KAPIL ARAMBAM

What’s in a name?

2012-02-12T13:11:00.002+05:30

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What’s in a name? That which we call Bolywood

By any other word would stink as the shithole in Slumdog Millionaire;

So India would, were it not India call’d...
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Last week, two ministers of an Indian state were caught watching porn on a cellphone while in the assembly. It has taken parliamentary decorum to a new high. The two farts also remind me of a local elder, who used to carry three 4GB phone memory cards: two of them for storing porn clips which he grouped according to the country a video belongs to, and a third card which he used for his personal photos and videos, though not necessarily obscene.

The cameraman had done what he must. Imagine his sinister smile while capturing the shots, as if he has nothing to focus his machine on, but he did well mixing business with pleasure. Call it the best names?

Back to the news after the break: These two erectile ministers belong to a right-wing political party, so conscious of the Hindu ideals and cultural drat and dump. However, this is just another absurdity of the talking shop called the assembly or the house and this and that. Media people say it was during a serious deliberation on some public issues, whatever heck it was; and they were quick to jot it down on their notebook and headlined the issue as the Porngate. A what-gate?

There is something called the Watergate scandal, popularised by the global media controllers of the United States of America. But this term is original. Watergate is a name they have created out of their mental foundry. And the Porngate...? It is preceded, remember, by the Radiagate of the 2G Scam that has been tickling every arse in this country. Perhaps the India Gate tempts the media morons but it will be undeserved sympathy to ignore their creative rust in labelling issues and events. What if they start suffixing all the so-called bloody national affairs with a –gate: A Hundredgate for Sachin Tendulkar scoring the anticipated century in cricket in a losing match, a Lokpalgate for the government’s failure because of opposition’s covert lobbying in passing the anti-corruption bill, an AFSPAgate for some useless army operations killing and raping the people in the Northeast and so on?

This is not the end. Call me names, India, Sir ji, but you are so unimaginative in naming or calling names for that matter. Take the case of Bolywood. Don’t say it is included in the Oxford English dictionary, we know it is, but do say Holywood was an entertainer who used to perform naked dance shows in Bombay. And do take some inspiration from Ramayan and Mahabharat; the latter, the longest epic which has around 1.8 million words (so does Wikipedia say) will give substantial creative prompts to name and label.

In fact, Khajuraho is the perfect place to start if there is any mental block. The two ministers, who were caught watching the clips, are also more innovative taking adult clips in a Democracy’s sacred building as a symbolic gesture of free expression. They were possibly influenced by Sunny Leone who came to India a couple of months back, otherwise they belong to a party that could influence their supporters to burn down cinema halls for showing indecent movies. Now I got to call the old man in my locality and ask him how many memory cards he is carrying these days.

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Breaking News for the 100th day: The army chief has lost his birth certificate on his way to the Headquarter. Anybody, if you find it, please sms iFOUND_your-name and send it to 5455. You will be compensated dearly.

Filler: In the past four years alone, the Home Ministry has rejected at least 42 requests to sanction the prosecution of military personnel found by the police to have engaged in crimes such as murder, homicide and rape in Kashmir, data obtained by The Hindu reveal.

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Thank You for Smoking

2012-02-11T09:01:00.002+05:30

A cigarette is the only consumer product which when used as directed kills its consumer.

INSIDE THE ROOM

•They stream through filters
Like marching bands of army
I play the piper

•Slowly it consumes
Helpless airs of lungs, the whiff,
nicotine-stained lips

•In the smoking room
We wear jackets of smoke and ash
The butts cry for fire

•with empty pockets
with compulsion to smoke oft
with biri i walk

•she fagged while i humped
i caught my breath when she said:
‘Are you done, my boy?’

•the picture scares me
it’s a government mandate
to spoil ciggy packs

NO SMOKING ZONE

•it’s time for a smoke
you can wait here for a while
no smoking zone sucks.

•take your butt outside
my buttock? i kick it out;
they mean the ciggy’s.

•As the lungs cough
the liver smirks; the heart wails:
Thank you for smoking.

PAMPERED WITH CHOICE

•from Moreh they come
smacking Burmese and Thai's lips,
Win, Classic, et al.

•Old folks they say they
prefer Bandor to Mantu
Easy on the throat.

•Which one is better:
active evil, passive good?
Smokers’ dilemma.

WRITE HAND HAIKU

•Should I smoke or stop?
Should I write haiku or halt?
The toilet knows not

•She sips her tea while
I count the words for haiku
The fag yells: "Drag me."

•with a fag, left hand,
with a phone, right hand; i write
meaningless haiku.

Mirror, Mirror

2012-02-06T20:53:00.001+05:30

See the sea of souls
on the mirror, meditating on the meaning
of the reality, aroused by their own reflection,
and accepting it is accurate.

In wealth and high rise;
Nowhere else there’s a picture
Of style and substance

In whisky bottles
Lies the nature of artful;
Redefine babble

In others’ image
Lies our likely photographs,
Our real snaps stink

Revolution chimes
In tune with the excretion
Of displaced people.

Mirror, mirror on the wall
Which is the fairest of all
— the wealth or its illusion;
the whisky bottles or its effects;
others’ reality or our dreams;
the revolution or the excretion?

