Not What Was

By Langston Hughes

By then the poetry is written
and the wild rose of the world
blooms to last so short a time
before its petals fall.
The air is music
and its melody a spiral
until it widens
beyond the tip of time
and so is lost
to poetry and the rose –
belongs instead to vastness beyond form,
to universe that nothing can contain,
to unexplored space
which sends no answers back
to fill the vase unfilled
or spread in lines
upon another page –
that anyhow was never written
because the thought could not escape
the place in which it bloomed
before the rose had gone.

Filed under: 1 , Langston Hughes

If …

by Rudyard Kipling

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

Filed under: Miscellaneous

Theme for English B

by Langston Hughes

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you–
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me–we two–you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me–who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records–Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white–
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me–
although you’re older–and white–
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

Filed under: Miscellaneous , Langston Hughes

The Unknown Citizen

by W.H. Auden

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the greater community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his union shows it was sound)
And our social psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both producers’ research and high-grade living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the installment plan
And had everything necessary to the modern man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a Frigidaire.
Our researchers into public opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace:  when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our eugenicist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their  education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

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Filed under: Miscellaneous , Auden

Theoretics

By Jyotsana Saha

(We are): floating time capsules
carefully preserved between extremities
of truth, hidden dimensions
depths we dare not uncover.

(We are): residues of unstable matter
particles of incomplete moments,
floating through standing waves between
what could have been, and what will be.

(We are): that uncertainty principle,fighting inevitability
the restless nomad, displacing and replacing,
balancing re-calibrations of foreign and familiar,
accepting imperfections of our immeasurable being.

(We are): who we are
the inescapable self.

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Filed under: Miscellaneous , Jyoti

I reason, earth is short

By Emily Dickinson

I REASON, earth is short,
And anguish absolute.
And many hurt;
But what of that?

I reason, we could die:
The best vitality
Cannot excel decay;
But what of that?

I reason that in heaven
Somehow, it will be even,
Some new equation given;
But what of that?

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Filed under: Miscellaneous , Emily Dickinson, Liberal Arts

Utility in the liberal arts: A cue from Dickens

 

by Anu Saha

Custodian of the arts: The Bodleian Library at Oxford has one of the world's largest collections of works in the liberal arts

Listen up! The verdict is in: in these hard times, fiction is irrelevant and poetry is frivolous. The Times portrayed a bleak trajectory last month: enrollment in the humanities is dwindling, funding for programs in languages, literature, the arts, history, cultural studies, philosophy and religion has slowed to a drip. The facts are all that matter, plain and simple, with no room to wallow or wonder. In this information age, the humanities increasingly appear to be a decadent luxury; the Dead Poets’ Society is not seen as likely to save the economy. Let’s face it, the worlds of Dickens, Kant, Auden and Foster did not feature in Friedman’s book about the flat world. We lovers of the written word, the sonnet, and oil on canvas, suddenly find ourselves having to justify the existence of these seemingly superfluous pursuits.

Is there a need to change the current perception of the liberal arts as an esoteric education for the elites to one with direct links to practical and economic considerations? Or, is the primary purpose of the humanities to go beyond practical considerations and develop critical reading, writing and thinking skills which indirectly influence any vocation? Where do the humanities fit in this age of ubiquitous information? These are old questions. While those in the humanities ponder the meaning of life, their more pragmatic counterparts question the value of this pondering, especially in hard times and in an age where greater emphasis is being placed by policy makers and administrators on the need for scientists and technologists.

Dickens resonates in this discussion. Particularly, the opening lines of his novel Hard Times:

Now, what I want is facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children. Stick to the facts, sir!

How dreary. The prototype of utilitarian education at its finest. Published over 150 years ago, the novel was set in the context of the toils of industrialization, when technological innovation sent GDP growth into overdrive. This, combined with the mind-numbing materialism of the period, resulted in pressure to create an education system that was (with the exception of elite schools) tailored to produce quantitative, ‘factory ready’ skills, with little emphasis on the development of the imagination.

Sound familiar?

