So aloofly precise and so fragilely proud...

On why Szymborska matters and matters so much…

I am quoting from part of the Nobel Prize speech by Wislawa Syzmborska that I thought was quite brilliant and very relevant to the contemporary times we live in…

I've mentioned inspiration. Contemporary poets answer evasively when asked what it is, and if it actually exists. It's not that they've never known the blessing of this inner impulse. It's just not easy to explain something to someone else that you don't understand yourself.

When I'm asked about this on occasion, I hedge the question too. But my answer is this: inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners - and I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."

There aren't many such people. Most of the earth's inhabitants work to get by. They work because they have to. They didn't pick this or that kind of job out of passion; the circumstances of their lives did the choosing for them. Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring - this is one of the harshest human miseries. And there's no sign that coming centuries will produce any changes for the better as far as this goes.

And so, though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings.
At this point, though, certain doubts may arise in my audience. All sorts of torturers, dictators, fanatics, and demagogues struggling for power by way of a few loudly shouted slogans also enjoy their jobs, and they too perform their duties with inventive fervor. Well, yes, but they "know." They know, and whatever they know is enough for them once and for all. They don't want to find out about anything else, since that might diminish their arguments' force. And any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life. In the most extreme cases, cases well known from ancient and modern history, it even poses a lethal threat to society (emphasis mine).

This is why I value that little phrase "I don't know" so highly. It's small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include the spaces within us as well as those outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended. If Isaac Newton had never said to himself "I don't know," the apples in his little orchard might have dropped to the ground like hailstones and at best he would have stooped to pick them up and gobble them with gusto. Had my compatriot Marie Curie said to herself "I don't know", she probably would have wound up teaching chemistry at some private high school for young ladies from good families, and would have ended her days performing this otherwise perfectly respectable job. But she kept on saying "I don't know," and these words led her, not just once but twice, to Stockholm, where restless, questing spirits are occasionally rewarded with the Nobel Prize.

Poets, if they're genuine, must also keep repeating "I don't know." Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift that's absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their "oeuvre" ...

I sometimes dream of situations that can't possibly come true. I audaciously imagine, for example, that I get a chance to chat with the Ecclesiastes, the author of that moving lament on the vanity of all human endeavors. I would bow very deeply before him, because he is, after all, one of the greatest poets, for me at least. That done, I would grab his hand. "'There's nothing new under the sun': that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun. And the poem you created is also new under the sun, since no one wrote it down before you. And all your readers are also new under the sun, since those who lived before you couldn't read your poem. And that cypress that you're sitting under hasn't been growing since the dawn of time. It came into being by way of another cypress similar to yours, but not exactly the same. And Ecclesiastes, I'd also like to ask you what new thing under the sun you're planning to work on now? A further supplement to the thoughts you've already expressed? Or maybe you're tempted to contradict some of them now? In your earlier work you mentioned joy - so what if it's fleeting? So maybe your new-under-the-sun poem will be about joy? Have you taken notes yet, do you have drafts? I doubt you'll say, 'I've written everything down, I've got nothing left to add.' There's no poet in the world who can say this, least of all a great poet like yourself.

(You can read the full text at Nobel Prize website- go to the link. The amazing pic of water lily was taken at recent visit to Coorg)

Wall Street and code of conduct !!

I came across this on the Net.

A fellow Ernie Paragallo was convicted last week, fined and sent to jail for two years (the maximum penalty) for starving and neglecting many of the 177 thoroughbred horses on his upstate New York facility. Judge (George J. Pulver Jr.) at Paragallo’s sentencing had this to say “Your moral compass is out of kilter and points you in improper directions…Your sense of integrity, your code of conduct, your perception of right and wrong was perhaps formed by your days on either mean streets or Wall Street.” (emphasis mine)

tragic...

Quite tragic, one of the worst accidents in Indian aviation history. Most of the victims are Keralites, don’t know when was the last time when so many keralites died like this. Quite a tough life when you work hard for years and decide to return with savings and end up like this. That compounds the tragedy for many people.