Active Evil

2012-02-05T15:45:00.000+05:30

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You are not clever enough to know all the evil you do

You are neither no god that you will not see, hear, speak, do evil

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‘The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.’ —Plutarch

A Life Rolled in Haiku

2012-02-02T20:34:00.001+05:30

Stage 1

whimpers, mother’s voice;

is the world, in truth, so good

—just milk and potty?

perhaps i’m still blind

my ears can hear but a sound

i can tell nothing

Stage 2

let me play a game

a simple game, not your crap,

—reason defying

toys and all playthings

are only we wish we have;

you shape us with guns

Stage 3

why should I follow

your deeds and dreams so hollow?

i have my credo.

guns and goons galore

does the pen have more power?

reality sucks.

Stage 4

teenage dreams are done

if not for my killer crush

what has life for me?

the government kills

why is the world so fucked up?

smoke and take a rest

Stage 5

the joke is on me

gunshots have become berceuse;

backache and lost dreams

once upon a time

i was unsure about life;

what happiness is

Stage 6

in the pale blue dot

besot with skepticism

drink rum as potion.

will this be the end

with life with a wife and kids?

too old to muse on

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T H E E N D

they fight for free speech

we battle for life and death

the art of protest

death has come to stay

while i fail to see what lies

beyond bleary eyes

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To a Scarlet Amaryllis

2012-02-01T22:07:00.001+05:30

In one gloomy corner of this room,
You are standing like the wild
but tamed elephant at Shamumakhong,
With your soul shackled in an unsung plant bosom,
Your tall legs tied forever
to the confining tiny land—tell me,
Do not you envy the white ibises
their flight of freedom.
Your wildness is in crimson, unblushing bloom
in your holier-than-thou countenance,
in the red rage, as if you have been mindful
of the mindless bloodshed of my tribesmen;
Be cheerful, Amaryllis,
Be your yellow siblings tho’ in this nook
You will see them never,
Imagine how they are delightful
Even in the deepest winter
They can dream of an impending spring;
Leastways, be a tinge of yellow;
In this alteration and your new self only
will people write of you,
Putting aside the gods and guns and goons,
But appreciating you
Your unspoken joy and your cherry eyes:
What life is made of, but wild celebration.

Biri Blues

2012-01-28T20:50:00.001+05:30

Drag
Drag on
Drag me out
But you are only dragging me down to the drain

to hide yourself from the scorn of society.
When all I have longed was some taste in you.
When you would not even buy me, my boy;
Why, tell me why, my boy?

The rabble rule.
Don't be so cruel.
You are acting
like a military, like a fake democracy;

Live inside your building of indifference,
while you build a statue of liberalism at your gate.
How can I let you know the truth?
How would you know it?

Blinking and winking merrily,
I would stay rubbing myself
against the cracked lips and crooked teeth
of my dear, dirty, poor folks, who chain-smoke to reach their gods.

But I'm just the butt, filter-less
of a biri, in my bareness,
Here, used and forgotten, near the drain
with a bloody, faded, red thread dangling on my head.

On Solitude

2012-01-25T07:38:00.000+05:30

On this promising day,
as the sun bathes
the reluctant sky
before the cold airs of the season arrive
their wintry little hands
extending unto us unwished,
delightful it is, we are gathered here—but
I have been yearning,
with all this glaring emptiness,
to know what exists between us,
to see what really exists.

No longer do I care,
in this land of the strangers,
how the sun is sought after these days,
greedily on the verandas and balconies,
and how the winter will be missed so much afterwards.
Waiting all along, all around.

But when you talk of love,
I’m occupied
with how I should not hate you;
When you talk of peace,
there is always a clarion call for war;
When you talk of justice,
is there an seething frustration
to break all the division;
To love is not to not hate.
To be peaceful is not to be not violent.
To live in a just world is not
to be not unfair in living.
When you talk of freedom,
I’m tied up in a chain of boredom.

Between me and you, there is
a world that flirts around with us,
with our cockeyed tease that it gets tickled.
And to my cold comfort,
I know that I know nothing at all.
Life’s been just a repast
that reeks of an otherwise delicious dish
that has turned simply sour, sans the salt.
And your company, out here, is purely redundant.

Andro, Manipur

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“there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it

in the slow movement of the hands of a clock”

― Charles Bukowski, Love is a Dog from Hell

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Lansdowne, Uttarakhand

Today’s Morning News

2012-01-22T22:17:00.005+05:30

Seven people killed, only three places bombed today;
In four places, sit-in-protest against the killing and bombing today;
The policemen blamed the patriots
The patriots are absconding, and a lot, the patriots are earning
The patriots blame the India—and of the land its vendible junta;
The India is sending a rocket to the moon in 2012;
6,000 acres of poppy fields are burned down, now deeper the raisers delve;
The genital doctor, he is my neighbour, has got a 1-crore demand letter
Search operation were conducted, luckily for the locality, only one suspect arrested
(According to some unreliable official sources)
The India is sending more mainland couches
For the beautiful wives and their riflemen and the army men;
I read the news, early morning, as I wait for the final poop
As I dream about fucking my motherland.

Of a Calendar Hanging Listlessly on the Wall

2012-01-21T21:05:00.000+05:30

When whisky wants
The modification of man is over in a peg
Or two, for a vagabond like me,
Like the spring does to the dendrobium
But it’s only a spring of frustration for me,
Of my blindness that sees the big world so small and mean,
Of all the beautiful people longing only beautiful things,
Of a fresh new year arriving with more bombs and bullets;
Pots should replace drinks,
It makes me want to listen to Tapta.

