3 Idiots: The Movie of Fantastic Insight

3 Idiots: The Movie of Fantastic Insight

By Mubarak Ali Lashari

Bollywod has given panorama of movies on different topics to the world audience. The movies with regard to topics range from love to action, social to political and historical to contemporary affairs. But the movie ‘3 idiots’ is mainly related with youth’s affairs. Many issues related with young generation are manipulated very skillfully and naturally.

On the one hand it presents the problems of career selection, which youths of all over the world face, because mainly the occupation or selection of area of working are imposed by parents and on the other hand there is first-rate insight of educational set up in the developing countries. With regard to education insight, not only the issues of teaching methodologies reference material but also the behavior towards the problems of students is addressed superbly.

In the issues of problems concerned with selection of future vocation, for example, the character Farhan Querishi faces an odd overwhelmingly. There is internal conflict between his parents and him. He wants to be a photographer whereas his parents want him to be engineer which he is unable to maneuver admirably. Consequently, he remains fed up during the whole period of study. In contrast to that the character, Raju, wants to be engineer in line with his parents’ desire but his way to handle his educational career to attain his position is very superstitious. In result of that he always remains under the dogmas and can not manipulate the confidence.

Furthermore, there is good insight into the educational institutes and their method of teaching and rendering youths to achieve loftiness in their lives. In this context the traditional way to deal with course and syllabus and the examination systems come under question. In this direction, the serious issue of committing suicides by the students is addressed. Correspondingly, the character of Mr. Joy has been depicted as an example facing the problems of datelines and the victimization of the rigid and anti-humanistic way of dealing students.

So, from above some examples towards the movie 3 Idiots we can see the genuine and creative filmography to bring the youth’s issue on surface. 

The Book Review of “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”

Two Extremist Binarism

The Book Review of “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”

By Mubarak Ali Lashari

The Book ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’; Written by Mohsin Hamid, Published By Oxford University Press, Pages 111, ISBN 0978-0-19-547517-3.

The novel consists of 12 chapters in all, dealing with the story of a Muslim antagonist from Lahore Pakistan, who is infatuated by the American citizen, girl friend Erica. It is Mohsin Hamid’s second navel after seven years of the first one ‘Moth Smoke’ in 2000. The novel is entwined with the first person narrative throughout and seemingly in essay type description with a long monologue of the character Changez. The story of the novel revolves around the concept of fundamentalism in behaviors of the West i.e. America. the antagonist considers it as the repulsive to be there after the Afghan attack of USA which is his immediate closer, geographically, socially, religiously and faith, which shocks him to know the American attitude as fundamentalist. In his own words: “I had always thought of America as a nation that looked forward; for the first time I was struck by its determination to look back. Living in New York was like living in a film about the Second World War;..”

This alienation continues to his thinking as other than American recalling the interference of American government of the Third World Asian countries like Vietnam, Korea, the straits of Taiwan, the Middle East, and now Afghanistan. His working at the American valuation firm, which is working for restoring ailing companies, Underwood Samson, he considers himself as one of the janissaries of the Ottoman Empire were captured Christian boys trained to fight against their own people, which they did with singular ferocity. This interesting class of warrior is described during a business lunch to Changez, the young hero of Mohsin Hamid's second novel, at a moment of crisis over his own identity. Born in Pakistan, educated at Princeton and currently the hottest new employee at a New York firm specialising in ruthless appraisals of ailing companies being targeted for takeover, Changez recognises himself in the description. "I was a modern-day janissary," he observes, "a servant of the American empire at a time when it was invading a country with a kinship to mine ..."

We further notice thin-blood cultural aspiration especially in the relationship between Changez and Erica. This privileged, patrician girl has a tragedy in her past: a childhood sweetheart named Chris, who died in his teens. Her growing intimacy with Changez, while interestingly free of the racial tensions that traditionally afflict such couples in literature, is nevertheless thwarted by her inability to forget Chris or allow Changez to take his place. In the turbulence following September 11, this preoccupation with her own past becomes a crippling obsession - "she was disappearing into a powerful nostalgia" - resulting in a breakdown, hospitalisation and probable suicide. It all feels a little sketchy, psychologically: simultaneously over the top and undersubstantiated. But after a while you realise you're not in the realm of psychology at all, but of allegory (and if you don't, a nudge or two from the narrator - "it seemed to me that America, too, was increasingly giving itself over to a dangerous nostalgia" - soon sets you straight). It dawns on you that Erica is America (Am-Erica) and that Chris's name has been chosen to represent the nation's fraught relationship with its moment of European discovery and conquest, while the narrator himself stands for the country's consequent inability to accept, uh, changez.

