firstfiction
(an off-shoot of http://somewhatobjective.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/whose-shame-is-it-anyway-part-ii/)
Friday is the Devil
(in New Age extra under “Our women Fridays” in 4 installments with a few edits/changes here and there –
1st installment: http://www.newagebd.com/2009/mar/06/mar06/xtra_also4.html
2nd installment: http://www.newagebd.com/2009/mar/13/mar13/xtra_also3.html
3rd installment: http://www.newagebd.com/2009/mar/20/mar20/xtra_also3.html
4th installment: http://www.newagebd.com/2009/mar/26/mar26/xtra_also2.html)
original/unedited version………
<1>
Shakil found Lamia so adorable, that he had no choice but to pretend that he was highly annoyed with her existence. For one, she wasn’t one of the cool girls. In fact her presence was usually unrealized, and she was only sporadically acknowledged as a landmark when trying to locate the misplaced cricket ball or badminton shuttle. These objects were often found lying on the left side, right side, in front of, or behind “that girl.”
Moreover, given his recent outstanding performance in the inter-class basketball matches, he was pacing up the social ladder quite swiftly. By now, he was the recipient of anonymous love letters and innumerable silent phone-calls on a daily basis. His mother’s irritation was a testimonial to his popularity, and he relished each and every chiding like peace treaties. He was a smart boy, and knew not to jeopardize this influx of adulation with a confession of feelings for a nobody with braces and a unibrow.
He felt pity for her when she lay under the mango tree on the otherwise barren school yard during recess everyday, either engrossed in her book, or her thoughts. He felt even more pity for her nonchalance towards her absence in the social barometer.
“Poor thing doesn’t know the joy of recognition. What a pity…,” he thought.
At times when she lay under the shade stretching and twirling around, smiling at God knows what, he felt an urge to go tickle her – not out of affection or playfulness, but rather to disrupt her bliss that spurted out of oblivion. But he refrained lest she misconstrues that as an act of violence or worse, flirtation. After all, the line between vanity and paranoia is quite meagre, and the spheres of neither allow space for the possibility of disturbance without a cause.
He silently chuckled at his aspiration to be like that goblin in the kettle from Radiant Reading. The only difference is, he didn’t want to be green.
<2>
As was her undeclared ritual, Lamia sat at her study table on a Friday afternoon, with her hazy gaze affixed on the same line of her physics textbook for hours; obviously absorbing nothing. She would occasionally try to lend an ear next door to her younger sister Tanisha, trying to learn Arabic from the same lady who taught her.
She was fascinated by the idea of having a “Lady Hujur.” She liked that everyone else she knew of had male Arabic teachers, and that at least something about her was unconventional. Of course, her parents’ reasons for assigning a female instructor were not geared towards making a statement of any kind.
As her sister rifled through the Arabic text racing towards the “Khatm” line, a formality she had already graduated from, Lamia realized that these couple of hours apart from her diction-crazy-new-age-rendition-of-Amy (of “Little Women” fame) sister, were perfect for getting some studying done. It is very difficult to fathom an overtly simplified version of Newton’s Law of Attraction with a ten year old mosquitoeing around her ears with words too heavy for her own tongue, and her audience’s ears.
What’s more irritating, though admittedly endearing, is how she occasionally misconstructs certain words. For example, the other day, she took a quick scan of Lamia’s desk, briefly pausing on the pen-holder. Read the rest of this entry »
potor-potor
“Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man’s heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in face of existence of flight from light.”(Camus)
Most of the time suicide attracts a macro perspective – of being a social phenomenon – though, according to Camus, at the outset it is usually not just a consequence of the relationship between individual thought, but rather, an aftermath of its exponential progression in whichever direction. “An act like this is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art. The man himself is ignorant of it.” He argues that though there are many causes for suicide, generally the most obvious ones are neither adequately powerful, nor convincing. “What sets off the crisis is almost always unverifiable. Newspapers often speak of ‘personal sorrows’ or of ‘incurable illness.’ These explanations are all plausible. But one would have to know whether a friend of the desperate man had not that very day addressed him indifferently. He is the guilty one.” And that alone is enough to catalyze all the bitterness and all the boredom.
