போர்ஹெஸ் எழுதிய முன்னுரை

பியூனஸ் அய்ரிஸ் நகரின் புத்தகக் கடையொன்றில், இளைஞனான புகைப்படக் கலைஞர் ஒருவர், முழுவதும் பார்வையிழந்து விட்ட போர்ஹெஸ் தட்டுத்தடுமாறி புத்தகங்களைத் துழாவிக்கொண்டிருப்பதைப் பார்த்தார். இளைஞருக்கு அந்த பெரிய எழுத்தாளரை தற்செயலாகப் பார்க்க நேரிட்டதில் பெரும் மகிழ்ச்சி. அவர் ஓடிச்சென்று போர்ஹெஸிடம் தான் புகைப்பட புத்தகம் ஒன்றை தயாரித்துக்கொண்டிருப்பதாகவும் அதற்கு போர்ஹெஸ் முன்னுரை எழுதித்தர முடியுமா என்று கேட்டார்.  குருடாகிவிட்ட ஒருவரிடம் புகைப்பட புத்தகத்திற்கு முன்னுரை கேட்பது போல பைத்தியக்காரத்தனம் ஏதும் இருக்க முடியாது என்றாலும் இளைஞர் போர்ஹெஸின் மேல் கொண்ட அபிமானம் எல்லையற்றதாக இருந்தது.

போர்ஹெஸ் அந்த இளைஞரை வா என்னோடு என்றழைத்துக்கொண்டு பியூனஸ் அய்ரிஸ் நகரின் வீதிகளில் நடந்து சென்றார். ஒவ்வொரு கட்டடத்தின் முன்பும் நின்று, அவர் தான் ஏற்கனவே பார்த்திருந்த கட்டிடமாக இருந்தால் அதை அந்த இளைஞனுக்கு  வார்த்தைகளில் விவரித்தார், பழைய கட்டிடங்கள் இடிக்கப்பட்டு புதிய கட்டிடங்கள் எழுந்திருந்தால் அந்த கட்டிடடங்களை இளைஞனை விவரிக்கச் சொன்னார். புதிய கட்டிடங்கள் எல்லாவற்றையும் இவ்வாறாக கணக்கிலெடுத்தபின் போர்ஹெஸ் இளைஞரின் புத்தகத்திற்கு முன்னுரை எழுத சம்மதித்தார்.

'அர்ஜெண்டினா' என்று தலைப்பிடப்பட்ட அந்த புகைப்படபுத்தகத்திற்கு போர்ஹெஸ் எழுதிய முன்னுரையில், தென்னமெரிக்காவின் புகழ் பெற்ற வறண்ட புல்வெளி (Pampas)  புகைப்படங்களைப் பற்றிய குறிப்பு இவ்வாறாக இருந்தது:

"Darwin observed, and Hudson corroborated  him that this plain, famous among the plains of the world , does not leave an impression of vastness  on regarding it from the ground, or on horseback, since its horizon is that of the eye, and does not exceed three miles. In other words, the vastness is not in each view of the pampas (which is what photography can register) but in the imagination of the traveller, in his memory of days on the march and in his prevision of many to follow."

தென்னமெரிக்க புல்வெளிகளின் பிரும்மாண்டத்தை புகைப்படங்கள் காட்ட இயலாமல் தவிக்கலாம் ஆனால் மனவெளியில் நகரும் காலம் அகக்கண்களினால் அந்த பிரும்மாண்டத்தைப் படம் பிடித்துவிடும்.

Tarun Tejpal's ponytail

Friends of mine who choose to describe Tarun Tejpal's case as a Lolita moment are either careless readers of Nabakov's classic or suckers for the photogenic collage of his image with a black ponytail and a white beard.

Lolita moment is there in the novel where Humbert Humbert hears children's voices and recognizes the harm he has brought to Dolores Haze and Nabokov writes this memorable passage " I (Humbert Humbert) stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries  with a kind of demure murmur for background, and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord." To read a writer describing the world with such specificity about the loss of laughter , to learn that his words go beyond being mere words, and to learn that they teach you about pity and shame as well as beauty, liveliness and compassion are really, what I would call, Lolita moments. Mind you, it was consensual in the novel. Tarun Tejpal's masochist apology to lacerate himself and to do penance could have achieved the Nabokovian subtlety had he chosen healing words of compassion; without them the apology stayed on, like his pony tail, a misplaced epithet.

“What is truth?” said the jesting Pilate

January 3, 2014

“What is truth?” said the jesting Pilate ( a sentence I borrow from G.K.Chesterton)  before ordering the crucification of Jesus Christ. Let me narrate a Buddhist Koan for those who think Pilate needed an elementary  crash course in developing a craving for truth. 

“The master holds the disciple’s head underwater for a long, long time; gradually the bubbles become fewer; at the last moment, the master pulls the disciple out and revives him; when you have craved truth as you crave air, then you will know what truth is.” 

Pilates are everywhere now; they occupy our television screens, newspapers and internet with their judgmental arses and they don’t jest. 

Not that we are not seduced by the charm of innocence

January 2, 2014

Not that we are not seduced by the charm of innocence but we often mistake it for stupidity. Or stupidity is mistaken for innocence. These two mistaken identities lend credence to the popular saying ‘Appearances are deceptive’ and make semiotics a worthwhile undertaking however challenging it could be. Is innocence decipherable? I guess not, as it is an abyss both as a repose and an emotion. Roland Barthes recognised it in the mystique of Garbo’s face. Goethe’s young Werther demonstrated it in his tormented love for the insipid Charlotte. 

I need a vacation from the spells of innocence and a mask of discretion with canine fangs. 

