Skyscrapers and crying primates

I quite like the rarified world of a skyscraper. Out here there are no people, only glass cages. The streets are far below my level of vision and there is no sound other than the low hum of the air conditioner. Or it might be the wind outside.

Out here the windows can be looked out of but not into. Here one is alone with oneself and there is no forseeable danger of human contact. It would seem that one is born into the world to observe in rarified oblivion. Announcing our arrival in loud cries, we get ever quieter, our world ever more rarified, until one day our face hits the pavement.

I hate everyone and am disgusted with myself.

Celine, Journey to the end of the night

"But there is love, Bardamu!"
"Love, Arthur, is a poodle's chance of attaining the infinite, and personally I have my pride," I answered him.
"Talk about yourself, you're nothing but an anarchist!" Always the little devil, you see, and just about as advanced as possible.
"You said it, fathead; I am an anarchist! And to prove it, there's a sort of social prayer for vengeance I've written. You can tell me this minute what you think of it. 'Wings of Gold' it's called." And I recited it to him:

"A God who counts the minutes and the pence, a desperate God, sensual and grunting like a pig. A pig with wings of gold which tumbles through the world, with exposed belly waiting for caresses, lo, 'tis he, behold our master! Embrace, embrace!"

Fata Morgana

In Paradise, plane wrecks have been distributed in the desert in advance.

Drowning rats and Gilad Kedem's 1 year in India

I was reading WG Sebald's account of an experiment that intrigued him:

“They put a rat in a cylinder that is full of water and the rat swims around for about a minute until it sees that it can’t get out and then it dies of cardiac arrest,” he told me. A second rat is placed in a similar cylinder, except that this cylinder has a ladder, which enables the rat to climb out. “Then, if you put this rat in another cylinder and don’t offer it a ladder, it will keep swimming until it dies of exhaustion,” he explained. “You’re given something—a holiday in Tene-rife, or you meet a nice person—and so you carry on, even though it’s quite hopeless. That may tell you everything you need to know.”


Soon after, I rediscovered the expired photogallery account of a stranger. And this is everything I need to know, that I can dream of visiting this desolation personified as landscape, in better circumstance and health, for an extended period someday.

Like many taking a break after army stints, this Israeli man spent a year traveling in India before moving on to Europe. One year. It reminds me of my brief journeys in India that never exceeded 10 days. One year is a long time. I wonder of all the things that must've met his gaze during this really long stretch of time. I wonder if the alien northern landscape seeped through his clothes and skin and set up outcroppings on his pericardium, so that every beat set off vibrations through the mountains and snowstorms triggered minor arrhythmias in his heart.

Like Sebald, I am drawn to the past travels of strangers in foreign lands. I feel that long after they have forgotten about their own journeys, I will still remember the rarified morning air touching the muffler-bound face of the traveler, and how close he once stood to the flowers whose picture still lingers on some expired account on the internet.

What I watched this summer

Tago Mago in my head

Whisper in my ear, lad,
You’re still my parent friend,
Throw me out of my bag,
Ask me “Are you dead?”


It is a late hour. I am shuttling boxes between two buildings.

The lighting in the new room is different. This room is large. Light from the ceiling center bulb has to cross a longer distance before it touches a surface, and there are few surfaces of a rich wooden finish to give its reflections a vibrant bounce. In fact things are quite run down. Strangely, the closet door, with its white plastic coating missing in certain places, reminds me of Rajshahi. Rajshahi where everything is run down, even the newly-constructed roads. Rajshahi that only smells of strangers' bedsheets that I must lie in so that I can catch the earliest bus the next day.

Somehow I never got the concept of the extended family.

I fold a few more clothes. I put them away.

I have already put in a request for extra furniture. I told them that I hardly have enough space for half my stuff. What I didn't tell them is I'm scared that tomorrow, when all my things are put away, this room will be as obscenely sterile as my last.

I have a neat row of books on my shelf, and empty photoframes never taken out of their packaging.

Neurotic, I pace the floor.

I like carpeting. I like the assurance of my shed skin finding a warm home and remaking friends with my shed hair. But alas, there is no carpet in the new room. For all the coldness its floor affords, I might as well be sleeping on the ceiling.

I discover clothes from the first time I left home. Here I find brother's red t-shirt and am hit by an image of him smiling at me. And there mother's cashmere sweater.... I move from room to room, and yet my home is nowhere to be seen.

Every time I move, it is like leaving home all over again.

I remove the empty trashbags from the floor so as not to slip. And fall.

I make up my mind to call mother at daybreak.

Islamic fundamentalism: The supply-side

I doubt that anyone, at this point, believes that the Bush administration's anti-terrorism response has done much to make the world safer. A they-hate-our-way-of-life attitude can be accepted only in a country where a third of the population has passports, and does dangerous injustice to a serious geo-political problem. This is why the recent London and Egypt bombings have nudged the world into considering actual ways of tackling Islamic terrorism. Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria appeared on the Daily Show last week, and I think he has it wrong on at least one count.

He cites the example of Asian muslim countries, where Islamic political parties fail to get any more than 5% of the votes, as evidence of improvements in the Islamic world. I agree that the populous core of Asian Islam practices a much more benevolent form of the religion than in the Middle East. However, his analysis makes sense only if things are getting better, not if things are as they've always been. Just for his information, Bangladesh has never been a politically muslim country. The Islamic parties, which harbor many that were involved in ignominious treachery during the War of Liberation, have always garnered a small percentage of votes during national elections. I would actually say that the influx of fundamentalist money from Saudi Arabia is actually making the religious atmosphere worse in the country. Global safety has become threatened by this viral ideology, and there is no room for complacency. Even Asian muslim countries should be on their guard against the constant outreach from Saudi Arabian ideologues.

Zakaria also addressed the question of demand or supply. The most tangible target would be the supply side of terrorism, although not in the callous, bumbling, opportunistic way the Bush Administration is lashing out at every country but Saudi Arabia. Even when there is no demand, supply will create some. Advertising is in endless supply, specially with the Palestinian conflict set to continue forever. Western countries could be a little less hypocritical and use their demand-side power in the oil market to induce reform and development in the Middle Eastern countries. It would also really help if they stopped meddling in their internal affairs altogether. Above all, the Western leaders should start showing some respect for muslims as people, and acknowledge that too many of today's global problems are remnants of yesterday's colonial instrusions (see Afghanistan, Palestine, Kashmir). It is too late now to stand by and observe. The Western leaders will have to meddle some more to put some things right. I feel that when the supply of fundamentalist ideology is struck, by helping these countries achieve reform and development themselves, demand will fizzle out on its own. And maybe then the disgruntled muslim youth will deal with not belonging in society, just like the rest of us, by doing drugs and cutting themselves.