The Rule of the State

The Rule of the State

By José Lourenço

1.  Fear the State.

2.  Subordinate your will to the will of the State.

3.  Be obedient to the superior assigned to you by the State.

4.  Be patient amid hardships caused by the repressive acts of the State.

5.  Confess your deeds and reveal all your activities to the State.

6.  Accept the meanest of tasks, and hold yourself as a worthless workman.

7.  Consider yourself inferior to all in the State.

8.  Follow examples set by superiors, do only as prescribed by the State

9.  Do not speak until spoken to.

10.  Do not readily laugh. And never laugh at the State.

11.  Speak simply and modestly. Keep your head bowed.

12.  Express your inward humility through bodily posture. Stay bowed.

These twelve rules have been standard tools in the hands of any self-respecting (!) authoritarian state ever since Man threw another man down and placed his foot on the fallen man’s head.

China is a classic example. The flattening of all men as humble, lowly equals controlled by a powerful leader or leaders is wearily familiar. Why does Man seek to oppress his fellow man and woman so much, for that matter, oppress all the men and women around him and preferably in the neighbouring countries too? Isn’t there enough food for everyone on this bountiful earth?

We could turn to God and spiritual guidance for answers. We could ask the saints of old, how can we live as brothers in a community? We could ask Saint Benedict, who wrote his famous The Rule of St. Benedict, a guide to monastic community living. St. Benedict was disgusted by the corrupt secular culture of Italy and wrote the 73-chapter-long rule book, 15 centuries ago, to advise monks on how to live peacefully together.            

Chapter 7 dwells on humility, and details it further into twelve degrees, or steps in the ladder that leads to heaven. In brief, here are the twelve rules:

Fear God, Subordinate one's will to the will of God, Be obedient to one's superior, Be patient amid hardships, Confess one's sins, Accept the meanest of tasks, and hold oneself as a "worthless workman", Consider oneself "inferior to all", Follow examples set by superiors, Do not speak until spoken to, Do not readily laugh, Speak simply and modestly, Express one's inward humility through bodily posture.

Oops!

Grope At The Poim

By Gordon Lobo

It's twilight and the sun has just shied behind the thickets leaving a pleasant afterglow. A few children scamper home with fishing rods, some freshly cut from a bamboo cluster. The local catch was khorsandi, for which they used a small piece of prawn for bait.

Manu has just finished setting up his nets. He has three of these zaus all set in a row. This is Teen Manos, a picturesque place in a small corner of Aldona. A manos is a sluice gate, its holding pond is called poim in the local Konkani language.  

Clambering down he sets his net, bracing each one with bamboo shafts on the sides and one in the middle, using his feet to check that the net is resting firmly at the base. He sets all the three nets and lets the tide do its work. The sluice gate is a system where the tide plays a major role in the poim as the water rushes out during the low tide through the gaping mouths of the net. There’s also a lot of floating twigs, leaves, plastic and other debris.

Sighting the moon overhead he knows he has a good two hours till the tide flushes the water out. He has to harvest his catch at least once before he pulls out the nets, as the water pressure bears heavily on them after they have trapped all the floating debris along with the catch. As an hour passes by he settles down to harvest his midway catch, before the full time is done.

The gollo is the funnel end of the net, with the finest net holes and is mostly of thick nylon so that the crabs have a tough time snapping and eating his catch. 

He collects his catch in a tall woven basket and quickly pulls it up for sifting on a large plastic sheet. He and his mates empty some of the catch so as to sort out the debris, the sticks, leaves, plastic bags, litter, etc., from his catch. An old stool or an inverted paint bucket and old car tyres make do for seats as the sifting continues. A catch may comprise small prawns, a medium hard shell koddem, a fully grown big white prawn and an occasional tiger prawn. As they sort them out the lively catch keeps making a run for it by springing up and jumping out of his panttlo and bucket. He quickly grabs and chucks them back again.

