The last 4 days in Canggu have been such a counter to the first 3 in Ubud that if I were so inclined, Id've called it Karma Reimbursement. Out of Sight is indeed Out of Mind. Wormholing ourselves into a super fancy resort on the morning of 02-Aug, we quickly forgot the troubles of Ubud thanks to the private pool, obsequious staff, showers that completely open to the sun, and a certain kind of All Day Brekkie Aussie food. So much so that Bali itself almost receded into the background, and there was the mindspace to unpack and discuss on the problems we'd brought from home.
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Hands down the first 3 days were far more action-packed, intense, memorable, which is what one claims one wants from a holiday to a different country, with that repeatedly expressed desire to get an authentic taste of the place, to be pushed out of one's comfort zone, and to have experiences that leave such a deep mark as to turn into little tales that'll be told years from now. Well, one is not always right then. Or perhaps one is getting old, or boring, or unagile, or making peace with/succumbing to the ways of the world. One buys bottled water without constantly feeling ashamed, seeks comfortable spaces, prefers to withdraw into private spaces for which one has to pay a premium but one feels its worth it because one 'works hard to be able to relax', doesn't he? One relaxes enough to blog, write a letter providing life gyaan while acrobatically pontificating that one doesn't want to precisely do that, to workout and go for a dip, and to reconsider the past few days in a more measured, even philosophical vein, thinking fondly about the trip to the Monkey Sanctuary and Pura Tirta Empul and the delicious food and the Candi Bentars, and telling himself, quite contentedly, in that tone of a certain character from Malgudi Days, "Well, one needs the unpleasant to better appreciate the pleasant". One finds it easy to assuage his, what William Finnegan in one of the first few fabulous pages of Barbarian Days that one found in the carefully curated books of one's more expensive, even fancier resort called, liberal guilt. And as one thinks he has made peace with the world, as he lowers himself into the cool waters of his private pool, that overlooks the private rice fields of the hotel, on a very hot afternoon, he hears a loud rustle. He raises his head to spot a man, covered from head to toe, wearing a traditional Balinese straw hat, and waving a flag made of a big, black plastic sheet. Why? So that, and this one derives from observing the said person throughout the day is a job, he can drive away the birds that threaten to eat the crop. Both men look at each other for a long moment before the flag-waver walks away, leaving the other to mutter to himself, WTAF.
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Bringing Naipaul's The Writer and the World on this trip has been an act of serendpity because his essays on post-colonial societies were supremely useful in trying to make sense of understanding the present condition of the Balinese Economy. The reason I used the word wormhole earlier, pointedly, is because sometimes I feel when people of a certain class travel across places, they find themselves being transported without coming in contact with how most of the society lives- Money has that power. Both here and in Fiji, I couldn't shake off the feeling that I was some sort of a brown sahib, a quasi-coloniser, or atleast a beneficiary of a colonising power, who has come to, say, a Dalhousie or Mussourie, to spend a few pleasant weeks in nature. Obviously, I'm able to afford this extravagance, spending thousands of dollars on a week's vacation, yet I don't feel comfortable receiving the service. Because I know that the respect and obedience is for the money, not for me- which is this entity that I can't properly define but is somehow my character that's seperate to my money or borrowed prestige ("Comes from Australia, speaks good English etc.") The same is probably as true in Australia itself, considering its history of colonolisation and displacement, but since the Aboriginals aren't as abundantly visible there, it doesn't irk one's conscience so much. I'd like to think all this isn't just some self-serving, responsibility-to-act-abdication handwringing but a more genuine internal conflict that is not convinced with the stories being peddled for why the world is the way it is and is trying to figure out either better explanations or more compassionate actions.
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In some senses a writer, okay a blogger, is always performing. No, that's not the word for it invokes falsity, pretension. He is always on-duty, constantly observing, judging, validating, reshaping, jigsawing every incident, interaction, feeling in service of a larger picture, with an insistence on articulating everything to make sense of, to justify his actions, his presence, often his very existence. It didn't happen if it hasn't found its way, ప్రత్యక్షంగా/పరోక్షంగా, onto the blog. It is a bizarre (self-imposed?) burden. It is also a habit, a trait that makes the world a place of wonder, all experiences valuable, turns life into a series of questions, a never-ending parade of "Yeah, But Why?"s. Is it mental diarrhea? A good quality to cultivate? Must one be equivocal about it, perhaps even in that problematic Whataboutery-sense, and say, "Meh, what can one do? Everything has both good and bad." What is the best way to live? Is it even possible to define a good life in an absolute, observer-neutral sense? Especially when for almost all of the time, the observer is also the liver himself, and the mind's a prick. Why do I keep saying the same stuff over and over and over again? Fuck, I'm so bored with so much of the shit that goes on in my head. कुछ नया लिख के आ बे | I suspect every filmmaker, every actor, is literally playing and seeing themselves in the scene- when I say performing I mean it like that, like having a double vision, still being in the moment but now with one eye seeing oneself in the scene.
