Space creates meaning in the endless process of signification. You see, learn, experience, and make sense of the externalities through internal and unknown mechanisms - we often call the cognition. Kaleidoscope discovers newer experiences from the same 'objective' material world. While he is not too far from Kolkata, spending most of the time within the outer peripheries - fringes of the city, however, there isn't any of the traces! Just when kaliedoscope started to believe in the fate of the 'new town' as a place devoid of history to have a depthless present in the making, he discovers the howrah bridge.
It is not that he didn't see the miniature bridge near the place he is having late afternoon coffees every now ans then, but the Baudrillardisation didn't happen until now.
Kaleidoscope says new town to be a space without time or history because it has wiped off the entire dimensions of old place, landscape and names. There are street snd roan numbers and not names, no localities based on landscape or other features. A complete out of nowhere cityscape. Soon all the memories will die with the death of the physical bodies of the people who still have nostalgia embedded.
Meanwhile, the Howrah bridge - the miniature of it, makes simulacra. Simulations of an imagined experience routed through miniature takes kaleidoscope to the memories of a distant past when he had to cross over the bridge every now and then. He could remember the day he was caught by the police for doing photography of the bridge in early morning or the day he purposefully missed few trains to his workplace miles away. However, such memories could only restore the space in time 'New Town - kolkata.'
Meanwhile Kaleidoscope can see Baudrillard as he sips his black tea, smiling and saying 'you too are saturated in constructs... truth conceals that there is none!'
In a circular motion called life you often get back moments like you have left as it is before you departed. You would never know when the moment was gone. Not all departures are decked with formal farewells and promises that you fail to keep as the life goes ahead in time. Meanwhile years pass by within blink of eyes and you continue to have a small corner of an imagined space for all the moments that are gone and for increasing nostalgia. Longing for a home which is no longer there. Sometimes, you question has it been gone forever? Will you ever be able to relive those even if for a moment? What will happen if you really can relive once and for all?
The answer never comes easy. There are so many years gone, so many different memories have been created, so many times life tested us over and over again.
Perhaps those moments came back at unexpected time and place... far away from the places where memories of an earlier life was created. Those busy city life, refuge taking after class melting pot dusky hours and moments of exotics in the middle of an ethnographic romanticism... all come back dances in the conversations. Meanwhile so many untold stories that needed a space above the head and a tap 'life goes on' seem to reappear. The juxtaposed overlapping exotic and liminal space just made it happen. All are relived... like raindrops finally reaches its kind in a river flow, like all the raindrops that circulates through all the life forms.
All of a sudden the ordinary but unexpected sky holds your hand and takes you to the fairies. Kaleidoscope looks at the sky, especially the monsoon and post-monsoon sky for that. As the winter approaches, the sky increasingly becomes the same, like the young ages and then makes regular revisits to the memories through a grey-blue dusty lonely pathway. A traveler would still find the darkness in memories - the darkness which shows the way through an otherwise flood-lit space of the cityscape. Meanwhile the spectacle makes regular objects to deck themselves for the fairies to appear. The two lampposts appear to be amorous, overlooking the canvas above, when the sun starts to wipe off the light slowly. Like the lamp posts becoming characters of all the unfinished fairy tales, souls of departed lovers imagine themselves passing through the white sledge-way to reach the timeless space. The eternal togetherness of all the departed souls, unfinished love affairs, untold stories and all those who couldn't be the one, must now be the one! Be the one, therefore, requires the sledge-way to climb and cling on to reach the timeless space. A space where the disturbed and undone past disappears once and for all, the time that has been lost because of the lack of love never haunts in the distant dreams and nothing disappears or reappears in time, because there isn't any, neither you oscillate, nor you stand still and wait for the things you wanted to have forever. It takes a lot of courage to climb the sledge-way like the two lamp posts. It takes a hell lot of transformations from iron ore to iron post - caste and drafted for the others till the pathways to the fairies appears once and for all.
Meanwhile, its the same sky that crosses over many distant souls, its the same envelop that covers very many unfinished love letters, because nothing disappears. Kaleidoscope like others continues to fall in love every time s/he thinks of the fairies and the pathways to transcend the timed world in which he struggles to survive. He always knows from the corner of his eyes, there indeed is a balcony waiting with a couple of tea cups along with a distant smile - because like water, sky is a great equalizer as well. With the sledge-way in hand its the same blanket everywhere and the timeless space is not very far. A few decades more to go and its oneway highway.
