and I come here to talk, I hope you understand

[Green Eyes - Coldplay]

I’ve always been wary of meeting new people. I’ve made a study of passing off intense shyness as arrogant self-involvement. Most of the time, I’m terrified of being found ugly, dull or stupid. I don’t suppose it’s much different for anyone else, really, but those awkward pauses, the scrabbling about for something to say in the hope that it will provoke laughter or at the very least, attention, are states I’m not fond of. I was discussing our last years of high school with a friend recently, and he was surprised by how vastly different I am today to the person I was then. I believe it’s the same for anyone – if we didn’t grow and change and evolve, we might as well be dead! – but rereading emails or diaries I wrote at 15 is intensely embarrassing, to the point where I don’t even recognise the person who wrote them.

But there’s something intoxicating about being introduced to new people, and that’s an aspect I’ve only discovered in the last two or three years. It helps, I suppose that we’re not all horny adolescents, with exaggerated opinions of ourselves that cause us to immediately consider everyone less intelligent and engaging. But there’s such an air of possibility about making new acquaintances that outweighs the intense, crushing fear of putting oneself out there. The potential for discovering common passions, ideas and kindred spirits always should, I think, be the thing that forces us to get out there and make an effort.

Long may it continue!

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

[King Richard II - Shakespeare]

I was at lunch with a friend recently, and one of the things that came up in our long conversation was British history. We briefly discussed our mutual passion for tracing the complicated genealogies of the British royal family through the ages, and each sheepishly confessed to having painstakingly drawn out a chart at least once. What struck me was that this wasn’t the first time I had mentioned this little passion of mine to someone and had them corroborate with an incident of their own. A lot of my friends have mentioned, at some time or other, having been fascinated by the history of a country that ruled us for about 300 years and has clearly left an indelible impression on our cultural consciousness.

I don’t know where it comes from. All of these people, with whom I share what I once thought was an esoteric interest, are well-read and intelligent. Perhaps the answer lies in the books we read? Certainly, the novels of the 19th century make casual reference to British history, having been written for a predominantly British (or really, an English) audience anyway. The names of George III, William IV, Elizabeth I, Richard III and William the Conqueror are familiar enough, and Shakespeare is a great way to know about the Henrys. Henry VIII of course carved a place for himself in history with his notorious reputation as a husband. But why, I wonder, are we so fascinated by the political and social niceties of a country that did us few favours in ruling us, imposing an alien system of education and morality on us in the name of “civilization” and only handed us the reigns of government when it was no longer profitable to stay here?

It seems like a classic case of Stockholm syndrome, except, it’s a case of cultural captives falling for a cultural captor after years of brainwashing. Maybe we’ve finally succumbed to all the propaganda we were fed about glorious England.

But I’m just inclined to think that they package their history better than we do ours. I don’t know anything about the Southern kingdoms because I remember being forced to study the different varieties of temple architecture when I was fifteen and really couldn’t care less about the style in which a gopuram was built. I was vaguely interested in the Mughals because they seemed a lot more willing to bestir themselves beyond just building beautiful mosques – at least there was bloodshed and battle and conquest and violence. Besides, history in India is so riddled with caste politics: I realised very late in life that I’m a non-Brahmin, and despite having a ridiculous number of Brahmin friends, that realisation has brought home to me the feeling that no matter what I do, this country will always view me within a hierarchy. Some of my friends themselves, whether consciously or not, take pride in their Brahmin-ness, which is something I cannot understand since I really have no idea what my ancestors were, nor do I care very much.

I always studied the Independence movement with a sense of nostalgia, and an ardent wish to have been born when the British were still here. I suppose I am an Anglophile, with really very little appreciation for this country’s history or culture. I don’t know how that happened, but there it is. I dislike a lot of things about India, though I ought to say here that I dislike a lot of things about Britain and the United States and France and Russia (etc) as well. If it were up to me, I’d renounce my nationality and stay a vagabond, with no country to call my own because no country inspires me to affiliate myself with its ideals.

I don’t know what my point in writing this was, really. Perhaps just to express surprise at the number of people who share a predilection for British history. Perhaps a rant against this country I live in for not having a more accessible history.

I do like reading about countries besides Britain though. Russia, for instance. And I’d like to know more about the Vikings, and about the many kingdoms which became France, and the Prussian and Ottoman Empires. Ancient Rome and Greece have always been fascinating, and the Ancient Egyptians were the reason I toyed with the idea of being an archaeologist. The distant lives of the Mayans and Incas, Africa’s turbulent and mysterious pre-colonial past and China’s ancient past are all things I’d like to know more about. But Indian history? I suppose I ought to at least try.

we made a connection, a full chemical reaction

[Annie Lennox - Shining Light]

Back from an amazing week in Oxford, there’s probably a post-holiday blogpost that ought to be up soon but this isn’t it. I’m currently nursing a hangover, and vaguely urging myself to shower and sit down to work. Nonetheless, since such is the world we live in, Facebook made me think deep thoughts and as always, I have returned to inflict them on my hapless though mostly non-existent audience.

