Anecdotes
The diagram series
Anecdote is a collection of my attempts at trying to express my personal observations regarding society, politics, and prejudices, illustrated through basic lines or shapes. These observations are the thoughtless immediate images that form in my head when I read, analyze, express or introspect.
Jiddu Krishnamurthy, an Indian speaker, writer Ms.Arundati Roy, an Indian author have had great influences in forming my worldview, and hence have traces of them in my writings.
protection
Protection
Native American depicted The Protection symbol as two arrows within a circle. The weapons were symbols of the major form of defence. A circle around another symbol signifies family ties, closeness & protection. The circle has no break and cannot be broken.
"SC Orders Forced Eviction of More Than 1 Million Tribals, Forest-Dwellers"
-13th Feb 2019
Symbiosis
The tribals have a symbiotic relationship with the forest. The forestland looks after it's dwellers, and the forest-dwellers look after their forest.
Development
The state signs MOU's worth seven billion rupees, a secret for steel plants, power plants, dams, mines, etc. For MOUs to translate to money, land is required, for land to be acquired tribals need to be moved.
Acquisition
Resources have to be acquired from the flat topped hills, under the forest floor, for which 85% of India's people need to fuck off into cities, India has to become a police state, the government has to militarise, for which it needs an enemy. Maoists are the enemy.
Ground zero
"Jaan dengen par zameen nahi denge" a group of tribals who have taken up arms, done so after years of violence, as a matter of right by policemen and forest right personals have now left no stone unturned and are reaching out for the only thing left, their land. Rebels the maoists believe that the innate, structural inequality if Indian society can only redressed by the violent over throw of Indian state.
War
The government declares war. Maoist or harmless tribals, rarely distinguished, are shot, hit, raped and burned. Half of the villagers dispersed. Forests filled with armed guerrillas and streets filled with armed policemen.
Consequence
Adivasis displaced, have no land.
Effect
Resources exploited, waters polluted, trees cut down.
Present
Barren, exploited, lifeless land.
unlearning
"Prejudice has something in common with ideals, beliefs and faiths. The turning point, the perceptive decision, the challenge is not in politics, in religion or in scientific world, it is in our consciousness." -Jiddu Krishnamurthy
Unlearning
Learning to unlearn the belief that the world we perceive through our physical bodies is the real world. As the years go by, the taught understanding of right and wrong, the learned opinions which we consider absolute truth, the years and years of conditioning closes down on us and forms a sphere. And this sphere only gets stronger and our quest to imagine or think only gets linear.
The cone of vision
The closer we think we are to concept of whole, “truth” (in whatever sense we might perceive it), only a part of the whole can be seen. With great effort, the moment we distance ourselves from the “known”, from the “prevalent”, from the “learned” our spheres of confinement, ignorance slowly starts permitting light thus becoming permeable. The farther we are to “our learned truth”, the more we cultivate the habit of observation as opposed to judgement , the more we see the object with utmost clarity and most importantly in its entirety. The journey of the ability to see the whole as opposed to a part of the whole for me is unlearning.
identity
Duality of existence
The aspect of existence by negation, or it being co-dependent is best exemplified in nature through symbiosis of the built and the inbuilt. The darkness of the case helps appreciation of light through the smallest of the cracks, while the bright light of scorched land lets shadow be the refuge. Each entity being complete in itself yet is a part of the bigger picture, ensuring individual expression yet within collective consensus.
Existence
The fact or state of living or having objective reality.
Bipolarity of existence
The aspects of counterpoint, where opposites reinforce each other. A coexistence of extremes where one can be experienced only due to the presence of the other. Where they become mutual references and an integral part of the self balancing system.
Identity
who a person is, or the qualities of a person or group that make them different from others:
Division
the act of separating something into parts or groups
Organisation
An act of arranging group of people, systematically in order who work together in accordance to a particular system
Society
The aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community, having shared customs, laws, and organizations.
Self Identity
The perception or recognition of one's characteristics as a particular individual, especially in relation to social context, in which you see yourself broken, incomplete, trying to relate all the time
Lost within confinement- The ability of an organised majority, called society to seclude, negate and concentrate power to "the recognised", "the alike", "the normal", leads to suppression, of the "misfits". The unrecognised even though as much a part of the self balancing system, are deprived of their rights, and every attempt at rebellion, crushed.
Chitra
The traffic signal beamed red, Chitra went orderly begging through a fleet of vehicles She didn't seem to persist much, it hardly took her 5 seconds to skip from one to another. On the signal turning green, she would climb up the divider and walk towards her native spot, where a row of vehicles would start lining up again.
My first attempt to have a conversation with Chitra was while she had stopped her routine for a paan, sitting under the shadows of the trees. For the lack of a better term, I asked if she was okay being called didi. She asked me to meet her at 6 p.m., since that was when her "shift" would end. We sat in a garden next to the signal.
Identity. "I".
Upon asking how people usually address her, she used the word "chakka" without even flinching, definition of which being "neither men nor women".
Chitra now 45, came to Bombay in 1993 from Madras. After the demise of her parents, her brothers abandoned her owing to her "unnatural traits". Around this time, a broker whom she called her "guru", told her that he'll take her to Bombay where she would have to beg to live. Chitra having found no respect and acceptance from her family agreed, and was sold to an agent for 5000 rupees.
She worked for him for 2 years, and decided to leave him following a fight. She now lives on the footpath under a tree earning 1000 rupees on an average, per day. Studied up till 5th grade, she speaks Hindi and Tamil. Her only source of entertainment or relieving herself are a few fellow companions at the nearby signal and a bottle of whisky every evening. Her boyfriend whom she lived with for five years, is now married and has two kids. He visits her sometimes.
These are facts, but when you listen to it carefully, you can hear something echo, I couldn't figure if it was hopelessness, ignorance, or mere acceptance. Her answers didn't have layers, they were short, small and just mere words, where nothing could be read between the lines. The meaning of which ended with the words itself. No emotions, no expectations, no complaints, just mere reality.
Identity brings with it the basic human rights, a sense of belonging and safety, and most importantly your own sense of being. This was the narration of her life, a person who lived her entire life without one.
Without imposing my assumptions, I asked her if she wished for any change or help, she nodded and said that god would look after her.
What if she lived her whole life misunderstanding her own sexual orientation? We are currently living in societies which are constructed comprising ordered, listed genders, with no tolerance towards anything outside of their narrow spectrum. This is ignorance, prejudices, lack of empathy, lack of awareness and laziness leaving innumerous such Chitras unknown.
Identity- Who or what someone or something is.