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How good is Kalyani Malik!
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Why do I find resort-conducted 'cultural activities' so off-putting? Why must the means of production taint the creation of a cultural artefact? Then isn't this a variation of Sravani's argument for boycotting performances of sexual abusers which I protest against? Well, no cultural product takes place in a vacuum and if the narration of an experience with it starts with the line, "We were in our hotel and there was a show, and since we had nothing better to do, we went downstairs", can only be off-putting. Which reminds me of this terrific social experiment the violinist Joshua Bell did a few years ago that goes onto prove that it is mostly the sense of occassion that people bring to the said occassion that makes it special in their heads. Which is paradoxical and stupefying because the rhetoric of great art is precisely that is hits you unexpectedly and rises above the circumstance as Dibakar Banerjee recounts in a lovely anecdote about watching Taxi Driver for the first time. There was a time when I couldn't eat in a restaurant where there was live music because I thought I was insulting the musicians by going on about my business when they were performing. Now there's still some of that feeling of shame but not too much so that I can continue my conversation or give a perfunctory round of appluase. What happens to us as we grow older? Towards the end of our Justice lectures, and I never tire repeating this particular bit, Prof. Pratap Bhanu Mehta said something like, "All these theoritical and philosophical discussions are one thing. If you notice the behaviour of young children, you'll see that they have an intuitive grasp of injustice. If we're able to retain that, we don't need all of this." A remnant of that is what I perhaps felt when I saw that man toiling in the sun for a fraction of what I spent for the room for a night, and I couldn't convince myself that I deserved this and he deserved that. Is this genuine hurt or self-posturing I don't know anymore.
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Obviously this same concern has found its way onto this blog in various shapes over the years- is there a point to any of this 'authentic' sharing and is this just incompetence, a lack of imagination, frivolousness masquerading as something real and honest when all I'm doing is masturbating in public. Sometimes I feel that the only way to focus on the outside and learn new things and understand more about the world can only happen when I get this out of the way and this blog is an excuse/ medium for that. Other times I worry if its a moral hazard, that I'll never 'outgrow' this phase because I've continued to invest more and more capital on this over the years that this is now expected behaviour, the status quo. The more I try to exhaust myself of this so that I can finally move to more interesting, more important stuff, the more never-ending this flow seems to become. Is the only way to escape is to snap out of it? Go cold turkey and decide that I'm never going to write about these preoccupations again? Then for long periods nothing seems to flow, and my mind becomes so cramped with all these unexpressed thoughts that it feels like I don't have time to read, watch, think about anything new. ఈ లొల్లి సరిపొదన్నట్టు కొబ్బరి చిప్పకి కోతి దొర్కినట్టు గిసుంటివి దొర్కుతాంటై- ఈరోజు శ్రావణి పంపింది.
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The question I suppose becomes this: should one try to change one's way of being, with the Why, How and To What needing to be subsequently answered, or should embrace one's way of being, even if it means one then has to carry the deficiencies that one acknowledges in oneself forever and carry the risk of subsequently becoming intelligible only to oneself for the unalienable fact that it is what seems most natural- The former feels more ends-driven, the latter more proximate mood-driven. Or more prosaically, does one cultivate a style, a personality consciously that becomes a capsule powerful enough to take one places even if it means one is occassionally cramped or does one remain the 'free-flowing' (and I have that in quotes because despite what one may tell themselves, it too comes with its constraints) being, at the cost of more immediate misunderstandings, if it means one remains and creates something original? Insert Prof. Udayan Vajpeyi quote here. Or obviously does one find a balance between the two, and if so how, especially since one is convinced that the way to go about it can't be, atleast entirely, through the intellect. How does one become a Charlie Kaufman, a DFW, a Meher, a Rajireddy without becoming them? Obviously there's craft there but also originality. How ra?
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I really don't know why I have intermittently used one as the pronoun.
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What is the metaphor that most accurately describes writing- is it mining for gold, cultivating a garden, going on a journey. Or as my uneducated Sufiyana suggests, all of it. Even this is such a phenomenal conundrum because if Sufism is supposed to be the natural way of being, then why is mine so crude and confused? And if it, like most valuable things in life, has to be learnt with passion and rigour, then why is it the most natural way and different from other philosophical schools? Wait a second, why this fasincation with Natural ('Organic', 'Detox', 'Rejuvenating') and why do I think Sufism is the most natural state of being?
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Screw it, I'm going for a swim.
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Damn, its closed for cleaning, so now I'm back.
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మా అమ్మ గిసుంటి ముచ్చటంతా సదివి లాస్ట్ల అడిగినట్టు, "అసలు ఏం చెప్పదల్చుకున్నావు? పాయింట్ ఏంటి?", అంటే నా సమాధానం, "గీ ముచ్చటే చెప్పదల్చుకున్నది. పాయింట్ ఏందో నాక్ భీ తెల్వది."
