Third side of coin

by Remigius de Souza

Third side of coin:
Aesthetics, Ethics and Economics

‘Two sides of coin’ is a common idiom in currency. ‘Aesthetics’ and ‘ethics’ could be the two sides of occupation, profession or vocation of architecture, or others. Yet there is a third side – the ‘edge’ – that is personal or collective on which the coin rolls or spins.

Economic currency in aesthetics of architecture, or built environment, in the capitalist society is a visible factor. Larger the currency denomination lesser is the edge. Hence a person or an establishment may strive to fatten the wad to gain the edge, where both the esthetic and ethical values diminish in reverse proportion that results in madness.

FLW’s mile high ego
Casts the shadow...
A missed target of 9/11.
Where do the pigeons dwell?

(14 October 2004)


(Mile high Tower by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Source: Google Image)

Remigius de Souza
Post Mail: 69-243 S. B. Marg, Mumbai 400028, INDIA

Sanjay Dutt’s adversity

by Remigius de Souza

Sanjay Dutt’s adversity

Adversities also bring new or unknown opportunities. Sanjay Dutt has been acting and entertaining Bollywood box-office and masses. He also has been providing spicy stories to media time to time.

I wouldn’t judge his Bollywood career in virtual reality; it is judged by the box-office bottom-line, which is reality. As for his TADA, or whatever, case, the judgment has been delivered, or is awaited further hearing. Hence no Bollywood-style sentimental melodrama needed.

As an actor, I suppose, he is an artist in his own right. Many artists are rotting in jails, in many countries, even without trial, for their work of art which has humanitarian value. There are many instances of prisoners, from M.N. Roy to Sane Guruji, who turned out literature from the jails. A criminal such as Jean Genet, who is also called Saint Genet, became an acclaimed writer. Remember Sage Valmiki!

In the jail, Dutt will be provided with work, wages, food and shelter; which are denied to the millions of people outside, here in India – either by fate or by the state. Dutt is lucky.

How to turn the adversity – an imprisonment – into an opportunity? It is in the Dutt’s hands.

So far, Sanjubaba has been acting according to direction and talking the script. If accessible, Dutt may have an advantage of first hand experience by real contact of various criminals, from petty to hardcore, and witness their dispositions. Besides the jail may offer him some time to reflect or contemplate.

Hopefully it may be an opportunity for Sanjubaba to grow up in real whorl, and grow beyond acting “Bhaigiri” and “Gandhigiri” in virtual world, where even Gandhibaba speaks Munnabhai’s dialect. Indeed who or how any of the casts of “Lage raho Munnabai” is touched by Gandhi?

We all know that Dutt’s mother was Muslim. Hence, it is possible that all Muslims could be “Mamus” and Hindus be his “Chachus”. In real life, with his resources, his celebrity status, his fan-following, Dutt could become a great bridge to achieve communal amity between Hindus and Muslims. It is time, rather than brand Gandhigiri, by his own “Sanjugiri”, we are sure, Sanjay Dutt might work wonders. Of course, to be oneself is harder than imitation or role-playing because one is answerable to oneself in the first place.

I reflect for a moment


With my statement above, indeed, I am exposed!
What if I, whoever, whatever, vanish from the face of the earth?
What if Gandhi – Nehru are no more?
What if the billionaire become paupers overnight in the Depression of 1930s?
What if several villages flattened in the earthquake of Bhuj?
What if two lakhs mill workers and eight lakhs of their dependants deprived of their livelihood by the closure of textile mills in Mumbai?
What if Harappa - Mohenjo-Daro are buried several times in the Earth?
What if the megalometropolis Angkor Wat vanishes?
What if a few hundred die in terrorist attacks?
So on and on and on…
What if Bollywood vanishes from the face of the earth? People wouldn’t loose a moment of wink. They shall find their own alternatives for much needed leisure – not the elitist pop-art but the revival of folk-arts, once relieved from costly entertainment market!!!

A Gond poem, from Central India

What is man’s body? It is a spark from the fire
It meets water and it is put out.
What is man’s body? It is a bit of straw
It meets fire and it is burnt out.
What is man’s body? It is a bubble of water
Broken by the wind.

(Re: Jaffrey Wainwrite, “The Basics: Poetry, Routledge, 2004)

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Remigius de Souza
Post Mail: 69-243, S. B.Marg, Mumbai 400028 India

A far cry – Voice in Wilderness

A far cry – Voice in Wilderness

Remi steers his alfa-craft from his alpha point
through the maze of hurdles endless
while trying the turns takes hurts and bruises
in the urbanity of chaotic wilderness
that live on perpetually on the external aids,
that sucks the energy from every molecule
of water, air and soil to choke life to the hilt.
On his way – any moment may be his omega point –
Remi seeks some tranquillity, some peace
in solitude. Alas! No solace.

