The Dark is Rising

The dark is rising
All the gods have fled
and Nihilism reigns.

Life itself
is bent upon
committing suicide.

Criminality glows
and blood
Sparkles.

My heart
bursted
long ago.

And Brain
is poisoning
day by day.

I can see
Angelic eyes
Still weeping.

The Innocence
The Beauty
And the Cruelty!

I ask
Am I still living?
Should I live?

After Him
Who can dare
to live?

I am lying
neither fully dead
no longer alive.

Senses are numb
Only a whisper
in my ears.

Love
blooms,
even if
there is
no one
to love.

Woman

When I first thought about writing this post, two names came to my mind, What is a Woman and The Enigma of Woman. But I felt that both these names spell masculine bias. Woman has always been treated by men as a mere thing or an incomprehensible enigma. Such a stance is bound to do injustice to women. But ironically, both these phrases are names of two books written by women about women. The former is by Toril Moi and the latter by Sarah Kofman.

Traditionally, men have always preferred to treat women either as a thing, which resulted in their exploitation or as an enigma, which resulted in romanticism. What women desire, lies beyond both consequences.

But who am I to decide?

Obviously, I have no authority to say the final word on these matters. But I do feel that most women will agree with my view that subordination and romanticisation is not that which they truly desire.

Then, what does a woman desire?

Does a woman desires most of all to be desired?

I don't think so. That would to too superficial.

Another question:
Is this desire which defines woman?

Yes.

Woman is the very incarnation of desire?

Desire is feminine.

Possession is masculine.

Thats why men throughout the history have been hunters, predators, emperors and colonialists.
And what women did all the time?
They are said to be the originators of agriculture.
Agriculture needs patience, faith and empathy.

Today, modern woman is in crisis because she is trying to imitate man with all her might. And she is losing herself, her most precious gifts, in this abominable game of imitation.

French militant feminists like Kristeva, Irigaray and Cixous have called women to stop this imitation and be themselves, independent of what men think about them. Its indeed a great step. Women, in their originality, are more beautiful than this culture of glamor can make them. These extraordinarily wise women are suggesting that women should evolve their distinctive
personalities based on a matriarchal culture.

For the finest gift which women have is that of motherhood. Mothers sustain this earth and life itself. This abode of humanity will definitely change for better when women recognize the beauty of motherhood and realize that their true self can be expressed only through becoming mothers rather than mere morsels in men's mouths.

MAHATANTRIC interrogates me

This conversation took place sometime during this summer at Amritsar. The main interlocutors are me and Kuldeep. The topic of the talk can roughly said to be the human condition at this particular historical juncture and the role religion and spirituality can play in this situation of crisis which can be named as Nihilism.


P.S.- It was recorded by Laadi with his mobile phone without our knowing it.

ਕੋਈ ਆਣਿ ਮਿਲਾਵੈ ਮੇਰਾ ਪ੍ਰੀਤਮੁ ਪਿਆਰਾ

Angel Death

I received this picture by Someone today. I am still wondering why anyone would like to send this picture to me. How is it connected to me? Why did the sender thought that I would like it? These are difficult questions. But upon reflection, I was able to see some connections.

The death of an angel is no ordinary event. It is an event of enormous proportions. It is spread out in centuries. And the time of its happening is no ordinary time. It must be a time out of joint.

The modern age is the age of the death of God and all the gods associated with Him. Nietzsche proclaimed the Death of God a century before. But this sculpture seems to precede him. It shows that the gods are being chased away from earth, as she is conquered by the sovereign and all powerful man. Now, the angels are in mourning. They are weeping and dying.

Look at the picture and you will find that a darkness, an ominous and terrible darkness is falling all over, as the angel lies dead nearby. This darkness is Nihilism. Nihilism is precisely that who have killed the angel and established his dominion over the earth. It is incarnated in modern man and his technological power. The modern age is the age of Nihilism. We all are living under its shadow. What is more terrible than that is that it lives within us. We are living Nihilism.

The question now is that what is the future of mankind after the domination of Nihilism. Most people will go after shallow optimism that we should live so and so and then we will be freed. But I don't think so. It is impossible for man to set himself free from the clutches of Nihilism.

Ok. Then you mean to say that the evil has won forever?

No.

I want to suggest that Nihilism can't be defeated with a merely human effort. Some power beyond humanity is necessary to defeat it. This power can come in the form of an event. We will have to pray for that. And we will have to prepare ourselves for it. We, who are not worthy of its arrival yet.

With Derrida, we will have to learn to say:

Viens! oui oui.

Strange Connections- Roma and the Jatts

Roma is the name of a Gypsy tribe of eastern Europe. They are nomadic people. They have their own distinct language, culture and folklore. What have they got to do with the Jatts of Punjab?