Suicide may have more “honourable” affiliations – for example, the political suicides of protest, as they were called, during the Chinese revolution. But if it is hard to fix the precise instant, the subtle step when the mind opted for death, it is easier to deduce from the act itself the consequences it implies. In a sense suicide may be looked upon as a confession of overestimating or underestimating life. It may be a statement of life becoming out of one’s league, or too far below an individual to go through with.
There are numerous renderings on the connection between suicide and religion. But it seems to be more of a philosophical discourse than a religious ultimatum, because exploring suicide entails treading upon political, sociological, psychological, religious, sexual and all other paradigms. The extremity of its nature makes it out to be one of the most, if not the most holistic of queries. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering some of the most fundamental questions of philosophy.
However, before getting into the subjective analysis, it is necessary to briefly scan the position some of the major religions of the world take on this issue. Judaism has traditionally, in light of its great emphasis on the sanctity of life, viewed suicide as one of the most serious of sins. Suicide has always been forbidden by Jewish law in all cases. It is not seen as an acceptable alternative even if one is being forced to commit certain cardinal sins for which one must give up one’s life rather than sin. Judaism has many teachings about peace and compromise, which present physical violence as one of the last possible options. Although suicide is forbidden under normal Jewish law as being a denial of God’s goodness in the world, under extreme circumstances when there has seemingly been no choice but to either be killed or forced to betray their religion, Jews have committed suicide or mass suicide.
There were seven suicides in the Bible, but in the sixth century, suicide became a religious sin and secular crime. In 533, those who committed suicide while accused of a crime, were denied a Christian burial, which was a prerequisite for going to heaven. In 693, even the attempt of suicide became an ecclesiastical crime, which could be punished by civil consequences, following excommunication. By the 13th century, suicide was vilified as an act against God and as a sin for which one could not repent. Civil and criminal laws were enacted, and degradation of the body and denial of proper burial were put in place, in order to discourage suicide. Property and possessions of the deceased and their family were confiscated. The main Christian argument propagated is that, one’s life is the property of God, and to destroy that life is to wrongly assert dominion over what is God’s. In point 2281 of the Catechism it is stated:
“2281 Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations.”
Islam views suicide as sinful and highly detrimental to one’s spiritual journey. For those who formerly believed, but ultimately rejected belief in God, the result seems unambiguously negative. A verse in the fourth chapter of the Quran, An-Nisaa (The Women) instructs; “And do not kill yourselves, surely Allah is most merciful to you.” (4:29)
For Buddhists, since the first precept is to refrain from the destruction of life, including one’s own, suicide is naturally considered a negative form of action. Despite this view, an ancient Asian ideology similar to seppuku (hara-kiri) continues to influence oppressed Buddhists to choose the act of honor suicide. The most well-known instance of this was Thich Quang Duc’s suicide by self-immolation to protest the government of Ngo Dinh Diem. Also in modern times, Tibetan monks have used this perceived ideal to protest the Chinese occupation of Tibet and China’s human rights violations against Tibetans.
Similarly, in Hinduism, murdering one’s own body is considered as sinful as murdering another, with the exception of the currently defunct practice of sati. Scriptures generally state that to die by suicide (and any type of violent death) results in becoming a ghost.
At the core, be it divine or man-made, religion is a disciplinary entity, moderating or mitigating the extremity of people’s actions. Religion may prevent people from committing suicide by labelling it a sin, or may (as Durkheim would argue) fill in the void which may lead to suicide. Either way, simply put, religion has not always succeeded (in fact it sometimes instigates) suicides. On the other hand, not everyone is religious anyway. But for the ones who do attest to a religious doctrine, why does religion fail to stop them from taking their lives?
Religion, according to Bertrand Russell, has many meanings and a long history. Originally it was concerned with certain rites inherited from a remote past, performed for some reason long forgotten, and from time to time, associated with various myths to account for their supposed importance. The activities of people maybe derived from three sources, which are not identical, but rather similar and parallel in nature: instinct, mind, and spirit; and of these three it is the spirit that makes religion. Instinct includes what people share with the lower animals, and is concerned with self-preservation and reproduction, and the desires and impulses derived from these. “It includes all the impulses that are essentially concerned with the biological success of oneself or one’s group – for among gregarious animals the life of instinct includes the group.”
Psychical origin of religious ideas is illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind. The secret of their strength, as Freud would argue, lies in the strength of those wishes. “An illusion is not the same as an error; nor is it necessarily an error.” In a world without religious doctrines, everyone will follow his asocial, egoistic instincts and seek to exercise his power, and that would lead to chaos.