"Fragments are the only forms I trust"

December 25, 2013

Yesterday somebody asked me how would I describe my job as a folklorist. I replied quite spontaneously without much thinking that my job as folklorist is to bear honourable witness to human creativity. These are not my words but I must have heard them either from A.K.Ramanujan or Henrie Glassie. I do not remember who exactly I heard those words from hmm

December 25, 2013

If you were to be afflicted by some unnamable fever for more than two weeks- like I have been ever since my return from South Korea- and if you were to be confined to your bed with paper books I would highly recommend that you have a copy of Nateszhda Mandelstam's "Hope against hope" on the top your medicine chest. Nateszhda,- not an accomplished writer or a poet like Osip Mandelstam, her husband-was the only chronicler who remembered his poems. Osip composes his poems while walking, mulls over them over a period of time before committing them to writing. He has to summon his inner voice of protest and freedom to compose every one of his line. Under the strict surveillance of Stalin he wrote the poem 'Kremlin's mountaineer' which Pasternak called a suicide note. Writing about Osip's disappearance Natezhda says" “And after his death - or even before it, perhaps - he lived on in camp legend as a demented old man of seventy who had once written poetry in the outside world and was therefore nicknamed The Poet. And another old man - or was it the same one? - lived in the transit camp of Vtoraya Rechka, waiting to be shipped to Kolyma, and was thought by many people to be Osip Mandelstam - which, for all I know, he may have been. That is all I have been able to find out about the last days, illness and death of Mandelstam. Others know very much less about the death of their dear ones."

December 25, 2013

Lazy and sleepy Christmas day it was, I spent the day playing with my energetic sons. Yet another day I could not spend even a few minutes on my writing desk. Shuffling through the manuscripts that I need to type I found Aljandra Pizarnik, an Argentine poetess I am always in love with and her poem "Road From the Mirror". I kept this poem as a reference for an essay I was writing quite sometime back. It begins with a beautiful line "And above all else look with innocence. As though nothing is happening, which is true" and ends with a haunting passage "Unfolding the day, yellow birds in the morning. One hand undoes darkness, one hand drags by the hair a downed woman who will never stop passing through the mirror. Returning to the memory of the body, I have returned to my grieving bones, I have to understand what my voice has to say"

Do I dare to look with innocence? Do I dare, do I dare? That question will remain my little secret Christmas gift today. Merry Christmas!

December 28, 2013

I am afraid that the modernist tone of complaint and remorse on the death of god is returning to my writing rather compulsively. But then it is hard to recognize Mephistopheles these days to happily traffic your soul in exchange for power, knowledge, and women. The loss of Mephistopheles' innocent ugliness is gradual argues Umberto Eco in his provocative study on ugliness. In Marlowe's Dr Faustus what I think is Mephisto's charm Eco terms it as visible and recognizable ugliness. Eco thinks Goethe made our poor Mephisto go through transformations of being a black dog, hippopotamus and finally a wandering scholar and an acclaimed intellectual. Doestoevsky, of all people, is one of the Gang of Four ( I forget the other three Eco credits) who portrayed Mephisto with nasty petit bourgeois habits and in a way reduced the possibility of recognizing him in your street corner. In Haruki Murakami' s IQ89 I think I had a fleeting glimpse of Mephistopheles in a paid assassin who quotes Shakespeare when he puts a plastic bag around a victim's head. Adopting the modernist's tone and tenor is less risky or rather less cumbersome than selling your soul for profit.

December 29, 2013

It is not rare for the wives of famous writers to pummel and if I may add an Indian expression, to pulverise their husbands occasionally but to read in the new biography of Jack London (by Earle Labor “An American Life”) that in a regular boxing session with his second wife Charmian Kitteredge she pressed him so ferociously against the door that the redwood panel was cracked- was something to savour for a Sunday morning. The Londons should have been running into huge interior decoration bills regularly. Jack London was a favourite author for -genius Tamil short story writer- Puthumaipithan and through his Tamil translation of London’s short stories I had an image of Jack London as a great adventurer. That London worked as an oyster pirate and went to search for gold in the Klondike rush- filled my adolescent years with fantasies for my own career. Now London’s biographer does not tell us whether he enjoyed or squealed being crushed by Kitteredge I mark it as an incomplete biography.

December 30, 2013

Did not Nietzsche exclaim in his ‘Twilight of the idols’ that no philosopher had yet spoken with reverence or gratitude about nose, one of the magnificent instruments of observation we possess in our senses? Recently when I could smell the stale and whithering jasmine in an air-conditioned mall miles away I resisted going inside and saved myself from the delirium and in gratitude I wrote an aphorism on nasal congestion. It goes like this: Nasal congestion is an epistemic radical aid for becoming an accidental Buddhist .

December 31, 2013

The epiphanic moment created by the repeated utterances of the sentence “Fragments are the only forms I trust” in Donald Barthelme’s short story “See the Moon?” in a collection ironically titled “Unspeakable Practices” is adamantly persistent. Perhaps that explains why the more I hear about Facebook and Twitter being fragmentary inferior spaces for artistic expressions all the more I am tempted to honour them.

January 1, 2014

Mimicry, even when it approximates the standards of the original, does not merit our attention and appreciation as an enterprise of artistic importance. Mimicry, on the other hand, when it distorts, ridicules, and subverts the original, awakens our artistic pulses to the passage of Time and its present form. Passage of time, in a way, is understood, grasped and acted upon only through artistic acts of mimetic subversion. For those who claim to mimic and live by the Original, Time is frozen like an unattended candy in a refrigerator. Happy New Year!