Condolences

Bairon Singh Shekhawat was quite a popular and respected leader, also known for his progressive interventions. At a personal level I recall bragging about having met him to kids in school. Quite saddened...

PS: quite a strange thing happened two days back, I have this breathing issue and as i got up late in the night I realized I was dreaming about meeting Mr. Shekhawat!!. (I often have dreams about childhood and spaceships...i guess that is quite common!!)

Talking about spooky happenings more than a decade back I wanted to buy Swiss knife (that multipurpose pocket knife), so I went to this exclusive shop in Connaught place. A beautiful contraption no doubt but unaffordable, disappointed I returned. Few days later I was sitting in the nearby park and lo somebody seem to have forgotten the very same Swiss knife I wanted to buy!!!. It was quite unbelievable. It is one of my favorite possessions and much used while I travel. Every time I look at it I do feel quite strange even now. I guess one of the coincidences that happen in life.

The tragedy in denial of ordinary

There are events that defy nature that is considered impossible, is that then miracle?. If it is impossible then how does it happen?. Clearly there must be some scientific explanation otherwise it is hoax. What is miracle now maybe explained later till then it is miracle. Or it could be that we create miracles since we want to feel the presence of superior force that can defy laws of nature thus indicating its whims to control these. Thus the creator and destroyer- the god. This I find horrendous and to have this as the basis of religion seems like arrogance to say the least. Since it denies the existence of ordinary, it denies small wonders. The extraordinary miracles of each life and nature are missed in this construction. This denial is then celebrated through stamping the nature and building edifices of human achievement over these. Everything becomes subsidiary (indeed exists) for human progress, it is like the planet is a mall for us to choose from. The alienation has begun.

It is quite clear that humans have created religion to justify their arrogance. Though they play the act of being subservient to supreme, what they are actually doing is serving their own conceptions. It is the ego that is playing supreme. And they construct huge monuments to preserve and edify these. Thus ego acquires halo of sacredness. Sociologists will find lots of functionalism in these gatherings but at the end of the day it is collective hallucinations, it is assertion of superego of human society. It has served socio-cultural function alright but what it has denied is immense. The loss to human conscious to significance of ordinary beauty of the surroundings is colossal. Religion is therefore incomplete since it is denying the smallness, it is denying ordinary.

In this partial world the arrogance of humans pupates into unchallenged bigger ideas of self (ofcourse as a servant of god) then the egos clash. The world becomes too small for these big egos they therefore take it to afterlife. Therefore these grand plans of destruction, this asserting of self as means of god’s will, this madness. When they resurrect their faith what they destroy is millions of small miracles. When they blast bombs they are destroying themselves too this they don’t understand since they have denied the nature, their very own origin. Their ego that constructed their god denies the understanding that it is nature that preserves and sustains this life. This understanding is too minor too simple for their exaggerated conceptions. Thus they deny part of themselves, destruction therefore becomes cannibalism. Every terrorist, every destroyer, is eating into his own self.

The issue now is youngsters are being sucked into this system without as much having an experience of life, without any awareness of self and surroundings, there is denial of choices. This is dangerous since what is being denied is core that defines individual life (the self and surrounding, intricate symbiotic connections) they are being denied the experience of miracles in ordinary. This has become acute recently since ordinary is slowly vanishing from our surroundings, we live trapped in colossal and make believe- the virtual. In the pursuit of grand even the idea of destruction is grander. If they could learn it from the diligence of as small a life as spider or an ant that there is so much to learn from nature and how insignificant we are in this vast universe then they may just pause a while. And the miracle may happen in that pause. A realization that millions of ordinary miracles surround us and that they can live and thrive very well without us or our juvenile constructions (not denying these may help in our own existential predicaments). It is time to appreciate the beauty of what has been dismissed for too long as ordinary. How about starting with an ordinary flower or an ordinary insect?

Thailand is slipping…

One of the most beautiful country and a favorite destination for many tourists around the world is slipping quite badly…hope it is not civil war that will be tragic. This blogger sincerely hopes and prays that they find peaceful solution.