The Chinese have included all the animals in their calendar;
Should we now include all the kinds of drinks too?
Would mentioning China urge
the United States of India to send more armies?
Nationalism can be spared for the next year,
In sobriety it’s easy to hide the sight
Of all the patriots and the bloody nationalists
In some meaningless words, in some bloody poetry;
But as soon as the whisky comes uninvited
From NFC and NAFED, does it arrive in galore
The man of change do accompany too;
Should we compare the number of people you killed
with the number of bottles we have finished?
We have the western calendar.

Arrival and Departure — Poetry in 2011

2012-01-20T20:13:00.001+05:30

A collection of poems which were posted on this blog in 2011. Nothing more special but there is a lingering push to recreate them better, thence the poems are now on a PDF taking a not-so-giant leap from blog pages and also to archive them more orderly, howsoever they are badly composed and edited. Now it has become an annual affair as in counting the number of deaths and bomb blasts in newspapers—this is the second year to be precise—to tally the poems and lay them out accordingly on some page-making and photo-editing software. InDesign and Photoshop were used for Arrival and Departure — Poetry in 2011 — The Year That Wasn't. So here it is.

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I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning,

and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Oscar Wilde

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It is easy to check and download the file on/from other platforms:

Arrival & Departure

Check the 2010 collection
THE SONGS OF DESIRE

English Poetry in a Bamboo Bush

2012-01-19T16:12:00.000+05:30

Of happy moments in the field of intolerable dreams
I’m visualising in it a life of essence
While ennui fails me day in and day out
As I fritter my time away in the killing fields.

Poetry is better in English:
It smacks of the Foreign, in our land so barren
A motif of greener grass that others own;
In my mother tongue,
I chew over a few verses but they are worse,
They taste so native, so bland
Like the loadshedding evening on a bandh
Like the defects of English;
Bring in more English nouns and verbs
and adjectives from faraway lands,
We can relish quality in quantity
Get more adverbs to show
We have been spending the nights listlessly;
Whitman and Auden and Ginsberg are my heroes
My love for English poetry is more than
The sweet sentiments of Khamba, he had for Thoibi,

—I would still not care to read Hijam Anganghal
Until I can go to a wedding, wearing what I want
I'm allergic to all the attires and apparels so aglitter
The English and Hindi and Bengali are too much
But if not nothing, let me wear the English poetry.

God is not Dead

2012-01-19T16:08:00.000+05:30

God is not dead,

But pretty much alive in so many divine ways
In and out, here and there, left and right
One of our oldest kings is also a god
He looks like a big python and a dragon
And there are beautiful goddesses
More lovely than the others
Falling in love can be so devotional
God is not dead, my friends,
And there are many photos, you can see
In colors, in monochrome, in black and white
There are many artists too, who can paint gods
Sometimes all adorned and sometimes all naked.

Once an old man told me
The gods and goddesses live elsewhere
They fled for we curse too much
They are found everywhere, I said, like bombs in our place
He told me I will know it when I reach his age
I do like to reach his age and prove him wrong
But I’m afraid he will be a dead man then
Don’t wait for heaven, it will come to you, he advised
“Chant the names: a ding ling ga jing ga
They will let you garner
They will let you plunder
The last time I had, it was the wet dream about a goddess.”
The old man must have been dead by now,
But God is not dead, it lives deep inside the mind.

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“Adubudi makha-romgi emoong-sina ookang-na shaba (lai-ni) haibiribani. Yaragadi ookang-na shaba haiduna noknariba makhoising asi dandi amadi pibiyu. Marei thadatpigera, macha-machusing soinaina pok-hanbigera amadi toubiyu.”

“Kuireda . . . Epang-galna tanjaba nattana kanamattana maroi maka amafao katladre. Ibungobu thajadaba-nara, eibu nungsidaba-nara madudi khangdre . . . Kali da bamon oiruba nanaidi karinungino haibadu yowrabani. Khangbidarene nanaigi awabasibu?”

Meino’s (a protagonist) dialogue, from the short story Nanai Meinogi Mang, written by Sudhir Naoroibam
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god is drunk
trying to cry in guilt for israel
god is drunk
and talking nonsense
i shout back “i cant shit if it is noisy
so shut the fuck up
otherwise you wont get ur next peg”

Impromptu lines from Akhu Chingangbam, the Street Poet

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Get Power Cut or Go Kaput

2012-01-15T13:16:00.000+05:30

A translation of RK Bhubonsana’s Mei Mamgera Budhi Mamgera

Get power cut or go kaput
—It is the new government notice
It is mandatory to choose one.

Get power cut or go kaput?

The octogenarians talk over
Amongst themselves, the better choice:
‘If it is affirmed
We should get power cut
than to stuck in a rut.’
Slowly the suggestions stream in,
Slacking their stooping shoulder
The burden on their walking sticks:
‘Going kaput, for us, is open-and-shut
Today is as confusing as yesterday as tomorrow
So if it is really done, before we pop our clog,
Let the electricity be damned
Get some good sense back.’

And right away
does the government pass the verdict.

In view of the old folks’ judgment
There has been power cut
A regular load-shedding,
It is not a government's trick.

Get power cut or go kaput?

So the news spread,
Amongst the middle-aged folks
The discussion goes forward
As they campaign from home to home
Across the town.

And after deliberation they decide:

As far as electricity is concerned,
It had been a nonentity from our childhood days and earlier
And even now, we have always got power cut
But significantly
We had gone kaput as soon as we were born
With no recovery
And the condition is getting worse each day
Now life has reached its midway
Let it continue for it is hardly going to make a difference
So preferably we should have electricity ‘brightly’
Each night as we eat and sleep well
Let there be light!

