DARSHAN AUR PRATIGYA - II

The Joker: Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!
                                                 – Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’

The battle between order and disorder is not a last night affair. It has been going over for centuries and would continue for many more until the cause is identified and cured of the illness. This forum indeed, is too small for this battle and I am so incapable of handling the issue all by myself. Any effort made would just be a small, may be a futile attempt and nothing more. I never opted to be a participant but it was destined to happen. I am really getting a morbid feeling that I have touched a big fat monster. But since, I have dragged myself into it, so I am ready for all the flak. 

There were a couple of issues and places in the last post which need a further clarification. Since this conflict is already big, it should not be complicated anymore and all efforts must be made to make the things a little simpler. Order when we say, is a structure which has been erected over centuries and evaluated by all existing parameters. Basically it is a time tested formula which just cannot fail and scatter given the trickiest of situations. Order has been a result of sweat and toil exerted by the elite, intellectual section of society. It is an outcome of a huge sacrifice of limb and life made by the proletariat class over a long period of time. It is an institution which has been approved by the law abiding, law enforcing, and law establishing community responsible for safeguarding the moral code of society. Moreover, it is stamped by the administration of religion and culture and has been passed on tenderly from one generation to another. It is a part of our rich glorious heritage which everybody is so strikingly proud of. So ‘order’ is basically a nicely garnished and aesthetically served, thickly priced pudding of a resplendent luncheonette. But we want to know if it’s sumptuously delicious too. 

A disorder on the other hand is an evil ghost which nobody wants to encounter. It’s a ‘shaitan’ who just cannot be permitted to enter at any bargain. It’s an unplanned, random event which can create chaos in a system. It’s an anarchy which would not let peace and harmony establish anywhere because it is fundamentally a violent, brutal and vindictive axiom. 

When we talk about the clash between order and disorder, some destruction is bound to happen. But it is not destruction in totality. It’s a unique combination of creation and destruction. The old dies and new happens. As stated earlier also, Mani Kaul makes it clear that essentially there are two possibilities. When a disorder drops into an order either the disorder would create mayhem everywhere or it would itself get transformed into an order. There is a third possibility too which can be seen in Tarkovsky’s works like ‘Mirror’ and ‘Solaris’ where nothing gets transformed. Both order and disorder stay together, uninhibitedly related to each other and create an experience (anubhav). There is a space for both sacred and profane in Tarkovsky’s earlier works. Disorder as per Kaul shouldn’t be perceived through any conventional definition and experience. According to him, it’s actually a possibility, an accident, a chance (sanyog) which can lead to experience (anubhav). An experience is basically interplay of jagrata, swapan and sushupti. And for the totality of that experience, for the enjoyable interplay of these three human states, randomness should be allowed to enter the structure. All divisions in that case, for the sake of a beautiful experience, moral-immoral, right-wrong, sacred-profane, order-disorder, and structure-anarchy are not required for a moment. They can be dropped off and left to the destiny. Mani Kaul says that he himself used to believe in the preservation of order during the first year of film school. Until he had not met Ritwick Ghatak, he used to worship the realistic framework of Satyajit Ray. But when he got introduced to the cinema of Robert Bresson (a French filmmaker), his perception changed completely. Bresson used to believe that accident (randomness) is the only hope. He used to retake the same shot fifty times. Sometimes, only one shot a day. When everything used to proceed according to the plan, he always preferred to stop and not move ahead till the accident used to happen. Until and unless the structure was broken, he never Okayed the shot. Kaul admitted that earlier, he used to control a lot. But in later years while making ‘Nazar’, ‘Idiot’, like Bresson, he also left control of the events around him. And surprisingly, even after parting himself from the control, everything used to fuse perfectly, as if it has been cautiously planned.

The disorder when I try to question myself is a fear of unknown, fear of death which has been molded into a giant in kalyug. It is imagined as a narrow alley which would lead us to dungeon. The matrix of materialism blinds us from reality. The contemplation and realization of death is an enemy of materialism. Materialism makes survivalism the only necessary battle to be won in lifetime. And even if love and happiness are to be sacrificed, it should be acceptable. In order to meet the demands, it makes death a rival. It spins the web thread by thread until the entire trap is ready to be spread. A man hassles the whole life to earn his bread and butter. And his economic standing remains much the same despite a better income and better resources. The pauper remains a pauper throughout. A middle class man always remains in the middle only. The aristocracy enjoys the best and keeps on aiming for more and more. Everybody remains caught in the thought and thirst of money only. Further, order is made necessary to be followed for the survival of materialism. A code of morality is created to deal with crimes of materialism. Gradually, the morality itself turns into an impenetrable structure. The enclosure of materialism which has been engineered brick by brick over years doesn’t allow the thought of death to enter the structure. The meditation of death is deliberately and astutely made impossible. Since one never meditates, darshan never happens. The entire process becomes a vicious circle. One leads to another and the chain continues. It’s only death, chaos, randomness which can break the chain and guide us to new hope (aasha). The deliberation of death can lead to creative transformation and anubhav.