The book has good qualities to describe cultural tendencies as well as ideological attachment towards the home town, country as well counting its obsession with the physical attachment and loosing of Erica. The interpretative way of the novel is a long monologue which sometimes feels boring and unnatural and overemphasised. Yet to know the Western fundamentalist behavor towards the east the novel presents the good example to go through the details of mentalities and understanding.

Call of Languages in Danger!

Call of Languages in Danger!

Language is a unique fabrication of human evolution and history. With it, human being came to be aware of its thinking quality and communication with each other. Through the language the human has magnificent power of understanding environment and nature. There can be calculated many qualities of human being which he/she/ got because of language learning but we here are to address some issues languages which are on the danger list.

There is a Navajo nation in Latin America. That nation is spread in four states of American south-western part; the language of that nation is dying. It was seen that most of the speakers of that language are middle-aged or elderly. Although many Navajo youngsters are admitted in schools and are getting education but language in the schools is English, or they are given education in English. Furthermore, in their states, sign boards, market goods and even their own newspapers are all in English, instead of their native language. The linguists are of the opinion that in coming hundred years no Navajo speaker would be there.

Navajo is not the single language in that list. According to an estimation half of the world’s 6800 languages are likely to disappear within two generations. In that way one language dies in every ten days. This kind of incident never happened before in the history of the universe that the linguistic diversity has shriveled so rapidly. An evolutionary Biologist at the University of Reading says that there are three or four languages dominating the world. ‘It’s a mass extinction, and whether we will ever rebound from the loss is difficult to know.’

Seclusion rears linguistic diversity:  as a result, the world is infused with languages spoken by only a few people. There are only 250 languages out of 6,800 languages, which have more than 1 million speakers, and at least 3,000 languages have less than 2,500 speakers. There is not only the issue of the languages that have fewer speakers to disappear but Navajo is the language that has 150,000 speakers yet it is on top in languages in danger. What makes languages in danger is not only the matter of number of speakers but also the oldness of the languages. It is believed that if the language is spoken by the children, it is relatively safe. According to Michael Krauss, director of the Alassk Native Language Centre, in Fairbanks, languages that are spoken by only elderly people are in great danger.

Then there rises a question that why do people reject the language of their parents and land? It is because of crisis f confidence in the small communities, when living alongside larger, wealthier society, says Nicholas Ostler, of Britain’s Foundation for Endangered Languages, in Bath. ‘People lose faith in their culture,’ he says. ‘When the next generation reaches their teens, they might not want to be induced into the old traditions.’

Change does not come always voluntarily. Quite frequently, the governments remain involved in killing off the minority or smaller languages banning its use in offices, schools and trade centre and keeps on discouraging such languages on the cost of promoting national languages, often languages spoken by dominant peoples. Its main example can be seen in former US policy of adopting English in Indian reservation schools at the place of Navajo, thus that language in this way was put to death. But Salikoko Mufwene, who chairs the Linguistics department at the University of Chicago, argues that deadliest weapon is not government policy, economic globalization. ‘Native Americans have not lost pride in their language, but they have had to adapt to socio-economic pressures,’ he says. ‘They can not refuse to speak English.’ But the question is that can languages be saved or are worth saving? In that context, it can be said that with the vanishing of those languages there is loss of data for the study of languages and their evolution, which relies on the comparisons between languages, both living and dead. When an unwritten and unrecorded language is no more, it is lost to science.

Language it also intimately bound with culture. Consequently, the loss of one is loss of other too. ‘If a person shifts from Navajo to English, they lose something,’ Mufwene says. ‘Moreover, the loss of diversity may also deprive us of different ways of looking at the world,’ says Pagel. There is clear-cut evidence that learning a language physiologically brings change in brain. ‘Your brain and mine are different from the brain of someone who speaks French, for instance,’ Pagel says and this could affect our thoughts and perceptions. ‘The patterns and connections we make among various concepts may be structured by the linguistic habits of our community.’

Although the linguists have carried out efforts but many languages will disappear over the next century. But there is the hope in the growing interest of linguists and people that may prevent to prove the prediction untrue. ‘The key to fostering diversity is for people to learn their ancestral tongue, as well as the dominant language,’ says Doug Whalen, founder and president of the Endangered Language Fund in New Haven, Connecticut. ‘Most of these languages will not survive without a large degree of bilingualism,’ he says. There is an example of enlivening the Maori language by starting classes in children that rekindled interest in it and stopped the erosion of this language. There is another such approach in Hawaii, which produced 8,000 new speakers of Polynesian languages in past few years. In California, ‘apprentice’ programmes have provided life support to several indigenous languages. Those who came as volunteer ‘apprentices’ pair up with one of the last living speakers of a Native American tongue to learn a traditional skill such as basket weaving, with instruction exclusively in the endangered language. In this direction, they after spending 300 hours of training with them become able to transmit the language to the next generation sufficiently fluent. But Mufwene is of the opinion that preventing a language from dying is not same as giving it new life by using it in every day life. ‘Preserving a language is more like preserving fruits in a jar,’ he says.