How can you ignore their decision,
This group comprise the maximum electorates?

Thus adopted
The government
Several special scheme
To make the people go kaput:
Thus the mark tampering scam in Manipur’s top civil exams,
Thus sans the rice from Guwahati, it is illegally exported from Manipur,
Thus so cowardly and yellow-bellied, electricity is bought from other places,
Thus the law-enforcing agencies work and function against the law,
Thus the ministers and MLAs’ defection make the land so unstable.

So is it because of the government,
Or is it because of the people, the argument.

Get power cut or go kaput?

The youth moots
In nook and corner
In schools
In groups.

Which one is better?

The decision.

We are the youth
Manipur’s future
Manipur’s welfare
All is in our hands
So inevitably
We want to get power cut as well as go kaput.
And if possible, please break a tooth or two, too.
Why because,
Electricity is more or less the same
Before the Loktak Project started
And after it was completed
And it is as it has always been,
On the other hand
The Loktak Project destroys fields and fishes
It causes floods
It ruins man
It creates eviction, roots out habitation
It takes people out of work
It makes people go nuts.
Along with power cut
It is better to go kaput
Why because,
For knowledge, we have read and studied
But we lost time and money.
We get knowledge to get jobs
And we lost everything as we lose the knowledge
while searching the means to arrange money for the jobs.
Likewise we are educated after studying
And we are reasonable after education
And we know the faults and flaws when we are reasonable
And we want to express when we know the faults and flaws
And in our land when we express,
We get beaten up, we are brutalised.
Literally, backbreaking!
So it is better to go kaput.
In any case
In a land sans any sense and electricity
What use is of a beautiful face
There is no use,
The face of the youth
It is more or less, all the same
Instead, for our expressive facial elegance,
The request to get our front teeth broken too.

Alright!

The pillar of the society, they are called
So necessarily, we should follow what they say
So the government intentionally
Make the Loktak engine go defunct
Make the people go kaput
Make the regular load-shedding programme
Anything against the youth
Anything that makes people go wild
All of these have been taken up—
To break the teeth
To beat up the protesters and demonstrators
It said, thus it does
These days.

So the people live up to their wish
They got no power and they go kaput
Their teeth broken
In the land of mani—the jewels, Manipur.

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Translation Lines:
Mei Mamgera Budhi Mamgera, it is a colloquial title with no exact rendering in English. It connotes an interrogation if you want to get power cut (mei mamgera) or mental blackout (budhi mamgera). The most interesting word is ‘mamgera’, from ‘mamba’— in Manipuri, mei mamba is power cut and budhi mamba is literally mental blackout. But for some effect in relation to ‘getting power cut’, I have used the phrase ‘going kaput’ for mental blackout, ie., getting defunct, as in the mind and brain going out of work.

Load shedding is a common phenomena for the last couple of decades in Manipur, with the common people receiving hardly 4 hours of electricity in a day, though the state is highly developed with the average people having an IQ above 135. The state is infested with conflicts and violence.

Manipur literally means the land of mani, the jewels.
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Note:
This poem was originally published as Mei Mamgera Budhi Mamgera, in a book of the same title by RK Bhubonsana. The book with 55 poems and published in 1999, was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2002.

Check the author’s website: http://www.rk-bhubonsana.in/

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Awfully January

2012-01-13T21:55:00.000+05:30

Part One: I Feel a Change Comin’ On

As drunken men shout for power
The power of itsy-bitsy nothingness
On the powerless streets
For the dictatorship of the donkeys
I feel a change comin’ on;

all these days I have been only waiting
In the passage inside my place of drainage
All these days I have been only waiting
For the next thousand days for more blood and gore
I do feel a change comin’ on.

They yell again to make it special
The beginning of the festival is marked here
—The festival of the fools,
With the loud merrymaking of bombs
I feel a change comin’ on.

Part Two: Of the People, On the Election

I hit the road as the festive moods prevail
There are going to be folks who are interested
Even if I'm interested in none of them
For the plastic dawn we dream of seeing in the horizon
And standing under a banyan, all I saw was Bose
And I talked to him, he had got the day's first dose
So strange he is not like a drinker like all of us
In this cold January morning
He had managed to get a shot of heroin
With the money he got from flogging
The defunct electric pole and wires near the Nambul
to the scrap dealer who came all the way from Bihar,
He convinced me we can get the present government back
All he need is three free shots a day till the election day
Then a job here, a' rob there, he needs them, he added
But he turned pale tho' he was so high
When I told him the government is dead.

My Buddy, Mr Bush

2012-01-11T13:36:00.000+05:30

Bring Them On
Thangjam Ibopishak, before he became Shrimati
Tomcha Babu, had met George W Bush at a hotel in Lilong

A translation of Thangjam Ibopishak's Eigi Marup Mister Bush

Last evening
In a hotel in Lilong Bazar
I had red tea together
With the president of America, George W Bush.
We gabbed
On terrorrism in Iraq
On the changing landscape
in the relation between India and Pakistan.
He said: "To fight the global terrorism
The Meitei martial art is the only way,
No nuclear warfare, nothing will do."
That's true;
We have the Meitei theng-gourol
In a flash of the sword
that a flyspeck seed of sesame cannot slip in
that five English heads had literally rolled!
Bush is bright
But brighter am I.
I asked: "Have you heard about the Manipuri art
called chainarol mentioned in the ancient puya?
The Maoist revolution in Nepal is going out of control;
How would you solve it?"
He replied: "Listen to the Bhagavad Gita
Spread the Hindu wisdom."
Towards the end of the meeting, I said:
"Mr President, I have no money
I have to go back to Imphal by bus
Give me Rs 10."
He answered:
"I have only American dollars
Not even a single rupee;
But my friend, Tariq Ali,
He has moved in to a house near the Ahanbi,
Tell him that I have sent you."
Then he hopped onto his Hero cycle,
Promising we should meet again at the White House,
He bade goodbye.
Oh! Bush had left his bidi packet!