Is your chocolate product of Fair trade?

You shouldn’t be surprised if your chocolate is a product of child labour. I happen to see this program on BBC the other day (they sometimes come out with some amazing programs). The cocoa that is majorily cultivated in West African region uses exploitative conditions. This program (Paul Kenayon-the reporter) traces how children are sold for labor and these cocoas finally end up as the raw material for huge conglomerates. ‘Fairtrade’ is the logo that was agreed upon to prevent these, after much reluctance from multi billion dollar companies. (A brief history: The controversy came to a head in 2001, when U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel and Sen. Tom Harkin introduced legislation mandating a labeling system for chocolate. The industry fought back, and a compromise was reached establishing a voluntary protocol by which chocolate companies would wean themselves from child labor, then certify that they had done so. The certification process would not involve labeling of products, but it would call for public reporting by African governments, third-party verification and poverty remediation by 2005). This situation still remains grim. So next time you have chocolate bar (these days shops are stacked with chocolate bars…looking at these is in itself amazing) check out for Fairtrade logo but also keep in mind that this logo in itself is no surety that the child labor is being used or not, as the program so effectively brings out. By the way any idea why region around the world that are rich in natural resources are inhabited by poorest people?. The MNCs tends to multiply their profit while the people go further down (you must see the deprivations in these regions, it is heartbreaking). This blogger is not into chocolate (I do buy one in case I am satisfied with a story I have written, which means it is rare!) but I guess one can live without chocolates. It doesn’t seem to worth it, definitely not over the tears of children.

Talking about child labour I think we Indians do have an unenviable record. Despite laws child labour is rampant. Child labour is used quite openly by garment industry (indeed right in the middle of Delhi in poshest of places-the fashion industry-children were being used in most exploitative conditions). I see child labour all the time while traveling, it need be added that the mid day meal scheme has been a brilliant conception and has attracted many children from poor families to schools.

Celebrating Tagore

This blogger was fortunate to be part of 150^th birth anniversary celebration at lawns of Ravindra Kalashetra the other day. It was morning well spent (I would have loved to see the complete program but due to demands of job I had to leave midway). You will get the amazing lyrics in tagore’s renditions if you hear it in Bengali, and yes one can feel the language if you know Hindi. This elderly lady’s song was absolutely mesmerizing, I also need to point out these kids here, their effort was brilliant. For more pictures visit photo blog…

Beloved Tagore

I cannot even explain how much I love Rabindranath Tagore. At one point I used to carry a thin copy of Gitanjali wherever I traveled. Those days I used to spent lots of time wandering the mountains of Himalayas. It is here I understood how tremendous this book is. It was enlightening. Much later I came across photos of some of the verses of Tagore in one of the libraries (I guess there is a copy in Sahitya Akademi Delhi, recently I saw it at Cubbon Park library too). It is a beautiful book and you can spend hours looking at . There are some amazing Black and white pictures. Read these enchanting lines of Tagore...with the pictures i took (i always wanted to do it!) 

  Let my doing nothing when I have nothing to do become untroubled in its depth of peace like the evening in seashore when the water is silent

I have scaled the peak and found no shelter in fame’s bleak and barren height. 

Lead me my guide, before the light fades, into the valley of quiet where life’s harvest mellows into golden wisdom

The tall grass sends waves of laughter to the sky in its flowers and I gaze upon the horizon

Earth, clamped into rock or flitting into the clouds; rapt in mediation in the silence of a ring of mountains or noisy with the roar of sleepless sea waves; you are beauty and abundance, terror and famine

Waves rise and fall The flowers blossom and fade 

And my heart yearns for its place At the feet of endless

Congratulation Mr Gill

people of this country are indebted to you...

Goldman Sachs: a case when the greed becomes too much for Capitalism!!

