உப்புத்தண்ணி

It is a tradition to celebrate birthdays from a local calendar and I turned 28 last week that way. It is new year’s day today, from a different calendar. The last time I wrote a post was when I turned 27. I read that post again; to my surprise I found it extremely well written, unlike most of my facebook or twitter posts, which when I reread all I find is mistakes. This year I am writing my thoughts on usefulness-no general theories but just a few useful guidelines on use, usefulness and being used.

The program that nature has set itself doesn’t rely on the notion or find reason to use. It’s an impression sapiodefined to embed function to its existence. This function nevertheless has given seed to form societies and sustain them, which is probably the modern version of Levi Srauss’s anthropologic origins of society. Beyond pandering to morality needs, use also serves a purpose. Use engages. The understated causes of a migration to invidualism and vanity is the failure to live engaged. Being engaged must lead to indulgence and if it doesn’t, one falters into futility. What is the use, one has seen people ask; though a seemingly existential question is atmost a question incomplete. Because, use and need are linked and the posing is complete only with an ‘of’.

This bring us to usefulness which can be as abstract as pleasure and as material as touch. The varied interpretation of usefulness is, as one would imagine a laddu for art, to my knowledge heavily underutilised. Well we know at least Wilde feels “all art is useless.” This unsettled definition of what is useful is what has resulted in chaos in our society, especially in the Indian context. It isn’t so much a jump in train of thought as it seems to perception. The collective knowledge of the Indian ‘intellectuals’ has failed to agree on a definition that optimises a certain quantity which can be a pseudometric for usefulness. As vague as this statement sounds, usefulness is also absurdly so.

Nebulous writing aside, the issue at hand for India is its chaos. A part of it comes from its failure to recognise expertise and even a phobia towards it. India has for long feared intelligence, marketing it outside while denigrating it at home. IISc, TIFRs, AIIMS, IITs, IIMs, and all other institutions in India are seen firstly as epitomes of success by the urban elites and as failure of the state by left leaning intellectuals (for not providing such education to everyone). The former is accused of ignorance and indifference to the issues of the society while the latter of a preaching tone from a moral pedastal taller than others. Both arguments and their functioning are failures because they have not come to agree on a definition of what is useful. I would like to expand on this more but that’s for another day (or year).

Usefulness of something is derived out of it being used. The narrative must drive itself such that we recognise each section of the society is useful, for one another and that expertise is not evil. One sees accusations of meritocracy for this argument; however a society will develop not by shaming the smart but finding ways to use them, framing a world where being used becomes an incentive. This does not immediately mean that manual labour will have to slog like Sisyphus, but that the intelligentsia is useless without manual labour. There is no panacea to human misery but a step towards progress (another sapiodefined term) would be to recognise use, usefulness of something or someone and be used.

I think i just turned 27 today. The reason for this dubitable tone is partly intentional and partly subconscious. This song from Kamal Hassan’s movie `Hey Ram’ has a simple sounding sentence - `vaazhvil paadhi nanmai theemai thedalil’ which stalely translates to `half a life is spent cherche le bien et le mal’, mirrors my state of mind now. The song has this deep inquisitive sense with also a pinch of morose salt. It then moves to a inciting spirit which forces Kamal to take up the job of killing the doddering, all realised Gandhi, in the movie. One could see as though the youth represented by Kamal is the sworn antithesis of old age that Gandhi mirrors. All that the youth needs for this realisation is a cup of vodka or somabanam, and with a generous sprinkle of cannabis. The tipping point for the infantile inside you to take on the growing winter can occur when you are 27 or 29. And i think as one asymptotes towards trente one feels he or she understands what life is, which is when the Gandhi inside you is having an upper hand over the still haunting Kamal. Of course this need not be the first of such an occurrence, a sense of achievement is also usually accompanied such a thought, as though the sense of victory is servile to the thought. I wonder then does growing up partly make one feel triumphant, a false one though.

The reason why growing old cannot be triumphant, my dystopian me tells, has to do with the debilitating aura that surrounds the word old. Being old or growing old is definitely irreversible, supplemented only by the feeble functioning of body parts. Of course the inclining probability of falling to the naturally formed craters of terminal diseases only aggravates. If one were to Hitchcockify but putting oneself for a while and imagine being senile, sitting in a bus stop with only faintly audible vehicle noise, nostrils almost blocked in entirety, a whistling bronchi, desiccated legs, slow processing power, it isn’t tough to conceive how growing old cannot be triumphant. One is snatched from the clutches of independence and stuffed into the yearn for support. There is one clear memory from childhood I have, probably my first realisation that death exists. My childhood nights were spent with my whole family sleeping a single room. Usually my brother and I on the bed and my parents on the floor. A thought as though dawning in from infinity, like those light rays travelling so far from sun, struck me that not a long time from now everyone would be gone. I think i cried for a while and crawled into sleep as my tears rolled down my cheek.

Everyone watches movies or would have, and there is always this childlike yearn to make a movie or write a story similar to the one you liked or better. Sometimes you wish you could do it just for yourselves and not for someone to see through you. Every individual is a vagabond, only thing that varies is the space in which that is. And one such step in the jaywalk is my attempt at short stories. My mother tongue is Tamil and as is the mandate, my literary tongue is English. My efficacy is not profuse in either and i will write these short stories with Mac’s awesome Dictionary’s help now and then for apt (only my feeling) words.

நான்கே பேர் ஒரே ஒரு குழந்தை சிசு உருவமில்லாமல் நிற்க ஒருவர் கொலுசு மாட்ட இன்னொருவர் கண்மை குழந்தை அனைவரையும் யாசிக்க வைக்க பிறகு உலகை மாற்றி எல்லோருக்கும் புன்னகை உயிரோ பெயர் நிலையில்லாமல் அளவில்லாமல் இவ்விடத்தில் வராளி மாண்டாக!!

தாதிதூதோதீது தத்தைதீதோதாது தூதிது தொத்தித்த தூததே தாதொத்த துத்திதத்தாதே துதித்துத்தே தொத்தீது தித்தித்ததோ தித்திதி

கற்பனையே நீ என்ன! மனதினில் தோன்றி அறிவை ஆட்டி வைக்கும் கற்பனையே நீ என்ன!

கற்பனையால் பல அதிசியங்கள் கற்பனையில் பல ரகசியங்கள் கற்பனையால் பல சரித்திரங்கள் கற்பனையில் பல தந்திரங்கள் கொண்ட கற்பனையே நீ என்ன!

நிழலாய் நிஜமாய் கனவாய் பொய்யாய் மையாய் காட்சி தந்து வெற்றியாய் தோல்வியாய் இன்பமாய் துன்பமாய் அருளாய் பொருளாய் உருவெடுத்து உடலில் உயிராய் கல்லில் இறையாய் சொல்லில் இசையாய் அவதரித்து

லோகம் லோகத்தில் அமைந்த யாவும் ப்ரஹ்மமயம் என பெரும் பெயர் கொண்ட கற்பனையே நீ என்ன!