Whistleblower!

                   Emile Zola- “J’ accuse !”               

With a spate of articles in the newspapers about whistleblowers like Dinesh Thakur and now Edward Snowden exposing irregularities and covert missions, I was reminded of the great French writer Emile Zola who published a letter in the L’ Aurore daily on 13 Jan 1898,  a letter addressed to the then President of the French Republic.

Letter to the President of the Republic

I accuse!

Sir,

Would you allow me, grateful as I am for the kind reception you once extended to me, to show my concern about maintaining your well-deserved prestige and to point out that your star which, until now, has shone so brightly, risks being dimmed by the most shameful and indelible of stains?

What filth this wretched Dreyfus affair has cast on your name - I wanted to say ‘reign’ -. A court martial, under orders, has just dared to acquit a certain Esterhazy, a supreme insult to all truth and justice. And now the image of France is sullied by this filth, and history shall record that it was under your presidency that this crime against society was committed.

But this letter is long, Sir, and it is time to conclude it.

I accuse Lt. Col. du Paty de Clam of being the diabolical creator of this miscarriage of justice - unwittingly, I would like to believe - and of defending this sorry deed, over the last three years, by all manner of ludricrous and evil machinations.

I accuse General Mercier of complicity, at least by mental weakness, in one of the greatest inequities of the century.

I accuse General Billot of having held in his hands absolute proof of Dreyfus’s innocence and covering it up, and making himself guilty of this crime against mankind and justice, as a political expedient and a way for the compromised General Staff to save face.

I accuse the three handwriting experts, Messrs. Belhomme, Varinard and Couard, of submitting reports that were deceitful and fraudulent, unless a medical examination finds them to be suffering from a condition that impairs their eyesight and judgement.

I accuse the War Office of using the press, particularly L’Eclair and L’Echo de Paris, to conduct an abominable campaign to mislead the general public and cover up their own wrongdoing.

Finally, I accuse the first court martial of violating the law by convicting the accused on the basis of a document that was kept secret, and I accuse the second court martial of covering up this illegality, on orders, thus committing the judicial crime of knowingly acquitting a guilty man.

In making these accusations I am aware that I am making myself liable to articles 30 and 31 of the law of 29/7/1881 regarding the press, which make libel a punishable offence. I expose myself to that risk voluntarily.

As for the people I am accusing, I do not know them, I have never seen them, and I bear them neither ill will nor hatred. To me they are mere entities, agents of harm to society. The action I am taking is no more than a radical measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice.

I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. Let them dare, then, to bring me before a court of law and let the enquiry take place in broad daylight! I am waiting.

With my deepest respect, Sir.
Émile Zola, 13th January 1898

(It’s a very long letter, I quote the first two paragraphs and the concluding part of the letter, only.)

Emile Zola was a naturalist writer whose sordid detail of corrupt life and degradation of human values repelled the public and paradoxically made him attain fame and win accolades as a writer. The truth hurts and disgusts, but we cannot escape it. His long legendary friendship with the painter Cezanne, too, perpetuates his ideology in life, though one cannot say who took off from the other, but they met at an intersection of their mindscapes. Cezzane painted the world in basic shapes of a circle, a square, and a cylinder, objects and forms reduced to their originality and truth. Zola’s 20 volume series Les Rougon-Macquart is a story of five generations of the respectable (legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts ,  a fallout of the effects of the industrial revolution of greater wealth and its entrapments.

He had followed the Dreyfus affair all along. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, was tried for treason on slim evidence in a wave of anti-Semitism engulfing the country and sentenced to life imprisonment at the dreaded Devil’s Island, off the South American Coast. Two years later, a Colonel in the intelligence section uncovered evidence that pointed at a Major Esterhazy who had passed on secret information to the Germans and exonerated Capt.  Dreyfus. In the meantime, a few other senior army officers had arrived at the same truth.  But in their minds, the prestige of the army and the country was greater than the honor of a Jewish man. In the name of patriotism, they resorted to perjury.  Major Esterhazy was tried and acquitted, the indiscreet Colonel transferred to far dark Africa, and Dreyfus left to rot.