However in the way of preserving the language comes back from its death. So, there are examples of written languages which survived and then revived by the new generations. For that, written form of any language is essential. So, the mere possibility of revival has led many speakers of endangered languages to develop systems writing where none existed before.

In this context, there are several languages in Asia, which are to perish out soon. According to a study one fifth of the 30 languages in province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will die out in next couple of years, says Mohammad Ali Khan, ‘because there are only several hundred persons left speaking these language.’ In this category, the languages such as part of Indo-Iranian languages include Iranian: Northwestern Ormure, Southeastern Pashto, Pamir, Wakhi, Yidgha, Peraian, Sarikoli, Hindko, Badeshi etc. whereas in Indo Arian languages include: Kanneri, Katawert, Pahari, Rajhstani, Gojri, Urdu, Kalasha, Khowar and others include.  These figures were revealed in Gamdhara- Hindko board conference. It was told that languages such as Yidgha of Chitral are recently declared endangered language by UNESCO because their speakers are less than 2000. Ushojo is another endangered language that is surprisingly spoken by less than 200 people. Thus, in the moot there was great call for saving the languages which are said to be the in the last breaths.

 

Across the Border

Across the  Border

Poem by Mushtaq Gabol

Across the border;

When the wind wafted; the troops gasped unworriedly!

Whilst went the fragrance,

They received it warmly!

To the flock of doves

Considering them as the token of peace

Allowed to fly freely!

Across the border,

Olive trees were grown!

One day my toddler;

Like wind, like fragrance, like doves

Went across the border.

What happened then?

Why do you inquire it from me?

Ask from the troops

And appeal them to return my toddler’s dead body, at least!

Translated from Sindhi into English by Mubarak Ali Lashari

Museum of Reminiscence

Museum of Reminiscence

Poems by Hamza Hassan Sheikh

Book Reviewed by Mubarak Ali Lashari

“Museum of Reminiscence” is the second collection of his, Hamza Hassan Sheik; a young man from Pakistan, romantic and delicate English poems. It was published by Naqshgar Publication Rawalpindi, in 2009. It is with beautiful title, like Greek goddess of love and beauty holding flower in her hand, and having hard cover. The book consists of 112 pages, its price is 120, mostly having the poems scattered on the pages and having a few pages of comments by different viewer and readers of his first compilation of English poems “Some Moments of Love” with title.

The preface of the book is written by author/poet himself. In his preface he seems overflowed with the emotions and thoughts. From the preface his (poet’s) poetic emanation of sensitive feelings and delicacy forcefully come on top from where his poetic sensitivity and depth can be judged. He does not seem amateur poet or writer neither seems to write for fame or some vested interests. It is all his poetic overflowing of thoughts, which at the time youth, is natural giving out of romance.

Speaking thematically, the poems are very intimately related to the doctrine of romanticism, in other words, it can said much of subjective treatment. Although there is no sign of keeping the doctrine in front of him at the time of composing poems neither there is any appreciation of the doctrine, perceptibly. Even the objective occurrences are seen in the subjective reactions and rejoinders, like in the following lines;

The cool breeze has frozen

Everything

The humans are shivering

With cold.

Yet I am burning

In flames of memories

Past is flashing before my eyes.

In the above lines it can be seen that the shivering cold has nothing with his passions and there is warmth of passion or burning past in which he is still burning. Instead of such examples there are much objective and realistic poems as well. Such as the poem ‘Cut Kite’ is dealt realistically and pragmatically. In such poems poet has little say to mould mode of idea and its treatment. I this context, the young poet treats the past and reminiscence marvelously sometimes. The poem on which book is titled is really very fantastically dealt. The poem is about the past and failure romance but from it the positive and optimistic conclusion was drawn that is the major quality of his treatment. It is apt to have a good read of the poem ‘Museum of Reminiscence’ here;

I loved a statuesque

Who dominated over my senses

In bedazzling sunlight

And in glooms of the night.

In whose remembrance

I became moon-struck

But that triumphant

Turned into goddess

The goddess of atrocity.

Who choked my feelings

And assassinated my passion.

But I have decked one more

Unforgettable statue

In museum of reminiscence.

In this poem the poet is not nostalgic but romantic and having refuge in inner satisfaction. Objectively, it is uncanny and holds the truth of bitterness or suffering but the poet dealt it with positive subjectivity. Hamza deals poetry very adroitly and has real passion of poetic portrayal of the imagination and thoughts. He comes from lower strata of the society and meets both hands troublingly. Yet he harnesses the fervor of creative literature and contributes in the genre with lofty poems and ideals. His book is full of such scholastic and romantic ideals in poetic creation, which ultimately is bound to appeal the readers and their soft thirst of love and romance. It is also worth of giving gift to the beloved in the weather of rain or drought; can also be preserved in the shelves of romantic creative literature.

