We have history books. Philosophical works. Research papers on culture, economy and religion and their impacts on society. Artistic works on the exploitation of the ruled by the ruler. Field workers who themselves have borne the brunt of excesses of our enemy. Dialecticians splitting their hairs to interpret the course of society.
With all these weaponry in place, whom do we propose to fight? Those who believe in fake images and unverifiable bits of history and myths, those who have no patience for well- researched evidences and facts, those who believe in daggers and guns and lathis, those for whom listening to the learned is some sort of pain, those who love emotional platitudes, rhythmic expressions of kitsch and over-blown sentiment.
How is the battle going to be won?
Do we at least have such hopes or have we resigned ourselves to the whims and fancies of Providence?
US vs THEM:
When we are ready to allot time for listening to what our enemy speaks and wait to expect the same kind of decency from the other end, what do we get in response?
A loud, peremptory howl of accusation that signals the end of ‘discussion’.
When we are ready to accept our historical missteps, apologize for the errors of our allies and wait to expect the same kind of decency from the other end, what do we get in response?
A series of vehement chest-thumps that identifies all their blunders and cruelties with the interest of something larger-than-life, something totally infallible and supremely sacrosanct, often called ‘The Nation’ in their language.
When we are suffering from the disease of magnanimity that forces us to acknowledge even the rare, accidental good that our enemy had unwittingly done to our nation, a disease which forces us to respect the icons and forefathers of our enemy, what disease do they suffer from?
A disease that makes them spout slews of unpalatable sentences that are indistinguishable from crude ‘name-calling’ of our ideological forefathers associating each one of them with every kind of obnoxious crime or conspiracy conceivable to the barbaric imagination of our enemy.
In this battle between brains and empty emotions, does the former stand any chance?
With every instance of recent historical development pointing to the victory of emotional loud-mouths that are bent on dividing humanity on artificial and obsolescent identities, does the side that stands for universal human integration still have any strength left over to stand its ground on the battlefield and carry its noble cause?
How many more scars do we need to sustain?
How many more years of patience do we need to muster to fight till the end?
How much gallons of sweat and blood do we need to sacrifice more?
With every reversal that we face on the battlefield, we pull millions of hapless, innocent, toiling masses down with us whose lives keep becoming more awry and chequered with every passing second.
BATTLE FOR THE PAST:
The Present seems untiring in deceiving us and in depriving us of all our self-invented chances. The Present seems dogged in its diabolic endeavors to create a bleak, uninhabitable, dystopian Future.
With every natural element underlying the Present working against us, whom do we have to fall back upon?
The Past? The omniscient Oracle who has seen all, felt all, and guided all. Does he have anything valuable to tell us? Do his words mean anything at all against the gush of Fleeting Time?
His calm face seems to inform us that he has seen the Slave who fought and won over his Master.
His calm face seems to inform us that he has seen the Serf who fought and won over his Landlord.
His calm face seems to inform us that he has seen the Woman who fought and won over her shameless Possessor.
Can us soldiers afford to ignore the message of this immortal Oracle who owns the power to subsume both his children- The temporal Present and The Blind Future?
With so much to gain from the words of The Past, do we soldiers realize how valuable is such a man to the enemy? If the enemy manages to seize the all-knowing Past from us, he will end up distorting and confusing him. He will rid the Oracle of all his healing powers. He will succeed in turning the noble Oracle into a Wizard who could conjure evil spirits and black magic to haunt the hapless multitudes.
Let us fight with everything at our disposal, my dear soldiers, the battle that is as much a battle for The Future as it is for The Past!!
– Jeeva P
Baradwaj Rangan 
brangan
January 5, 2018
With this, I have only one more ‘Reader’s Write In’ piece left — Madan’s article titled ‘O Butterfly and things even Google can’t buy’ 🙂
If anyone wants to submit more, please do so. (Some new names would be nice — say, Rahini talking about blog communities and their ephemeral nature 😛 )
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Vivek narain
January 5, 2018
“I live off the fat of the land,I don’t believe in work. It’s against my principles. I don’t do any work,if I can avoid it. I get by.”~Mark Girland
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Rahini David
January 5, 2018
Ah, if only I understood blog communities. ☺
But my own personal rule is “When you send a Reader’s write in to BR’s blog, make it about the movies”
Well ok, let us see what i can write within that rule.
