Incomplete reading of incomplete texts

The controversy that seems to have affected the ‘Tamil intelligentsia’ the last few days caught my attention and I wanted to talk about some things that bothered me. I’m still too lazy and disinterested to write anything coherently, though. I’ll just make some broad observations around various reactions that it’s garnered and some that are specific to the article itself.

Ethnography/ethnographic research was among the most seriously contested fields in the mid-later part of the 20th century. This article gives a very good breakdown of the challenges that it faces to this day. Unlike quantitative studies that sociologists engage in, ethnography tries to present narratives that aren’t necessarily meant to be extrapolated (the qualitative vs quantitative camps within sociology have a history of their own). It presents an account of a people in a place at a time (or within a time frame). It’s a form of record keeping that is supposed to be done by people who are trained scholars capable of providing contexts and ideological clarity along with the observations they’re recording. Such endeavours are invariably susceptible to all kinds of bias -- wilful, unintentional, editorial etc., layered by racial, ethno-linguistic, ideological etc. The onus has long been shifted to the reader to extract knowledge from these studies. It’s for them to apply qualifiers and retain misgivings on top of those applied by the researchers/authors themselves. It is definitely not meant for popular consumption by untrained readers.

The reader may not like the ‘findings’ presented by the authors. It may not be politically correct. It may be highly problematic when situated within a larger socio-political/temporal context. But none of this should automatically lead to the assumption that the authors did not approach the study in good faith or that they employed unscrupulous/unethical methods to obtain their data. It’s highly possible that it indeed is the case but the reader must resist the urge to embrace that conclusion immediately.

About the EPW article

It’s poorly written (this includes, verbiage, translation, phrasing etc) and it could be accused of taking a patronizing or even a casteist tone -- it doesn’t help that all 3 authors were either OBC or upper caste. Even so, in a purely academic sense, it’s completely irrelevant.

It makes quite a few leaps in terms of what participants seem to say and the immediate conclusions that the authors draw from it. It is unknown how many participated and whose stories/accounts were taken as median to string the narrative. I’m also aware that this is EPW -- which is not the most prestigious journal around -- and it’s an ethnographic study. So I know that the ‘takeaways’ are to be situated specifically to that village and read as a kind of oral history that cannot be extrapolated.

For now I’m going to play the contrarian and choose not to impute any bad faith and assume that in spite of the shortfalls -- in terms of declaring the reason for conducting the study, the basic methodology behind it, the number of participants, the exact reason this village was chosen (other than it being close to Chennai) etc. -- it should be read from a value neutral standpoint.

Reading the broad thematic progression of the article (at least, the way I would summarize it[1]), one might find similar patterns of behaviour in many communities that are in flux; trying to negotiate racial inequality, transition/thrust into modernity, postcoloniality etc.

Some key points that seem to have bothered many

Dalit youths from Thirunur can’t seem to hold a steady job; they engage in acts of provocation and violence; they spend beyond their means to dress and appear attractive/fashionable; they woo upper caste women to assert their masculinity.

I would like to lay out a hypothetical scenario and see how it plays out for the reader.

A dalit ethnographer who has an ‘unblemished’ track record among dalits and progressives wants to record the “changing meanings of masculinity” in a village in Tamil Nadu. She employs an algorithm that picks a village at random filtering for population > 2000 and dalits to be > 50% (because she wants to study dalit majority villages). She arrives in the village and starts interviewing willing participants after explaining in great detail what the interview is meant for and where their words might end up (the methodology including the consent form is approved by an ethics committee composed of dalits, and non-dalit academics).

At end of the study she makes the following observations among others:

Dalit youths from randomly selected village can’t seem to hold a steady job; they engage in acts of provocation and violence; they spend beyond their means to dress and appear attractive/fashionable; they woo upper caste women to assert their masculinity.

Should she publish them given the potential for it to be misappropriated by those with vested interests?

Should she have abandoned the project in the middle once she realized it’s not going in a ‘desirable’ direction?

Should she ignore the median responses and pick the ones that make for more politically correct conclusions that are also less prone to problematic reading when stripped off context in social media?

Let’s say the researcher goes ahead and publishes the article after much deliberation.

Is the reader going to claim that it is impossible for such readings/observations to occur in such circumstances? If so, is it because the reader knows or did a study he/herself (in the exact same village at the exact same time) that contests the other study’s findings?

Exactly on what basis is the reader saying that it’s completely falsified or biased? Wouldn’t it be puzzling if the reader dismissed ethnographic studies because they don’t follow the scientific method and yet their own dismissal has no scientific basis?

Given this researcher is a self identifying dalit woman from rural Tamil Nadu, what is the disgruntled reader going to accuse her of? Being a turncoat?

But the reader need not worry for it is only a hypothetical situation. In reality the reader is free to furrow into the authors' identities at the expense of the points made in the study itself.