Plea to set up Shaikh Ayaz varsity

SHAIKH Ayaz (1923-1997) is the greatest poet of the Sindhi language after Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai. 

His poetry and prose drew upon the very original local references of culture. Before him, poets were afraid of using local references, similes, metaphors, symbols in their works, thinking these as drawbacks in the face of dominant Persian literary values then. 

Ayaz discarded such alien and foreign parameters of excellence and recognition. He wrote in pure national and local context, using original metaphors, literary devices and local themes in order to lay a strong basis for Sindhi literature. 

He is one of the pioneers of modern Sindhi literature and language. He wrote many books in Sindhi, as well as in Urdu, covering a variety of subjects and themes. 

His books were translated almost in all the important languages of the subcontinent and in many western languages. 

Recently, Shaikh Ayaz Day was observed in Hyderabad. On that occasion prominent literary personages and icons demanded a university in Shikarpur, the birthplace of Shaikh Ayaz, after his name. 

Establishing institutes, colleges and universities is a symbol of living and aspiring nations. 

Sindh is in great need of universities and institutes to cater to modern knowledge. Not only in Shikarpur but also in Ghotki universities should be established to cater to the requirements of the new generation. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2011

Happy New Year to all my blog visitors, contributors and friends, with the prayer that this year would be the happiest, most successful and most brilliant for all of you...I pray you all be blessed with faithful year ahead...I also hope your appreciative visits of my blog with expert and scholarly suggestions and contributions....
Mubarak Ali Lashari
PhD Scholar
Islamabad

Penitence Poem by Saeed Memon

Penitence  

Poem by Saeed Memon

Getting the pain in extreme

I smashed my lips

In the inauspicious life

I suffered a lot!

I erected numerous dreams

And

Razed all those accordingly.

Always on the way to beloved

Unknowingly, why have feet been jogging up towards!?

Neither stopped the innermost craving

Nor feet did discontinue!

In the finale

I drowned, and with me,

 Some innocents too!

Didn’t think over their bleak tomorrow

Now

Youth had departed

And

Aged hands are hectic wiping out tears..

نظم

سعيد ميمڻ

مليو درد ايڏو

اسان چپ ڀڪوڙيا

اڀاڳي حياتي رڳو ڏينهن لوڙيا

سوين خواب جوڙيا

سوين خواب ٽوڙيا

سدائين پرين جا پئي پنڌ ووڙيا

اسان جا قدم ڇو اجايو پئي ڊوڙيا؟

نه من ئي مڙيو پئي نه ئي پير موڙيا!

پڄاڻي اها ٿي

ٻڏاسين اسان ڀي

۽ معصوم ٻوڙيا

نه سوچيو انهن جي سياه آئيندي تي!

جواني جدا ٿي

پيا هاڻ ڳوڙها اگهن هٿ پوڙها!

Translated into English by Mubarak Ali Lashari

A Walk

Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

A Walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill. going far ahead of the road I have begun. So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp; it has ITS inner light, even from a distance- and charges us, even if we do not reach it, into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are; a gesture waves us on answering our own wave... but what we feel is the wind in our faces. Translated by Robert Bly

Book Review:Democracy the only Way for Pakistan

Book Review

Title of Book: Democracy the only Way for Pakistan

By Benazir Bhutto

Published By: Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Archives SZABIST, Karachi

Pages: 177

Price: 360 PKR

Reviewed By: Mubarak Ali Lashari

Living political History and Affirmative Stances

“and he would take us to the lands” she describes her political bringing up by the hands of her father Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, “and he would tell me, ‘Look at the way these people sweat that you will have the opportunity to be educated, and…And you have a debt and you’ve got to come back and pay that debt by serving your people”. And having the sense of heavy responsibility on her shoulders she did not bow down unless given her precious life in the name of stabilizing the democracy in the country where according to her ‘politics was a man’s world’. And in this way she continued to work as politician though entered reluctantly and accidentally after the hanging up of her father by a dictator and thus paid the heavy debt of it.

The book titled “Democracy the Only Way for Pakistan” of her interviews, a talk and articles, Shaheed Benazir Bhutto depicts a panorama of checkered Pakistani political history and her personal experiences and aspirations ranging from her childhood to the height of ruling country, remaining under male obsession, exiled life and dethroning conspiracies as well. She sometimes according to the interviewers skirts the issues directly but often speaks out openly and thoroughly though knowing that ‘Tomorrow they may decide to kill me because I know too much’, affirming.

