Love in a time of Technology

My friend Sasenariane Persaud sent me his latest collection of poems Love in a time of Technology (Tsar/Mawenzi 2014) several months ago.

I’m no literary critic, and my understanding and appreciation of poetry is non-academic. I like poetry that touches my heart and makes me misty eyed. And by those simple standards, Sase's latest collection is one of the most exquisite collections of poems I’ve read in recent times. 

I read it and re-read it several times.

I wanted to review it in April, which is celebrated as poetry month in Toronto.

Divided into four parts, the poems are about love, longing, and belonging; about remembering, nostalgia, and memory; and about desires that are both carnal and chaste. The poet is on a journey and wants to take you on the ride of a lifetime.

In the first section – Love in a time of technology – the poems that stay with you for a long time are 'In Hickson Park: Tampa on the River,' and 'The Promise.' 

In the first, the poet wants to take you “where laughter fills the night.” And in the second, the poet reminiscences longingly about the girl who has transformed, as he reminds her that “the apology wounding as much as it heals.”

In Hickson Park: Tampa on the River

I want to take you

where white lights

glow on deleafed winter

 oaks like icicles,

where the dark river

floats a rubber slipper

inland – away from the bay

invading our souls,

where water erupts

under spotlights

like our love once

I want to take you

where laughter fills the night

The Promise 

The falling coin striking tiles

rolls into a corner

you have ceased looking at.

Where is the girl who gave

unreservedly whose eyes held

promises you could not keep;

where is she whose silence

freed and trapped you

in a sub-tropical garden?

The fallen disc rests on cold ceramic –

your pocket is laden with plastic

that slide in and out of readers

accepting your promise to pay tomorrow –

is today a circle cartwheeling out of reach,

the apology wounding as much as it heals.

The section Elsewhere is about places that the poet hails from and / or belongs to both physically and metaphorically. The poem 'In Our Heads' captures the ephemeral essence of the section.

In Our Heads

Fireflies light our heads

in an afternoon

when there are none

must be pre-festival fireworks

or the stars that light

journeys to other worlds

This feeling of an immigrant’s loneliness is exemplified manifold in the next section – Storm, where in 'Tulips,' the poet laments

And if in spring

I sing promises to tulips

instead of marigolds

 daffodils instead of oleanders

or at my desk bite

an apple instead of a turmeric

mango – not concealed pleasure

on the side – it is because

I have no country

but the country of Gandhi’s Gita.

The two masterpieces in the collection are 'Returning to a Far Country' and 'Georgetown,' and both are about a time that has gone by, a time that won’t return. Although 'Far Country' concludes triumphantly, it’s a tragic remembrance of a time that won’t return:

and there was no greater rain

and there was no greater city

on no greater country

in no greater time

than this time of our love

Georgetown is the most evocative poem in the collection

'Georgetown'

For evenings on the seawall

drinking soup thickened with coconut milk,

melting cassava, sweet potatoes and plantains;

for your smile in the mornings, a wave

from your platform as we pass, the trade wind

in our faces; for parched peanuts jumping

out fingers unto sand and breakers exploding

on old brick groynes jutting into the Atlantic’s

belly and tempering tides as stars flick on;

for conversations on galaxies, or monologues,

what if we are from beyond beyond,

aliens in this space and the ocean spray

sprinkling spectacles and moistening lips;

for a first kiss, or second riding around

the bandstand, the dance of street lights

in your eyes, I would return. I would dare all gun-wielding bandits to walk, linked fingers

with your ghost on the sapodilla brown sand.

Prabhat Pheri

We live by popular misconceptions and myths, and then when we encounter the truth, we become a bit more aware and better informed, but also a bit sad that our myth turned out to be baseless.

I'd always believed that V. Shantaram was the founder of Prabhat Film Company in Poona, and that Prabhat wound up when Shantaram moved to Bombay and started Rajkamal Kalamandir.

Earlier this week, I saw an interesting documentary Prabhat Pheri (Journey with Prabhat) at this year’s Hot Docs festival in Toronto that enlightened me about the real story of Prabhat Studios.

The documentary, directed by Samarth Dixit and Jessica Sadana, takes a languid, unhurried look at Prabhat’s history.  It’s replete with innumerable stories, and derives its strength from firsthand accounts, and nonlinear narration.

A brief digression: Prabhat played an important role in developing cinema in Marathi, and provided a platform to V Shantaram to make some of the most socio-politically relevant cinema in the early era of the Indian film industry, which included classics such as Aadmi (1939) and Padosi (1941).

Padosi, which is relevant even today, should be seen in the context of the rising Hindu-Muslim tensions in pre-Independence (and pre-Partition) India that were set in motion after the Pakistan resolution of 1940; it predated the Quit India Movement (1942) and foresaw the tragedy of Partition.