Emile, a dedicated follower of truth and an enemy of injustice, wrote three articles on the Dreyfus affair, but to no avail. The cynical whitewash of Esterhazy propelled him to write an open, flaming letter to the President of France, which he  took to George Clemeanceau , the editor of a struggling liberal newspaper who in turn printed it on the front page under the heading – J’ accuse (‘I Accuse!’). Zola was prosecuted for libel by a hostile jury under the influence of a raging army and sentenced to one year of imprisonment. He wrote in his letter – ‘In making these accusations, I am aware that I am making myself liable to articles 30 and 31 of the law of 29/7/1881 regarding the press, which make libel a punishable offence. I expose myself to that risk voluntarily.’

He had accomplished his purpose. Dreyfus affair reopened as an open public trial, and he was vindicated. When he died in 1902, he was mourned as a national hero. His service was attended by thirty thousand people, and Capt. Dreyfus too was present at the moment that the priest spoke the final words:  “Envy him! Envy him his destiny and his heart………..He was a moment of the conscience of man!” 

Whistleblowers are a breed unto themselves, who go all the way with their conscience, acknowledging all dangers and repercussions of their actions. Courage in the face of fear! Acts of godliness by a few in an otherwise ever-erring human species!

The Great Gatsby

            The Enigma of The Great Gatsby!                

I watched the film ‘The Great Gatsby’ over the weekend. I was driven by an irresistible urge to relive GATSBY whom I had encountered in the eponymous novel in my postgraduate course. He had left an indelible mark on my mind and I savored him on my treasured list of classical characters that live in my thoughts. ‘No one can doubt that the legend(Gatsby) engaged the imagination of the author more deeply than the society in which the legend is played out’. Scott Fitzgerald came into his own with his book ‘This Side of Paradise,’ but he became a critically acclaimed author only with the publication of this book. A book of the Jazz Age,  the roaring twenties (1920s) , written by an author of the ‘Lost Generation,’ it has lived up to all its tags and has gained fame and widespread appeal with time.  It stands true for contemporary India and many other nations in the third world. An age of pleasure orgies, flamboyant display of wealth, singing and dancing , as if eradicating the conventionalities and moralities of the past which had culminated in World war I, a repercussion beyond human comprehension. A world gone berserk on a mindless spree. A study of the milieu and moment of the novel centers the hero and the ambience in the mind of the reader.

The Great Gatsby does not deal with an imaginary space of fetish materialism but is very much rooted geographically in Long Island district of New York.   It was home to the rich immersed in hedonistic life styles , a psychedelic  indulgence of senses,  in the  excess that they had garnered through a thriving economy and prohibition era of the 1920s. Akin to the world today of guns and extortion, black money and power axis.  In that era, Fitzgerald imagined a Great Gatsby , not because his was a rags-to-riches story but that in poor dwellings, he dreamt of himself as ‘a son of God’ . ‘For Gatsby , life with all its absurdities , shortfalls and sadness  is still valuable. He is obsessed with the wonder of human life and driven by the search to make that wonder a reality. An urge that drives prophets and visionaries of this world to make the facts of life measure up to the splendors of human imagination. In the day-to-day realities of existence nothing or nobody is to blame, people are what they are and life is what it is. At this level most people don’t count, they are just refined animals living out a mundane existence, the Tom Buchanans,  the Jordan Bakers, the Daisy Fays.  Only Nick and Gatsby count. Nick tells him so in his last exchange, ‘You are worth than the whole bunch put together’. Nick who is as much of this world as Daisy is in hers, still sees , obsucurely , the significance of Gatsby. He can see that  the content of Gatsby’s dream is corrupt but he senses that its form is pristine’. 

Nick is the narrator of the book. He is within and without as he profoundly defines himself in the movie too. Fitzgerald used the Conradian device to the hilt, by having Nick use the letter ‘I’ and brilliantly perceiving characters and situations through his eyes ironically. The narrator( Nick)  has two styles of narration.  In one, he describes in detail what happens, and in the other he debates, fills in the background detail, muses and summarizes. He is a bond salesman, from the Midwest with his education from Yale and a sound philosophy rooted in values from his rich father. His cottage is set between two large mansions on Long Island, one of which is owned by the mysterious, young  Gatsby, who gives huge parties each week-end, and people come in uninvited in overflowing buggies -  politicians, celebrities, secret agents, actors, extortionists…….  .   A rich married couple, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, friends of Nick, live on an estate opposite the bay, marked by a green light at the end of the dock. Tom is engaged in a sordid liaison with the wife of George Wilson,  the owner of a local garage in the valley of ashes, where the rich dump all their industrial grey waste . Daisy has everything but her husband’s love and is unhappy.   Gatsby wants to take the relationship between him and Daisy five years back, when they were lovers. The book ends in an act of betrayal and ingratitude on the part of Buchanans and Gatsby’s former friends and business associates, and finally Nick concludes that the bootlegger Gatsby, embodied something more genuine and on the whole less depraved than the parasites he entertained, or the so- called aristocratic Buchanans, who run away sheltered by their money and dead conscience. The writer means us to be wholly on the hero’s side, to believe that without Gatsby’s extreme idealism, life is simply a mundane unlivable reality.

