Heroes

And no, I am not going to be talking about that 2006 series that initially raised sweet, sweet hopes with an original plotline, a deliciously twisted supervillain and a wonderfully bonkers tagline that went "Save the cheerleader, save the world". Though it does seem in a way appropriate as a metaphor for this year, a year when drowning of great hopes seemed to be fate's favorite trick and when absurdities became hyper-real.

Can we agree that the previous centuries greatest cultural flourishes all came in the period upto the 1980s? That would be true for my generation at least (a generation that came of age in the 1990s), in a time when cultural appropriations took 2-3 years to travel from west to east. We have lived through some momentous years which have led to an incredible co-option of western mores as our own at a speed which would make Space Ghost blink behind his mask. The history that we were reading in our schools, even modern history (which usually ended with the establishment of the non-aligned movement and hardly ventured to the years after independence), was supplemented by that slow awareness of the modern world which peeked and did not yet intrude beyond the household curtains. I was (and am still) proud of my local history, but that seems foolish and bloody-minded in view of the changes that are happening and at a greater pace than ever.

This is then a lament for the past, of a time when heroes were good and they strode like giants across culture consciousness. This is about a time of black and white front pages and about when I cried on hearing about Mother Teresa's death. This is when Mom returned from work and told me that Diana had died and then we watched the memorial service on a flickering TV screen (an Oscar purchased in 1988, since you ask). What I am trying to say is that these people and therefore their deaths mattered. Maybe it was because we had so few domestic icons to really speak of or because these people really mattered in a way very few people now do. And as I get older (yeah yeah), these icons, some of which I discovered after moving out of my house, in my dissolute and curious youth, are going away. As we become more integrated (another word for homogeneous maybe and therefore not the best thing I sometimes think), we react faster and more intensely and at the same time with less consequence. Thanks to pop-news and info-screens, the importance of inconsequential (to my eyes) things are magnified and at the very same time, social-media provides a vent to the masses which expectedly rants and proselytizes and trolls and then heads back to the pods for harvesting by advertisers. This must that dystopian sci-fi novel that got refused by so many publishers and will be discovered in 50 years and then be declared as the most prescient work ever (goodbye Jules Verne).

Anyway, I console myself thinking that it's but time that treats us so. Woodstock and Vietnam, Thatcher-era Britain, the Bangladesh war and the settlement of refugees, they will happen again, in other guises and in other places maybe, but most of history is remarkably similar isn't it. Triumphs and falls. Occasional heroes and geniuses, misfits and philanthropists - all marking years and decades. Ingenuous and beautiful, firebrands and peace-seekers. And sometimes a beautiful poetic turn. I couldn't believe it when MJ died (and we are ignoring what he became later but choosing to focus on his music) and when Robin Williams did. I guess it's the human cycle and the real ask is that the chain doesn't break and that we don't become culturally vacuous and morally bankrupt. The creative output that these people shared will always exist and maybe we choose to remember and appreciate that. To take courage and inspiration from them is what we can do and to not do that is perhaps the silliest thing to do. So I ask you to read that book and listen to that album and watch that film. There is immense joy to be had in savoring those moments. When the future is unknown, the past can provide succour. And maybe you'll create something in turn which will pay it all forward. Somebody else might need it someday.

_____________________

This has been a sad year.

...

Around midnight

12-12

A bit of pleasing symmetry in what has been a pretty uneven year. Calling it uneven is being pretty British of course, when it has been wretched and frustrating for the most part. I should probably embrace being Indian and a Bengali and complain loud and proud. I do terribly want to do that. We must search for catharsis wherever we might find it. As long as we don’t end up passing on the pain to others, which too many people are doing these days, we are all entitled to find ways to be happy. So where were we? Still in 2016 obviously, still mired in the things we did wrong in 2015 and managing to find ways to screw up even more. I keep on harping on the same things, in my head alone, which is most considerate of me, but oh my, haven’t we become more self-absorbed, short-termist and dogmatic than ever before. I keep reading, of people and in places I admire (which means I read them and which also basically meet my slight leftist remit), that we must keep faith in humankind and that ultimate goodness will finally win out. I don’t believe them much anymore.

It’s been such a weird year. Quitting jobs, with the new job even meeting the expectations I had of it. But it all remains extremely unsatisfying. As I have written before, I am gradually coming not to expect any great happiness from any job I do or hold. It’s something necessary in the obvious sense that I need to earn to spend and there are societal pressures, so as to say, that it’s taken to be odd if you don’t earn at least 80% of what an average peer earns. A mild case of always being compared with leading to a fear of coming out worse in that comparison then is ingrained in your psyche I think. It starts pretty early and then you are conditioned to behave in a certain manner and be a certain way so as to not be considered a “loser”. Some people would, quite reasonably, say what is wrong with that? Isn’t competition healthy and interesting? Well yes and no would be my answer. I like competitions. I like fighting for some things. But, as well, there are certain things I really couldn’t give 2 figs about and I don’t want to be fighting over every silly thing (things that I consider silly, the list is pretty long actually). So that’s my whine really. As it always is. Is it so hard to understand that I don’t want to really have the nicest things? As Gordon Sumner well sang about the progressive leftist collective, “we are spirits in the material world” (I think that a version appears in an Ace Ventura movie as well). The things I really like are the things I have – books and songs and movies and art mostly. Spending money won’t give me talent or give me time – and the rest of things are quite not so fun. What about charity you say, clutching the shiny poster on a glossy sheet of a cherubic boy/girl with a so-so sweet smile? I say, I would rather teach a boy/girl than give money to a charity. And let’s admit it, nobody really wants to earn money to spend on charity (I know what I did there - made a straw man argument – well I just wanted to check if I could).

You know it’s a weird year when the government kind of reneges on its basic fiduciary promise. There are arguments on either side but at the very least it was an omnishambles in terms of execution (HT). There seems to be a short-sightedness among the sort of people you’d really expect to know better that is troubling. Everything reduced to catchphrases and easily parsed jargon, fed in easily consumable soundbytes and tri-colour syrup. We don’t have a political alternative at all and there is a trenchant feeling of anti-intellectualism that is almost despairing. We are blithely proud to be rude and crass, naked ambition and proud superficiality. You know that we are in for a tough time when the TIME man of the year is a reality show character (I couldn’t find a better word) and a failed businessman who shall get his small hands on the baddest nuclear  arsenal in February next year. This was a year which kind of finally proved the ubiquity of social media. I grow more and more distrustful of news; of outlets with always have an agenda to peddle. I loved the Guardian (and I probably still do), but I feel that there is an inherent bias in any news agency that has a political mooring (however far adrift it might have floated). I have a visceral reaction to anything that offends my religious, political, national and racial prejudices – and I realize that I definitely have my own prejudices and who is to say that it is I and my kind who deserve better judgment and faith. That leads me to dissociate from contrarian viewpoints, trying to preserve my own little bubble of low twenties temperature and easy muzak. I block the people (friends on social sites) who really like their tasseled sneakers and the occasional bursts of harmless jingoism. Keeps things polite and keeps me disconnected from a reality that I often don’t understand, definitely can’t shape and sometimes feel that I don’t belong to.