The narrator of the novel’s opening lines is Thomas Gradgrind, the Dickens archetype of the all too pragmatically minded educator of the industrial revolution era. In the novel, Gradgrind is forced later in his life to face the consequences of his inane philosophy when confronted with his daughter’s terrible unhappiness in the factual world she grew up in that he so vehemently defends. This is not to say that an education without a focus on critical thinking skills leads to mass depression, but that the novel provides a brilliant depiction of the consequences of binary thinking (perceiving that everything is either on or off, true or false, black or white). The characters in the book find it difficult to know their own minds and discover alternate possibilities for their personal and social problems. In the conflict rich context of today, this theme is, to put it mildly, particularly relevant.

Will a black-and-white approach to thinking solve problems with population, water, alternative and green energy, all in the context of globalization with newly emerging centers of power? It’s doubtful. In an interdependent world, it seems to me that the ability to compromise is more important than purely staunch conviction, the ability to find alternative means a surer sign of progress than the ability to find the right answer. Perhaps it is because of this interdependent theme, this facet of our existence, that we may have a greater case today for the continuance of the liberal arts tradition than that of Dickens and his cohort over 160 years ago. In today’s world, more so than during the industrial revolution, there may not always be a right or wrong answer.

The challenge now lies in making this case persuasively. While the liberal arts are relevant, not enough has been done to emphasize their pertinence and practical applicability in today’s world. In this, the argument for rethinking the subjects with due consideration to current topics and realities warrants merit. This should be more than just a PR exercise with policy makers to garner increased funding. What is needed is a shift in the way these subjects are taught and studied. This approach has already been used in some fields with positive results (using the U.S. as an example since it is my best point of reference for post-secondary education at this point). Links between psychology and business have had profound impact on the study of organizational behavior in business schools. Political science and economics have fared similarly, with some business schools now housing graduate programs in political economy (contrary to the traditional model where teaching and scholarship was managed by the arts and science faculties). Elements of philosophy can be integrated in business ethics classes and the same principles can be explored in the languages and literature.

If science and technology are to be the key determinants of economic vitality, it must be acknowledged that both interact with and are nurtured by society, particularly, a society that fosters individual curiosity and allows experimentation and deviation from the often hackneyed norm. The focus in this discussion should be on how the humanities can inform the sciences – the poet who contemplates the road less taken may someday inform and inspire the scientist who must venture on such a path in the journey toward innovation.

I think both poet and pragmatist would agree: this would make all the difference.

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Filed under: Alternate Progress , Anu, Culture, Liberal Arts

I’m Nobody

By Emily Dickinson

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d advertise — you know!

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one’s name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

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Filed under: Miscellaneous , Emily Dickinson, Liberal Arts

Satyam and Me

By Anu Saha

In the infamy of Satyam, if we were to peer into the looking glass, what would we see? Would it be just a singular (albeit colossal) aberration amongst an otherwise functional system of governance? Or would we see an affliction that is larger than the corporate entity, a systemic disease in the culture at large, of which this incident was only a symptom? And most importantly, would we see a reflection of ourselves? In this debacle, are we equally culpable? Thoughts on what the scandal tells us about attitudes towards government and culture are discussed.

Government: Boardrooms worldwide have a notorious reputation these days; board member negligence is clearly not a problem that is only unique to India. However, certain facets are specific to the Indian context. Governments and businesses do not operate in isolation from one another; the actions of the former invariably influence behavior in the latter and in India, the relationship between the two is particularly dysfunctional. In an environment where public services are acutely inefficient and it is the norm (many times a requirement) to bribe a bureaucrat to get things done, from the menial task of getting a passport renewed, to obtaining a business permit, what has suffered is our collective perception of ethics. If we bypass the system when dealing with government (which, effectively, IS the system), is it not expected that this attitude will trickle down to the private sphere? The proverbial line becomes murky and all magnitudes of malfeasance can be rationalized.

While it is true that Indian financial reporting standards are strict and the market watchdog Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is truly independent of the government, what has been amiss is the implementation of stringent standards to alter behavior. Particularly, standards and requirements for board accountability and scrutiny, to address issues such as conflicts of interest, board meeting locations, meeting frequency, transparency, and caps on the number of boards that members can simultaneously serve on, need to be enforced. So far, these have been largely lax. Reform has not trickled into the boardroom at the same pace as foreign investment. The result is weak shareholder activism, opaqueness and familial dominance in boardrooms (as was the case with Satyam).