The entire fairy tale atmosphere in the background of the Long Island sets the scene for the tragedy in the end. The very first introduction to Gatsby’s mansion and persona is that of a glittering caravanserai, the towers lighted from bottom to the top like a world fair. The symbolic implication of the green light at the end of Daisy’s estate which has a colossal significance for Gatsby is indicative of the green pastures and the desperation for the green card, which drove people in droves, to acquire the ‘American Dream’.  The enormous eyes of Doctor T.J Eckleburg, on a billboard are always watching – ‘God sees all’ as Wilson says ; the moralistic strings of the story.

On an allegorical level , Nick is reason, reality, experience, history, like Wordsworth listening to the sad music of humanity whereas Gatsby is imagination, dream , eternity , like William Blake seeing angels in the sun. Nick sees the tragic, can never be hurt, is a moralist but then he can neither be happy. Gatsby transforms it by the power of his imagination – radical and apocalyptic. Gatsby is hopelessly out of time, and pursues the green light.  He can touch realms of ecstasy - a radical to the core.

Gatsby’s foray into immense wealth comes about through dubious means of bootlegging and his association with shifty characters like Dan Cody and Meyer Wolfsheim(played by Amitabh Bachchan in the movie).  The reason he projects himself larger than himself in epic proportions is a ploy to buy respectability, in the form of his yellow buggie, an Oxford Man, parties and the poise of a thorough gentleman. A phrase from the book – ‘he had a platonic conception of himself’ points to his dual character of criminal wealth and respectability.

Amitabh Bachchan and his part in the movie takes us to the Indian Gatsby’s  of today who have acquired their fortunes through grabbing mines, forests and water , exploiting the poor and tapping into the aspirations of the middle class for amassing great turnovers. The luxury-goods market in India has expanded to $ 8.21 billion this year. Studio Creo sells ceiling fans and mattresses priced upward from 2 lakhs. Items of necessity have become luxury goods to acquiesce the pure luxury-living demands of the nouveau riche to lend them a worth in the  eyes of  their so called friends, which makes them worthy in themselves.  People want to own the idea of luxury. They have forgotten the essence of what made Gatsby, ‘The Great Gatsby’ – his pristine vision and genuineness. He is ready to sacrifice himself and his fancy world for the safety and well being of others. After the reader finishes the book or the movie ends our hearts feel heavy and we are filled with despondency for the Great Gatsby himself.

Baz Luhrmann and his design/vision mate Catherine Martin packaged the movie in a radical display of opulence, an aesthetic which seems sublime . This sublimity is blinding the population to its vulgarity of greed, superficiality, envy, selfisness and a pursuit of happiness in indulgence of sensual desires. This is what we are ; the truth stares us in our face. Don’t be dazzled by the veneer – go look for the darkness beneath!

‘Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past’!

Theatre Review 'No Birds in My Attic'

The Mustard Seed English Theatre Company in Goa and their production 'No Birds in my Attic' engaged theatre lovers in Goa in May, 2013 , with its witty dialogue and sparky enactments. Isabel Vaz the director yet again proved her mettle in script -  writing and direction. I was asked to review the play and the print  appeared in the 'Herald' .

The English Theatre scene in Goa seems to be looking up with Mustard Seeds production last month in Kala and the ongoing play readings in International Centre Goa every first and third Thursday of the month, an initiative by Karan Bhagat.