The conflict between order and disorder is not simple as it may appear in words. What should be done and how much should be done remain a matter of concern. If the disorder is left free, it would be a state of total lawlessness. According to Mani Kaul, total disorder is as ignoble and petty as total order. Basically a negative vow, pratigya. A balance is required between the two, otherwise darshan won’t happen. This balance would lead to anubhav, an interplay in which not only the three states would exist together but also one would lead to third and vice versa. Jagrata could be taken to sushupti directly and also otherwise. The balance between order and disorder would make this conversion possible and practical. While explaining to Mita Vashisht (actress) on the first day of shooting of ‘Siddheshwari’, Kaul asks her, what a frame according to her is. For instance if there is a frame of an empty wall with a girl sitting below at one corner, and suddenly she lifts her hand slowly and slowly upwards, then what would happen to the rest of the dead space? Kaul explains that the girl is jagrata, the dead space is sushupti and the movement of her hand is swapan. The dead unconscious space becomes conscious when the swapan enters the frame. Basically a cinematic frame is a beautiful interplay of three states. Similarly frame of life should also be an aesthetic coaction of these three, rather than a dull and wrinkled lonesome one.

This is an issue of concern in the best of world cinema today. Despite best of the production values, script writers and technicians, it follows a very linear approach. The polychromatism, the layered framework is missing on the whole. The ‘New extremism’ or the ‘New Wave’ cinema of the west is accentuating savage violence and sexual ugliness. Mentioning about some of these movies like Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day (2001), Patrice Chéreau's Intimacy (2001), Bertrand Bonello's The Pornographer (2001), Marina de Van's In My Skin (2002), Leos Carax's Pola X (1999), Philippe Grandrieux's Sombre (1998) and La vie nouvelle (2002), Jean-Claude Brisseau's Secret Things (2002), Jacques Nolot's La Chatte à deux têtes (2002), Virginie Despentes, Coralie Trinh Thi's Baise-moi (2000), Alexandre Aja's Haute tension (2003), Christophe Honoré's Ma mère (2004) and the cinema of Cronenberg, Gasper Noe, and Catherine Breillat, Tim Palmer who is an Associate Professor in film studies describes them as a ‘cinema of the body’. There is a total of lack of humanity and darshan in the best of world cinema today. These filmmakers are able to picture the collapse of defunct structures but they are not able to visualize any alternative methods of liberation and hope which would rescue the humanity from this stage of violence and sexual perversion.

This is an age where many new things are happening together. The old structures are falling apart. There is a disharmony is the existing establishments. Everybody needs some space. The old must give way to new. The hope needs to come from within. Nobody would emerge with a torch in hand to show us the way. The concern needs to be emphasized. The obsession with order and morality needs to be dropped. We need to find a meditation zone in our vicinity where the issues can be contemplated upon. Otherwise, the war (Mahabharata) is inevitable and huge destruction is waiting ahead.  

At the end of the post I would like to ask people who might read my blog someday, do I wish to proclaim myself as an agent of chaos by emphasizing the need of disorder? Is it what I intend to do so? Am I somebody who doesn’t like peace and order? Am I an atheist, an anti-god who wants to dethrone good with bad? Am I a twisted pervert who has an inclination and predilection for serial killers, flesh and cadavers? Or am I just somebody with gift of the gab who would blabber and die out someday of my self-righteousness? Or am I somebody who wants everyone to stop, think and introspect that have we made right choices and can we just move a bit from the positions we have taken for so long? Who am I?

DARSHAN AUR PRATIGYA - I

I have been blessed today, blessed with the wisdom, blessed with a realization, blessed with love and deeper understanding of everything going around me for so many seasons. And it has happened suddenly, without scheduling anything in anticipation, without any necessary arrangements. In that flash of understanding, I could decipher the never-ending suffering and agony of a modern man and woman, the wild expansion of violence, hatred and perversion in this world and the sad demise of love and trust in our society. I could comprehend why the flash of darshan is not happening everywhere with everybody as is happening with me and some people around me. I had brought a book called ‘Abhed Akash’ from my brother recently few days back, based upon the conversations between Udayan Vajpeyi and Mani Kaul. Udayan Vajpeyi is a Hindi poet, essayist, short fiction and script writer, whose works have been extensively published and translated into many other languages. Mani Kaul though doesn’t require any formal introduction, but for the sake of convenience, was a renowned Indian filmmaker, critically acclaimed in international art circles as the avant garde independent filmmaker from India who gave a completely new definition to Indian cinema.

