On Education

Indeed, over the years, all the definitions, I scooped up for exams, have been washed out from the accessible corners of my memory, thanks to them getting used to not being summoned for recollection. This is of course, barring a few things which happened to be of interest to me. For I still remember the day when mom-dad woke me up to have me get ready and wear a new set of clothes, socks and polished shoes, when I realised that was to be my first day at school. Since then, I have only gotten used to knowing, and not understanding education in the context of fourteen years spent at school, besides college, and in terms of qualifications that keep getting dropped like fused bombs around me. Taking up literature for my graduate course, is probably the best decision I have taken so far in terms of pursuing something that caught my interest. Learning and remembering things taught at school perfectly, and trying to pin them in all four corners of my memory, through semantic codewords, if I may term them so, sounded a little restricting, then and now. For despite 'words' being frightfully cradled by 'definitions', things go haywire. Miscommunication, failures, and so on.

Experiences or observations, translated into retrospective memories, having left most vivid of impressions on my memory/mind, are one of the few things I instinctively refer to, when stuck in situations I need to get the better of. Also, I would any day prefer to have something catch my curiosity and have me chase that thought till I reach a hypothesis, a conclusion, never mind if it's a dead-end. I don't want to wait for concepts to squint my very vision of myself, the world, and all that exists, and all that waits to be discovered. I would rather die thinking too much of things that make me wonder, with me progressing towards it, one step at a time, some forward, some backward, for the aim remains to go one level up in another dimension. That is when I day-dreamingly wonder when, or rather IF, I'll get to use a few or every thing I 'absorbed' like a sponge in moments of 'devoted student-hood'. And that's also when in a half-correcting, half-disappointed mode I remember what I've heard often - 'Every moment of your life, has something to teach, just that you realise the worth of it at such-and-such time.', and that's when I feel, that it doesn't seem to fit in with this situation. Maybe education in this symbolic order is just, self-regressive in nature. One that you may be aware of, but not necessarily be able to help.

The Anti-Rape Strategy

The moment the word ‘rape’ is dropped into a conversation, an immediate association is made with the portrait of a female. In that case, one really needs to reconsider the very definition, [it’s sad the word exits in our mental vocabulary] of rape – for it is [not just] the act of forcing someone for the act of sexual intercourse, but also that it is typically committed by man, according to Oxford dictionary. How about defining who a man is, next.

For, till 1992, male rape was not recognized as a criminal offence under British law, and was only termed as ‘non-consensual buggery’. Quoting an incident that occurred in 1992, where a man was gang-raped by a group of men,

Mr Leak, chairman of an organization for male rape victims, then said ‘that reluctance to report attacks stemmed from feelings of shame and humiliation. 'There is the fear that he will not be believed or that people will think that he asked for it, that he must be gay, or weak, unable to defend himself.'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/man-abducted-from-train-and-raped-1557478.html

On one hand, people speak of unnatural sex, and on the other hand, people seem to be confused about knowing what the term ‘rape’ could imply. So a man cannot be ‘raped’ because sex between people of the same sex is unnatural and hence cannot be clubbed under ‘rape’.

Then, a girl must be inside her house by 8 or 9 in the evening, because apparently, no one ever got raped till 8: 59 PM in the world’s history. A woman is better off returning home alone in the dead of the night than with a guy because every guy she interacts with outside her family milieu is a threat to her modesty. Then again, talking about incest and domestic sexual abuse, one cannot really know whom to trust. In that case, maybe it is better to not have more than one child, so as to banish that remote possibility. But what about the fact that minors, infants get raped as well - even better to not have children in the first place. What about the minors who end up committing the crime instead – not really a great idea to bring up a child in today’s times. And then, it’s not like old people are spared, nor that they don't commit the act, so might as well kill oneself and everyone else in the family, so that no one ever gets raped again. Oh but forced sex between a married couple is sacredly sanctioned, so let that be. So, building a family, encouraging your children to interact with people outside of their home, is the worst thing you could do in times like these. Let's head out to a massacre today, maybe that will purge us. 

The Company of Solitude

Now, I seek solitude for company
Waking to the spectrum of vitality within,
Enough of your rhetoric,
Now's for my soliloquy.

Beneath the semblance of the Silence,
On the verge of bursting any moment.
Silence, spelled as chaos,
Sitting in fear till now,
At the sight of sound and the voice of light,
Stabbing itself with self-consciousness.

Where no one can reach
Neither the notorious comfort of darkness.
Nor the shadow of light.
Neither my thoughts, 
Nor my circumstances, can reach.
For they just are.
And I just am.
When no one's watching,
When I'm not thinking.
(For to start thinking,
Is to not be yourself.)

P.S. Not a narcissistic retreat of self- pity, this.
       I look within myself,
       To rise above myself, eventually.

The Evacuation

Skin flaking away to shreds
Breathing a fresh whiff of mockery your way, my way,
Shrouding their compliments and
My pride that turned stale
As they were uttered.

Alphabets 
Lisping out of my mouth
Numbers
Trickling out of my mind
(Not a hospitable host,
This existence of mine, they recount.)
Fears & dreams 
Going into comatose.

Clock-hands pointing at me, 
At the stroke of wakeful realization
Like arrows, yanking out and
Darting past me, in all directions
On a time-bound mission.

Sounds, gone out of tune inside of me
Screeching out of my ears
Favourite colors, smells, sights 
Now driving me nauseous
A choking cough that echoes 
(Was it not supposed to stifle it, like in movies?)
Of all of these
Crashing at me, 
Trying to weave again
That familiar path on that train
That leads to the crossroads of that maze
Of self- destructiveness 
That I seemed destined for,
No matter where I'd exit from.
("The exit is only a dead-end!", a fleeting voice quivers)
As I stagger under weightlessness
While familiarity squints into a blur 
and
Alienation burrows a happy home
Mute stares from my end lasting three nanoseconds
Angry for they still don't get it
Thrilled, breathing a sigh of relief.
For I get it, lest I should forget it,
This, where I had arrived.

Or

Was I inhaling stagnant complacency 
Slipping into the reprieve of familiarity again,
Of accursed i-dent-ity
Wait. Am I getting familiar with myself?


P.S. Things you held dear
Where are those now?
Were they yours to admire?
Or mine to own?