Those who grew up in Bombay during the era of mono-channel television of the 1970s would recall having seen both these classics on Doordarshan on Sunday evenings at the neighbour’s home.

Of course, Prabhat Pheri is not just about Shantaram. It’s about Prabhat Film Company and all its founders – Vishnupant G Damle, K. R. Dhaibar, S Fatehlal, S. B. Kulkarni. It’s also about the Film and Television Institute of India, which is what Prabhat became after it ceased operations as a film studio.

The story of the glorious legacy and heritage of the pioneering studio emerges from the narratives of some of the technicians who are still alive, and from the stories the former officials of the Film and Television Institute of India.

Samarth and Jessica have been student of the institute; and the documentary is the duo’s personal and often idiosyncratic paean to their alma mater. It is at once a gloomy and enervating portrayal of the inexorable march of time and the changes it wreaks on individuals and institutions. But equally, it is also an exhilarating episodic account of both Prabhat and FTII.

A technician, who had worked with the founding stalwarts (and who despite his unassuming demeanour turns out to be extraordinarily knowledgeable), recalls the woman who became Prabhat’s logo (see film).

Another recalls the “real reason” why Shantaram had to leave Prabhat. Apparently, the founders had an unwritten code of conduct – if they fell in love with a heroine, they’d have to leave. And Shantaram fell in love with Jayashree.   

And yet another recalls an argument between Ritwick Ghatak (who served as the vice principal of the institute) and Mithun Chakravarty (who was a student) that ensued when Ghatak caught Mithun drinking alcohol.

Prabhat Pheri is an interesting and unusual look at an institution that has played an important role in Indian cinema; kudos to Toronto’s Hot Docs for bringing Prabhat Pheri to Canada.

The Innis Town Hall in downtown Toronto has been a venue for great cinema. Coincidentally, a couple of years ago, it was the venue for the Satyajit Ray festival, where I saw Ray’s documentary on Tagore. 

Literature Matters - 1: A new social contract

Keep it in the ground is an evocative campaign that The Guardian newspaper (London) launched recently. Advocating strict policy measures to tackle climate change, the Guardian Media Group divested its entire £800 million portfolio (about $1.4 billion) from fossil fuels, which it will re-invest in socially responsible alternatives. It is urging the world’s two largest charitable foundations — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust — to stop investing in oil, coal and gas companies.

The debate over climate change is the only one that should dominate our century. Nothing else matters. Two recent events in Toronto focussed on the urgent need to focus on climate change not merely from an environmental perspective, but as an economic, social and moral imperative. On April 7, Smaro Kamboureli, the Avie Bennett Chair in Canadian Literature, presented Literature Matters that featured Canadian author Thomas King, and Naomi Klein, the author of a series of books on the exploitative nature of capitalist economy, whose most recent book This Changes Everything Capitalism vs The Climate, has comprehensively changed the debate. 

On April 12, as part of the Spur Festival, Imre Szeman, Canadian Research Chair in Cultural Studies and professor at the University of Alberta; and Chris MacDonald, Director of the Jim Pattison Ethical Leadership Education & Research Program discussed the Moral Economy – Canada’s new social contract; the intersection between public permission to operate and important sectors of the Canadian economy. Konrad Yakabuski of the Globe and Mail moderated the debate.

The two events overlapped on several key issues.

Klein believes that we are dealing with a profound failure of imagination, even though nobody is disputing the claim that capitalism is destroying our planet, there is no attempt to find an alternative to capitalism. There is a near-universal sense of defeat. The two prevailing thoughts that have contributed to inertia are: We screwed up, but we’re God’s species, so we’ll eventually fix it. The other is: We did it, and it’s too late to fix it, so we should let it all burn down.

Klein characterised it as either defeat or war. The idea of peace with the planet is not part of the narrative.

She attributed the policy paralysis in terms of tackling climate change to the increasing fundamentalism of market-driven economics. The dominance of capitalism as a determinant of global economics has left us without any alternatives, and this has stifled both debate and action. 

A few days later, at the debate over Moral Economy, Szeman emphasized that the policy paralysis stems from a paradigm shift. It’s not just our economics that is market driven, market philosophy has taken over our way of life, and it has now become an integral part of every human endeavour.

The debate over social licence – the new social contract that governments and corporates need to negotiate with the society – is acquiring dimensions that appear to question even the democratic basis of our societies. Szeman, in fact, stated so rather bluntly. The issue of climate change is no longer about individual choice, it is a collective responsibility. By embracing globalization, western societies have outsourced pollution.

