This side of Iraq

This side of Iraq, I will give you something to remember:
A poster with a dove flying out a of gun barrel,
A woman hugging a boy soldier on a railway platform,
A pair of eggs, a red ribbon, a child's smile.
A picture of a child's smile.
A web site with the picture of a child's smile on it.
A search engine for that web site,
Right under a listing for pedophilia and child pornography.

This side of Iraq, I will play some sounds for your pleasure:
The creaking noise of a bed
Of lovers making love.
The cackling noise of a child's laughter.
A tape of a child's laghter.
A web site with the sound bite of a child's cackling laughter.
Her father who made the web site is in kosovo,
Fighting the war he doesn't care to fight,
Started too late, limping like an anorgasmic penis.
The sound of his voice cracking with fear before his flight,,
The sound of death following, a requiem.

This side of Iraq, I argue with my Russian friend,
I paint white flags with blue circles,
Watch television with weary eyes,
Both sides.
Wrong, and right,
Since thirteen hundred.

Always killing,
Always running.

And this side of Iraq,
I stop my car by the gas station and
complain about The gas price.
I watch the blue sky and
Cry about smiling children.

Trivialities

So here is the part I don't get. 40 year olds acting like pesky little children. Some days are harder than others.

So P is talking about marrying this guy she met in San Jose, except she can't really have a conversation with him, his parents doesn't like her, they have nothing in common, and she is not even sure if they love each other. You would think a divorced woman of 35 would know how that is going to end up!

People!

As days pass, I realize more than I am still not over the death of my father.

Telling of histories

Globalization has become to new buzzword to all kinds of movements, addressing all kinds of solutions. The right and left, bereft of their traditionally-held ideologies in the new context, have devolved into caricatures of their former selves and new battles are being fought as proxy wars for or against this new entity in the global village. However, what really dives this engine?

An objective telling of history is an impossibility in any circumstance. Either you are too close to the facts thus creating a slant or bias making the historiography necessarily subjective or you are too far removed from the facts and therefore, your historiography is a shell of a story with gaps. When you add your own perceptions and cultural judgments to this mix, the history that emerges is necessarily corrupt. It is this vein attempt for an objective historiography, more importantly the vein belief that an objective historiography is possible, that leads to problems in interpreting. History becomes a pseudo-science, with rigid notions and standards. This history is then peddled to the masses as “the” truth with which one is supposed to gauge their moral compass and judge the morality of the past.

It is with this corrupt and morally bankrupt historiography that one has to approach globalization. One has to also distinguish between the globalization of the economy and the globalization of the marketplace. If you were to use the image of an Asian bazaar or a Latin American Village market, the concept of the marketplace emerges not only as a place where commerce takes place, but also as a place where diverse cultures meet and interact; values clash and judgments are made. In this regard, the assault of the marketplace is a bigger crime than just the assault on the commerce of the marketplace.

To quote Nicaraguan poet Giocconda Belli, “What worries me about intellectuals nowadays is that globalization has isolated us, and we have to look for ways to rekindle the communication that used to exist, and the influence that intellectuals used to have in their societies. Many intellectuals renounced their commitment when the Left failed. When socialist ideology showed itself to be a failure in the way it was applied in the Eastern countries such as Russia, a wave of shame came over the leftist intellectuals. Many went back to the trenches, this time to hide, swearing, "I won't get involved in politics anymore. I'll just be in my ivory tower writing and doing my thing and that will be my contribution." Thus the critique of the Left was entrusted to the Right.” (interview with Bomb Magazine) What this isolation and abdication of critique to the right has resulted in is a perception, bred through by the right with selective exposure and history, that the entire question of globalization is the question of economy and economic development. Furthermore, with the left not available to defend its own ideology or methodology, the right has had a field day in detailing the troublesome aspects of the methodology to their great benefit. Thus the contrast of well-attired economists meeting in a conference room against unruly mobs chanting in the streets and destroying property is presented as a tacit value judgment on the ideas that they espouse.

What has been the response to this avalanche of public discourse representing the right and the virtual silencing of the arguments from the left? Two things have happened. The left has thus become more lethargic at the prospect of complete loss of voice and have disappeared entirely from the public sphere, retreating back the ivory tower. To this vacuum, a more fascist, jingoistic right, one that have much in common with the group they oppose but with clashing economic interests, has moved in. The new right is appealing to the populace that is fast losing its identity to cling back to its traditional protectionism at the cost of all the gains to the subalterns under previous progressive conditions. Reproductive rights are challenged, language supremacy is asserted, women are increasingly being forced off the public sphere and religion is used in increasingly fascist ways to stifle debate.

