What Globalization: Whither Literature (2)

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

But in the contemporary world it is not possible to live in isolation. We have to partake of resources available in the world for survival. And for that we must have alliances, treaties, pacts with countries whether we share common language- literature and culture with them or not. Survival and the desire for growth and development makes enemies join at the dinner table. Cultural identities undergo transformation for capitalistic ventures. Post Second War capitalism jointed most of the world with a corporate culture. The multinational corporation and inter- governmental  financial and other deals made the world ‘borderless’, a term coined by  a Japanese corporate consultant Kenichi Ohmae in the 1990’s. This corporate capitalism led to a profusion of literature in Business and Corporate management, Medicine and Health studies and other allied fields of interest. But imaginative literature or classicization of human affairs was not in their focal area. These corporates emphasised liberalism and secularism without which it was not possible to pursue their corporate interests in a borderless world. This was termed towards the close of the last century, Globalization. Basically it is an economic globalization where attractive products of different countries will find a global market.

By Globalization we normally think of economic globalization.The world as one market where the products of the world in a competitive market will enter into global capitalism. Literature in this so called age of globalization is a product, marketable and consumer friendly.The product attractively packaged and competitively priced must be backed up by bold and aggressive advertisement.The publisher like a corporate participates in the capitalistic venture with the products of his country. If it is a MNC (Multi National Corporation) like Viking, Oxford, Harper Colllins, Penguin and the like it has to invest a pretty penny  to familiarize its brand  in the cities of its presence.

In the Indian context any corporate publisher would wonder: what is Indian literature? India writes in many languages and cultural voices vary in tone and tenor from language to language. The works written in English mostly look at India with borrowed western eyes or through a native Chasma scanning the virtues of an irretrievable past. The bhasa literatures project an Indian-ness through local prisms. How then an MNC select his product for the world market. Globalization presumes a borderless world but borders to exist. Nationalism is a potent energy. Patriotic nationalism expressed in one language  is all the more powerful.  I shall do well to quote the German philosopher Johan Ficte ‘ Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins’. (Address to the German Nation 1806) Geography, Culture and language create their own exclusive appeal  which may not move the buyers of bhasa products to throng the book stores in foreign cities. If a great work from bhasa literatures is chosen as a product, there is another difficulty. The work must be translated into English for English in the present day world is the only comprehensible language of communication. But when a great work is translated into English, the aim of the translator is to cater to the taste of the English reading public. The translator sacrifices the local and the Indian nuances and the voice and rhythm to please the English knowing people. Moreover translators in India and in Odisha too are a rare specimen. However, competent they may be like the Voyager to the moon they please neither the population on the moon, nor the earth dwellers by their accounts.

The other, more intricate problem is globalization often undermines democracy. The local units in a globalised world are not treated equally. The identities of literature-rich but week in money and bargaining power are often hidden on the stalks and booksellers never display them. The advertisement for these products, therefore is never aggressive. The identity of the country’s is never recognised . As the neo-liberal global trade in literature seldom recognizes and often undermines the literature springing from a democracy or nation-state, MNC’s shy away from aggressive marketing . A Salman Rushdie or Vikram Seth may push into the market fortified by  a Booker prize but in  general , bhasa literature of great literary value loses out in the competition.

Is there any hope then? Well, as I am an optimist, great works in Indian literatures may one day find place on the display table in foreign cities; provided translators emerge to communicate the human universality in Indian literature in readable English. I will conclude my brief presentation in the words of Aime Ce’saire : And no race has a monopoly on beauty , on intelligence and on strength : And there is no room for us all at the randezvous of history.

Absurdity

What power moves the earth

who makes the sun burn above

no mystic philosopher can tell

no Einstein can ever measure

the depth of this absurd earth.

I hold on my palms heaven and earth

one is hot burning my left palm

the other cool and bright on the right ,

I weigh them with burning joys

the heavier is my left globe.

It is pain fire and brimstone

but it is my birth place, my home

I throw heaven to its place

to burn my dreams to flaming life.

Sabita Sahu

What Globalization: Whither Literature (1)

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Globalization is a much hyped term lost in ambiguities. When you think of literature in the Age of Globalization the ambiguities lapse into confusion. One may ask in all sincerity : Is there an Age of Globalization? If the answer is yes, when did it begin? For the sake of argument one may say, it began in 1827. On 31^st January 1827 one of the greatest literary names in world literature Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe ruminated, “National literature is now at hand and everyone must strive to hasten its approach”. And he also added ‘if we really want a pattern, we must always return to the ancient Greeks, in whose works the beauty of mankind is constantly represented. All the rest we must look at only historically; appropriating to ourselves what is good so far as it goes'. In this sense the beginning of Globalization of literature can be traced back to the Greeks. Speaking to a Calcutta audience in 1907 Rabindranath Tagore has said : ‘Our goal is to view universal humanity in universal literature by freeing ourselves from rustic uncatholicity’. In the colonial and post colonial times a feeble effort was definitely made to establish a  global tradition of literature highlighting the literature of the East mainly to counter the language and literature of the colonial masters, that is to say to undermine the overarching  influence of English literature. The desire to create a ‘One World reality’; however, could not take off as the local and regional identities could not assimilate human diversity in any meaningful way. If it was to be all inclusive the idea of a universal library was built into it. But ill conceived as it was, it became difficult to give it form, shape and validity. In the absence of a system of evaluation of national literatures from a borderless world perspective, a universal library is effete. There are libraries, particularly the Library of Congress in America which stock and stack books of other nations. But no sense of world literature or universal humanity emerges as translations of these works into English often take away the local flavour and anglicize them, thereby dissuading the non- English readers into indifference.