Can anyone remember the last major reform in the performance appraisal of the students, or mechanisms of measurement of merit in the education system? Frankly there isn't any! There are instances of development of reform like trends, such as, making learning more informative - the advent of surface learning by making students to mug up information - which in my opinion is meaningless because now we have google to do that! There seems to be increasing emphasis on 'training' rather than education. Yes, the coming generation are trained to do certain precise things which is at per with the increasing mechanisation of the nature of work force. Hence, as a student you are supposed to know a hell lot of things. You are supposed to memorise them and reproduce them like a computer without virus capable of giving prints to a billion flawless copies.
What if that computer fails? Yes, we look for potential 'problems' that stops the machine to do what is expected from it. If it can be fixed it is fine, if not it adds to the huge lump of electronic waste! What if a child fails in a similar way? Yes, we become equally frustrated add extra private tutor (like adding an additional RAM) and compare them with others who are performing better. If the child is failing repeatedly to perform as expected, what we do is finely shown in the movie Taare Zameen Par. See the clipping below.
Repeated failure and there is a chance of a complete disaster. There is hardly any space left where the child can vent out her/his accumulated frustrations. Their natural games are also been replaced because of lack of playground and too many engagements and tuitions. In one of my earlier post I wrote extensively on this. It is a fact that while in many urban centers there is a vanishing space for children to play, in rural places there is vanishing number of playmates hence the picture is gloomy everywhere (click here). The little games they are allowed to play is under strict supervision of the coach - which is not much different from the ways they are supposed to study. In art school they are supposed to paint according to the art teacher who (usually) only guides them to colour within the countour of the drawing and anything that goes beyond the boundary is considered mistake. Similarly, those who swim are frustrated with their coaches because before they could love water and their body within it, the coach is asking them to rectify the butterfly strokes! Come'on not everyone is going to become Sachin, nor everyone is going to be a Olympic swimmer. We are thankful Vincent or Leonardo didn't have a coach to 'discipline' them.
The murder of a 7-year-old child allegedly by a class XI student perhaps shows all the symptoms of an outcome of present everydayness of late capital child rearing practices. The class XI student wanted to delay the examination because he was ill prepared. I remember whenever there were some examinations approached that too of serious ones I used to pray to make some kind of natural calamity (rainfall or storm) so that the exam gets deferred and so that I can prepare! These were wishful thoughts but then I used to think okay, whatever! There will always be another exam where I can do well. My friends from school (apart from the consistent first ten ranking students or so) more or less used to have similar thought pattern. Our parents demanded us to secure qualifying marks in subjects where we were weak. For the rest, above 50% would have been sufficient for us to satisfy them. They would only say "okay, perform better next time, play less and concentrate." That's it, everything remained the same. This, dear readers, have changed a lot. I knew a few of my friends who used to score top marks and then failed to do so had faced hardship from their parents. They had set the expectations and their parents reciprocated. I guess, these forms of expectations like conspicuous consumption have percolated everywhere. Now, even the bottom most pupil are facing similar pressure that the top one of his/her class faces.
For Foucault let me begin by quoting him from his monumental "Discipline and Punish" (read the book here). Foucault (1975) writes :
"Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines."" (222)
Now extend the idea of "formally egalitarian judicial framework" a little further to see the egalitarianism and supposed equal opportunities among the pupils of an institutions. The basic logic is that each student's performance is now measured in some supposedly objective measure through gradation (it is even more objective with Multiple Choice Questions), hence, a student's performance will indicate her/his position. The mechanisms of 'discipline' demands to "follow what coaches ask!" "...these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical..."
What happens when you cannot cope with the 'Coach' or the disciplining practices! You know what is waiting for you at domestics. You have no playground to vent out emotions, and you are surrounded by a number of threat perceptions!
No one knows "how many deaths will it take 'til he knows/ That too many people have died?" The system will remain the same be it gradation, judgement of merit or potential. On the top of which there will be pressures for 'disciplining' because that is what suits the late capital utility maximisation. There will be blood! More cases like Ryan murder and Foucault will keep on shouting from a distant past!
For the detailed case - click here Pic Courtesy: NDTV. https://www.ndtv.com/gurgaon-news/ryan-international-school-murder-case-16-year-old-grilled-as-cbi-tries-to-fill-gaps-in-gurgaon-schoo-1773258
You never know what saves you from sheer disaster. Sometimes the place where you feel that you belong to lifts you up from a sure fall on your face. And then you grow up and migrate. You are forced to leave or might choose to do so. When you leave and you wake up in the middle of night to search for the space only to find the time and space gone for long. You pull and concentrate through your long blood vessels. They rush! Sometimes even within your dreams you search for the body of the space - your bed, pillows, a window, the slice of sky and pair of eyes or a known smell - all lost (?)in time only to be found in the never-ending circles of time space sandwich.