Seraphic Verses, Revisiting Gitanjali

SERAPHIC VERSES

As the world celebrates and hails ‘Gitanjali,’ a confluence of  mysticism, religion and humanism, to mark the centenary of the Nobel Prize for Literature by Rabindranath Tagore, I make a humble attempt, in this column, to showcase the history and a few of  his writings from  a work so profound.  The English Gitanjali is a collection of 103 poems of Tagore's own translations of his Bengali poems from the original Bengali Gitanjali, as well as poems from other books of his poetry.

 I begin with the words of WB Yeats, who wrote the preface in the English translation of Gitanjali, “I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses and in restaurants, and I have often had to close it, lest some stranger would see how much it moved me. These lyrics---which are in the original, my Indians tell me, full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of color, of metrical invention---display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my life long. The work of a supreme culture, they yet appear as much the growth of the common soil as the grass and the rushes”

Tagore always wrote in his mother tongue , Bengali, and was highly regarded and admired in Bengal for his literary pursuits and ideologies.  It was only in 1910 with the visit of foreign personalities like the English artist William Rothenstein , who had set up the Indian Society in London , that attempts were made to translate his work into English. Tagore was for such endeavors but was not highly enthused to read the outcome of his writings in English. With mounting pressure from home and abroad, he expressed an inclination to translate his poems himself. Referring to his translation, Tagore observed that his attempt to translate into simple prose had held him in good stead. Without rhyme and metre, his poems were hailed and accepted for their aesthetic and mystic core; such is the appeal and lure of a golden treasure that he gave the world. A major part of the translations was completed on his voyage to London, accompanied by his son, who misplaced the manuscript in the subway at London station. It was shortly traced in the lost and found section of the station and Tagore presented it to Rothenstein, on his arrival. The latter shared it with his literary friends namely Yeats and Bradley who, once in possession of his work, were bowled over completely. Their admiration and adulation knew no end and the feeling of rapture is admirably illuminated in WB Yeats introduction to the first print of the book, a must read by each and every human being whose journey in life brings him to the haven of ‘Gitanjali’.

Readings of Tagore’s poems evoke flowers, mountains, the sky, sunrises and sunsets, boat rides and water and lead many to the verdict that he was a naturalist poet.  The latter per se would have the tenets of romantic poetry of Wordsworth and Shelley. But Tagore’s mission was beyond the mere rapture of earthly beauty. He was a seeker who felt the divine touch and omnipotent presence through creation and nature. Living life embroiled in all its vicissitudes, his quest for God is a spiritual awakening strengthened by a humble yet determined resolve to see Him in all his glory. His playing field was the study of the Vedas and Upanishads, and his poems reflect the essence of his reflections and ruminations of these sacred texts. In the symphony being orchestrated by all the elements of nature, in praise of the divine force, paradoxically he himself is so meager and small. Yet his faith in God urges him on , led by a deep-rooted craving to raise himself . Like Rumi said :

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover or leaving — it doesn't matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come

Tagore acknowledges the divine in each of us, and his ceaseless endeavor to elevate his consciousness comes through in this verse from Gitanjali

Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch is upon all my limbs. I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind. I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart. And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act.

For him, God is not in the reclusive haunts of a self proclaimed saint. Rather, he seeks God in the stream of life , the toil of a farmer, the soil of the tiller

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee! He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and  like him come down on the dusty soil! Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all forever. Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.

The procrastination that besets us and enmeshes us, chaining us to our comfort zones and force of habit or belief, such that renewal ever lies postponed

The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day.

I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.

The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.

The blossom has not opened; only the wind is sighing by.

I have not seen his face, nor have I listened to his voice; only I have heard his gentle footsteps from the road before my house.

The livelong day has passed in spreading his seat on the floor; but the lamp has not been lit and I cannot ask him into my house.

I live in the hope of meeting with him; but this meeting is not yet.

In many a verse he enunciates the bindings of our big egos and illusionary fears

Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them.

Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed.

I came out alone on my way to my tryst. But who is this that follows me in the silent dark?

I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not.

He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger; he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter.

He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame; but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company.

And over and over again, he pinpoints our human failings and illusions wrought by ‘maya’

`Prisoner, tell me, who was it that wrought this unbreakable chain?'

`It was I,' said the prisoner, `who forged this chain very carefully. I thought my invincible power would hold the world captive leaving me in a freedom undisturbed. Thus night and day I worked at the chain with huge fires and cruel hard strokes. When at last the work was done and the links were complete and unbreakable, I found that it held me in its grip.'