The idea of one world has never been nor can ever be a reality. Geography, climate, economic conditions, political situations and also religious compulsions will make the people different. Mankind is one, at best, is a poetic statement but as we advance in time each human being is a separate mankind. Think for yourself, is the new humanist education which means contain the universe within yourself. Hence a  literature representing mankind as a whole is unthinkable. National governments too experience this difficulty of making laws for a country. Each human being has his/ her world view, national identity and social configuration.  All efforts, therefore, to create a world literature of man have not succeeded till date. International conferences and comparative accounts of literatures never arrive at a global view of man. Africa, India, the Muslim countries are so diverse and deviant from each other that to place their literatures on the same platform with the literary west is too idealistic to be practical. After the second world war when decolonization happened a new reality emerged. All decolonized countries in the way of political freedom suddenly tried to rewrite their history as a continuous process leading up to a national identity. The colonial times were treated as veritable aberrations. Scholars in all the decolonized countries tried to make the past their present.  Their desire to showcase their identity as unique had built in elements of intellectual isolation.  A non- compromising self esteem forced them to an unacknowledged spiritual alienation. …(to be continued)

Nothing Waits For Nothing

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Dawn! What dawn? The dawn of a new age delivered by the womb of time? Or a routine pre- sunrise glow reddening the east like the lubricating blood making birth a slippery tale of painful beginning? How do I bother! And why should I? Does the sun wait for my moony night to linger my passions on my love’s arms? Does anything wait for anything? The earthquake does not wait for the city to evacuate forewarned. The petals don’t wait for the stroll of the princess into the garden to smile at her in full splendour. Life does not wait for death, death for life. Time is such an unseen song which moves unheard from one beat to another like juxtaposing the east and west for shock effect- you may call contrastive melody. The day does not wait till you close your accounts, write your will or to buy a kg of rice for your starving family. The wife does not wait for her husband to return exhausted, the husband does not wait for his wife’s return from the club. The ball does wait for the fitness of the leg, nor does it wait for the referee’s whistle to enter the post.

Why then people wait for things? They wait for results, wait for holidays to start, for the rain to stop , for promotions to come before time, for the doctor to cut your tummy to remove the gall bladder. Why? When things happen like the motiveless malignity of a villain to work on his machinations to strike when you are not alert or ready or aware - well go on doing what your mind wills you to do. And there is the rub. The mind hesitates. Measures the pros and cons, weighs, calculates and often gives up.

Never wait for things: if you can seize upon the moment and bend it to do your bidding to say it is never possible. Yes- life is meant to make the impossible possible, to play with sun and moon in the park of your own making. We know, we are not welcome here; there is no band waiting for us. Nature laughs, cries, invites, ignores, grows calm like the fallen dew but creates the illusion of pearls: we must create our own nature to enlarge the given territory of life. God’s little acre should be your own vast kingdom. Build your own gold palace. Carve out your own destiny. Your own river of sorrow, your own ocean of happiness. What is happiness you may ask? Well, it is only a chemical equilibrium in the body which gives you a state of well being. It may be irrational like my friend saying I love the world for its grapes, for the lobsters. You create your favorites, your fruit Friday, your love sonnets. Ride on the wings of butterflies- if they cannot hold your weight create strong sturdy butterflies more colorful with exotic colours. Create your music, however, cacophonous they may be. Sing and dance for if you don’t the eyes will be moist when your love does not respond; if she ignore your cooing calls, if she does not keep  the dinner date or repulses your advanced lips- your eyes will stream down wetting your face and drowning your heart in the Red sea. Create your own love; give her the beauty of your own imagination, fly in the sky like skylords. Life offers nothing. You come crying and go without the senses functioning or obeying your commands.

You come for a brief moment, make it long, never ending. Never wait for anything because it’s a waste of your given moment. Make your life a dream.  Live in dreams, love in dreams, 

work dreamlike without asking Freuds the rationale behind what and why of your dreams. You create your dreams and spend the given moments as if you hold time in the hollow of your palm. Spend the moment like an Emperor ordering his reality for posterity to remember. If the future generations laugh at your Taj Mahal doesn’t matter. At least you have made them react to your deeds. Live, dream and die a dream death without waiting for anything to happen. Things happen for their own needs. You make your needs happen even though the dream happenings are not palpable. But do and dream and live every moment.

Anniversary

A soft knock... hard knuckles
Who is at this hour?

Wait , my loaded mind

one more year is put on the pile

faithful time loads its bricks

comes like a midnight guest

to pack my years

with restless nothings.