            She according to her own opinions expressed, up to reaching the political dignity has sought the influence of two persons in her life which surely determined her political career and personal approach to face the challenges ahead. One of the influencing personalities was obviously her father, Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who according to her was the person who showed the world according to her, to live a life of lion’s one day rather than the Jackal’s life of thousand. She seemed so much under the influence of Shaheed Bhutto and his political aspirations that in Pakistan’s later development she imagined his perspective and behaviors. On the other hand she admits the influence of, ‘my teacher in the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Mother Eugene’.  In affirmation of both the persons she says, “My father gave me a love for books. He loved reading books and he’d make sure that I bought books and he’d buy me books. And then Mother Eugene made my imagination run wild through Shakespeare~Twelfth Night and Julius Caesar~and Keats and Browning and Byron”.

By such perspective she comes to become determinant Benazir Bhutto to change the politics of Pakistan from ‘man’s world into human’s world’. In the course of her political career to lead Pakistan People’s Party, initially faces the ‘factionalism’ of her father’s party and legacy. Yet she according her acclamation did not loose her struggle because she says there is a natural process of the politics, ‘those who are with you stay with you and those who are not, let the parting come’.

Thus the book of her interviews and articles, in which 17 detailed and snapshot interviews and 6 most useful articles are included, seems like an umbrella covering the many facets of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto’s life, political career and the multifaceted political history of Pakistan, in which she describes detailed accounts of conspiracies and backdoor influences during her two term government. Not only to this, she has also honestly describes the acts that have been missed to materialize and were the stakeholder for the betterment of common people and country during her two tenures in government but she also gives a good future vision for establishing democracy and prosperous Pakistan in the world. When asked about the mistakes she committed during her two terms of governance, she openly admits, “The stories of corruption hurt. Foreign policy was hawkish. Defense purchases were controversial”. And she also gives her future vision if came in power, that can be a beacon light for the present PPP government. She manipulates her program as, “I hope to have the support of the press next time round through a more open policy enabling full facts to reach them and the public”.

The well-published book having standard paper and excellent title cover with Shaheed Benazir Bhutto’s live picture, in the due course is replete with the historical affirmations of the Martyred Leader of the country and appeals to read it thoroughly in order to understand the palace-conspiracies as well as the MI intervening in the political arena of Pakistan. For instance she says, “in December 1988, within a week of my forming the government, Brigadier Imtiaz working at the ISI Internal began contacting political parties to overthrow my government”. She also forms her opinion in interviews that she has been tortured on being a woman Prime Minster of a Muslim country where woman is a private property of man and lives within four walls of a house and been refused by some military personnel to accept her premiership and authority. In this perspective she enters into ‘fervor feministic rhetoric’ to justify her points.  Furthermore she has been saying ‘battling with presidents’ because they wanted presidential system of democracy in contrary to her parliamentary democratic aspirations. moreover, she complaints of being a victim of personal prejudice of the president Farooq Laghari during her second tenure when she quotes a relative of President Laghari saying that he (Laghari) could not tolerated the government of Ms Bhutto when her husband Asif Zardari made a video of one of his child. Thus the President’s ghairat did not allow him to continue her government.

In this book Shaheed Benazir Bhutto at the one hand complaints against internal military intrusion fiasco and on the other hand laments over immature political parties and their programs. But one thing is believable that she had an acute eye on internal as well as external affairs of the country. Because when President Musharaf goes to India for Agra Summit, she shows the concern of ‘legitimacy crises of the Musharaf government and backup. By the same time she looks into the economical and budget affairs as well.

Szabist, and Madame Nusrat Lashari have taken an admirable step to collect the interviews and valuable intellectual assets of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto in publishing the book, which verily be an excellent addition in the political history of Pakistan.

Engrossed in the Princess!

Engrossed in the Princess!

Life is not wrought itself, neither unreservedly preordained, as can be taken- even fortune has given vent to the objective influences to figure it socially, psychologically and personally. I observed in infancy, the tender heart of mom…positivity and inclination of dad to raise me up to the adolescence in cheerful and pleasant atmosphere. Taking my little finger (regarding conduct) taught me the ways and manners of life and gave my tongue words sweeter rather than hurting ones, and both immersed in my pleasure and good bringing up. In the multitude of figures around even icons found hither and thither, have littlest or hugest sway over me, might be on more than a few like me, Princess lady Diana, of Wales, had abound. I imagined her smiling face, silvery shining teeth and blonde hair, rather gold like..but proliferate in her smile and jovial. First of all it patented my thinking enormously and undyingly, not because of her Royalty, which was superfluous or irrelevant for me then though, but because of her activism in the world ebulliently.