My personal opinion on the ‘problematic findings’

1. Dalit youths from Thirunur can’t seem to hold a steady job; they engage in acts of violence

Historically, people from marginalized groups have often found it difficult to fit into modernist/capitalist sites such as factories and other regulated workplaces (one can include schools in this too). Many first nations people of Canada are caught in a cycle of unemployment, substance abuse, crime and incarceration. Almost all studies implicate the residential school system and the government policy that has consistently failed them for decades. No one accuses the researchers for painting the indigenous people in a poor light. That they cannot hold a steady job or that they engage in violent/delinquent behaviour is a direct result of their historical positioning and its readily acknowledged (at least among those who aren’t halfwits) [2]. It’s frustrating to read dalit intellectuals/'observers' not give their own youth this minimal 'concession' after enduring hegemonic violence and disenfranchisement for centuries. If they’re able rise above it -- as overwhelming majority of them have -- great, but it’s understandable if they cannot. It’s no small moral burden to overcome and they don’t owe it anyone. (Please refer to Fanon on this topic and also bell hooks' critique of Fanon.)

The first instinctively driven priority for most members of disenfranchised groups often is to achieve parity (yes, I'm qualifying this statement on multiple levels); not just in aspects that are socio-political or economical but also in simple acts of peformativity, gendered or otherwise. The moral/ethical/rational considerations are secondary [3].

2. They spend beyond their means to dress and appear attractive/fashionable; they woo upper caste women to assert their masculinity.

This was recorded in the most value neutral sense for the most part, except when they discuss the economics of it where there’s a hint of paternalistic critique for their ‘irresponsible’ behaviour.

The second part of it needs to be addressed with the reader’s views on sex and sexuality.

Mine align with what is legally recognized in most ‘developed’ countries. I do not place sex within a moral framework. A man can lie about his age, job, intent to marry or any number of other details. As long as the sexual act itself is consensual the many falsities that it was predicated on is still immaterial. (I’ll say vice versa just for the record.) For instance, I find it hard to sympathize with those who are sad because they had sex with the 'wrong person' or for the 'wrong reasons'. It's unfortunate that that's what they have internalized from their lived realities and have not been able to transcend it but I just do not subscribe to that value system. (I am saying this fully aware that sex, class and dignity are intertwined  discursively in various degrees all over the world.)

So I don’t have a problem with men ‘targeting’ women from certain groups. Even if it’s with a ‘sinister agenda’: to ‘entrap’ them into a ‘false marriage' just to extort a ransom from the bride. It is unethical at worst and even that because of the social context in which it happens. Outside of it it’s just a laughable notion. (Please don’t muddy this with actual criminal acts involving children, revenge porn or related threats, and coercion.)

Nevertheless, I do need to remind that nowhere in the article is there a suggestion that the dalit youth want to ‘entrap’ upper caste women with such ulterior motives. It is stated as a matter of fact based on the participants' own words. They should have qualified certain acts as commonplace among youth in general -- especially for readers who are not well versed with the larger milieu -- but this kind of 'incompleteness' is not unusual in such studies. They follow their own dialectic with contestations and correctives coming from within academia. The EPW article begins with faulty methodology and arrives at faulty conclusions. This is perhaps where a dalit reader may not be as generous and ascribe malicious intent (while I would stop at egregious error in judgment).

Final thoughts

The reason I wanted to write about it is not because I am interested in the topic or I personally care about the authors of the article. It was more in response to the outrage and their premises. It is to point to the possibility that in spite of a robust methodology, a larger sample size, a rigorous theoretical framework accompanied by exhaustive literature review and a clear conscience from the researchers, 'problematic' findings do occur. I think it's very important then that we stop and question the bases for the outrage itself.

For instance, there's a claim that Thirumavalavan instructed dalit youth to lure/entice upper caste women, popularized by Ramadoss and many believe it. All I have seen is a rush to 'clear' Thirumavalavan from this accusation; I have yet to find someone who says "so what if he did?" in response.

An individual/groups (supposed) disposition for violence, engagement in 'unscrupulous' sexual activity (or just its markers and 'rituals') etc., have been engineered to dismiss the disenfranchised's historicity and situatedness by hegemonic forces. It is critical that we disengage from that polemic and ethos even as we debate the merits of a study that makes those observations.

Of course, I would be sternly reminded of the social reality within which these ideas are put forth and how one cannot be dismissive of those concerns. I would concede that much too, but our ideological positions cannot always be dictated by complicated, regressive social realities.

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Notes:

1. The village ‘belonged’ to the land owning mudaliars and the dalits were daily wagers working in the former’s land. The economic dependency ensured that the caste structure remained unchallenged (with its concomitant effects from emasculation to lack of agency of the dalits). At one point the landowners migrate out of the village due to various reasons and the dalits simultaneously get to own more agricultural land and find other modes of employment. The dalits now outnumber the mudaliars as well. The relative economic independence and new found strength in numbers embolden them to act out their hitherto suppressed masculinities. This nascent masculinity, not as materially substantiated as that of the mudaliars of the yore, is dynamic and manifests in various forms -- drinking and smoking as acts of performative transgression, teasing/harrassing uppercaste girls etc -- that are often a result of being the actors in a certain dialectic. If one were to overlook the poor structure and bad writing, the article progressively illustrates the potency of historical materialism that undergirds the roles taken on by the ‘oppressors’ and the ‘oppressed’. The point about the victimization of women on both sides of the caste hierarchy is cursory at best, though.

2. This includes the hostility and prejudices they encounter in the form of institutionalized racism, sexism, casteism etc.