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Originally published as Eigi Marup Mister Bush, in Thangjam Ibopishak's Shrimati Tomcha Babu (Writers' Forum Imphal, 2007).

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Meitei - A major ethnic group in Manipur
Lilong - A Muslim-dominated area, 15 km away from Imphal
Theng-gourol - The art of using swords and spears
Chainarol - The art of unarmed combat
puya - A collection of historical books / sacred text for the Meiteis
The Ahanbi - A river in Lilong

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Good Taste and Bad Times

2012-01-10T17:08:00.000+05:30

“All of life is a dispute over
taste and tasting.” —Friedrich Nietzsche

Back in those bad old days, men would savour anything from roots and shrubs—the one with the hardest nails getting the most delicious parts—to the flesh of any prized catch. Now in a sort of time-machine leap to the present time, we have the blandest egg curry served in the finest ceramic plate, sprinkled with nicely sliced onions and bits of green chillies in ostensibly what is called a good presentation and serving and we would relish to our heart’s content. In a similar pulse, a public hanging for lousy criminals would be a grand entertainment in the bygone centuries but we have heightened our taste to the degree of using only fingers in front of an electronic box for amusement today. This gives us, precisely, a rough idea of how we have evolved through the ages and the difference between, to put it brusquely this time, the cultured and uncultured people. In the latter there lies a conflict, a dispute over the guffs of being overly civilized or not civilized.

Initially the act of refining and getting refined sets our living condition, at least it has been the case as we march forward to the glory of our civilization. But as in the ups and downs of a private life, we also have the sporadic periods of regression. This is a serious problem in a land, which is marked as underdeveloped in a modern parlance. In such a place where survival can become an act of resistance, there is also a thin line between the cultured and uncultured people as well as disdain for both, though without no reason; and clearly there is a naked show of absurdity in elegance and poverty.

WE THE LIVING Statistics shows a lot of confusing numbers, so without it, the illustration of difference and contempt will be clearer in this context. In such a place, as we see luxury cars and SUVs increasing gradually, people of good taste are obviously on the rise—those who read from the oldest Aristotle to the latest chick lit, dine in fine restaurants, travel from one corner of the globe to the other, appreciate Rembrandt and van Gogh, cultivate the art of being connoisseurs, et al—while completely refusing to see the large shit hole that smears the sophistication of being in a supposedly high class. Those years of education and effort and thence the luxury to treat themselves are damned. If not for more personal interests or altruistic values in exceptional cases, the halfway is indistinct as if there is a crack at the centre.

Juxtapose the luxury cars with economic blockade, literally a very economical term in a sense that this kind of agitation is rare in the whole world. Imagine in a failed state, where a blockade results in shortage of oxygen supply for hospitals and many tragedies many a time, the indulgence in things of good taste. This is not a question of different sensibilities but of desperation. Where should we position the societal desire for good food and clothes and their taste when there is a big interrogation mark over living, as in dying? On the other hand, poverty is rich in hopelessness. In the impoverishment, sympathy and victimhood hide not only the civility and other such cultivated things, but also the shit hole-ness of a failed state. So in any case, there is no touchstone but the realisation of the world per se. We have come a long way from the days of root eaters but it seems like, in this part of the world, the road of humanity is quite longer than others.

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Read Bad Taste: Beyond Decency and Conformity

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Tattooed with Taboos: ‘Quietely and Unexpectedly Poetry Came and Woke Us Up’

2012-01-08T17:11:00.000+05:30

Source: The Imphal Free Press January 8 2011

Interview by: The Gender Studies Journal

Tattooed with Taboos, An Anthology of Poetry by Three Women from North East India was published by Siroi Publications and Loktakleima Publications in September 2011. The book was awarded the Best Book Production, 2011 in the recently concluded book fair held in Imphal organised by National Book Trust, Raja Rammohan Roy Library and Central Library,Imphal. This is an interview of the poetesses Chaoba Phuritshabam, Shreema Ningombam and Soibam Haripriya by The Gender Studies Journal based in University of Delhi. The poetesses talk about the process of writing and publishing poetry, negotiating gender, Manipuri society and politics. (They are referred to by their initials.)

What made you write poetry? How is your gender identity related to what you write?

S.N. : Writing poetry came to me in my school days. For me poetry is a revolt. It can hardly erupt from a banal feeling. It has to be from a deep pleasure, pain, passion or catastrophic disappointment. The feeling of being trapped in this gender construct, the anguish of the social norms associated with it and the sense of censorship and surveillance in our private and public life is expressed in several of my poems.

S.H. : This is a rather difficult question. Poetry is never apart from me and I write as a woman. There is no other way, there is no escape. I don’t think if I were a man I would have written poems.

C.P. : Seeking freedom which I don’t get in our society as a daughter, sister, and lover made me write poems. Women in our society still cannot express their own feelings freely without fearing judgement - even falling in love needs the consent of a man. My writing celebrates the desire of a woman while removing her crown of being a cultural ambassador.

What role do you imagine for poetry in feminist politics?