Not cramped to it for me, in her idealism, I sensed the activism of the charming, brilliant-compassion Lady Diana , in the meadow of sympathetic work towards painful humanity, in distress, in gloom, in utter devastation, to eradicate that from them, to inspire, share the bits of majestic pleasure with them. I established the microbes in me, then and now and perhaps in entire of my life, serving on the level of downtrodden strata, allocating my tinny energetic thoughtful provocations for the needy. I imagined Princess’s presence among the handicapped people, war-stricken disables, unable for themselves, AIDS inflicted innocent, who knowing or unknowingly touched the death-stone and were in craving stage for death; might have felt the soft hands of the princess, her squashy and loving words; how joyfully had they wished for life like…! Their yearning I felt from the depth of my sensitivity and yearning their prayers while raising their hapless and helpless hands pointing injured fingers, all those blessings what were for the Princess, seeing her among them. I then visited, unconsciously and unwontedly, towards my grandmother feeling softness of her wrinkled hands, which trembled like a fish out of water. I tried to discern the situation, were I there, among those, consoling, smiling, embracing…..! The accomplishment of the regal Princess in the arena of human-welfare had had me from top to bottom. I even dreamt of the mission undertaking beyond the limits of colour, caste, class, category, like her magnificence. In the school, street, alley, neighbour, and even home, my senses remained engrossed to be concerned with anything anywhere anytime. Once found a cat on way to home from schooling could not cross the periphery without alighting from the dad’s car and grabbing that irrespective of the blood-stains, messiness and the looks of the people. Although verily such animals are burrowed into the menial and inferior sensation and significance yet it was lofty and pleasing for me, even ignoble to think so. I immediately requested dad turning towards the nearby hospital and have full treatment to utmost satisfaction and even liked to take them home and tend to the liveliness not to mention the ill-children and beggars. Their sight even brought the reasonable shower and flow of tears to marking the cheeks, which even wasn’t affordable for my affectionate parents. The look of hospitals teeming with the ill-fated patients, peoples of under-privileges on the one hand disappointed and gave dejected vent to my infant senses and also roused my aspirations to work and dedicate myself like the Princess on the other. Consequently, the figure of the Princess develops into my mind as the beacon light in the direction of working for the well-being of this world and preserving it for the coming generation.

Moreover her intrepid daring in the world of males; voyaging all the nooks and corners of the world was another saga for me to brood over. Her femininity had such a marvelous undertaking that under-shadowed my fears in the world all around. Her courageous endeavourers led me to imagine broadly; across the self and surrounding. With the intention of functioning in her way, I took for granted my scope of living that gave me wide-perspective paradigm of being and welfare of it at all costs and at all stipulations. That is my capital and earning, now and then to forthcoming times. In every step of life, academic and extra-academic deeds I ever muster my steps, fancying the courage of the noble Princess.

Negative Capability or Self-Merging?

Negative Capability or Self-Merging?

What goes on all the way through one’s entire life is not possible to inculcate the record of the things. There may be some too important things while some too trivial to discourse. Sometimes larger facts are ignored sometimes minute happening are instilled. This too happened with my serene mind and innocence contemplation. I was unaware, though may be yet too, the things surrounded my mind, cognition and ingenuousness. Seeing my father’s engrossed attention towards me, sacrificial spirit and granting all the worthy requirements at finger tips created weird and wonderful feeling in my intellect. I still too much experience absorbed in the sense of endowing oneself with the happiness of others-- loosing for finding something. At the stage of sensing poetry especially the eastern Mystical one, gave me much corresponding counter and opened the window of merging-self existence to something in addition. In the perspective, nevertheless not at too lofty stage of appreciation of the self-denial poetry, yet too touchy and closely readings of John Keats solved my enigma to much extent. His creation of Negative Capability is what?... I pondered over—taking the context of my parents; reviewing my child-like occupation of the cognition; why one finds oneself in others’ happiness? Though parents, lovers, fond of persons- in flowers, scents, books, money- not to be counted things at all! Isn’t Negative Capability that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mystery, doubts, without any irritable reaching after facts and reasons…? If taken so Keats proposes the theory of Negative Capability for the sake of expressing the immortality of the beauty of the song of bird. Is that immortality that I have been seeing in the eyes of parents…? Or even found my own innocent indulgence absorbed to tackle the phenomenon? How much the commencement of the poem “Ode to nightingale” is paradoxical when he says:

A drowsy numbers pain

My senses,

A bivalent emotion of sane and sensibility prevails to create the sensory beauty of drowsiness to feel not for escape but share the ecstasy with the bird:

‘T is not through envy of thy happy a lot,

But being too happy with thy happiness,

This cliché ‘happy with thy happiness’ has prevailed on my senses now and again. Surely! That is the absolute willing submission and surrender of individual to explore the pleasure of full swing of the song of Nightingale (in concealing outfit, though), which I have been observing and thoughtfully overtaken…so Keats denied his existence and merges with the soul of bird. Is it the thing to be looked for..worked.. Shouldn’t be taken to perfection? That isn’t the Eastern Hindu and Mystical mortification? Or so…! Because it is not the ecstasy of bird but the inner happiness of Keats (person’s selfloosing in other things and discovering unification). It seems like the soul of Nightingale and Keats are fused together. Eh..Not only one thing but are referents….or one’s escapism? From objective things to subjectivity…. strange? Is it the vision of Keats that not only pleases embroiders on reality but giving the spiritual interpretation behind this phenomenon world or is he overwhelmed by sense of beauty of the song that blinds to account what is around him?:

I can’t see what flower is at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the bough,

But, in embalmed darkness, uses each sweet

Where with the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit tree wild:

Lets see… wonderful, it is dark but his sensuous beauty recognizes each fruit and flower elusively. I feel the transcendence in the light of imagination to the mysterious scene where Keats sees that song is listened thousand years ago by Ruth, a Biblical character and even a young Maid, who is captivated in a mysterious castle near a for sea shore. In the sequence my flight of imagination bores the relation on my being, soul, body, structure, colour, race religion so on and so forth. Am I not the part of the lineage… seen in individual… continuity of great great grandfathers and grandmothers? It seems me like the whole structure of the universe divided into pieces; letters, words, sentences, language, communication, human conduct, culture, humanity, civilizations, cosmopolitan, universe…never ending! Similarly drops of water forming mighty oceans, little grains of sand forming large mounds…! Then don’t I live in my fore fore fathers..mothers..? Don’t they live in me? I am not now but I was then too and would be ever after in future! They were not then; they are now too and would be ever after. I took the point of may parent’s delight, their sacrifices, their subduing before offspring before me.. other children. This mortification of life and life is destined to mortify as like all other things. I did away the fear of death, fear of loosing anything; loosing something is actually achieving other…! Then my favourite concept expressed in Keatsian terminology Negative Capability? Self-Merging? Diversity in Unity and Unity in Diversity? Why negative… it is actually positive capability… the globe is alive in diversity that is unity in truth!

 

Homi K. Bhabha’s Concept of Mimicry

Homi K. Bhabha’s Concept of Mimicry

General Statement---Bahabha’s Concept of Mimicry---Use of Ambivalence in Mimicry by Bhabha---Fanon’s Psychoanalysis---Mimicry as Resemblance not Resistance---conclusion

The aim of this task is to explore the meaning of mimicry with relation to the study of postcolonial criticism and theory in Homi K. Bhabha’s interpretation in his book “The Location of Culture”. According to Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary; “Mimicry is the art of mimicking somebody/something”. And mimic is to copy somebody’s voice, gesture, etc. in order to amuse people.

“When colonial discourse encourages the colonial subject to ‘mimic’ the colonizer, by adopting the colonizer’s cultural habits, assumptions, institutions and values, the result is never a simple reproduction of those traits. Rather, the result is a ‘blurred copy’ of the colonizer that can be quite threatening”.

(Bill Ashcroft et al, 1990: p.139)

In the above sense of to mimic the traits of colonizers is not complete beneficial for colonizers, its ends are spoiled image and caricature of the masters, though may it be desirable for them too. That “blurred” copy is threatening to colonizers, their civilizations and images.

Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of mimicry is a strategy of colonial power/knowledge which has a desired goal for the inhabitants of approval and changed outlooks in terms of inclusion and exclusion. Inclusion aims the acceptance of “good natives” as the colonizers programmers and exclusion puts the goal of disavowal and denouncing the majority “bad natives”. Bhabha further defines mimicry in the term of ambivalence as similar and dissimilar. Similarity defines its resemblance to the masters, colonized subjects to be like masters and dissimilarity: “a difference that is almost the same, but not quite”. (Bhabha 1994:86)

Again the concept of Bhabha’s mimicry is related to Sartre’s Existentialist theory of “inauthenticity and role-playing” but Bhabha gives mimicry different inflection of the individual crisis which is contrasted to, the mimicry that comes from “colonized subject’s peculiar awareness of cultural, political, and social inauthenticity, of being ideological constructed and fixed in representation”.(An Introduction to Postcolonial Theory p. 130) Further Bhabha draws a line of mimicry and inauthenticity calling it as menace to the mimicry; “A sudden  awareness of inauthenticity, of authority’s constructed and assumed guise, is the menace of mimicry”.(ibid. P.130)

Bhabha takes his initial point from Fanon’s psychoanalysis model in Black Skin, White Masks. Bhabha takes his point of interest from the ‘mask’, due to its menacing effect. Moreover he takes example from the essay “Algeria Unveiled”, in which there is an image of camouflage. “In this Bhabha sees a representative fear of veils, covers, and masks in the actions of the French: “-the veil conceals bombs. The veil that once secured the boundary of the home-the limits of woman-now masks the woman in her revolutionary activity”. (ibid. P.130). Therefore in that context the veil becomes the mark of cultural and religious difference, possibly disguised terrorism. While the term camouflage Bhabha takes from Lacan in his essay “Of Man and Mimicry” in “The Location of Culture” as:

Mimicry reveals something in so far as it is distinct from what might be called an itself that is behind. The effect is camouflage….It is not a question of harmonizing with the background, of becoming mottled-exactly like the technique of camouflage practiced in human warfare.