After he's done with the catch he hauls the nets in and inverts them to clean out whatever small fry and twigs and leaves are stuck inside the net. By this time the ffn tide has slowly swelled and the sluice gates close with the returning high tide, making the poim ready for another type of fishing. This is the perfect time to cast the kanttiem, a large meshed fishing net with floats on the top while the rest of the net dangles freely in the water tangling all the passing prawns and fish, and an occasional crab too as it attempts to eat the tangled fish.

Late at night a bunch of hobbyists get together for a night out fishing, some with rods and others with line. The line is commonly known as poller. It has a hook about an inch long sometimes a little bigger, with a lead weight set after a span. The bait varies from a sardine to a small crab or a live fish or live prawn, all depending on what fish one is fishing for or what luck chances upon the angler. 

A canoe (ponnel) is also used to fish in the night using a Petromax lantern to momentarily blind the fish with a bright light while slowly sneaking a small koblem net under the fish, whisking it stealthily into the canoe.

A common greeting ‘Oi!’ is bellowed in the night. Another set of fishers are fishing in the river. This is a branch of the Mandovi, where ore-laden barges ferry the land’s minerals to waiting offshore bulk carriers.

Back to fishing. These guys have placed a thick nylon line and hanging on this line at every meter is a big hook about two inches long. The line is weighed down at both ends with a heavy stone locally called davon, and is checked every 45 to 60 minutes. The bait is sometimes live, or sardines or squid. The catch can range from a red snapper to a stingray, or catfish or eel, and sometimes an old rag or sack.

And then there’s the Grope way. A koblem, a circular net from bamboo or the vine of a chunna tree, is used wherein the net is held in both hands and pressed to the bottom and then felt around for whatever is trapped inside. This method is called 'khampnem'. The ones without a koblem feel around the sides of the poim and around the rocks with their hands. This is called porshievunk or porshepak, literally meaning ‘to grope’. The catch is collected in a bamboo woven basket tied to the forehead, called konni.

The arrival of the rains also bring about a heavy flow in the open drains, the vaum, where the waters from the hills and higher terrain pour into the lower lying areas, finally flowing to the poim which leads to the river. During this continuous flow of fresh water, fish also travels upstream. Fishing in the night is most ideal at this time, usually using a bright light, a koblem or a sharp pointed metal rod. Good for crabs, catfish, pearlspot, carp (pitthov), and occasionally turtles.

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(Photo courtesy Pantaleao Fernandes)

Return to Bombay Café

Return to Bombay Café

By José Lourenço

Ordering a cup of tea to close a snack is a delicate art. The tea arrives hot. It cools with time, depending on many factors—the ceiling fan may be on, there may be a light breeze blowing, it could be the monsoon season or winter. The stainless steel pelo in which it is served is the only constant. Many regulars at Bombay Café speed up the cooling by pouring the tea into the lower broader watti that holds the pelo. But the consummate tea drinker drinks his tea slowly, sipping it in kisses that don’t scald the lip.    

The trick is to start eating your batata-wada or bhaji-pav and order the tea a little while later. That way the tea washes down the snack and is still hot enough to enjoy the last few gulps. The last gulp of tea should be a warm finale, a joy to the throat and belly, celebrated by a soft yet sonorous belch. If doing this at home you can even groan loudly with pleasure as you put your cup down.

But this isn’t home, this is Bombay Café, where only a few elderly gaunt Hindu men can get away with a virtuoso full-bodied belch. A Catholic male doing this would be glared at by women customers, probably muttering “Dekh naslolo!” under their breath.

It’s a cool December evening and I am in the mood for some play. So I take my place at the second table from the window on the far wall side. This one has a simple magical quality to it. Only one other table in the café has the same feature, but it is presently occupied.

