each other
And veils that hid our joyous togetherness

In oppressive times
From sniffing watchdogs.

Unknown deaths, aplenty,
Without reason
Sometimes medical, sometimes in accidents that suicided
The society
For a mad-dog spirit
And schisms that were raised up
By the dog-trainers of plenty
And the holy threads of purity
With their masters in the arms trade
And their wicked Gitas of fratricide
That had spread its legs over
Egalitarianisms head.

But the touch of God's grace
And the people's spartacus spirits
The songs of the sirens
The snakes dances
Baldwin's and Ra's rastas
Appachan's and Gurus tracks
All those various strands
That could not be erased
Of 'a love supreme'
And amidst the worst house arrests
A sun that still shined on
With the clipped wing of freedom
That kept on growing back.

The play of everyday sheens
On the mouth of things
Would still draw a kiss
And a gay dance outside decorum
Would flick a grenade into tall towers of drudgery.

There were skirmishes, people thrown out
Gates that closed in on themselves
Shit tracks of funereal culture
Skeleton's that came out of every closet
And the skinning and hanging of  men on the pole of shame.
The bubbles that could only find their way up to the surface,
Suffocated,
Had started envying the fishes that could move about
At the deep bottoms.
The gypsy feet with its firm tendons
And the turtles speed
All those things that vied for significance/ signification
Trips taken around many a corner
And the Power's adminstration of libido and responses
The cat and mouse games
That made out people into administrative categories
With doubts cast even on their basic human worth.
Cinema wars and war machines
Snging a lullaby
For the drone  and the embedded  wasps sting
Along with mosquito feet that kept
Alighting and moving off..

But the painted bruise had lost its palor
And become insensitive
To remain in painting
In robins, minnows and so on.
Sometimes the shadow of as yet unspoken words
Were thrown on the walls of a catacomb
Marking the slow penance of becoming something else, someone.

In the night
A hand that held her hand
Without ever having held it
A desire that broke loose from tether
And made a wild gesture in the air
A touch on the toe
Or its lack
A kiss of the mind
To the other
Over and above the turbulance.
Dances in the making
And a darkness
Like never before.