“Even if we knew, and could prove, that religion was not in possession of the truth, we ought to conceal the fact and behave in the way prescribed by the philosophy of “As if” – and this interest of the preservation of us all. And apart from the danger of the undertaking, it will be purposeless cruelty.” (Freud)
Countless people find their consolation in religious doctrines, and can only bear life with their help. He argues that people have imperative needs of another sort, which can never be satisfied by cold science. Religious doctrines tell of historical truth, whereas our rational account disavows it. The store of religious ideas includes not only wish-fulfilments, but important historical recollections. This concurrent influence of past and present must give religion a truly incomparable wealth of power on account of its wish-fulfilling and consolatory powers:
“In view of the difficulty of discovering anything about reality – indeed, of the doubt whether it is possible for us to do so at all – we must not overlook the fact that human needs, too, are a piece of reality, and, in fact, an important piece and one that concerns us especially closely.”
Many feminists, particularly Simone de Beauvoir, argue that women are more likely to resort to suicide than men. Successful suicides are much more common in men than in women, but attempts to end their lives are commoner in the latter. They are much more likely to drown themselves like Ophelia, Beauvoir argues, “attesting the affinity of woman with water, where, in the still darkness, it seems that life might find passive dissolution.”
Many who hold an intrinsic or otherwise claim to be devoid of all human love look to God for help; Beauvoir claims that it is precisely around menopause, that most women become religious. Amidst the vague notions of destiny, mystery, and lack of appreciation, women seek and possibly find, a sense of rational unification in religion. However, it can be argued that the same is not an exclusive truth pertaining to women, but may as well be applicable to all people. If people willingly embrace religion, it is above all because it fills a profound need.
So reverting back to the point stated a while ago whether religion is divine or man-made, why is its existence not sufficient for stopping suicide? What is it within human beings that make them overlook religion, and surrender to powerlessness or assume power over self (however you prefer to look at religion)?
Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics may be able to provide with an answer for this. In is book he explains virtue to be a state involving rational choice, which consists of a mean determined by reason, which is relative to us. “It is a mean between two vices, one of excess, the other of deficiency.” Mean in other words is a moderation or balance. Some vices fall short of what is right in feelings and actions, and others exceed it, but virtue both attains and chooses the mean.
One compartment of the soul is reasonable, while the other is the counter. It does not matter whether these elements are separate or whether they are naturally inseparable but differentiated in thought, “like the convex and concave aspects of a curved surface.” We deem the reason of the self-controlled and of the incontinent to be praiseworthy. That is the part of the soul with reason because it urges them in the right direction, towards what is best. But as mentioned earlier, there is within them another natural element besides reason, which conflicts with and resists it:
“For just as paralysed limbs, when one rationally chooses to move them to the right, are carried off in the opposite direction to the left, so also in the soul: the impulses of incontinent people carry them off in the opposite direction.”
The nature and characteristic of this discrepancy seems irrelevant to this discussion. The element in the soul of the self-controlled person obeys reason and presumably in the temperate and the brave person it is still more ready to listen, since in their case it is in total harmony.
When looking over and synthesizing the various dispositions of philosophical and theological discourses, the question of what suicide is a consequence of, at the face of religious (positive and negative) promises; promises of Heaven or its equivalent upon religious obedience, and penalty upon disobedience, arises. Is suicide an act of cowardness or courage; of hopelessness or hopefulness? Is it an act of powerlessness or surrender to all beyond control, or a perception of ultimate control generated by a realization of power within: is it enslavement or emancipation of the subjective self? Catalysts of the act and conclusions to its explorations are many, but for now, it seems that it is a consequence of a lack of harmony within self, whereby the individual foregoes or loses his/her mean and the subjective self transcends all hope (in victory or in defeat). In such cases, even if religion manages to serve as a successful regulatory entity temporarily, at the brink of all surrender, it may not factor into the given equation(s) at all.
The 2003 BLAH Series ( i was sooo….yeah….)
BLAH 1
I don’t want my heart to be touched and moved away from. I want it grabbed. Grabbed to feel the pain that would cause the bliss of being grabbed, squeezed, examined and humanized.