While explaining to Vajpeyi in the context of cinema, Mani Kaul describes the philosophy of entire filmmaking process in detail. Mani Kaul says that filmmaking if we see it from a perspective can be divided into three basic processes. Script writing, on- ground filmmaking, and editing. These three processes however integral to the entire process of making a same film, are in fact completely different worlds in themselves. Though they aim for a similar conclusion but they are inherently completely different processes. When a script is written, it is actually written in a dream like state/fashion (swapan), imagining the events, situations and characters of the story. Making the film on ground with camera and technicians is a conscious process (jagrata) which happens in a voluntary fashion. Finally editing it when everything you had planned is finally over, is a different process in itself. A script is basically a planned thing, an order, a structure which a filmmaker tends to follow during the filming process. Now, what actually happens is that when a filmmaker tries to interpret the order of the script on the ground and tries to transform the dream into reality, he finds a complete disorder/anarchy existing before his eyes on ground. Perplexed and staggered, he begins to establish as much order as possible in this chaos. In an attempt to do so, he follows a structure which the script writer has given to him in advance. In that decisive moment, he divides the entire space available to him into moral and immoral, right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, usable and unusable, order and disorder, planned and random, structure and chaos. When he does so, he takes a vow/oath (sankalp/pratigya) that he would not accept the random, immoral and non-structure. In the universe of chaos, he vows to establish order by eliminating randomness which is integral to the continuity and nature of that universe. The filmmaking process ultimately turns into a struggle. This struggle further continues during editing also. For instance, a script describes a poor girl of a village, sitting on a bed, in hot summer month, with sweat dripping from her forehead, whirling a hand fan to get some air. This is what is written in the script. But when the script is given to the filmmaker and he begins shooting it and seeing the entire scene through a camera, then some unplanned, random event takes place suddenly which distorts the planned perception of that scene. During shooting that scene suddenly it happens that when the girl is whirling the fan in her hand, then some of her hair start moving in random fashion here and there due to the air disturbed by that hand fan. This event has transformed the aesthetics of that scene and given it a new dimension. It has opened a new world of possibility which can take the entire scene to a different platform. This event was not a part of the original script. But now the onus lies on the filmmaker whether he is ready to accept that chaos or not. Similarly, when the film is being edited, normally, most of the filmmakers divide the whole shot material into OK takes and NG (NOT GOOD) takes. The not-ok/NG material is discarded and not usually given to the editor for final editing. The editor is only given the OK material for final processing. Mani Kaul further explains that when something starts in a moment, then it is the destiny of that moment only which would decide the culmination and conclusion of that event. We really cannot predict when this would actually happen. Say for example, in a scene, the door opens; man enters the room, walks slowly towards the window, opens it and starts looking outside. Now the culmination of that scene can be decided only by its inherent destiny which has been captured by the camera and segregated by the filmmaker into ok and not-ok material. So it means that the not-ok material carries the equal possibility of deciding the fate of that scene. But that part has already been rejected before reaching the editing table because the vow was taken in the beginning that no randomness would be accepted during the entire journey. So in a way fate has already been pre-determined by the filmmaking team. But in reality, they just cannot decide the fate of the whole process totally by themselves. They must leave a door open for something which through randomness can determine and conclude that moment. When a disorder drops into an order, there are basically two possibilities. Either that disorder by its very nature would disturb the whole order and create a muddle or that disorder would itself become an order. Both the situations are completely feasible. The moment when the disorder becomes a part of the order, becomes a part of the whole creative process, darshan happens. Mani Kaul further elucidates by concluding that darshan is possible only when it takes an exile from that sankalp/pratigya/vow/oath. Until then the struggle, the fight (dvandva) between order and anarchy would continue on and on. The pratigya taken to remain stuck to the order and moral has degraded the art and cinema. That is why every other movie is nothing but a bad movie and every good movie is also nothing but an ordinary one. That is why we are not able to find realization in modern cinema. Even the best of the global filmmakers like Cronenberg, Gasper Noe, Catherine Breillat, Lars Von Trier, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and Michael Haneke are not able to go beyond and re-define the locus of cinema.  Every artist somewhere or the other is failing in an attempt to achieve the pinnacle of climax because that pinnacle is possible only when the limit is not pre-ordained by him.