S.N. : Poetry can be a form of resistance and rebellion. As a part of literature it can be a medium for imagining and subsequently constructing a new world and new moral order which is fundamental to feminist politics. In this, poetry can be a means as well as an end.

S.H. : Poetry expresses what I feel as a woman and when I claim that poetry for me is very personal, how can that be divorced from politics? When I write about home, in the section ‘Angst for the Homeland’ I feel I have a certain ambivalence - why should I write for a homeland when I know it doesn’t have an inch for me?

C.P. : Poetry carries the untold dreams, desire and hopes of a person. It can provoke a reader to understand her womanhood and realise what she wants from her life. Once she claims her body and soul, no one can suppress or conquer her.

How have you three poets influenced each other’s work? Do you feel that the collective has a role to play in the process of writing?

S.N. : We have spent much time together talking, discussing for nights and days and almost eating from the same plate. If it was not for this solidarity and collective consciousness the poems may have not taken the form they have now.

S.H. : Not just this collective but ‘Burning Voices’ as a collective has shaped my poems. The discussions we have had, not of the form and structure of the poems (though I think we should take that up too) but the spontaneous emotive expressions we experienced remain a central influence on my writings. I would not have written ‘Five Day’s Untouchable’ if I hadn’t met Shreema. This poem came about after I read an article written by her.

C.P. : Without inspiration, discussion and help from my friends I would not engage too much into writing escaping my busy office schedule.

Who or what is a significant source of inspiration for you, an impetus to write?

S.N. : My grandmother was a poet though she was not a literate in the modern sense of the term. A phrase which she coined tremendously inspired me: thamna khenjongna wai wai, tharo thambalna hai hum (the lotus leaves swaying wai wai, and the lilies and lotuses swaying hai yum). She was standing in the midst of lotuses and lilies trying to gather lotus stems which she would sell in order to feed her children. Poetry is an arena of my personal resistance against the dogmas of patriarchy. When I seek freedom, I write poetry.

S.H.: Laishram Samarendra Singh, my introduction to his work is through a collection - Mamang leikai thambal satle, 1974 (And yonder blooms the lotus) a satire on the contemporary situation of the society we grew up with. In the title poem he with his trademark subtle sarcasm built a utopian Meitei community where people started caring for their work and the people around them. Thangjam Ibopishak of course, and Shri Biren for his absolute love and dedication to poetry. I read works of Memchoubi as a conscious decision, because she is a women poet. These are all Manipuri poets and I do get inspired by them though my poems are written in English.

C.P. : My mother who cannot read and write any script but has tremendous knowledge of literature. I wanted to paint her imagination in my writing. Also, being born and brought up in a troubled state like Manipur.

Please tell us about the production of the book.

S.N.: The book was printed at Kangla printers in Manipur. We had faced the price of paper zooming up because of the ongoing economic blockade. The ISBN number is given by Siroi publication and Loktakleima publication is our own consisting of the three of us as founders.

The cover design was done by Kapil Arambam. The four red drops on the cover were supposed to be on the phanek but he made it into four o’s in Tattooed with Taboos. It was wonderful. I also wonder if poetry can be for sale. So we tried to keep the price as low as possible.

S.H. : We had approached some mainstream publishing firms but since that was going nowhere we decided to pool in our own resources. Thankfully we did not know what it entailed. Publishing poetry in the time of economic blockade and socio-economic turmoil was rather difficult. Shreema was one woman warrior who coordinated the entire process through innumerable obstacles on our way.

C.P.: It’s a common goal for us to reach the people with our poems. Shreema’s father edited the book more than five times and I have no words to thank him. Kapil Arambam, who started designing the cover of this book since February of this year provided 37 cover designs, without his contribution this book would be incomplete.

Could you tell us more about the significance of the phanek?

S.N. : Phanek is a symbol and a qualifier of women in Meitei society, how we wear it, what colour we wear it and when we wear it has so much significance. From being a symbol of impurity to the symbol of resistance in nude protest phanek is a marked signifier in women’s lives in Manipur.

S.H. : That the book has a phanek for its cover is very significant in many ways. We were asked why a meitei phanek, why not any other ethnic community. But it is the meitei phanek which is tattooed with taboos. The phanek of other communities I believe, is not embedded with such stark ideas of impurity. Choosing the phanek mapanaiba as the cover was a very conscious decision. Firstly, it is untouchable, meitei men do not touch the phanek, and putting that on the cover of course will have many men touching the phanek unconsciously. Secondly, it is considered inauspicious. Of course this is strange because I am sure there is not a single man who has not yet touched a phanek.

C.P. : Its interpretation especially in Meitei society is still confusing for me. A piece of mother’s phanek is treated as something so powerful that it can even ward off evil spirits - so men living in far flung places used to carry a piece of their mother’s phanek to symbolise living under her protection at all times. On the other hand, a husband is not allowed to touch his wife’s phanek in front of others. I wonder, does a Meitei man avoid touching his wife’s phanek in the bedroom also? Phanek has now become a part of politics because self proclaimed moral police stated it as a symbol of our culture and tradition.

S Haripriya, Chaoba Ph and Shreema N

What does the phrase ‘writing with the body’ mean to you?

S.N. : It means a way to resurrect our own body.

S.H. : It would mean, to me, the poems ‘Five Days’ Untouchable’ or ‘His and Hers’ . Writing from the sense of feeling, in a very physical way. An articulation of the physical and its manifestation. Why, not only these two poems, I think I have written all of them with this idea of expression of an immediate urgent sense of feeling something and that feeling is through my physical manifestation.