3. The 'aspirational brahminness' exhibited by non-brahmins in large cities like Madras is an example of this.

Addendum:

In light of other revelations around this study -- the second version of it which was included as part of a larger research -- that I learnt about after writing the post above  it is hard not to attribute bad faith to the authors. C Lakshmanan's response in EPW -- whose existence I was not aware of either -- in fact follows the exact rhetorical tract I had claimed as imperative for one to question studies such as these. It also adds to my other claim that "'[t]hey follow their own dialectic with contestations and correctives coming from within academia."

Many of the reactions that prompted me to write the original post were also made before the information gained traction (about the second version and C Lakshmanan's response in EPW).

The kuleshov effect (kind of)

In Paatal Lok, there is a scene in which young Tyagi chases a boy down and breaks open his skull with the brain matter scattered out. It's a macabre shot in the first go. The viewer later learns that Tyagi’s sisters were raped (less than a suggestive shot but gut wrenching all the same) and he murdered his cousins to avenge them and the shot is revisited. This time the viewer, one imagines, is less horrified. Maybe even finds it satisfying.

It reminded me of my tweets while talking about the film Yudham Sei (2011).

'Rape revenge' narratives by 'nature' engage with the spectator's personalized morality that s/he also 'knows' as universally shared. Rape, in general, is presumed to warrant all kinds of violence.

— englishtamil (@englishtamil) February 11, 2011

On spiritualism and the 'search'

A friend and I were talking about religion/spirituality etc and he shared the video below and asked what I thought about the exchange between Russel Brand and Ricky Gervais.

I left this as a comment in the video:

The notion that the extra-material manifestation of the biological stuff (blood, brain, the nervous system and what have you) has within itself the capacity to transcend its material origins and somehow connect/communicate with other such manifestations is exactly what drugs are likely to induce.

A simpler form of what I've said above: the idea that your mind can connect you with the stuff of the universe is just bullshit.

This theory has been put forth in different variations for at least 3000 years with no progress. This side should at least demonstrate a very insignificant outcome of that possibility: say, prove telepathic communication with someone in the same room, meditating or just drugged up. What the fuck is the point otherwise? This quest for universalization (of whatever) is just nonsensical even in its purported goals, let alone the possibility.

Brand, you might want to watch The Matrix again and convince yourself that all those people who are literally plugged in are just meditating in a gooey medium as they are 'talking' to each other in the Matrix. That's the closest we're going to get. Also don't forget, stasis cannot lead to contentment, let alone bliss.

Now, there will never be a universally acceptable answer to the why question (fuck, we can't even convince everyone in the world that the Earth is spherical). So the wise thing to do is to declare that it's not a question worth answering for others. If one has that question, it's best they come up with the answer themselves for themselves.

Thankfully, there are so many who are seriously focussed on the how that the why becomes more and more irrelevant (while, yes, the vice-versa will always be true as well). And the how side has added so much to life. Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein and everyone from that pantheon has contributed to answering the how and in doing so has re-shaped the answer to the why.

YouTube Gold: 2

From here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgvvfSvg2bQ

Lost in not-sharing-a-sense-of-humour

With the whole COVID-19 lock-down and the apparent sense of doom that many seem to share -- that I definitely do not -- I've been re-watching some of my old favourites. Melancholia is in my top 10. As I was reading some trivia around it I was reminded of the controversy Lars Von Trier was caught in during the screening in Cannes.

Here's a video of it:


The joke is so simple and yet it was lost on the audience. I sincerely apologize for breaking it down (or butchering) but here it is: 

Part 1: He grew up thinking he was a Jew; a self-loathing Jew (as is so common among Jewish artists/comedians - it is at least an archetype that they publicly embrace for comedic purposes -- to the extent it becomes tiresome). Later he learns that he isn't a Jew. The question then becomes: is a self-loathing Jew who is not a Jew, a Nazi? 

So many people before have joked about how they understand Hitler/serial killers etc. Take this one from Family Guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTO6fAJf1GM  

It’s a common form that has many variants. Here’s one from Bill Bur about beating women (that I personally detest, especially the joke): https://youtu.be/mIOY2ezMy9A 

Part 2: No true progressive/left-liberal will be uncritical of Israel. This part, however, often splits the room even when the underlying humour is construed as intended. Islamophobia runs too deep in modern political discourse that only the ‘far-left’ is conscientious enough to be critical of Zionism. The far-left and people like Lars.

Part 3: He’s reflecting on the bourgeois media’s apparent gasps. He could see that his joke isn’t received well and he himself offers the reductionist headline they are likely to go for anyway: ok, I’m a Nazi, happy now?

Larry David, for instance, would have sold this joke very easily.

From twitter: feeling smug

• My colleagues in the next cubicle are talking about God, atheism etc. Pretty juvenile stuff, really. Two thoughts strike me: ...1/2 Aug 23, 2010
• 1. I can walk to them, start talking and make them feel like idiots..and then feel smug about it 2. I can feel smug about it as is. Aug 23, 2010

Memories: assholes in kindergarten

Dindigul in the mid 80s was a big town that boasted a handful decent English medium schools and a dozen or so Tamil medium schools of which some were well known even in the neighbouring districts.

My schooling started in JK Matriculation Higher Secondary School, popularly referred to as 'public school' (I know, doesn't make any sense). My school was started in the late 70s, I think. It had pretty decent facilities and had some decent teachers working for it [1]. We even had an old white lady as the principal for a few years. But it truly was public and unremarkable otherwise. The students were from a wide range of backgrounds, from the fairly poor to the really rich. Skin tone composition must have been: a lot of dark brown, some light brown, some darker and a few Kamal Hassan-level light skinned.