Years come rolled out

like carpets of designed fear

no time to sit or walk

to appreciate the artwork

makes one run to a doc

for a piece of prescription

of pills and tonics like

love lyrics to a cripple.

Anniversaries increase

the quota of pills and doses

we wake up with pills

sleep with tablets of dreams

rise again to be peeled and patched.

Yes, this is  what I am

what you are or will be

knocked out by time’s yearly push.

Life is time’s arithmetic

count as many as they come,

adding futility to your dreams

fly soar shine and fall

time will gather you again

with a number on your chest.

Sabita Sahu

Anniversary

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Time is an indivisible, impalpable dimension of our reality. The ancient Indians thought time was an endless cycle of kalpas and yugas repeating itself in terms of divine eternity. Indians believed that space divides but time unites in its eternal flow everything that happens. Indian culture did not have time-awareness hence there is no sense of history. The Vedas are a vision, a speculative meditation of ‘seen reality’, the world of sight and encounter with space. But later Indians thought of time in the calendar sense. Months, days, tithis and lagna divided time for social use. But mostly we follow time as a vast calendar after Anno Domini and calculate time, record births, deaths and other events. To remember events of the past anniversaries are observed. But no one celebrates the birth anniversaries of the earth as it is an irrelevant given for human drama. We observe anniversaries of national events – Independence, War victories, Nation builders. Personally we observe anniversaries of birth- marriage-death and other events which remind us of joy, pride or deep sorrow.

In the modern world we celebrate almost everything of man for we are now in an assertive phase of human history. Women’s day, Mother’s day, Yoga day have become familiar anniversary celebrations globally. But at the personal level we mostly celebrate birth and marriage anniversaries.  Death anniversaries too are observed but those are a low key affair.  Since life has expanded to embrace a vast reality of organized governance everyone tries to seek his own salvation by his ritualistic practices of living. Each occasion is celebrated, even the anniversary of a disaster. Hiroshima observes the atomic extinction of its population every year on a sombre note. Since joy and sorrow, achievement- disappointment are the two unavoidable binaries of life each occasion is remembered with appropriate emotional involvement.

But generally birth and marriage anniversaries are celebrated with snobbish extravagance. To remember the day you saw the first light is definitely a great feeling. Most people observe this day as a thanks giving day. They visit religious places or relatives dressed in new clothes and other fineries to show they are alive and happy to beat the challenges of the morrow. Those who are rich and so called celebrities they make their birth day bashes media events as if the nation participates in their good fortune.  Glasses are clicked, bottles get emptied and tons of food supplied by nervous liveried men and women in star hotels are swallowed in riotous revelry. Cakes of all sizes, shapes, colours and designs are cut by birthday boys /girls to the chant of happy birthday to you… and thunderous clappings drown the bands. But there are also some ‘ashamed to have been born’ cynics who dissolve their shame in alcohol in lonely dark rooms. The poor too celebrate, austerity and ostentation go on simultaneously in arhythmic beats.

In England any day could be the Queen’s birthday. To award and honour talents in different spheres of life Queen’s birthday is celebrated in traditional royal fashion. Some political hot heads show off vainglory in Saifai fashion like Mulayam Singh and Mayabati wears thousand rupee garlands to match the dazzling diamonds on her person; while some other leaders celebrate birthdays in remote villages alone or with family to show how austere and noble they are. In the bullock cart days of aristocracy some feudal lords celebrated the birthday of their pets –cats and dogs as if a new age of royalty has just dawned on their pawned kingdoms.

Anniversary of any memorable occasion or event is definitely a positive aspect of cultural attitude. The birthday of Gandhiji, Father of the Nation or India’s Freedom from British rule call for national celebration. Similarly personal birthdays or marriage anniversaries are certainly occasions to remember, however, miserable the post- birth, post- marriage days might be. What is needed is sobriety and love of life. Life is nothing but a memory making process. What better memories can there be than birthdays and marriage days? Man comes to the world to live a life, to build and create a world of his own; to create a private sub-system in the larger system over which man has no control. What matters is the satisfaction to have lived to remember the mile stones (not the mill stones) and to carve out a destiny using the past memory for future achievements.

We too are celebrating the First Anniversary of our blog savimuse.blogspot.com today to review what we have left undone and to plan out to do more for the intellectual entertainment of our dear readers. Our Anniversary too is a call for sober confrontation with our emerging reality. Celebrate with us dear readers, we promise to reach your hearts and minds soulfully.

My Muse

    

My muse is in love with god

she offers truth, beauty, rhythm

her ethereal prayers echo

in the darkening void of my heart.

I played with the waves and clouds

prayed for the gas cylinder to be cheap

spread the sheets on the cold beds

brought groceries from daily market

drank coffee at past midnight.

One day my muse woke me up

threw songs and letters at random

I spent the night searching for them

but in the morn I read on my cheek

love god, love life , love poetry.

I laughed aloud and washed it off

washed it from others' plates

all mundane crumbs into the sink:

but poetry came from the gas stove

lyrics rose like incense in the air

I bowed down to my Muse and lo!

I have completed my worship

celebrating love and beauty

I am here after one full year.

Sabita Sahu