Imagine you go to bank and the “investment advisor” (I never dealt with them, since I don’t invest) gives you his valuable advice on how to go about investing the money that is lent to you, the bank in the meantime very much aware it will be difficult for you to repay and will eventually default. And on the other desk another part of the bank is putting money on you to fail. In the mortgage crisis that hit US millions lost all their savings and home but companies like Goldman Sachs earned huge profits (they bought securities from the firm, sold them to clients, and then bet against those same securities). Whatever euphemism they use this is gamble and the worst part is they are gambling on common people’s savings. An insider expert in BBC (as also many including one Mr Andrew Clark in Guardian) was quoted as saying this is a “normal practice in big organization”. Really!!. I thought ‘conflict of interest’ was another concept you come across in well written essays!!. Incidentally Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein calls his company ‘a machine” another euphemism for professionalism to obfuscate ethics, clearly. He argues that “there's no problem in selling clients a security that Goldman will then bet against, because that's the nature of the market”. Frankly the issue here is much more than Goldman Sach, it is whole nature of economy system as is being practiced and replicated all around the world.

Two references: one is a book by Michael Lewis “The Big Short” (read few things on the net) and second the documentary by Mike Moore “Capitalism: A love story” (finally I got the cd last week). Both these are apt in understanding the problems of corporates like Goldman Sachs and how societies end up paying for their greed. The shocking level they intrude into policy making (Goldman Sachs is well documented by Moore) and even have the clout to scuttle law making (if this could happen in US, just imagine how much vulnerable poorer societies around the world are). It is not a coincidence that powerful people always talk of removing regulations while poor queue up to elect government to regulate the country. Indeed many Corporates see democracy as a threat. The problem with capitalism is that it is a monster if it is not regulated. Capitalism arose from ethical context but when greed replaced ethical norms the system had already started to cannibalize. Therefore the paradox of unethical act but not illegal. It is becoming very much clear that only democracy can temper market greed. Incidentally Lewis (“The Big Short”) did point out that Goldman Sachs and other banks conspired to inflate the price of mortgage-backed securities well into 2007, even when they knew the true value was falling, only marking them down in value after their own hedging strategies were in place. And that top executives were largely clueless about the risks their organizations were taking.

It is not surprising that Church (et al Protestant ethics and Spirit of Capitalism-Max Weber) nor founders of market economy will find anything admirable about present nature of market functioning. One of the most neglected aspects of Adam Smith is the book “Moral Sentiment”. In the age of market hooliganism it is time to revisit his writings. Smith writes, "A great part of the capital of the country is kept out of the hands which were most likely to make a profitable and advantageous use of it, and thrown into those which were most likely to waste and destroy it". Smith saw the task of political economy as the pursuit of "two distinct objects": "first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and second, to supply the state or commonwealth with revenue sufficient for the public services". He acknowledged the importance of interventions on behalf of the poor "When the regulation is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters." Smith was both a proponent of a plural institutional structure and a champion of social values that transcend the profit motive, in principle as well as in actual reach (some quotes taken from Amartya Sen).

The tragedy of the times we live in is that the best brains are going into managing greed, the economics is reduced to gamble at stock exchange (stock exchange is no longer place to raise capital for business). Perceptions are created on daily basis, companies plan for short term take, employee bonuses and perks are based on year end results. What incentive is there not to invest in something that makes money today but will likely implode three years from now?

Michael Lewis (the author of “The Big Short”) who left Wall Street at a time when the big investment banks were turning from partnerships into publicly-traded companies (which placed the ultimate risk on a new and remote participant- the public shareholder) writes “There was a very clear sense that we were behaving in ways with this money that we would not behave if it was our money.”. He further points “People on the trading floors could be sitting two desks away from each other, and not have the first freaking clue what the other guy was doing. That the places had become so big and so balkanized that nobody had a really clear overview of their own firms.” He concludes “It took four years before any serious reform passed through Congress after the crash of 1929, I think the endgame here, and what's likely to happen, is that these big firms are going to become much less profitable businesses and much less interesting places to work. Saner, duller. The political winds are so clearly blowing in the direction of changing the way these places operate”

I guess last few decades were about Wall Street making billions of dollars at the expense of Main Street. Time for change the Americans voted for is now. What happens in America will significantly impact the world.