UKG:

Ramu came from what seemed like a poor family. Dark skinned, runny nose, messy hair and looked out of place (yes, even for this 'unremarkable' school). We all wore the same uniform but his shirts and shorts had buttons missing, safety pins taking their place. Shirt almost never tucked in because the trousers were too loose without the button or the belt. His shoes were barely together and his socks remained loosely curled around his ankles. Just remembering his appearance makes me want to cry. It's an image that has haunted me for over 30 years. Every school I went to had kids that fit a version of this mould.

Manoj did not strike of anything in an obvious way. He was light brown, thin, not too tall and do not recall him being overtly rich. Only thing that struck was that he already had a posse. There were at least 3 other kids who followed him around and was definitely the most vicious among the bullies.

Manoj subjected Ramu to some of the worst bullying I had ever seen (it did not stop until Ramu left the school in grade 4). Among the many deplorable things that Ramu endured the worst must have been the one in which I participated. Manoj once picked up Ramu's water bottle and had more than half the classroom pee into it. I don't know where the teacher was, but the water bottle was passed along under the desk and each boy took his turn peeing in. I don't know if some refused. I remember thinking about it briefly before obliging. I think I wanted to appear favourable to Manoj more than I felt bad for Ramu. The most distressing thing about the incident was that Ramu just sat at his bench in the back as always and did not protest or cry. He just appeared detached and his eyes seemed to say "well, I don't know expect any better from you little assholes".

It was a class about 30, ~20 boys and ~10 girls no one reported it to the teachers. We were just 4 year old kids, right?

________________________
 Notes:

1.  My faintly informed theory is that it was a time when college graduates who spoke good English only did slightly better than their counterparts who spoke poor English. So a school that paid Rs 600/month to a 3rd grade maths (and science) teacher in 1988 still managed to retain someone who spoke really good English. Of course they were predominantly female and in their 20s. Also I don't mean to equate their skill level in English to their competency as a teacher. It's just that when I look back, that's pretty much the only thing I picked from junior-middle school that has contributed to my life in any meaningful way.

End is nigh?

This blog is so scantly read that I can actually write about this without raising an alarm among my loved ones. It's no secret that my desire to exist wasn't particularly strong at any point. My relationship to life and its various manifestations has been tenuous for well over a decade (as discussed in length here). Ironically, those are also the years that could be categorized as my best/productive/happy years (except the last 3). I described life 12 years ago like this: "[i]t's like a good movie that I want to keep watching....[And] all movies come to an end, but some bad movies are so bad that we cannot stand it. So we get up and leave the theatre in between. That's how I see life. If life gets really bad, regardless of what follows, you end the nonsense."

That's kind of what happened in July 2015. I underwent a relatively complex surgery in my arm and came out of it with a nasty side effect (edited the details on this out). It had a severe impact on my day to day life and it started nudging me out of the seat bit by bit. To add to that, I had another accident recently and was diagnosed with a bulging disc in my L4-5. So now on top of the existing issue and associated symptoms I have to deal with persistent back ache and the occasional tingle down my legs.

I have been trying to fix the old issue the last 3 years with not a lot of success and I'm going to try to fix the new one too. But in all honesty, I'm only going through the motions: see doctor, see physio, do stretches, try to keep busy etc. My ideological position and my disenchantment with everyday life are likely to meet sooner than later. The wobbly nihilist is becoming steadier by the day.

I figured I'll start the process of shutting down, close a few lose ends. Consider this post as my announcement, the real life equivalent of  the 'System Will Shut Down in the next 15 minutes'. The timeline I have in mind is around July 2019. I think I have enough 'courage' and pain tolerance to carry through until then but I'm not completely sure. It's also quite possible that things change and I get back in the seat. I'll be faced with many moments of irony, contradiction and absurdity [1] in the meantime, no doubt, and I might even address a few of them here.


Notes:

1. For a nihilist who's decided to end it, an announcement like this is as pointless as it gets. In fact, this only makes things difficult -- not in a direct sense because now I have to fend off the usual voices of concern and panic. But whenever I'm not a nihilist I think about what my role should be in bringing about social change. I had many aspirations on that front in my younger days and many have died out with ideological clarity and aging. Few remain. One among those is the de-stigmatization of suicide. Few philosophers have written openly in favour of it and I'd like to highlight their views in the coming months. Not just as abstract ideas but my personal engagement with them and divorce it from the usual narratives of depression and mental illness. This is a question the modern society will be faced with a lot and at some point they'll have to embrace them as everyday occurrences that are sad and devastating, commonplace nevertheless. Maybe even take it out of the simplistic prism of something that needs to be 'prevented', all the problematic dimensions of suicide notwithstanding.
 ____________________________________________________________

Update (May 02, 2019):

In spite of my reasoned pessimism (?) I have actually managed to heal my a back quite a bit over the last several months. As I mentioned to some of my friends, my mental state was directly correlated to my state of physical being. It's still fragile and far from perfect (or the pre-2015 level), but this will do for now. So yeah, consider the the July 2019 'deadline' nullified.