Culture: One incident is pretty telling. In 2001, the Bharat Ratna was awarded to Lata Mangeshkar. A clarification before I proceed. Lata Mangeshkar is clearly very talented, and, arguably, deserves all the accolades of Bollywood that she commands. My exception is not with her, but with the fact that the nation’s highest civil award for the most exemplary degree of service to the nation and the public (previously awarded to leaders such as Nelson Mandela and B.R. Ambedkar) was given that year to a playback singer. The recognition was entirely misplaced.

That year’s award decision symbolized, in my view, the incredulous tendency that seems to persist in our culture to be enthralled with the petty and materialistic. It is an insult to our principles of social responsibility and civic duty when we look to the largely make believe world of Bollywood as our highest source of national pride. It also speaks volumes about our perceptions of one other, how we view those with material wealth and those without, and the virtues and vices we automatically attribute to each group, whether they deserve it or not.

Per the letter of the law, we are equals, but its spirit has suffered, because our society does not accord everyone the requisite respect of equals in daily life. We consistently compartmentalize and treat accordingly. It happens quietly amongst us, through the seemingly mundane, the everyday: when we treat hired labor as servants instead of as keepers of our homes, when we interact with manual labor every day and never wonder whether their children go to school, when the rat race manifests itself on our roads, when 25 percent of Lok Sabha members have criminal records but were still allowed to run for office (and were even elected by their constituents!) These actions pollute our ethical norms and result in a culture of arrogance and impunity that permeates amongst those who have, and those who have very much.

Society interacts with business, and vice versa; the two are interlinked. Corporate culture and ethics are functions of the social setting within which they operate. Perhaps if we held ourselves to higher ethical standards in our personal lives, we would expect and demand the same from one another in the workplace. Perhaps then a whistle-blower would have emerged sooner from within the ranks at Satyam.

So what happens now?

On the issue of governance, the SEBI’s reaction has been largely geared towards restoring foreign investor confidence in the Indian market. The bells for reform are ringing once again, but this is an election year. Even if fortune were to favor a bill in Parliament and it were to pass as legislation, if it is not enforced according to its intent, it will be just another piece of paper. What is needed is more than a swift stroke of legislation, what is needed is policy, which, even in the best circumstances, takes time to formulate and implement. So, chances are that, this year, the repairs will be largely kneejerk – they will be band-aids, just enough to carry us through the election season but not enough to address root causes. It will be interesting to note whether any of the candidates this year will even bother to include governmental reform on the agenda. I, admittedly quite pessimistically, think probably not, though it would be nice to be proven wrong.

These are hard times and everyone is confessing, be it to fraud, or to participating in the binge of credit and risk taking of the last decade. Reactions toward corporate malfeasance in the west have been directed largely towards two groups: the perpetrators themselves and the regulators. However, reactions toward Satyam were directed at much more. Foreign investors and the press have questioned boardroom culture, corporate standards in India overall, the ability of the judicial system to effect reform, and the overall health of corporate governance in all of India’s 9,000 listed companies.

Some of these concerns may be exaggerated – ironically, the SEBI is the one institution that seems to have been given the stamp of approval for its swift action in this scandal. The agency fared better than its equivalent in the States, the SEC, which has been derided for negligence. It is clear that India is measured differently. Whether or not this is right is, to me, irrelevant, because many of the concerns raised by the international community are similar to those that we ourselves have raised before. We may not have been the direct perpetrators of this fraud, but just as the real estate crash revealed the consequences of a collectively relentless pursuit of the American dream, Satyam showed once again that ethics in the private and public spheres of our society are long overdue for reform. We would be amiss to not take note of this.

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Filed under: Alternate Progress , Anu, Culture, Government

On Mugabe: His Land, His Lies

(Originally posted on 01/16/2009)

By Anu Saha

They say that no news from Africa is good news. Last year, Zimbabwe’s reserve bank issued a 100 billion Zimbabwean Dollar (Z$) note. In a market with the world’s highest inflation rates, peaking at suicidal percentage points, and persistently chronic food shortages caused by the disastrous economic policies of the maniacal Mugabe, chances are that this note will soon be, or already has been, discarded on the streets of Harare, worthless even to street vendors. When it was issued, Z$100 billion could only purchase three eggs. It was just another note in a long string of many, heavy with zeros but weightless in value, a manifestation of the country’s useless currency and crippled reserves.