People are such fickle creatures. If there’s anything one can take away from 21 years of living on this planet, it’s that.

It is ridiculously easy to enter someone’s life, burrow yourself into their quotidian existence, and quite suddenly up and run out of it. Some of these departures are, of course, painful and echo long after the door’s been shut, but the astonishing, well-oiled slickness with which others are accomplished are, with hindsight, simply unbelievable.

You can have close, intense friendships with people you couldn’t imagine your life without – except you suddenly wake up one morning and realise you hadn’t noticed them having left at all. Or perhaps you did, but you were too wrapped up in yourself or someone else to care.

Facebook is full of ghosts. Of old friends, forgotten lovers; people who have drifted apart from you but are still alive and people you loved but have left the world forever.

There is always that same jolt of shock, when you suddenly realise that here, on your computer screen, you see their lives – going on, going on just the same without you.

arguing about magic on a rainy afternoon

There are so many thoughts whirling about in my brain right now, that I quite honestly have no idea where to start. I spent all of last night awake, lost in the pages of The Subtle Knife, and as the sky began to turn lighter, I turned the last page and put down the book with a great sigh of relief, contentment and… exhilaration, I think, would be the right word for it.

First, I love that a book can do that. I love that I can throw away real life, forget to sleep or eat, forget the essay I have to submit tomorrow, and lose myself. There are no words I could use here that could ever describe that feeling of utter weightlessness, of non-identity, of a complete and utter forgetting of everything but the words on the page. Perhaps that’s the closest any of us mundane humans will ever come to real, thought-shattering enchantment.

Second, I’d forgotten what it was like when a book shocks you. Not in an appalling, frightening sort of way – but in the way that a jolt of electricity shoots up your arm when you bang your elbow against something. You simultaneously feel a numbness, an inability to move your arm, but also, a sudden, vital awareness of the fact that your arm is there. It’s real, it’s there and it’s yours. The Subtle Knife does that to you. It takes all you’ve been conditioned to take for granted (like the goodness of God, like the possibility of higher powers, like the clear, constant difference between “good” and
“bad”) and, in the subtlest possible way, shocks you with the knowledge that you have, for so long, left these ideas untouched. You didn’t realise how constructed they were.

Third, for all his genius, Philip Pullman made the massive, heinous mistake of saying the following: “The Lord of the Rings, for all its scope, weight and structural integrity, is not a serious book because it doesn’t say anything interesting or new or truthful about human beings. It tells an essentially trivial story. The goodies are always good and the baddies are always bad”.

If that isn’t an unfortunate misreading of LOTR, I don’t know what is. Pity.

More than anything, it’s sad because what Pullman does through fantasy is precisely what Tolkien does too: they question the nature of good and bad through the introduction of the idea that goodness and badness are products of a profound subjectivity. What a good action is, what principles prompt it and whether a good action could go bad – these are questions asked of the characters in both books, and by extension, they are questions forced on us, too.

Nonetheless, what Pullman says immediately before the above quote is worth setting down here:
“The only thing that is interesting about fantasy is if you can use it to say something truthful and realistic about human nature.”

I’d go so far as to add that while that might be one interesting thing about fantasy, it certainly isn’t the only thing.

Peace.

“

elektra.

I’ve been attempting to write my bibliographical assignment all day – ok, not really, I’ve been involved in my usual cycle of work-procrastination-work-sleep-procrastination all day and I’m tired. I think the time has come for some dialogue with the Self, or is it a monologue, since I’m the only one talking? But am I one person or two when I’m talking to myself? Is there a Self and an Other within one person i.e me?

Yes, I’ve been reading theory.

So. I’ve been ruminating on the fact that I’m currently terrified of relationships but as a source of temporary comfort and future debilitating hurt, they’re indispensable as an antidote to my perennial boredom. Unfortunately all the men I have ever felt intensely attracted to are either a) fictional b) older than my own father c) too far away to reach. Possibilities for romance = zero.

I keep seeing these less-than-appealing men on tv, or in books and somehow, they have an ineffable magnetism about them, despite their general misanthropic attitude to life and their addiction to being ‘grey’ all the time, never black and white, despite a strong sense of self-assurance and power, stemming not from physical attractiveness but rather, intellectual superiority and sense of the self as being independent from social restrictions applying to people of lesser intelligence. That’s why inhabiting a moral grey area makes them appear more reliable rather than less so, purely because the grey area is of their own creation and that, therefore, allows them to control it rather than be controlled by it.

Strange.

The fact that they’re really old is a bit disturbing though. I don’t think I have particularly significant father-issues, but younger men seem uniformly stupid in comparison to older ones and always have been, to me.

Oh well, bedtime.