On being childfree

Draft from early 2015. I think I wanted to write about two issues that could be tied at some level. On one hand I wanted to discuss the quasi caste system as envisioned in the films below and on the other discuss the ethics of having children.

Even the most positive spin one could put on the caste system – something like it being just a template of categorizing humans in way that it’s easy for self-realization/actualization and to keep the society in equilibrium; the varna system being that macro template etc. – is still only fodder for dystopian futures for Hollywood films and rightly so.

Let us consider only a handful of them but suffice it to say that there are many more that could fit into ensuing analysis neatly. Let’s leave aside the intellectual depth of each of these films for they do not necessarily concern that larger critique – by drawing a parallel to the caste system – I’d like to present though the films themselves.

Some noteworthy films include:

Superman

Snow Piercer

Divergent

On Reproduction:

I’ve written about being childfree before, but I think it’s perhaps important that I revisit it now – when I’m about to enter my mid 30s where my stand could be taken a little more seriously. Although ideally this author could well be dead and it’s the idea that needs scrutiny by the reader.

One of the most important reasons in this list is that the choice and individual makes in bringing another sentient being into this world – a system which may or may not be hospitable, its customs and believes accommodative or alien etc. – is fundamentally a gamble.

The irreversibility of the (possible) horror of childhood has to be the worst possible outcome. And I’m not even talking about children born into poverty or disability or even perceivably unfavourable conditions such as physically/sexually abusive households. As far as the argument goes the point is made already. What follows is just gravy.

It’s easier, perhaps, to start with my own childhood, but also would like to draw on those of Andre Agassi and Yuvraj Singh as they saw it well into their adulthood (I’d like to say “how they see it now”, but I’m fully aware that some of these assessments tend to rest on the fickle side of one’s mind than steady).

My earliest memory right now is the first day I was left in school by my father. I think I could recall a few moments prior to that, but it’s possibly quite corrupted by various accounts I’ve heard of since and some fully imagined. As with most children of the day I was rattled when my father left me in the classroom and started to walk away. I screamed and sobbed so much that I vomited whatever I ate that morning on the desk which prompted the ones sitting beside me to cry out as well. Not to be poetic and all but my reaction to day 1 was a sign of things to come: I wasn’t going to enjoy the next 14 years very much. (Actually, as it turned out, it was 18.)

Sparing the minutia and even some notable events, the pattern was set. I didn’t understand why I had to go to school or why I had to do homework even in the simplest sense -- which is that that’s what everybody does and you do it too or is it you do it otherwise you get the beatings. I got a hang of the beatings as a consequence of not doing homework sooner than the former. Because, I was slapped in the face with open palm (yes, I’m intentionally describing it the way it is in legal parlance vis-à-vis domestic abuse), slapped with a wooden ruler on my open palm, sometimes the calf and few knocks to my head. Usually delivered by the teacher sometimes a fellow students and myself at others (for some reason I took a lot of pride my in knocking myself hard)

Point: Childhood and something like racism or casteism have a lot in common. Much like white people who grew up in the ‘burbs without witnessing/trying to understand the horrors of racism or Brahmins with casteism, people who go through relatively uncomplicated childhoods seem to not understand the real horrors that are inherent to it. Much like the former, they too seem to believe that the system is benign and well intentioned and it’s only hands of a few bad people.

Zoned out: view from the front window

Things I could see through my windows on either side, facing the street at various times of the day.

East Asian man delivers food to white people - opposite
Black woman delivers food to white people - two houses up the street
Brown man delivers food to white people - immediate neighbour to the right
Brown man delivers food to white people -  diagonally opposite
Black man delivers food to white people - two houses up the street
Brown man picks up white people in Uber - immediate neighbour to the right

Youtube gold: 1

This comment chain made me laugh so hard

Police in Tamil Cinema

Note: Publishing the draft of a post that I started writing in 2013. I think I stepped in a few times in 2014 but was discouraged by the sheer work required to make concrete assertions as opposed to sloppy bullshit. Sometimes I wish I could give up some intelligence to gain disposition for hard work/discipline (especially in academic endeavours). 5 years later, I have not made any progress on the research side of this topic. It's sad that I have a note within the draft. Fuck.

From the 2013-2014 draft:

Note: I would like to be forthright about some things before you continue on to the post. I wanted to write a some what researched essay on Mysskin's movies vis-a-vis his portrayal of the police and other civil servants in his films. I wanted to discuss it within at least two contexts: a. the perceived reality of the role of police in law enforcement, crime and corruption by the people [1] and b. the evolving, constructed, fragmented reality of the above on screen. Ideally, I would like to have (re)watched at least parts of a dozen films each from the last 4 decades, read a book or two and several journal articles. But I couldn't quite get around all of it so what follows is an attempt to present some of my views as coherently as possible purely based on my recollection of things. Think of this as an open draft that begs several revisions. Time and interest permitting, I'd like to open it up to include other films such as Kuruthi Punal and Kadamai Kanniyam Kattuppaadu.

Corruption among civil servants in India has been known and often accounted for by anyone who had to deal with them -- and people, in general, do not want to -- since the early years of the colonial era. As it has been argued convincingly elsewhere, colonization is a corrupting force in itself. It is one of the unshakeable residues that most post-colonial societies, especially in Asia and Africa, are reeling from[1]. But the police is unique in that colonization is not a necessary component to explain its corruptive nature. Any group ordained with the responsibility of enforcing the law, be it the police or the military in  'graver' circumstances, is in essence given the subjective power to judge events and execute actions.