PUNCH!! From you to yourself. The self you have hidden from you and put to sleep in your subconscious with a heavy dosage of sedative; the sedative you accidentally created while meaning to create cyanide. How many times have you drenched the apothecary table in your subconscious with the pungent smell of rotten aspirations? The aspirations you meant to kill as a means of eliminating their attempt to kill you with their dead cells…never to be functioning again. You thought you have resolved old issues right? And you hate them looming back and punching your breath out every now and then. Those idiots keep coming back. The faster we shove them aside the sooner they jump on to us, as if progressing time is clutching time back. When time learns to respect our want and need for linear time, will we learn to appreciate our presence…ourselves… kick out linear appearing curves and get sucked into the apparent maze of the present…of reality… by silence– that manages to create turmoil within.
How many times have you been woken up by a knock? The knock at the back of your mind that knocks out the embryo from which a Goddess was to be born…a potential masterpiece…a strip of reverse evolution… the Goddess of Creation that was destined to die before creating a platform for creation.; she who dragged along an entire generation with her – a generation of candidates who could potentially beat the speed…the speed we are all meant to pursue in our exceptionally slow and dragging existences.
Existence in this place that we call the Earth; which Carl Sagan, calls: “ a moat of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Ironic, how this one statement made him so big. The one statement where he reduced the earth to dust; forgetting how minute his real existence then becomes, with relation to the small earth, which is only a dust particle in the enormous Universe. This one little statement belittling the image of earth magnified his image; immortalised his existence in a mortal place. But do we realize that we are in a way, immortalised? We are becoming a part of history living in the present; immortalised by existing in time, not by individual names. Thus we are all immortal.
Mortal. Mortal we are, and so we crave immortality whether we admit it or not. In some way or other we want to live forever in this Earth. This Earth, that is not mortal itself and in forever, that no one knows the longevity of. Futile. How futile. To avoid destruction we killed the Goddess of creation within and now, we look up to the God above. Is God really above? What if He is beside us or in front of us? But that’s besides the point. Let’s assume God is above. And let’s not get into the argument as to whether he created Earth with a bang or it just started with an accidental bang. The point is it started with a bang. How solid can it be? Has been nursing life for thousands of years now. So it’s bound to die sometime. How will it die? Perhaps God will crush it within his fist or perhaps it will diffuse into the “system”. The system we call universe. But will the Earth diffuse exactly when it diffuses? What kind of a question is that? What I mean is will we realize the diffusion the moment it happens? Science says no. Parallax. It will diffuse into parallax. So will we. Scary thought. We will die moments after we were dead.
BLAH 2
Dichromatic vision penetrates perfection. That is probably why attempts were, and still are being made to erase blasphemers and heretics from the records of existence; shatter all the different genus of dogmatism, criticize fundamentalism standing on a foundation of fundamental antifundamentalist ingredients.
Attempts to eliminate lethal ideologies such as communism to promote “more just” ideologies such as democracy are not unknown to anyone. But why should such attempts be made? Because the parasitically monstrous soul within humans does not permit the existence or even the co-existence of ideals that lead to a picture and print perfect world; because people are driven by an idealism that broods anti ideal sculpts. Why am I a democrat and not a communist? Because I believe in fairness. Fairness for most, for myself, not for all. Because I believe in prosperity…precisely self-prosperity, not equality. Because I am human and I choose to confine humanity to myself.
Utopian ideals reduce the complexities of life; make everything simple and equal…thus ideal. But as creatures that bear cells of complexities in their blood, it becomes impossible for us to accept such perfection. Complexity becomes a meaning in life… gets equated with perfection. Seldom do we realize that complexity gives us sadistic and masochistic pleasures. Doesn’t matter as long as it is giving some kind of pleasure. Thus, I possess anti idealist ideals.
Poets and thinkers I love and hate talk about the beauty of simplicity and how everyone deserves a fair share of it. I agree with them. I appreciate their claims and their notions… all falsely of course. I nod because the world is nodding. On the inside, I want to monopolize beauty. And that’s the only truth for you and me. I want all the beauty in my kitty. Just because you want all the beauty in your pockets or closets does not make you different from me. Let me metaphorize this piece with a dash of economics. Imagine happiness was a product of a few firms. They will hold a large market share but to make the share larger, they merge into one…oligopoly turns into MONOPOLY. Theoretically they all produce the same amount and make the equal amount of money. But they want to be better than each other. So each produces more secretly so that they can earn more. Prosperity then, is given a competitive connotation. Thus, there is cheating on part of the individual firms… to maximize their own profits, to make more than the other, to be happier than the other. What does this show? Monopolistic competition the flesh of a monopolistic skin. What does it mean? Oligopoly is just a hollow theory, unicellular or even multi-cellular monopoly a failure, and unity, a sugar-coated vacant notion. Reason – unique versions of dogmatic parochialism.