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Vivek narain
January 5, 2018
‘I often wonder who was the fathead who first proclaimed that work was a noble and rewarding activity. Or was he a really brilliant fellow who thought of a line to kid the suckers into doing the dirty jobs and liking it’.~Simon Templar
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Arjun
January 6, 2018
This is like one of those boring essays you find in 11th std English textbooks. Verbiage, verbiage
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Madan
January 6, 2018
@Jeeva Thought provoking piece and interesting format. With regard to re-appropriating the narrative of the past, isn’t that just mimicking the right’s appeal to nostalgia? My view is liberals need to recast the appeal of liberalism in an aspirational light, the way Thatcher/Reagan did to counter the Soviets. That has been lost somewhere in the cultural tilt of progressivism, which is perhaps why the losers of globalization felt liberalism had nothing to offer for them. If a demagogue told displaced mill workers in Mumbai that he would take back the Mills and give them jobs again, I can’t blame them for buying it because politicians connived with the mill owners and sold out the workers all these years. By the way, this was Raj Thackeray’s pitch and of course he duly built a posh office block on the mill land he and Manohar Joshi acquired. So we have to hope they self destruct and vacate the space for liberals again.
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Madan
January 6, 2018
@ BR: Oh, so you still have that one? 🙂
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Dracarys
January 6, 2018
Nicely written!
Funny thing is I am picturing Prakash Rai’s character from Iruvar while reading this!! 😎
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mymirrorshadow
January 6, 2018
Dear Rangan sir,
What’s the process to send an article for ‘Readers write in’? Can any reader send you an article which, if you find it to be good, could be posted on your blog? Are there any specific topics or could any topic be covered?
If possible, please do let me know about this.
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Vivek narain
January 6, 2018
@mymirrorshadow, of course you can send any article, only you must be good at it and really love what you are writing, if Ben or Billy Fisher or John Miller could do it, why not you?
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brangan
January 6, 2018
About submissions, it’s more about hearing a different voice here than having super-rigid quality standards etc. So just send in something heartfelt and interesting to my email. 😀
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Aditi
January 6, 2018
@brangan, would it be ok to send in previously published pieces?
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Vivek narain
January 6, 2018
It’s very interesting to note how Mark Girland Simon Templar and Tom Sawyer have converged to express similar sentiments. Mark Twain indeed is the original McCoy.
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brangan
January 7, 2018
I received some previously published writings. That doesn’t work, because the idea is to showcase a new piece by a voice that’s not mine. So please do not send in things you’ve already put up on your blog. But otherwise, don’t bother about length, gravitas, etc. — just make it something of interest, that’s all.
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Vivek narain
January 7, 2018
It is heartening to know that this blog is not supposed to be an echo chamber as other movie blogs obviously are. Besides, this analysis of an actor’s histrionics can never be as important as the core idea, the original book or event or movement. A movie, after all is a conduit to make public a thinker’s original idea, however diluted the narrative becomes in the changed medium.
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sravishanker1401gmailcom
January 7, 2018
Jeeva : Still trying to assimilate fully what you’ve written.
Very well written !
And as Madan says unique format.
I’m reminded of lines from a breathless page turner disguised as a classic.
“The first puffs of the pipe’s tobacco churn the toughest of stomachs ; the first differential equations are a bore ; the first lines of poetry have us hankering after a novel but in staying the course with the former is where we cultivate our minds”
Well done !
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MANK
January 7, 2018
Some new names would be nice — say, Rahini talking about blog communities and their ephemeral nature
Guess something like Misogyny of Rajnikanth would do, now that thalaivar is joining politics, he needs all the help he can get 🙂
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vishal yogin
January 7, 2018
Ha hmm, you will have one coming from me, its gonna be one of its kind for sure.
Regarding what’s national or not, the reality remains that the modern human race is essentially a slave to its self created system. We are born, we “educate” to prepare to be good slaves, we slave till we retire, and then we exit.
You have a minute part of the day when it comes to spending time with your family, you have plenty of time after you “retire”.
Wonder why there is no revolution here.
Oh yes, and for all the great achievements of science and tech, the fact remains that all the basic needs get worse as time marches on. Not better. Never better.
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sravishanker1401gmailcom
January 7, 2018
Vishal : Is that your contribution to Readers Write In ?
You’re never going to be a screenplay writer. You need to specialize in happy endings even when everyones’s dead at the end of the movie.
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Vivek narain
January 7, 2018
Vishal has some of the points correct, when Google named its os ‘android’ it wasn’t trying to be prophetic, sf writers of 40s were already indicating that androids will be bulk of the population and the flesh people won’t be able to tell the difference. And even the flesh people would be ageless zombies, both androids and zombies will be slaves to a master super computer.
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