Now, let's focus on the police. It's hard for me to say if the films of the first three decades post-independence were ever explicitly critical of them even though they have always had bad name. Barring a few exceptions, the police in Tamil films of the 50s and 60s mostly enforced law in its strictest sense. After all, the mock phrase "police'nale kadaseela dhane varuveenga!" (after all, the police shows up only in the end) was inspired by numerous Tamil films that end with the 'hero' beating up the villain to pulp only to be arrested by the police with a note of gratitude. Police roles played by MGR and Sivaji Ganesan, like any other, were centered around being unimpassioned (while being compassionate, of course), dutiful and working for the greater good. It was probably in the latter half of the 70s that we see the police taking more antagonistic roles. When the likes of SA Chandrasekhar came on the scene, in the 80s, the police were 'elevated' from being mere participants of a corrupt system to those who perpetrated the crimes to serve their direct ends. The complexity of the mix progresses from distant and symbolic to ambivalent or good to the damned. In the last three decades they are mostly kept within a good vs. evil binary.

An over-simplified contrast between Shankar and Mysskin's approach to crime could be summed as follows: One is about an upright and all-powerful individual overcoming a corrupt system and the other is about an upright system overcoming corrupt individuals. It's safe to say that neither of them tread close to reality in any sense.


in light of the 7 people shot dead and several suspects killed in custody mysskin's police's purported vulnerability and victimhood is perverted.

will prolly never venture into the caste angle (it's alluded to in Virumaandi).


[1]The argument is simple: the bureaucracy under the colonial rule had no qualms about engaging in 'illegitimate' activities because the government they were 'stealing' from had little legitimacy to stand on. So when the government was handed over to India, not much changed in the civil servants' psyche, presumably.

End of draft

Bicycle Thieves

Note: Publishing a draft from 2012. Since then two more bikes have been stolen. So the count stands at 11 as of today (May 5, 2018). But the last bike was stolen back in 2013. I've had a good run since. I probably wanted to talk about my very first bike in Canada, in 2005, and how it got stolen in about 10 days of having it. I didn't bother locking that bike because I thought, well, it's Canada. Why would anyone steal bicycles here? Anyway, 13 years later, I still don't fault myself for being that gullible. I was a product of that stupid, presumptive generation (as opposed to this stupid, presumptive generation).

From the 2012 draft:

When I came to Toronto about 4 years ago, I spent quite a bit to bring my somewhat expensive bicycle from London, ON. It would have made sense to sell it and buy a new one instead of spending so much on shipping it, but it had become 'mine' already. It got stolen the first week. Unfazed, I bought another one. It got stolen the first day - when I took it to the store near by to get a lock. Left the bike out and came back to find nothing. I didn't give up (read "learn my lesson"), I got another one. This one was stolen too, the second day. So in a matter of 2 weeks, 3 of my bikes were stolen. It might be worth mentioning that I already had 2 bikes stolen when I was in London. In the years since 4 more bikes have been stolen from me bringing the total count to 9.

End of draft.

The dirty fight

Note: Publishing the draft of a post that I started writing back in 2010, I think. I might have revisited it once or twice since. I'm still not sure if I should expand the lazy cryptic here: t'ism. I decided to not use the actual t word then because I was a little paranoid about being tracked and watched over. I still am to a certain extent.

From the 2010 draft:

I was not able to view t'ism as black and white as many of my friends and the adults around me did when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. My earliest memory of thinking about t'ism is one of "why don't I feel so bad about it?" It was only in my late teens was I actually able to articulate why I seemed to 'understand' where the t'ists came from. I didn't necessarily sympathize with them. But the idea of a disproportionate force was definitely featured in my discussions about war and the options available for the weaker side. It resonated with some bitter experiences from my childhood -- one that many kids who grew up with an older brother could relate to.

When I look back, my brother wasn't a bad guy in the general sense. He was supposed to be the kid who's good at studies, disciplined, responsible, quiet etc. I hated him for all that, of course. Also I knew him differently. He knew that I could see through what many others couldn't, so there were no pretensions of keeping up that good, quiet persona when it came to a fight between the two of us. Being the bigger guy he would always win a scuffle. My best options were to wait until he least expects it and deliver a painful blow. But we were on equal footing as far as this strategy was concerned. He would do the same to me. The only thing he seemed to shy away from, due to his psychological predisposition to avoid the sight of blood or some such, was that use of sharp objects. To me, it was fair game.

I've stabbed him with a compass a few times, thrown a knife at him, slashed him with razor blade, and thrown stones at him (none of this after I turned 12). I would have some sense of guilt after the fact but in the heat of moment I had no qualms. To his credit, he maintained a 'bro code'. We both did. He's never outed me to my mother unless the damage is so severe or visible that she found out herself. The physical altercations stopped in my early teens and after a few more years of hating on each other we became 'proper' brothers in our early 20s.

I was a relatively small guy throughout my school and college days but with a big mouth. I had a flair for taunting people and delivering deeply hurtful insults on the go. Didn't matter who was at the receiving end -- the weaklings or the bullies. Now, the bullies will invariably retaliate and a physical altercation would ensue every now and then. And my go to move is to punch them right in their face. Many thought it was below the belt, so to speak, because you could leave their face permanently damaged with cut. Didn't matter to me because I knew that's not a bar that I could respect and still survive the fight [1].