26-08-2007
Mumbai

(Society – urbanity – city is a work of only the human hands.
Mumbai has witnessed, within a span of few decades, mass killings of humans. In the 1960s, 105 persons were shot dead by the Government of Maharashtra, during the agitation of the unarmed citizens who protested against the proposed formation of the state. In the 1990s, several events of terrorism and riots, including a riot by police who went on rampage, took place. These are apart from the reported or unreported cases of crime, epidemics, house-collapse road accidents etc. besides the pollution of every kind – social, political, economic, environmental and ecological.)


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Remigius de Souza
Post Mail: 69-243 S. B. Marg, Mumbai 400028, INDIA

Kabir and Industrial Society

Kabir and Industrial Society

by Remigius de Souza

Kabir says (circa 1500):

Sun sinks, day fades,
dusk has fallen.
From screwing too many lovers,
the whore is barren.

(The Bijak of Kabir, Trans: Linda Hess and Sukhdev Singh, Motilal Baneasidas,Delhi., p. 94)

An event in 1950s

“Why the prostitutes don’t have children?” A boy asked his grandmother.
“On a pathway there is no grass, because many people walk on it.” She replied.

A college mate, who came from a small town nearby Mumbai, told us this event. The old woman, like Kabir, was perhaps even illiterate. But that’s Indian mind, not that of the industrial society.

An event in 1960s

“Institutes are prostitutes.” — Louis Kahn

The late Louis Kahn, architect, often visited to his project, “Indian Institute of Management that was under construction in Ahmedabad. Once during his lecture at the National Design Institute, he said, ‘Institutes are prostitutes’. P. S. Rajan, architect and one of our contemporaries, at once stood up and asked, ‘Then why do you teach at Penn?’ Kahn was very angry at the question or perhaps the interruption.

We are now accustomed to the intrusion of various institutions in our personal and collective autonomy that we never question.

An event in 1990s

“Take a baby off the shelf.”

We were at the faculty’s common room during a break. The talk among the professors was drifting from practice to getting married to career to ‘have or not to have babies’… Then some one said “Take a baby off the shelf”, as if picking up a toy. These women and men belong to elite profession, most of them had travelled abroad or educated in the US or Europe.

Qualitatively there is no difference between the statements of the old women and Kabir.
The reference point is “culture”. After five hundred years, or even after fifty years, what Kabir says, or what the old woman said, is still relevant. Though Kabir refers to a woman who is a prostitute, in the present global circumstances it applies to the industrial society, wherever it exists. The pimps and prostitution are now prevalent in almost all occupations and trades, even though under different garbs, in the industrial society.

There are no prostitutes and prostitution in many communities, particularly adivasis – the tribal. Prostitution is a feature of civilised societies. Now the elite identify the prostitutes as “sex-workers”, thus legitimise the flesh trade. This, of course, is shameless hypocrisy of the high society or the elite class.

As I quote Kabir, who is illiterate, above, it is obligatory on my part to mention the translator. How far am I enlightened by Kabir? It is a matter of speculation?

Sowing seeds of hybrid culture

The industrial society behaves as if it has no posterity.
Hybrid seeds of food grains came later. By then industrialization had successfully bred the hybrid culture through the assembly lines of mass education to produce mass society in the First World, now known as the ‘virtual global village’. The result: hybrid culture, like hybrid seeds, has no second/third generation, no posterity, no community.

With technological advances when sex-change, genetic modification, surrogates father/mother, clones etc are possible, sex and gender loose their sheen, of course, in the industrial societies. What remains is the colonisation of the weaker and poor classes and communities by the egocentric elite a sheer greed for possession and power, by giving charities.

Take for example. The farmers in India have been committing suicides for some time and elsewhere peasants are displaces for the development projects. The only thing the government can do is to distribute cash dole, but no sharing the skills in finance and technologies relevant to them.

No wonder, for the likes of the Gandhi, the Schumacher… there are no takers on the assembly lines, no germination either. They rest in archives, except for the ‘quotes’ in the discourses, a part of the past such as, socialism, radical humanism, modern, post-modern, Art Nouveau, construction, deconstruction… but no action. As is this article.