And then you begin your search for the 'lost' in space. You find your imagined marks on the corners of your corridors or on the rooftop. Those whitewash renovations could only transform those walls and not your marks anymore. Not because they are imagined but because they are transcendental. They continue to lift you up, save you, make you relive many more ways than you would ever know.
There are times when certain monumental architecture along with natural habitat give you immense possibilities to imagine about the past places. Andul, all of a sudden becomes one of such places. During the Haldia travels Kaleidoscope used to cross a not so conspicuous rail bridge carrying signboards before and after denoting the canal as Saraswati River! Kaleidoscope has seen rivers transforming into canals and becoming worse than a mere drain in his life time (click here for details). Saraswati river is no different, however, sometimes, the riverbed is filled with conspicuous and typical Bhagirathi water because of high tide or because of monsoon. The Indian railways have kept a considerable space while building up the small bridge which also indicates its potential widening in recent past. However, if you read R. C. Majumdar's (1971) History of Ancient Bengal, you will find that the river was an active large tributary and distributary of Bhagirathi in 16th Century AD.
District Gazetteer 1909:
Once in 2012, National Library, Kolkata gave Kaleidoscope a rare opportunity to go through the Bengal district Gazetteer edited by L S S O'Malley. He copied portions of the chapter on Andul because of course he wanted to visit much heard Andul Rajbari. O'Malley wrote Andul was a village connected through Howrah-Nagpur railways. The place includes Mahiari (Mauri, hence Maurigram raiway station) and Andul. It was a good market place and it covered a good square mile and a half. "There is a high brick tower with 5 stories approximately 165 ft height. On top of which can be reached by a long series of steps inside (now only portions planks). This tower is one of the several erected during the early phase of British rule for Semaphore signalling." (p. 149). He also wrote about the palaces built by Malliks and Mitras of Andul and Kundu-Chaudhuris of Mahiari. Mallik family settled with Gaur Charan Mallik who settled during Muhammadan rule. Mitra-Majumdar served under Lord Clive and Kundu Chaudhuries were traders and money lenders and with accumulated wealth achieved Zamindar status over years. Today's most conspicuous palatial building belongs to that of Mitra family.
The imagined space:
This brief historical note is essential to imagine the legacy that the place has. A river, a busy market hub of mostly of coconut and crops, active connection with Britishers, trade connection through the river Saraswati, collection of taxes and some redistribution - schools, library, health centers and the like! Let us start from the Semaphore signalling tower near Unsani bridge at Khatirbazar. The first sight of that brick tall structure with typical arched windows now decked with outgrowths hear and there held Kaliodoscope's hand to see the river from high above. If it wasn't the Bengal gazetteer, he would have easily imagined this to be a watch tower where people with archery or perhaps canons waited day and night to protect their business center from external attack through the river. The bridge that helps you cross the river now is covered with shops and hence the river has disappeared literally. The tower, if and only if Kaleidoscope could climb he would have seen the ignored yet busy business hub of Andul-Mauri imagined space. As he searched for the palaces he had to go through alleyways - typical alleyways which might have appeared large and wide roads centuries ago. Kaleidoscope whenever revisits a place which he had visited in his childhood, he always find that place a little (or lot)less spacy - as you grow (old), you tend to find a shrinkage of space. It was a afternoon napping phase of the ongoing Rash fair near Kundu-Chaudhuri's palace. The palace shows a slow but steady decline of the architecture - yes all these buildings are unmanageable today. Neither any of them will fall down all of a sudden. Hence a slow and steady end of the days of feudal lords.
Portion of Kundu-Chaudhuri palace
Similarly, the most conspicuous Andul Rajbari - the palace of Mitra family with a massive extravagant pillars and a large opening at the western side welcomed Kaleidoscope with a golden sun effect. The kings have given up and written the dangers of roaming around or entering into the palace. The once spectacular building demanding awe from all the spectators is now humble facing time. It is carrying the mark of time on all of its body and soul. Like a dying time and decaying space, increasing capital encroachment has made it impossible for the palace, its open space and the river to converse with each other - yes the river goes a little beyond the front gate at the western side of the palace. Taller late capital apartments have blocked the private conversations between the two in a lonely summer noon or in a quiet moonlit night. However, the river still flows in high tide, brigs water from Bhagirathi and washes the Andul shore with whispers of history. While with age like Kaleidoscope they too find their places as becoming less spacy, the river Bhagirathi with her high tide continued to provide encouragement to Saraswati it whispers "someday all the prisons are blown to dust and like dust in the wind imagined spaces walks with ecstasy."