Klein quoted Andreas Malm, who has termed climate change as an “atmospheric expression of class warfare.” Writing in Jacobin, Malm says, “Few resources are so unequally consumed as energy. The 19 million inhabitants of New York State alone consume more energy than the 900 million inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa. The difference in energy consumption between a subsistence pastoralist in the Sahel and an average Canadian may easily be larger than 1,000-fold — and that is an average Canadian, not the owner of five houses, three SUVs, and a private airplane.”

The debate also needs to factor the traditional rights of people over their lands. In Canada, it’s the first nations people, who have been systematically deprived of their economic right as their traditional resources have been usurped by the government and the corporates that profit from extractive resource sectors.

The debates were both insightful and disturbing; and Thomas King, the critically-acclaimed Canadian author, gave it a human dimension. The academics and the journalist marshalled facts, arguments and statistics to prove their contention, the author touched the audience’s heart by telling a simple story of the greed for more candles. As part of Literature Matters program, Lee Maracle, one of the first indigenous authors to be published in the 1970s, ‘robed’ Thomas King with a handmade blanket she had woven together from pieces of cloth gathered from around the world. Later, Joseph Boyden paid a tribute to King.

The role of religion in contemporary society

What is religion’s place in the society? Should a non-believer be described differently, without – or outside – the frame of reference of belief? In a postmodern world, do we now need to redefine the notions about secularism which have fostered the idea (dogma?) that religion should stay personal, and that it has no place in the public. Is religion inherently pernicious? 

These are straightforward questions with too many answers, and therefore no answer; also these are some of the many contentious issues that surround religion in the Canadian society that is avowedly multicultural.

Spur Festival, the annual celebration of politics, arts and ideas that shape Canada, organized a discussion on the Role of Religion in Contemporary Society.

The participants were Ara Norenzayan, Ingrid Mattiso, Eva Goldfinger, and Mark Toulouse. Three of the four (Ingrid, Eva and Mark) are believers, and three of the four (Ara, Ingrid and Mark) are academics. So, the discussion was expectedly erudite, polite and agreeable. Brent Bambury, of CBC moderated the session.

The Al Green Theatre at Miles Nadal Jewish Cultural Centre (Spadina & Bloor) was surprisingly filled to capacity, despite it being the first day of spring weather in Toronto (April 11). More than a discussion on religion, it turned (again, expectedly) into a discussion on the need to evolve interfaith understanding.

But to achieve interfaith understanding is almost impossible. A majority of believers have to depend upon agents of god (there really is no better way to describe the swamis, priests, mullahs, rabbis) to understand their own beliefs, and these agents prefer to protect their own turf rather than get into others’ domain. Their interests are better served by being isolated, not by amalgamation.

So, for all practical purposes, the interfaith dialogue and understanding has a limited appeal, and is likely to be so for the foreseeable future.

But, coming back to the discussion: Scholarly erudition can make even the most complex ideas accessible. And during the hour-long discussion the audience must have felt warm and happy that in Canada (unlike down south) we’re all tolerant and conscious of the need to be more accommodative of alternative belief systems.

The usual suspects – Stephen Harper, Quebec Charter of Values, Charlie Hebdo, Bill C-51, ISIS, – got the knuckle-rap they perhaps deserved.  The panel also questioned the selective demonising by the media of some events, and selective amnesia of other events; it questioned the selective funding of religion-based schooling by the government.

Each panelist had at least one idea that was thought-provoking. Norenzayan said we need to acknowledge the universality of religion in public life and be curious about it before analyzing or critiquing it. Mattiso said we must break down the silos and compartments and reach out to believers of other faiths in a genuine attempt to foster better understanding. Toulouse said we are in a postmodern world where the traditional European dichotomy of the separation of the state and the church was no longer meaningful or relevant. Goldfinger said it’s necessary to redefine the debate over belief and non-belief. To term non-believers as atheist is restrictive. She said she preferred to be termed a humanist.

These scholar-believers stressed on tolerance. The hurdle here is that the common believers of all religion generally prefer to be among their own kind, secure in their belief, and don’t necessarily go out of their way to mingle with believers of other faiths.

Also, the implication of a more public role of religion in the society that was advocated by at least two of the panelists, seems to ignore the potential of trouble it would create in something as basic as the workplace, where people of many religions work together.

Moreover, it is unrealistic (as the panelists advocated) that religion or religious practices would change and become more attuned with the changing world. It means acceptance of blasphemy, sexual orientation, interreligious marriages; it also means rejection of proselytizing, religious texts that propagate bigotry and intolerance. This is unlikely to happen in a hurry.

It may sound terribly antiquated, but I think Marx got it right: Religion is the opiate of the masses, and of scholars as well.

Image: http://www.foodgalaxy.org/food-and-religion