And all of this — after “Enlightenment”.
BLAH 3
I could sit and write a million sad words to capture my inner turbulence. But what’s the point? These words can’t capture my feelings. How can they? They are mere words-words that I didn’t create. How can they capture what I feel? But then again, I didn’t create these feelings either. You created them; my soul created them. The soul that is commonly known as “I”. And somewhere in between You and I, I lost Me. Then what’s the point of me writing my thoughts down with words? I don’t know. Re-highlighting the already highlighted futility I guess, with superficial pseudo philosophical attempts once again. How ersatz am I!
But still I prefer to cry than speak; scream than write. That’s how superficial I am. I express myself with tears that are nothing but very shallow drops of water – so shallow that can’t even be measured. Futile. So superficial that it only touches the skin; skin its periphery, vacuum its fathom. Tears are just too overrated I think. They come out of the eyes on to the skin, yet they melt hearts (in theory). Just like screams. What is a scream? I don’t have adequate biological facts to write down but as far as I can remember from my 7th/8th grade biology lesson, scream is basically wind through the vocal chords, some humdrum et voila, a (supposedly) painful sound.
Then why do I put so much emphasis on them when I am dedicating a few pages and a few kilobytes on my computer to them? – pages I could use to do an assignment, kilobytes I could use to save that assignment or even download a song. Opportunity Cost. Substance, an opportunity cost for futility. But seriously though, I am so bothered by their futility, agitated by their superficiality, yet they move me- Why? Not like they come directly from within. It would be a whole new story if my heart cried through my breasts or my soul screamed through my belly button. That would actually make sense and give those idiots (tears and screams) more credibility. But…uffff… Is it because they touch me (even if in a superficial way)? Is it because I long for a touch badly? Is it because I crave to be moved so much that their slight movement along my vocal chord or my skin is transformed into a make believe movement on my part. Is it because I am so sick of mechanism and materialism that at the slightest hinge, I tell myself, “I am moved”?
What is it? I don’t know. But what I do know is I don’t want you to cry. The thought of your tear touching you makes my blood boil. Only I reserve the right to touch you. So I will pump all the tears out of you so that they can’t touch your skin. Then I will peel off your skin so they don’t touch your flesh. Then I will detach your flesh so they don’t cling to your bones. I love you my dear human. So much, that I unearth sheer bliss in dehumanizing you.
BLAH 4
She closes her eyes pretending no one can see her.
He is six years old and still wets his bed. She wants to cradle him in her arms but she doesn’t want to push her blanket aside to blanket her arms around him; doesn’t want to sacrifice her security for his. It’s actually fun watching him get scared in the middle of the night and gazing at her with hopeful eyes that she would grab him and reassure him. It’s a lot of fun taking him out to the veranda–topless on a windy night and watch the chill run up and down his spine, watch his supple red cheeks turn purple and the tears of pain almost freeze with the chill. It’s as if the wind freezes her hormones, her instincts and halts her milk flow forever. Sadistic motherhood—is that what they call it?
He crawls up to her and rests his head on her chest…carefully listening to her heartbeat and wondering what the sound is. Is his Mother malfunctioning?
Kaput motherhood.
BLAH 5
wonder if I can ever tell a story as if it was the only one. As if it was only mine.
I keep myself alive by constantly feeding my existence with things to lose. In other words, things to hold on to. Every time the grip slips, it’s an awakening; a flagging off to continue with this pursuit…this pursuit…I don’t know exactly what pursuit I am talking about…ummm…intellectual vertigo? Or perhaps my own version of affectionate dogmatism, translucent intransigence.
Why can I relate to Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Macbeth or Mary from Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace? Is it because I see in them the fetish for fatality that I see in myself? Is it because I empathize with the bliss that Grace and Mary drown in when practising self-destruction?
Why does anything morbid appeal to my senses? Why is it that the more I try to drive darkness away, the more I find myself in it? Not that it’s sucking me in or anything. It’s just that I cant let go and the more I push myself to shove the sinister aside, the harder I cling on to it.