Similarly, we as modern human beings have taken a pratigya/vow to remain moral, upright and structured. Everybody has taken a certain vow in life for the sake of survival. A modern female has taken a vow that she would remain loyal to her parents, moral to her husband, and upright to her children. And she has decided that come what may, she would not deter from her vow. She even decides to forsake her love and beloved for remaining loyal to the vow of morality. Even if she ever becomes promiscuous, the burden of morality doesn’t leave her. A modern woman is an estranged, dichotomized woman. This is what is happening around us. The females opt and prefer to betray for the sake of morality. We as humans opt to follow the structure for the question of survival, even if that structure devastates us in the end. A modern man has bartered happiness for survival, love for morality, desire for pain and bliss for suffering. We have inflicted and imposed misery upon ourselves. Nobody can be blamed. The word ‘darshan’ is a dirty word in public. You try shout in open, and you would be called insane. The question of survival was never that difficult as we have made it through generations. As the people call it, the outside world is a monster world. But it’s really not that monstrous as it appears to be. After all it’s the people everywhere and it is the people only who make the system. We have in fact generated a system of fear in this process. And the strange part is that we haven’t done it consciously and nobody has done it to us in senses. The realization is not possible in a conscious state because the vow has been taken at a deeper subconscious level and has been strengthened through years of grooming and conditioning. It can be realized only in a deeply meditative state. When a sperm fuses with the ovum and the fertilized ovum implants itself in the uterus of the female, the pratigya/vow is implanted along with it. This is how the individual becomes ‘pratigyabadh’ from the very beginning when the seed of life is implanted in the womb of the mother. It grows and breathes in the womb, nourishes in the same liquor amnii and takes birth along with the birth of the child. And it is transferred from generation to generation like this silently, sneakily.                                 

Until and unless this vow of morality is dropped consciously by the individual he would keep on suffering his whole life. The pratigya eliminates the possibility of love/ishq from life. It makes the liberation of an individual a tedious process. We have deliberately blindfolded ourselves. All of us are modern avatars of Gandhari. Until and unless this blindfold is not dropped, darshan is impossible and love can’t happen. The obsession with the moral has to be dropped once and for all. Mani Kaul believes that vyavastha/structure/organization and avyavastha/non-structure/chaos/anarchy always walk hand in hand with each other. Moral and immoral are equally powerful in every moment. Choosing the one is not going to eliminate the other. It would just make it more potent. Therefore whatever structure we have imagined and constructed, a chaos is already present along then and there only. It is just present outside the frame of that structure. It is impinging it from outside, terrorizing the existence of that structure every second, ready to drop in whenever it finds a way. And we as mortal beings are trying very hard for our whole lives to escape from this chaos. This is what is ultimately related to the fear of death which takes various different forms in our whole life. Sometimes, it disguises itself as the fear of loss, sometimes as fear of poverty, sometimes as fear of disease. But if this chaos is so inherent to the very nature of structure then why don’t we allow it to enter our being, rather than strengthening it from outside? Mani Kaul was a genius who could understand Mahabharata and cinema in a way which no other filmmaker/intellectual could manage to do so and also simultaneously allow the randomness to exist along with the structure. He admitted that he finally decided to give it a way because that was the only solution available to him. This is the solution available to us also otherwise the fight would continue the whole life. We have tried following the order for a very long time. And it has certainly not resolved the things for better and made our lives any easier. If the disorder is actually not that disordered and the order is really not that ordered so why continue the distinction. In any case, this distinction is nothing but an illusion created to satisfy the ego of a frightened man.

PEOPLE

PEOPLE PEOPLE

YOU ARE PAIN

ALWAYS

STILL

I CAN’T STOP LOVING YOU

I CAN’T  LIVE

WITHOUT YOU

I THINK MANY

A TIMES

WHAT MAKES YOU DO SO

WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS

THE WAY YOU ARE

DO I HAVE AN ANSWER

DO I DESERVE

TO BE ANSWERED

I AM YOU

AND

YOU ARE ME

IT’S THE EGO

‘I AM THIS’

WHICH MAKES A DISTICTION

EVERYTIME

AND LEAVES A TRACE BEHIND

AN ILLUSION OF MATERIAL

MAYA

WILD AGONISING

HAUNTING

PAINFUL

STICKY

A SIMPLE THING

WHY CAN’T I END THE CONFLICT

IS IT SO DIFFICULT

WHO AM I TO HATE

WHY CAN’T I LOVE

IS IT ME WHO ACTS STRANGE

OR IS IT SOMEBODY

DISGUISED IN ME

WHO IS IT

I PREPARE TO LEAVE

GO AWAY

WOULD IT BE OVER THEN

THE MEMORY

THE SAD BROKEN

PROMISES

MONSTERS

WOULD STILL BE THERE

KNOCKING FROM INSIDE

IT’S NOT YOU

WHOM I WANT TO ESCAPE

IT’S ME WHO’S

FLAWED

SCRATCHED

YOU CANNOT BE

IMPERFECT

IT’S JUST THE DELUDED

MIND

WHICH

CREATES IMPERFECTION

YOU CAN NEVER HURT ME

BECAUSE I DON’T EXIST

IN BODY

IT HAS ALWAYS

BEEN OTHER WAY ROUND

I WANT TO STOP IT

END IT

RISE

FEEL LIGHT

LOVE

LIBERATE ME

LIBERATE ME

MY GOD

FROM THE PERSON

I AM…