Once we embark on our readings of Gitanjali , we can just not stop. May it triumph and be hailed in each human soul for our ultimate deliverance!

Revisiting Shelley's Ozymandias

      Earthly Passions                         

The cover page of the current issue of ‘India Today’ reads the ‘High & Mighty’ Power List 2013. The features inside on celebrities are arranged in a hierarchical order, with money and assets as the discerning quotient for pickings. Reading the stories of these living icons, I reminisced of my last visit to Jaipur in January during the Lit Fest. The preserved museums and mahals, a narrative of the erstwhile maharajas’ power and pleasurable lifestyles, had evoked in my mind two poems which resurfaced again with the present reading of the 27- storey mansion of the Ambanis.

The first poem is the famous poem, ‘Ozymandias’ by   Percy Bysshe Shelley, a major 19^th century English Romantic poet, critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in  English language. The work is a fourteen- line sonnet , a quaint work of Shelley, rendered in ten minutes but invoking a radical thought. Historical records say that Shelley decided to enter a sonnet competition with his friend - Horace Smith and the subject decided upon was the partially-destroyed statue of Ramses II ("Ozymandias") that was making its way to London from Egypt, finally arriving there sometime early in the year 1818. The colossal statue had tempted Napoleon too, who had tried to get it transported to France from Egypt, but in vain, defeated by its dimensions. It weighs almost 7.5 tons. Shelley, like Napoleon, was fascinated by this giant statue.
Shelley published his poem in January of 1818 in The Examiner, a periodical run by his other friend Leigh Hunt .

Ozymandias

 I met a traveler  from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The poem has a spiritual connotation for today’s materialistic, consumerist times. In its short space, it explores the relevance of kings, despots and tyrants , and men of insurmountable wealth and clout . What happens to them ?  The broken-down statue of Ozymandias in Shelley's poem points to the short-lived nature of political regimes and tyrannical power. Shelley uses  the irony of earthly power  to make a satirical statement.  At the very onset, we meet a traveller who describes the deplorable condition of the shattered visage that stands half- buried in the ever stretching sand  with ‘The wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command , stamped on the trunkless statue, a colossal wreck, boundless and bare’. A mighty king who was striving in his whole life for his possessions and got involved in worldly assignments so much that he forgot his ultimate destiny. Besides  this, Shelley reminds the readers of their mortality through the realization that our earthly accomplishments, so important to us now, will one day be finished, and nothing lasts forever. The psychological forces of the id as well as the superego of Oxymadias ,  appear as a character in a poem, and as a poetic work, writ large in the inscription ‘my name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: look on my work , ye mighty, and despair!’. ‘Nothing  remains , Round and decay,  The lone and level sands stretch far away’ – dust mingles with dust, and death levels all as equals in its play.

Now I shall enumerate translated verses from a sacred text:

I have seen many abodes, where groups of sarogis, sudhs , sidhas, and yogis reside

I have also seen various groups of brave men, kings, Gods who drink nectar, and saints belonging to various sects

I have noticed religions of different countries, but none seems to be the religion of preaching worship of the creator by which the soul becomes his slave.

If emperors possess tall incomparable elephants painted in bright colors, adorned with golden trapping

If they were to own million of horses, capable of fleeting at a speed greater than that of wind and bounding like deer

If countless kings, having large and strong arms were to stoop low and bow before them

If such emperors were to march and conquer all countries beating drums

If in their stables herds of beautiful elephants were to trumpet loudly and horses of royal breed were to neigh

If they could break into pieces the revolting enemies and twist their necks and smash pride of even the furious elephants,

If they could capture forts and win the whole world territory simply by issuing threats

What matters if such emperors exist or existed?

They shall depart bare-footed in the end , they must go to their final home of death empty handed

The whole world being in the grip of false ceremonies , rituals and practices of the ego and vanity has not known God’s secrets.

A study in the following poems would be an interesting follow-up of the theme under scrutiny.  “To his Coy Mistress”, “Ozymandias” and “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”. All three of the poems clearly deal with the passing of time in different ways.  ‘Song’ , ‘We are Seven ‘ deal with death  and the attitude that human beings have towards it. ‘In Spring and Fall’, ‘To the Virgins’, ‘ and ‘Ozymandias’ poets tackle the question of mortality.

Poetry is powerful; in the hands of celebrated poets, it is sublime.