C.P. : Signifying a woman’s claim to own her own body and soul . Understanding her physical and emotional desire and expressing them with freedom against the social and political restraints.

What does it mean to be a Manipuri woman and write of ‘mother’?

S.N. : Motherhood can be a powerful experience. In the context of Manipur it is a source of “hysteria” and “anxiety” in every woman whether you are birthgiver or not. As in the case of Meira paibi all women are mothers. Motherhood as an archetype is very easy to be appropriated. In my poem ‘Mother’ , I speak of myself as a mother waiting to mourn the death of my yet unborn. This is an existential reality in the lives of many women in Manipur.

C.P. :Expectations of Manipuri, especially Meitei women, are too high- we should have a good character, be hard working, beautiful, polite, independent, courageous, charming, religious etc Women are also the favourite topic of criticism among some groups of moral police. ‘Mother’ is the most respectable title given to a woman in our society. Manipuri mothers are known for their participation in many social and political struggles even against the British such as “Nupi lan”. Most of the supporters of Irom Sharmila Chanu and protesters of ASFPA in Manipur are women.

S.H. : As a woman it is still very scary for me to see the notion that people have about ‘mother’. To construct this entire myth of mother and embed in her ideas of chastity, forgiveness etc. and to assume that out of every woman, motherhood will ooze is absurd. I usually refrain from writing with reference to the idea of ‘mother’. The first lines I wrote about mother (ema) (not in this collection) were these:

Ema’s tender hands
Weary of
Creating flowers
One day
Grew barbwires
from her slender fingers

I feel it that way, and I wish my mother would be accepted even if she has barbed wires for fingers…

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Read ‘Quietely and Unexpectedly Poetry Came and Woke Us Up’ at the Imphal Free Press

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On the National Death Day

2012-01-07T07:37:00.000+05:30

The splitting of the January skies disturbs
The anxious corpses at the riverside crematory
Seeing no mortals in the cold, wet morning
They rise for an apparent cut and run to No Man’s Land
How long could have they been waiting for these unholy hours?

Some of them would have been surprised seeing me
But indifference marks their rush
As if it makes no difference no more, they are seen or not
As I run ahead, in front of some bullet-ridden cadavers,
To tell them they will be missed:
“You, folks, have been so close to us.”
And assuring, just in case, if they would ever return
I will welcome them, singing the national anthem;
One teenager with one side of his face cloven uglily,
He barks back all he care is a national flag.

Withal I realise what importance
All these things are of, but my own volition
—What I make of myself.

The National Gobble

Emma Goldman's journal 'Mother
Earth', Vol. 7, No. 4, San Diego
Edition. June 1912. Source: Wikipedia

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On Revolution and Dustbins

Trotsky, Zedong and others share a platform when we look up to the revolutionary ideals that has shaped human civilization through political means. It is depressing beyond expression, however, when we glance through the events and currents of our time in my native place—so much that the condition has set before us a question if it is at all worthy or useless, for that matter, to scrutinise the so-called movements for self-determination and all the proponents be damned. Thence, there should be an alternative path, obviously as opposed to all the contemporary perspectives, which can bring about the ‘maximum happiness’ in us, in our living. Our end is plain: to live a life of dignity without state terrorism and brutalities of the definition-defying insurgents, still with the ingenuity to face the onslaught of globalisation and external aggression. On hindsight this is one of our tragedies, being always compelled to take sides and fight for the basic requirements in life while no energy nor imagination is left for other formative pursuits. There is no scope for improvement but for the unscrupulous means that we resort to, through them that the precept of might is right exists and completed with gross selfishness and blunder. How do we make some room to fit ourselves in? Lest life is a roller-coaster ride to the graveyard and lies its essence in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s words: “All that is transitory is but a metaphor.”

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“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

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Sitting by the River Last Night

2012-01-05T21:50:00.001+05:30

the Nambul is weary now,

Forever watching its own tedious flowing
Under the cerise skies,
Hearing the all-time wailing

The seasons are changing,
But these are only distorting
The fragmented ideas
Of killing and bombing and raping

How would we tell it to stop
Its reluctant running
Pass the lawless riverbanks
That show only desperation?

How would we tell it to stop
Its reluctant running
Pass the pipes of faeces?

But happy it is, this evening
As we sit by its side, comforting

We are innocent people, having
Brains in the buttocks;
Buttocks in the brains,

That we have always been so close,
By its bank, as we drink and dope
Forgetting the grunge and grime;
Sharing, all is not lost, yet,
We still have a packet to fill the pot
We still have the guts to gun down the government.

The Sparrow’s Story

2012-01-04T17:40:00.002+05:30

caged in the hencoop a sparrow,
It dreams of flying away to Shangri-la
As wires and metal bars of the cage ridicule
not its plan of an ever-impending flight,
But its arrogance of dreaming
What the cage owner would not even dare to.
It has seen in many wakeful nights,
The inevitability of dawn
The coming of light, though, is never enough
New days—its company of melancholy
Arrive duly, only for some hopeful fellowship.

It is one thing to dream, quite another to realise it
The tragedy of life, in and out of the shackle
The unruly imperfection of a night in which a day would melt into
The wretchedness of wires and metal and their damn slavishness
The invisible cage owner who possesses the puppets
All of these, the sparrow knows not, but its destination.

