MAY 2012

People in Europe want manufacturers here to stop selling arms around the world because they seriously fear total nuclear annihilation. Since governments seem totally out of sync with this sentiment of ordinary citizens, people have taken it upon themselves to do what they can against militarization. And artistes are once again in the forefront.

I’m beginning to feel really and truly sorry for India’s politicians. Thanks to social media, Indian citizens have been emboldened to say such deplorable things about them in public. The shrill ‘India against Corruption’ team took the anti-neta tirade several notches higher last year, despite the fact that many of the team leaders do not have spotlessly clean records themselves — heck, I’m absolutely certain that some of Team Anna’s holier-than-thou tribe will not go to heaven and play the harp for God when they die.

What happens when you lose your way? You pause. Ask people whether you are going in the right direction. Whether you need to go up or down. If you have Google Earth on your smartphone, then you try to find out where you are located to help you go right or left or turn back – depending on the kind of crossroads you find yourself at. Sensible people manage to find their way by adopting such methods and devices, but no such luck for governments.

“We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.” 

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places.