The peculiar tragedy of Zimbabwe’s fall to billion dollar notes is that the country was once a beacon of hope for the continent, particularly in the sub-Saharan region. Africa’s story, for many in the international community, is garnered largely from the 7 o clock news, through two minute snippets depicting droughts, famine, AIDS, war and genocide. Over the last couple of years, Zimbabwe has become a victim of this trend, and has visited our television screens in the same way. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, it was not Zimbabwe, but countries such as Rwanda, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, and Mozambique that were synonymous with conflict in Africa. During South Africa’s struggle against Apartheid, Zimbabwe provided refuge to both black and white activists who escaped political imprisonment or were in exile. During those years, when rallies and violence in Soweto captured the world’s attention, Zimbabwe remained relatively peaceful, even though it was, like many of its neighbors, a young country (having gained independence from British rule only in 1980).

Peace certainly did not mean that Zimbabwe did not have problems, but these were symptomatic of the types of chronic challenges that are faced by many developing countries. Politics were dominated by Mugabe since 1987. There were widespread international condemnations and accusations of rigging, corruption, and suppression of opposition leaders during elections. Economic reforms trickled, and efforts to transition to a market-driven economy failed. But, in spite of these failings, the country managed to maintain positive economics growth in the 1980s and early 1990s, primarily owing to mining of its vast mineral resources, tourism, and yes, agriculture. Zimbabwe only a decade ago, was a net exporter of maize (or corn). Today, not only is the country unable to produce enough maize for domestic consumption, it is not even able to pay for sufficient quantities of imported maize to feed its citizens.

Gross malfeasance and mismanagement by Zimbabwe’s Government are the root causes for this crisis. Added to these was the controversial land distribution of 2000, when vast tracts of agricultural land, owned by white farmers, who had lived in Zimbabwe for generations, were forcibly seized. Ultimately, the majority of Zimbabwe’s white population was forced to leave the country. This was all orchestrated using the old yet disastrously effective “colonial guilt” rhetoric, which went something like this: A vast majority (allegedly 70 percent) of the country’s arable land was owned by its minority white population who inherited that land from their colonizing ancestors. Land was, supposedly on these grounds, forcibly distributed to blacks by the government. The process so far appears to have primarily benefited government loyalists, not black Zimbabweans as was promised. The compulsory removal of the white farming population caused a brain drain that eventually sent shock waves through the economy as agricultural output plummeted.

The process by which the land distribution was carried out serves as an example of the expediency with which disastrous decisions end up aggravating, instead of curing, the social ills they are purported to fix. Land inequalities probably did exist before 2000, as the government alleged, and these inequalities were indeed probably partly as a result of British colonial rule. However, the government’s tactic of blaming whites, many of whom had lived in Zimbabwe for generations, is hollow and dangerous. Land inequalities could have been addressed through a variety of other policies during the over 20 years of Mugabe’s rule. Revenue from the agricultural sector, which the government chastised for being dominated by whites, could have been directed to investment in the country’s abundant mineral wealth and to education and training for blacks in this sector. The same approach could have been taken for other industries, such as healthcare, small businesses, education and tourism. In the agricultural sector, the implementation of labor laws to address discrimination and subsidies to provide on the job training for black farm workers could have, albeit gradually, diversified the workforce and redressed socio-economic inequalities. These are easier said than done, and there certainly are disadvantages associated with each that are not discussed here. But, more importantly, neither were they discussed (or even considered for that matter) by Zimbabwe’s government. What was chosen instead was a policy driven by blame and by picking on the wounds of history. It is perhaps because of this that it utterly failed.

The BBC recently ran a story on a speech Mugabe gave at a rally, during which he chillingly declared, “Zimbabwe is mine.” As I watched him, I didn’t see a statesman, nor did I see an autocrat, or even a fascist dictator. What I did see was an old man, once a hero, now drunk and delusional with power, who lies to his people because he is too fearful to face the reality that the people of Zimbabwe, who once loved him, no longer consider him relevant. I realized how wrong he was. Zimbabwe is not his. Sadly, although he does not appear to realize it, it never was.

Filed under: Alternate Progress , Anu, Colonial History, Government, Zimbabwe