For the dreams it lives;
But its stories are beautiful only in narration
While, inside the cage,
Even breathing is becoming burdensome
The sparrow's life is sinking into oblivion.

rocket gabble: shoot them away to uranus

2012-01-03T00:48:00.000+05:30

....................................................

the special passengers should go,
where they really belong to,
others can also join if they want to
....................................................

we must get the rocket,
our monstrous creation,
out of our trouble;
get it ready now.

the men in white: their class is supreme, let it be
and should they seat in the lavish business section
and load up all their loots and goods beneath their seats
and should they wear gaudy yellow and orange ties,
like the old man with a coat and tie from noney
who came all the way to buy the gospel cd;
the supreme men have looted enough all along,
in the name of the land
in the name of people
now the time is over;
so is it for the clever middlemen
who ever dream of heaven in our hell:
take the seat behind the supreme leaders,
dream of a better place than heaven now,
far away from blood, bombs, bullets, bollocks;
the police and the patriots of the land
should they take the economy section
at the rear, should they fire, fight, fuck freely
inside the special rocket, off our world.

shoot; shoot it right away,
straight off to uranus
but we are so afraid:
what would become of us,
without them, the wise men
what would become of us?

___________________________________________________________

All in a Day's Work
Jan 8 2011

1. Grenade lobbed at the Sangai Express office; media persons take out rally against grenade threats
2. The grenade attacks on the Congress party have continued unabated with unidentified persons lobbing grenades at the office of the party at Nambol, while another was lobbed at the residence of a Congress worker at Sagolband yesterday. Another hand grenade exploded yesterday at the residence of Congress MLA Brajabidhu of Lamsang, while another was unexploded Chinese made hand grenade was found this morning from the MLA’s residence. (This is a single para directly copied from the web!)
3. Imphal west police nab PLA cadres along with huge cache of arms involved in attacks on Congress
Source: Imphal Free Press (Jan 8)

So we say: "Bomb mayamse thi chaibagi type chaire"
___________________________________________________________

As the Year Draws Towards Its End

2011-12-31T13:24:00.000+05:30

In its one-goal march to eternity

The year is here again, cold but comfortably
To give man another reason to be man.

As immortality looms
As the year draws towards its end,
Fighting forever in few fleeting moments
The world is waiting for another annual obituary.

A couple of shots would herald the new year:

Whiskies and rum will overflow,

Though much lesser than the blood on the street;

and the final murder of the last 365 days,

Welcome the first death of the hopeful new sun

For dying secerns living, a new living.

Election Justification

2011-12-29T01:45:00.001+05:30

nothing can be more ironical in Manipur than having a general election in January, when we are supposed to be hopeful of the coming days. At the beginning of a year, it is also a cruel joke that we have been ordered to listen to, but somehow we have managed to tolerate it with the fact that it occurs only once in five years.

If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.
Emma Goldman

On the other hand, a participation in a popular online campaign (which is set to go offline that is in body and spirit and across the ground in a day or two) has tossed in some disturbing questions: about where we see and locate ourselves within the Indian political space, for simply taking part in this animal feast means we accept the status quo.

One who thinks practically, not necessarily a realist—those who are aiming for a piece of the loot, who are hoping for a favour from the election candidates, who see no other way but to jump in the bandwagon and fit themselves in and those who see nothing but listen to the campaigns and go to cast their vote—view that the election is indeed crucial. Obviously. Here and there, we would show our displeasure but are helpless as usual in this bloody state, and we are not foolish to go our own way. So, we join the queue.

But that is only half the story. It is undeniable that we have very little voice in democracy, and here we are not talking about America but a primitive state located deep inside jungles, where there are even more little values of life though well nourished by greed and crudity. Add this fact to the indifference of the overlords, sitting far away in New Delhi and the aggregate is a big zero—the nothingness that defines our life. We can at least stop calling Delhi all kinds of names, or the government for that matter, if we care to go to the election booths.

Don’t we need to put our records straight before aiming for a political world record in supporting both the government and insurgents, while simultaneously hating them? Do we need to have this election at all?

Postscript:

Don't read, but please see this kind of headline we have in our local daily
Series of bomb attacks launched ahead of January 28 election all over the place

Hospital Haiku

2011-12-26T17:15:00.000+05:30

A strip of fifteen haiku that I brought from

All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi

......................................................................................

I hate going there

The medicines’ smell’s vulgar

Let me go elsewhere

......................................................................................

Right in front, she cries

Left, the little girls giggle

The men are pensive

......................................................................................

They have the papers

Their death written on them, clear

Where are the doctors?

.......................................................................................

Between life and death,

our home and the hospital,

We smile and we cry

.......................................................................................

Now there’s an old man

He stares as if he knows us

through his big black glass

.......................................................................................

Hard, the madman shrieks

He shouts he know where truth lives:

Inside his sane mind

.......................................................................................

All the world is sick

Hospitals are bad for health

Go, get drunk and die

.......................................................................................

The doc smiles and speaks

Almost pop out the man’s eyes

Man! He’s got a girl!

.......................................................................................

Hoping to get well

Sleeping on the cold footpath

They wait for their turn

.......................................................................................

The only good thing

The tall, huge hospital has:

The cute lady doc

.......................................................................................

Token Forty-nine

That will be quite a long wait

Smoke in the washroom

.......................................................................................

The docs discover

His illness is from yearning

Guns to be guitars

.......................................................................................

I like white aprons

It makes me a clean, real doc

I cure love sickness

.......................................................................................

A big instrument

He got it stuck up his ass

“Used to eat money”

.......................................................................................

I went for treatment

And I was prescribed haiku

Now I feel so fine

.......................................................................................