(Bhabha 1994: 85)

But mimicry at Bhabha is not a representation of resistance but resemblance according to the desires of colonizer master revealed in the Minutes of Macaulay as: “A class of interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern-a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and intellect”. (ibid. P.87)

In other words a mimic man may be raised through English school as a missionary educationist wrote in 1819, “to form a corps of translators and be employed in different departments of labour”. (ibid P.78) Descendants of the above sown seeds of colonizers Bhabha traces in the literary mimicry works of Kipling, Forster, Orwell, Naipal etc.

Mimicry in Bhabha’s terms though is the colonial strategy to create the people “to be Anglicized is emphatically not to be English” and though it is clear that Bhabha’s concept of mimicry is repetition not representation, yet this resemblance is threatening to the basis of power and discrimination while preserving difference of, for example, liberty, status, and rights because when Stokes says, “there is a distinctive quality of English civilization……” (An Introduction to Postcolonial Theory; p.132) is threatened.

Knowing this Bhabha too comes to the conclusion that mimicry is both threatening as well as supporting to colonial powers, thus he calls it the metonymy as:

In mimicry, the representation of identity and meaning is rearticulated along the axis of metonymy. As Lacan reminds us, mimicry is like camouflage, not a harmonization of repression of difference, but a form of resemblance, that differs from or defends presence by displaying it in part, metonymically. Its threat, I would add, comes from the prodigious and strategic production of conflictual, fantastic, discriminatory ‘identity effects’ in the play of a power that is elusive because it hides no essence, no ‘itself’.

(Bhabha 1994: 90)

References

 McLeod J. (2007) Beginning Postcolonialism, Manchester University Press New York

Bhabha H.K. (1994). Location of Culture

Ashcroft B. et al (2003) Post-colonial Studies, key concepts, Routledge Taylor and Francis Group: New York

Ashcroft B. et al (  ) An Introduction to Postcolonial Theory

Education

Education: an ever underestimated sector

The world is well aware of the importance of the education in this age of ultra-swift communication. The West, historically, when lagged behind in this sector was recognized as the dweller of the dark ages from eight 8^th to 13^th century. But when they got out of the abyss of lack of this human eye-opening field, they called themselves as new-born ones. They called it renaissance or re-awakening or rebirth of their existence. No doubt, the Islamic world during that period was luminous with the bewitching beauty of knowledge and education in all most all the fields ranging from medicine to astronomy, politics to fine arts. As long as this spirit continued to stay with them, the Islamic world was ruling over the earth educationally. But unfortunately after the fall of Spain and Constantinople, the bright side of Islamic world to promote the education and knowledge started diminishing from 15^th century onwards. European peoples started colonizing hegemony and ruling not only through armaments but also through their strong understanding of the natural and social sciences and phenomena. It helped them to figure out the actions and reactions of the colonized people and to grasp the peoples in all over the world. Consequently, the western powers are ruling over us since then physically, mentally, ideologically and economically. Having all that calculation, every sane head of state and government of our beloved country has been seen shedding tears of being backward in educational development. But this nation, since its 64^th years of establishment has not reached to any reason educational achievement so far. On the other hand, we have been dancing over the ever urgently calls of fighting others wars, becoming champions of world welfare, peace, getting rid of terrorism etc. ever since. That kind of trumpets like working for others, making ourselves scapegoats and making our strength their fuels, every time stimulated all the governments of this country since its creation.  But if the ruling class and parties of this country had ever paid such fuel of its strength to the education sector and true literacy the picture would have been quite different today. Having such fatal blunders through its age-long epoch, the ruling class is still steadfast to trim down the true strength of progress and alleyway of destination. Thus this nation has been deprived of the true sense of development and progress but seems still to suffer a long way if it persists. This can be seen in recent step-back efforts in education sector while lessening the educational budgets which was already from 35 billion to 15 billion in the current budget. HEC has been crying over the issue since then but instead of coming to the demands the government acted inversely. Rationality of the issue might have expected from this long longed democratic set-up to pay extra attention towards the education sector in increasing its budget, scholarships, stipends, salaries, academic development funds etc. but it did not happen. Now with demands of universities, teachers, students, academic and non-academic staffs of education department, every progress and education-loving democratic people demands to increase the education budget and provide the true paths of progress instead of falling in other chasms of militarization and time-long illiteracy and stereotyping sufferings.