1. The last time I had a proper school-yard fight was in my 8th standard. It was also the time when WWF was very popular and we were stupid enough to try to incorporate those moves in our fights and end up badly twisting our ankles or dislocating our shoulders.


End of draft. 

Sense (false) of elevation

Note: Publishing the draft of a post that I started writing back in July 2007. A few days after I returned from ooru. Basically, I wanted to talk about one might feel all important, loved etc., when they're visiting a place after quite sometime and you're there only briefly; and how all that might create a false sense of elevation and might contribute to delusions of grandeur that could fuel other more serious issues. Like, deciding to move back because things are so good over there. I'm sure this topic has been explored in greatly by 'expats' and such. So I'll leave it here.

From the 2007 draft:

It's been over a week since I got back from Madras. I've spent most of the time watching and organizing all the videos and photos that I shot there. I hadn't been there after close to two years. So everyone was obviously happy to see, well, mostly.

End of draft.

Zoned Out: Ideas for a film that will never be made - 1

The protagonist is not quite an adrenaline junkie in that he doesn't obsessively seek out avenues to get his fix, but someone who'll push it if the 'right' circumstances present themselves. The only things he's afraid of are being arrested by the Indian government on drug possession charges and full body paralysis. He rides his motorcycle like a maniac and has a cyanide capsule in his mouth -- the idea is that in case he crashes into something he'd bite the capsule and die rather than live through the unsavoury aftermath. And the prospect of him accidentally biting into the capsule makes his bike rides that much more maniacal. Equally terrifying is the possibility that as he's approaching certain death -- about 200 microseconds into the slide off the bike -- the cyanide capsule pops out before he could bite and he's left paralysed as result of the crash.

PS. No, this protagonist is not a woman.

Vetti post - 15

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babu_(actor)

Following a stunt sequence gone wrong when shooting for a film, Babu suffered spinal injuries and became paralysed in the early 1990s. He subsequently stopped working as an actor.^[3] In 1997, he worked as a dialogue writer for the unreleased film, Smile Please starring Prakash Raj, which would have marked the debut for filmmaker Radha Mohan.^[4]

A Clear Canvas

Note: This post was written in bits between Nov 2016 - Oct 2017. Publishing in its half-assed draft state because I've lost any hope of finishing it properly.

Is it just a coincidence that a small place like Goa gets to be the setting for so many Hindi films off late? No, this is not a genre that could be likened to those 'Vegas films' (in some ways, it is). This is about the special individual or a set of special individuals for whom money is not an everyday concern. They're trying to deal with 'post-money' life and and it's only natural that they take the story to a post-money space [1].

The literality of the space might be 'natural' for the film maker for s/he, perhaps, imagines his characters existing in void interacting with one another and discovering whatever save a few instances where the canvas exhibits character. Otherwise, it's just there to aid an uninterrupted flow of the narrative while the audiences aren't 'distracted' by the milieu but remain primed for a semi hypnotic experience. The literalness -- of being in Goa, Spain (or Ooty as it used to be, for Tamil film makers of the 70s and 80s) -- is probably superfluous and is either overlooked or actually considered integral, but rarely critiqued. I say probably because the audience isn't just from the subcontinent.

Consciousness of the 'backdrop' for the Indian film consumer has to be paradoxical or at least wildly inconsistent. For the individual who grows here learns to either divorce the objects and stories that occupy his/her house, neighbourhood, daily commute, the work place etc., from those that form their respective countours or exists in a state of constant mental turbulence and indignation;  usually, though, swaying between the two ends of the spectrum. The situation is not peculiar to India by any means but the disparities and injustices are particularly stark here.

An interesting contrast could be made with advertisements for cars and automobiles in general. The global format, going by most ads, is to select roads and streets that carry no semblance of its normal existence -- devoid of other cars, pedestrians and denizens of the city -- and have the car ply through it. There's no secret as to what the viewer should focus on; even distractions that could be deemed subliminal are seldom identifiable.(Just that Honda or a Lexus sold in France has its ads shot somewhere in Europe -- with cars zooming through the streets of Paris at night or the mountains of Italy -- as are cars sold in India.)

If Aamir Khan is crying over his unrequited love while sitting inside an air-conditioned Mercedes Benz S-Class stopped at a busy junction in Bombay while a 5 year old is panhandling outside in hot sun, nobody would give a fuck about Aamir Khan and his rich-man tears, would they?


Plato said that a society cannot exist meaningfully if a significant part of the people are 'checked out', in relation to drug/alcohol use -- existing in world of chemically induced sense of pleasure, disconnected from the goings on of the immediate, 'real world'. The truthfulness of this assertion then has a strong bearing on a people who are largely checked out -- by way of otherworldly religious beliefs (Marx did call religion the opium of the masses), weariness of existence worsened by the mundane etc. So people are already checked out. They have a boket vision of the background already. They're immersed into the immediate signifiers while those in the contours decay into non-existence no matter how active and dynamic, anything but still. A literal emplacement of a hazy background -- like the blue water and the sandy beaches of Goa or the green mountains and yellow fields of Europe -- is an exercise in redundancy.