A few days ago, my brother was driving through San Francisco and when he stopped at a traffic light, another car with two guys in it stopped beside him and one of the guys asked him in a loud voice: "Wanna sell your car?" My brother nodded and then both parties met in a nearby parking to finalize the deal. My brother was amazing that both these guys are looking like Jatts but apparently they were not as their accent showed. He asked them about their homeland and they said they are from eastern Europe and from Roma tribe. A long time ago Punjabi University Patiala published a book on the Roma people and their story of origin in Punjab and later migration to Eurasia in about 1050 A. D. He told them that we are related to each other in a curious way. Then the guys asked him what the eyes are called in your language. He said, "Akkhan", and they told that in our language they say "Akkan". My brother said that what is word for hair, they told him, "Baal". In Punjabi, it is "Waal".

Then googled it for further information and found that upon linguistic and genetic studies, it is now established that they have the same race as of Jatts.

Further evidence is suggested by their lifestyle. They are very lively people. They love dancing and singing and telling stories. They value virginity very much in matters of marriage. All these values are also esteemed in Punjab.

Russian writer Gorky has written a story named "Makar Chudra". It is about a Gypsy young man who fell in love with a girl named "Rada". Upon rejected, he felt that it is useless to live and he killed the girl before killing himself. It is a strange and beautiful story which transgresses the limits of morality, but shows violent nature of all true love. I don't know if it is about Roma people or not but it is about Russian Gypsies.

Once an old Punjabi man told my brother that he has lived in Iraq and on one occasion he went to the Kurdish region. When he told them that I am from Punjab, they became very happy and they treated him with greatest respect and when they departed from each other they gave him a Blanket. It was a common practice in old Punjab to give a Blanket or a Khes to a special gift. Kurds also believe that their ancestral land is Punjab.

We are living in a strange world. We don't know who is our relative and who is not. Perhaps we are all connected to one another.

Here is a video of Roma Music:

Derrida- The Movie

Derrida is undoubtedly the greatest philosopher of 20th century. He is the father of deconstruction. He is a sort of celebrity. This is the first ever movie about his private life in which he discusses his secret self.
I have longed to see this movie for years, but it was not available in Punjab. Now I have found it at last. His thinking has made me a different person. My blog can never be understood without reference to the thinking of this man.

The Fragrance of Radical Hermeneutics and the Darkness of the Id

A few days ago, I came across these lines on H's blog:

"This flesh called "our body" often brings with it many emotions that are not exactly pious and drive us into the world of darkness. But I am in no way saying that darkness can always be a bad thing. If God created light, then offcourse he created darkness too, and offcourse self-awareness always can make you not only learn the vast light within you, but also the darkness in you too."

And after a few days, I received a comment by K. which runs thus:

"Although dangerous, this species of thought is certainly the most fragrant – the most beautiful indeed. What is so compelling about this thought? It allows one to love uninhibitedly – honestly and without the residual dark mask that looms perpetually overhead, visible to the other yet hidden from the self: the id. "

The species of thought about which K. is talking about is called Radical Hermeneutics besides other names.

A chain is being formed here.

The intellectual lineage of the West is heavily burdened by metapysics. We have been constructed through modern institutions of education to think in terms of binary oppositions.

e.g. Light vs. Darkness

Where everything good stands on the side of light and everything negative on the side of darkness. H. has already started to deconstruct this metaphysical pattern of thinking while wrestling with her own solitude. But K. has contextualised this move in the field of existential resistance against metaphysics which goes by the names of postmodernism, continental philosophy, post-structuralism etc. But the hidden potent force working behind their thoughts has a common name: Love, although the adjectives differ. H. calls it the unbiased love while K. says it is uninhibited love. Both are aware about the dark sides of the human psyche while not being wholly negative about that darkness. When one thinks in terms of stark oppositions then the thinking starts to loose its freshness. That is what has happened to the 2500 years of western thought. The society in which we live today is the result of 2500 years of metaphysical thinking. The institutions which are built by by the technological thinking has determined the patterns of thinking of the very large portions of humanity. The most potent institution of all is the one which we all have attended: The School. The others are mental hospital, psychoanalysis, prison, military and the work place.

But there is thing which cuts across the highly comlex network of these institutions like a sharp edged sword. It is Love, when it becomes unbiased or uninhibited. But there is no easy way to get that. The very first step toward it goes through solitude, which is almost always felt by every blogger. Solitude is essential to the exercise of blogging. You will find that most extrovert people don't have blogs. But whenever one tries to confront one's solitude, one gets caught in a vicious circle. The more one lives with oneself the more one becomes narcissistic. No one can conquer one's darkness with his/her own effort. It is simply beyond the possibilities of merely human endeavour, much less the effort of a single person. There must be an other. The other which saves the narcissism from becoming absolute. In simple words, love needs an other to exist, otherwise the love in question must be an other love.