The conspicuous tower
Series of arches
An wooden plank suggesting the old staircase which would have directed towards the top. At present the inside of the tower is a popular place for people to urinate!
In a typical sunny day you can find different sheds of bricks within a single frame,
Part of Kundu-chaudhuri palace
The extravagance of Kundu Chaudhury palace. Though time has market its way it still is standing tall
Those nostalgic iron arts
Windows of Kundu Chaudhury's palace
Those beautiful glasses
Kundu Chaudhury institution - a school
The conspicuous pillars of Mitra Family palace (popularly: Andul Rajbari)
The sporting club at the ground floor and estate's declaration of the danger of the old building
One of the few decks still surviving
The palace annexed temple
The nearby Saraswati River
The appraoch road of palace and the juxtaposed late capital apartments
Me and Arun da
References:
O'Malley, L. S. S. (1901) Bengal district Gazetteer: Howrah. New Delhi: Logos
Majumdar, R. C. (1971[reprint 2005]) History of /Ancient Bengal. Kolkata: Tulsi Prakashani
Note: Author is indebted to his University senior Arun Makal for taking him to these places on his well maintained pulser.
Kaleidoscope has witnessed painful departure of much loved cows at his mother's ancestral home. The departure was eased through a process of handing over the dying cow to mercy killers (to read about the story click here). However, those days have gone in most part of his country at present and there is some new era has come when you are not supposed to use you assets as and when needed. Kaleidoscope is not talking about note ban nor he is interested to deal with the consequences of ATM queue or the problems of AADHAR card linking. This is more substantial. No ATM, no money. This is about mother (or father?) nature.
Stray cows:
We listen to over and over again about the damage that can caused by the non performing assets or the bad loan recovery by the banks. We are supposed to hit worse with these things. Now let us think about your asset demanding a lot and giving you nothing in return. Please no PETA argument here. People who raise cows raise them because this is their asset and their livelihood depends on it. They do not fantasize like Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's Mahesh. That excellent short story even today makes Kaleidoscope cry and I guess most of its readers feel the same way. How can a person has so much of attachment with his cow? Well this is possible, Kaleidoscope has seen it and knows it. But one must also understand cows (similarly hens, ducks, pigs) are valuable assets with strict economic issues attached to it. Since, there is strict rules about how to sale and buy cows the economic dimension of the cow rearing all of a sudden has fallen under strict vigilance. In consequence, there are people who have no choice than to abandon their cows. Let them starve to die or to encroach in places where they are supposed not to enter. This includes not only farmland in places like Uttar Pradesh (For a Business Standard article click here) but also places like reserve forest (for Hintustan Times article click here). Professor Sudhir Panwar of the Department of Zoology, Lucknow University in a recent article has expressed grave concern for the rising number of abandoned cattle and potential damage they can cause over reserve forests (click here). He says "Developments following the 'cow protection' efforts of the government and other social organisations have not only crippled an already beleaguered livestock sector but also resulted in the proliferation of stray cattle, raising serious economic and ecological concerns" (page 13). One might talk about the cow shelters recently been built up to give shelter to the strays, but these full and cows are ill treated. Hundreds of them have died already (click here for more information). This simply is a disaster having serious economic and ecological consequences.
National Green Tribunal and Jantar Mantar:
Interestingly, while there is a rapid growth of an environmental disaster primarily because of cow protection without proper management plans, the National Green Tribunal asks all the protesters to be relocated from the historical Jantar Mantar ground in Delhi (click here). While Kaleidoscope has been there a few times to experience the iconic sundial and to see the protests. He has also felt a stream of blood flowing while watching Rang de basanti (those requiring some motivation watch the movie, click here), those places are repeatedly shown. There is no denying that those who have pleaded to the court on account of the continuous dharnas have suffered for long, but then again from where one can protest other than Jantar Mantar? Its not too close neither too far from Parliament house, very close to police stations and the roads can be cordoned off without much disruption to the city's traffic. Ramlila maidan as a replacement of Jantar Mantar is ineffective: first of all it does not have that location advantage, and second, its close to some of the major hospitals!
The question of dissenting voices:
Kaleidoscope recently completed a refershers' course on environmental issues at Jadavpur University to gather respect for the National Green Tribunal. This article doesn't mean that he has lost all of his faith on the organisation. He always preferred stronger institutions. He prefers stronger institutional mechanisms and he doesn't mind if there are relatively weaker leaders. However, the incidents of stray cows and till date silence from the part of National Green Tribunal and a proactive decision is symptomatic. It is symptomatic to a possible shrinking of democratic space and a bias that can bring an all-round disaster economic-ecological-democratic.
