Skip to main content

Notes from the classroom

Having assigned the ten students in my feature writing class a short assignment, in which they were to write the first instalment of a column to be called "The personal is political", I could not stop my pen from picking itself up and joining them in the furious scratching on paper. This is what emerged....

Sitting in the classroom, the fan whirrs above my head, casting a rapidly rippling shadow over the lined book-page (does a moving object "cast" a shadow?), making my words seem like they are emerging from under the waters of a flowing river. How is the act of writing, this movement of thought from mind to page, a political act? What is the exercise and expression of power that it implies? Is the political resident inherently in the symbols we create, consciously and otherwise (for one might argue that there can be no true unconscious, everything one does is the sum of deliberations over time)? The fact that I use one turn of phrase rather than another--is that political? Is it that I carry ten pens, none of them costing more than twenty rupees, to ensure that my words do not run into an inkless vacuum? Is it that I write--and mostly think--in English? Is it that I sit here, at the head of this cloth-covered table, striking the pose of writing teacher, with the power to tell my students to bend over their books and apply themselves to a task of my choosing? Does the labeling of these acts and their attendant intentions trivialise what most of us understand as politics? Is the political in fact restricted to the popular understanding of the term "politics"? Or does the fact of being a human being occupying--naturally and otherwise--certain positions in relation to others (always, in relation to others), constitute an essential politic-ality? And here my pen pauses.

Because what that implies is that every act, every thought, whether in performance or interpretation, must be framed, unframed, reframed, as political.

And that's what this space is about. About looking at our lives--one's life--with a microscopic intensity, bringing to bear on it all the harshness of ethical illumination, so that it is rendered clear, its antecedents and possible consequences made visible.

Why?

So that we can then take each step that we do take (and reflect on those we do not take) with full awareness and responsibility.

One might then say that such intense reflectivity/reflexivity robs life of spontaneity. On one level, perhaps this is true. But on another, it calls for an internalisation of the process of reflection in a way that makes all thought, all action, ethical, or sensitive to consequence.

And maybe that is one way in which we can hope to live the good life.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A house called Ayodhya

How do words get taken away from you? How do they mutate and reconfigure around entirely new meanings, only weakly related to those that they held when you owned them? And then, through repetition and constant association, they solidify into these new forms, their other histories hidden behind impenetrable layers, where they have not been erased altogether.   I live in a house whose name often elicits a curious look, raised eyebrow, a muffled cough, a judging eye, or even a vigorous nod of approval. But for even the least politically minded, the name is evocative of something. For some of us, it is the wave of negativity, divisiveness, and violence unleashed by the events of a December three decades ago. For others, it may represent the righteous assertion of identity.   But the name etched into the gate pillar, now fading and diminished when compared to the glitzy lettering on neighbouring walls, has nothing to do with the politics of place and claimed heritage. It is a simple, gentle

Origin Story

You can know someone all your life and only begin to discover who they are more fully after they are gone. The stories seem to flow more easily, less self-consciously, without the moderating physical presence, perhaps more detailed in the awareness that they cannot be challenged and the memory can retain its sanctity. Today is my parents’ anniversary, 62 years since their marriage that rainy day in Secunderabad when the monsoon used to arrive without fail on the 10th day of June. The family legend has it that it poured so heavily on the 9th (the evening of the nichyathartham or engagement ceremony) that water entered the storage room, soaking the provisions for the next day’s big meal, causing my maternal grandmother to faint. That turbulence however did not seem to affect the tenor of the marriage which, by all accounts and my own experience, was characterized by a calmness that suggested a harmony of purpose and personality.   Not that my parents are/were alike in all ways. T

taking measure of 21 years

How does one measure the usefulness of anything? Does it lie in its quantum of influence--spatially, numerically, intellectually, materially? Does it lie in its ability to survive over time? Or (as some in this age would have it) in the number of mentions it generates on social media? An idea that was born just over 21 years ago is now in the process of being put to rest. Not quite given up on as an idea, but in its material form, designated "unsustainable". Teacher Plus was mooted in the second half of 1988, and given shape to in the first half of 1989, in the offices of Orient Longman Pvt Ltd, Hyderabad. The ELT team in the publishing house, of whom Lakshmi Rameshwar Rao (Buchamma), Usha Aroor and Rema Gnanadickam were a part, originated the idea of a professional magazine for school teachers that would serve as a forum for the sharing of teaching ideas and experiences, and perhaps motivate teachers to play a catalyzing role in reforming classroom practice. I was recru