This opposition to the globalization is much easily discredited and thus its rise has been a welcome change to the forces of globalization. Having vanquished the voices of the left to the ivory tower, they are now allowing the new opposition to grow and become uglier at which point they can be neutralized with military force which will be welcomed, as the thinking goes, by the native population.

Can globalization, the marketplace variety, be evaluated without paying attention to the historiography on terrorism, revolution, dictatorship and political disfranchising of large populations? As Noam Chomsky points out, the root causes of terrorism lie in the much larger imperial sins of the powers of globalization.

Memories

Kanchanaburi Cemetary, Thailand

Why spoil the moment? I thought.
Outside my room, river Kwai rested mostly silently,
Remembering to flow only when prodded by the noise from a floating disco.
Why spoil this moment with thoughts?

It is supposed to be warm, but the water in the pool was icy
I was alone, trying to float
Without my glasses I wasn’t sure if
The American teenagers were staring or not.

In the morning, away from the sun,
I walked to the bridge on a dirt road with old cart wheels fences,
A small army of stray dogs followed me,
Each of them reminding me of mine, back home.

They all smile. A country of smiles.
From rickshaws, bikes, in front of their houses
They smile open smiles.
I haven’t frowned since I landed here, I thought.

Over a hill and a hidden valley, both miniature in scale,
Almost like that I have seen in my village,
I landed on the train tracks, overgrown with vegetation,
Away from the tourists’ glare.

The bridge over river Kwai.
I smelled of travel fatigue and tourist weariness.
Under the bridge a lonely boatman passed,
His eyes on the bridge training for tourists

The 8:40 train arrived while I was on the bridge,
As I jumped on the platform for cover,
The train full of Japanese tourists
Stared at me standing there wearing a straw hat.

What do you make of this? I asked myself.
Photographing myself in front of old locomotives
The other side was busy with a European team
Setting up for a documentary shoot.

Later, on a motorcycle taxi I went to the train station
A Muslim girl, head covered in scarf, Translated for me
Do you know Kanchanaburi well?
I want to escape to the waterfalls.

Instead I end in front of the World War cemetery.
Ibrahim Mohammed, Asif Khan, Karim Lala
Names of Indians who died in the battle greet me As I enter.
Celebrated on a small plaque away from the White celebrants.
They are buried elsewhere, the cemetery is for the masters.
They died alone, their blood spilled for no eulogies, no songs.
And strikingly, no place In front of their names for a wreath.

A memory that refuses to die

There you lie, your eyes closed, sunken deep as if they withdrew from this world of hate and hunger to give you peace, you mouth just open wide enough for a grain of rice that I push in, my last offering of peace, before you go.
I shift you a little so you can be comfortable in the metaphorical sense, your sweat I wipe away even though I know it is condensation; you are ice cold like a slab of meat even as I try to
offer you a flower
touch your feet
ask for forgiveness for all I did not say.
You wait patiently, your arms on your chest as if you have eternity waiting for you, for once you are not running the show, there is none of your agitated presence shouting just the right things to do at these occasions, it is almost as if you are letting me be a man and allow me to grow up.
There is no time for me to mourn or cry or even to think of the significance of your cold body on the floor, the lamps, the incense, the open coconuts with oil in them, there is just a procession of people, I even smile at them, all their faces just melding into one
I kiss your forehead.
We ride together for your last journey, this time I am leading the way, I have the fire pot on my lap that is destined for you, I look back,
I can see your bound feet
I can still see I am not a man yet
I can still see I haven't told you all the secrets
I can still see that you wanted to say you loved me but never did.
In the end, watching the macabre site of the crematorium keeper picking your bones, I wonder why you are so warm,
like a smile
like a memory

like an image of you riding a bicycle on a warm sunny day
like a tormented moment when you knew you couldn't make that trip because there wasn't any money
like my mother's tears,
like your children's tired sleep waiting for your drunken steps on the porch,
like your smile,
like your love,
like a hot, hot sun
All I am left with is this picture of you sleeping, your eyes closed, sunken deeply as if they withdrew from this world to give you peace.
I am still waiting for my peace.

Inside the Brazen Head

"You got a decent enough do at the brazen head" - James Joyce

I am not Irish.
Not even close.
I am from India, from Bombay, from all those monsoon mornings and sweaty nights wandering the streets.
Thinking about being Stephen Dedalus.
Like she said once.
So, like the Joycean pub, I stand as a repository of characters many, good, small, feeble-statured, given to hyperbole.
And of course, I hear that the design of the Indian flag was in part an expression of solidarity with the Irish people and their struggle against the brits. Who knows?
I am just the brazen head.
Welcome.