If evolution is to be seen as a species's ability to transmit genes and continue to propagate then among mammals Humans happens to be one of the most successful animals, or at least this is how the species perceives it since the time Darwin. The second best performers in this definition happens to be those who has some purpose to serve to the species of Homo sapiens sapiens. Therefore, cow, chicken, pigs are evolutionarily more successful than their wild varieties or the rest of the animals which lack purposive connection to humans.
Frankly, the whole idea of evolution under this definition is now worthless. Kaleidoscope knows he might receive a heavy blow from his friends from biological disciplines because come on evolution cannot be flawed! He knows the luxurious life that he leads is a fruit of evolution and he also knows even poorest of the poor of this world is leading a luxurious life if it is compared to the Homo erects - and credit goes to evolution. However, as it is said "idea of evolution is flawed" it also demands some explanation. Evolution in terms of passing on genes to the next generation to continue the species happens to be the primordial drive and also the source of most of the problems in the world! - well this is not the reason for which evolution is flawed! Evolution as a concept of passing genes is flawed because it lacks subjective dimensions - the dimension that has never looked upon seriously. The basic question that needs some reflection is something like this "Do I need this life to pass on genes?" Any reader might say - well its like Cartesian ideology. Some other might say "okay, that is only true for Homo sapiens sapiens and not for the rest of the animals, because they are yet to reach the cognitive revolution. Kaleidoscope will say its not so and will refer to an old post on Civilisation and Question of Love series "Brutality on animals".
Think about hens having complex world of behavioural needs and drives. They want to run around, find hierarchy, make nest lay eggs and groom. Think about intelligent and inquisitive pigs. Think about dairy cows. These animals spend almost their entire allotted life inside a confined space. Calves, piglets are kept away from their mothers. all of them are fed with perfect dose, given hormone injections and so on an so forth. Just to pass on their genes for the superior species Homo sapiens (Benson and Rollins 2004, Appleby Mench Hughs 2005). Yes, Kaleidoscope knows it might seem a laughable logic. Okay, fine, lets go back to the age of slavery. Or assume the role of any minority population in today's world. Even better think about your life in front of a computer screen for 12 - 15 hours a day for 12 months a year and then think about the significance of evolution on Homo sapiens sapiens. You can pass on your genes only to be exploited by others.
'Iron has only made the world tough and dull' kaleidoscope said to himself. It lacked the lustrous colour of fresh copper or bronze and to make the matter worse it carried stronger cutting edge advantages. However, thought kaleidoscope, it is colourful when there is some rust on them. What about steel? Yes kaleidoscope thought, its equally dull and gives no chance for rust to settle in and make it colourful.
'Just a wishful and useless thinking it is' kaleidoscope said to himself. How can you allow rust to settle down on your steel made items.
With the advantages of tough and dull metal the kaleidoscope's world devised new constructs related to the dullness. Examples might include such metaphors as 'shining like steel' 'as sharp as steel blade' 'iron man/ iron lady' so on and so forth.
How would have been the domestic life in early iron age? We can remember the roundhouses of Britain (around 800BCE to 100 CE). These were thatched houses with a constant fire burning inside at the centre. The fire was a multipurpose one to keep the home warm, keep the flies away, keep the room smoky to keep the food preserved for a long time. Often people were accompanied by domesticated animals. Now imagine the smell and smoke that would have provided for a permanent or semipermanent settler equipped with iron we are so proud of!
Where is the change?
There has been genuine changes since then! Kaleidoscope was born in an advanced near late capital civilisation. He resides inside a home, teaches at a building, crosses and romanticise bridges, sees the parallel points merging at railway tracks, dines on a plate - all are made of iron. The dull and strong metal might have been discovered at many places thousands of years ago at the dawn of the 'civilisation'. How far has it been changed since then? kaleidoscope gave it a thought for a while.
Yes, now that chimney installed, there seems to be an absence of smoky confined spaces, there seems to be an absence of smelly world and with the advent of perfumes and roomfreshners there seems to be a complete absence of those smelly days replaced by smell of civilisation. Kaleidoscope is happily married with the dull and strong iron in his everyday life while the nations are happily playing with the steel to do extravagant jingoism. Kaleidoscope is sharing an increasingly smoky outside to install air purifier inside! His world demands iron like personalities, decision makers and perhaps unifiers (of late in India). But the question remains what has changed? When he looks at the dumped and increasingly vegetation engrossed rusty and lonely iron rods for constriction they smiles at kaleidoscope. Demands him to look at the tall blue-white buildings at the horizon to understand there is also a word IRONY.
For facts-
Flatman,j. 2015 archaeology. London: oneworld
Fagan, m. 1999. The beginning. Boston: little brown and company.