1. The term post-money need not necessarily be pejorative at all times. There are issues that affect the human condition that are beyond the everyday economics of existence. Nevertheless, most earnest renderings of a narrative cannot but have it running as an undercurrent somewhere (as in, you insert money and at least some problems are solved).

On Tamil 'regionalism'

Context (you can skip it):
Sometime last year an acquaintance had asked my opinion on this piece: http://www.popmatters.com/column/from-yugoslavia-to-south-india-the-rise-of-tamil-turbo-folk/

I had known this guy (Kumuthan Maderya) before through another friend who mentioned a shitty book chapter he had written. He just came across as a complete idiot with an attitude of a dickhead. Fret not, it was all a coincidence, this guy is not all that widely known. He's just eking out a living dishing out niche sub-par academic garbage that people wouldn't find worthwhile to contest -- as many arts and humanities PhDs without a tenured position do.

Anyway, I wanted to leave a comment countering some of the asinine conclusions he had arrived at -- on the Dravidian movement and Tamil nationalism -- while trying to make a claim that was even more so. He promptly got my comment removed and I forgot about it. But the whole reason I wrote that comment was so I could use that as a placeholder for my views on the topic. So republishing here.

On Tamil Chauvnism or Regionalism

“Among the most prominent in the Indian body politic, Tamil language zealots mobilized public support for self-determination through exaggerated fears of cultural genocide under North Indian hegemony.”

I don’t care much for the article except for this ridiculous, ill-informed, prejudicial statement. It’s as if the author didn’t learn anything from MSS Pandian or Ashish Rajadhyaksha, except that quoting these names would render a faux scholarliness to an article that is mostly bullshit.

It is as tiring as it is common to come across writings that are devoid of any socio-historical understanding of the political demography of the subcontinent. It’s also equally frustrating to see people parade simplistic majoritarian views of a (united) nation and its purported virtues juxtaposed against the ills of ‘regionalism’. The author conveniently forgets the fact that the state of Tamil Nadu – a state with its own unique history and language not unlike any major European country – was de facto ruled as ‘India’ by the British empire and the independent ‘India’ wanted to whitewash it by imposing homogenized identities on it primarily through the agenda of a ‘National Language’ in the form of Hindi. The so called chauvinism was an organic opposition to an undemocratic, authoritarian decree by the ruling Congress government post-independence.

The above scenario was no different from this: Germany wins world war-2. A century passes, Nazis get diluted and gradually disappear (or there’s Gandhi 2.0 to make it happen). They’re replaced by a government that’s ‘voted in’ by all of Europe but run mostly by Germans, and one fine day they figure it’d be easier to run the ‘country’ of Germope (well, the Germans renamed Europe) if it had one national language of, guess what, German! If the English or the Spaniards protested against this, they’ll be dutifully labelled ‘language zealots’, ‘chauvinists’ and ‘separatists’. Because, you see, Europe was mostly Christian, there are old books and shit that make references to parts different parts of Europe as if it were a singular nation etc. Besides, united is always better than separated. No exceptions. Status quo is always better. Also, bigger is better.

Only bigots and nationalists (btw, if nationalist doesn’t sound insulting, how about fascist?) would even try to slander any campaign for self-determination. It’s amazing how some of these people casually categorize calls for self-determination as guided by “exaggerated fears of cultural genocide” while the status quo would be anything but.

It’s the worst kind of farce when insular status-quoists try to masquerade themselves as progressives or worse, revolutionaries.
 

People eat people world

Been trying to catchup on some of the docs from 2016. I used to be religious about it until 2011 or so. Same with electro songs too. Laziness and general dissociation from many things set in around that time and I haven’t ‘recovered’ from it since. What I’m doing now is just a consciously driven exercise to re-establish that life bit by bit, although I’m aware that it’s futile.

Anyway, random docs have started to show up in my recommended list in Youtube and among them was one on Mao Zedong (Tse Tung as many of us were taught in school, in India). I had seen this documentary when it was on TV several years ago.

It didn’t strike me as an objective or particularly coherent documentary then. Nevertheless it had some chilling details that I was able to verify to an extent from other sources. One such detail was about the ‘wide spread’ cannibalism during the Great Chinese Famine.

A few months later I brought it up in a casual conversation with my grad school colleague from China. I have to admit that I showed no seriousness or sensitivity when I mentioned it; in a manner of talking about something that’s supposed to have a happened a long time ago and that is common knowledge. Ok, I might have joked about it: “we may have to eat one another like the Chinese did during the famine, haha!”. I’m not sure (I’m not sure because I’ve joked about it several times without the Chinese famine part). But she was completely taken aback. I don’t think she called me a racist but she was visibly offended and very upset, and said something like “we’re colleagues here, it’s important that we be respectful towards our cultures and not throw such preposterous allegations and that too so casually.”

She stopped talking to me for a few weeks but I wasn’t too bothered by it. I knew what I said would have shaken her up and driven to do her own research. Being the scholar she was, she did. She spoke to me after a month or so and expressed her regret. I did too.

We spoke for long time that day. She spoke about how she felt ashamed for not knowing her own country’s history and how these revelations have got her completely confused about her identity etc. I said I sympathized with her and gave a long list of examples that applied to me vis-à-vis my right wing past. But I also reminded her that I was only 24 and she was 31.

She didn’t talk to me for a few weeks, again.