Kabir refers her not to a woman but to the whole society, with its many loves, is out to destroy the insects, the “other” people, ethnic communities and aborigines, biodiversity on one side and talk-talk-talk about “climate change”, which might lead to the devices “to control power and add to the profit” further. It is leaving the Earth barren.
~~~
31-08-2007

Who is the giver? Who is the receiver? [1]

On 60 years of India's Independence:

Navi Mumbai Development Plan

Who is the giver? Who is the receiver? [1]

(Poem written on 23-02-1997: I was writings a review of a workshop, "The Idea of New Town, Looking at Navi Mumbai". While writings I was stuck for many reasons. One of them was the stalwarts in architecture and planning from India and abroad attended the workshop. Sant Tukaram came to my help, and I composed the following poem. On the occasion of 60th Anniversary of India I re-publish it. )

Oh Vitthala*, while you stand steadfast
On a single brick, the foundation bestowing
Courage and joy through Gyanoba-Tukoba*:
There is no beginning – no end.

On the threshold of Third Millennium
Of "English" calendar, what are a few decades
Of life of New Delhi, Chandigarh, or New Mumbai
But specks of dust in a hay stack?
We have lived through cities thousand years old.

The sperms of Navi Mumbai were laid in an incubator
By an industrial corporate body, legitimized
By the CIDCO* of Swadeshi Raj here
Of your beloved Maharashtra and of the displaced.

Oh Vithoba1, your beloved people of India
Are blessed by Mother Earth for millennia,
Living in million villages, who nurtured and helped
To sustain cities of Gods, kings and Nawabs.

In the age of rape of Mother Earth
And ecological-cultural subjugation of the sons of soil,
Pushed them to the brink, to make a fast buck
While the sun shines, through manufacture and market;
The machine does not make maize neither milk.

Corporations know not "boundaries", – neither of values
Nor culture, – Their tentacles reach afar
Under different garbs and masks anew;
What are the new towns across the continents
In the name of urbanism – yet another mask?

Swarms of corporate locust devouring resources
In decades, what had been plentiful for millions
Of living entities for centuries, to leave behind
“Holes in the sky". City planners are by-products.

We witnessed the destruction of Hiroshima-
Nagasaki, calamities-man-made with impact;
the shudder of earth that reduced Kobe to debris.

You hold aloft Kedarnath – Kashi – Kanyakumari
Through the times of turmoil, age after age.
Bhagiratha4 brought Mother Ganga to revive
His five thousand ancestors in peril.

In the age of annihilation unsurpassed
His offspring struggle to survive in numbers.
Will the sons of soil survive or perish?
Oh, Vitthala, Give your holy verdict.

In the era of contraception - condoms - abortions,
The steel-glass-concrete jungles of modern towns
Are sprouting, sprawling, swelling, multiplying
To celebrate triumph of "Post-historic-Man".
Will New Town, living a hybrid life on life saving
Drugs, shall be or not be an abortion?

Desperate planners are gripped in two-three dimensions
When Newtonian Age passed away hither thither;
In spite of revelation of Time and Eternity;
And half-truth of second law of thermodynamics.

Tied to a mill of self-cantered ego, they go in rounds
Endless, locked in cells. Will some glimpse liberate them?
Oh Vithoba*, It is time again to release Vishwakarma*
from the bondage of Indra*, we pray.

We recite the past, or speculate the future in mechanical
Actions; run into political impotency;
when confronted to the Present, take refuge
of numbers in perpetuity, dividing, sieving, grading,
degrading the humanity at the cost of creativity.

Now the "Bhasmasura"* of modern technology is let loose
Shattering the ancient limits only to defile and displace
Land and Waters, to eliminate the living entities.
New Towns offer man a life of hydroponics.

His tentacles reach deeper and wider through his weapon –
"The Cities" – to bring slow death to regions afar without impact.
Oh Vithoba, heed to our invocation to give us Insight
Into the Present, the People, the Life, the Nature's Way.

At the end of second millennium, they struggle
In the narrow compartments of 2D – 3D to establish
Credibility; offer the urbanites "New Town Neurosis"
They are yet to awaken to hyperspace;
How could the planners be Visionary?

Architecture is poet's imagination to serve
The two in hundred of the world;
Planning demands vision in Universal Truth
Of a sage – of a humble farmer – who lives
In the timeless eternal NOW.

* * * *
Remigius de Souza
Mumbai
23-2-1997

Notes:
* Vitthala, Vithoba: Most venerated deity in Maharashtra (an incarnation of Vishnu).
* Gaynoba - Tukoba: Jnaneshwar and Tukaram are saint-poets of Maharashtra, India.
* CIDCO: City and Industrial Development Corporation, Maharashtra State, India.
* Bhagiratha: a character from Mahabharata.
* Vishwakarma, Indra, Bhasmasura: characters from Puranas. Bhasmasura is similar to Midas in the western mythology. However end of Bhasmasura comes reducing him ashes by his own folly, which is inevitable. There is no room for repentance.


(This poem was written on the occasion of the Workshop - "The Idea of New Town: Looking at Navi Mumbai", held at Coomaraswamy Hall, Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai on 21-22 February 1997.)

Remigius de Souza