I order a single cutlet and a tea and wait. The tables at Bombay Café are narrow. If two patrons sitting on opposite sides were to lean their heads forward, they would collide. A middle-aged man enters and sits diagonally across me. He orders a mix-bhaji-pav. We wait. I assess him with my peripheral vision, reserving my primary focus for the street outside, where evening shoppers walk briskly past Margao’s cloth shops. He’s wearing a stained shirt over a modest potbelly. His eyes roam over the breasts of the fisherwoman at the next table. To her face and back to her breasts. Why do they always do that? To connect the two? To check if it’s someone they know? If it’s a known woman they can’t look at her breasts. Not directly, anyway.

I don’t like him much. He seems like a grocer who would cheat his buyers. And his wife. If I were a woman he would be surreptitiously looking at my chest. When he sticks his little finger in his ear and grinds it around before inspecting its wax stained tip, I decide he has to be punished.

Our snacks arrive at the same time. I cut open my cutlet, with the two teaspoons that accompany every snack at Bombay Café. Never a fork. Why would you need a fork when two teaspoons can do, goes the reasoning of the BC management. Western culture may have come to Goa with the Portuguese, way before the Brits came to India, but most cafés have adapted to a cutlery etiquette of their own. Everything is actually best eaten by hand, but teaspoons are a reluctant concession, probably to the ‘Cristãos’.        

I pour tomato ketchup liberally onto the heart-shaped snack, now torn apart. A bloodied broken-hearted cutlet.  

The Corrupt Grocer begins to eat his bhaji too, dipping pieces of bread in it. I place my elbow on my corner of the table and press down. The grocer’s bhaji plate rises up by a good half an inch. He places his left elbow on his corner of the table and pushes it down. It’s hard to get a table with uneven legs nowadays. This one is a wonder, with almost three quarters of an inch of lift.

His corner stays down and he relaxes. Just when he dabs his bread again, I push down again. And release. And down again. And up.

To eat a mix-bhaji that’s constantly bobbing up and down is very irritating. If a customer has had a bad day it can drive him or her over the edge. They try to push the table around, as though nudging it forward or backward a couple of inches will stabilise it. One of my younger victims even tried to grip her table leg with her thighs to keep it still. But how long can thighs remain closed? Another older fellow once slammed the table in rage, spilling everyone’s snacks all over.

Mr Cheating Grocer decides to bear his elbow down for the rest of his bhaji. With considerable pressure. I relax. He’s not enjoying his mix-bhaji now. The other two customers at our table are oblivious to the ongoing seesaw battle, their corners are relatively unperturbed. By the time my adversary has finished eating and the tea has arrived, his arm and back have tired. I jerk his tea pelo-watti up with a thud. It nearly spills over, a few drops spattering on a passing girl, who glares at him with disgust. In despair he rummages through his pockets for a piece of paper, which he folds in half and then again in half, until he’s got a reasonably thick wad that he bends over and tucks under the delinquent short leg. He angrily finishes his tea, which I’m sure has now gone tepid. Tests the table by rocking it slightly. And goes off with a frustrated scowl.

Ritual is important. That’s what separates Man from beasts. Ritual is what gave us religion, art and civilisation. I have screwed up the Adulterer Grocer’s ritual. He will probably hit his wife today. And she may smash a chair over his head, killing him. In self defence, of course. The courts will acquit her and she will marry the carpenter from the neighbouring chawl, who used to come over to oil her creaking doors.

I have eaten my bloodstained broken heart and now perform my final swallow of tea. It’s perfect, and I sigh gently. It’s like those Hindustani classical pieces where the vocalist goes yammering all over the place and the tabla guy goes wandering somewhere else, and they eventually come together at the sam, like lovers orgasming, culminating their ululations in one resounding thump. That’s what the last gulp of tea should be like.

Before I rise from my table I reach out with my foot and dislodge the wad of paper the grocer had carefully installed. The table rocks again. And all is well with the world. This is my table and I call the shots. This is where I change the world in small nefarious ways.

The waiter comes with his tiny bill, places it near my empty plate, pushing it partly into some spilt tea to wet it, so that it stays stuck to the table in the face of the whirring wall fan. I give him a tip, pay my bill at the counter and step out of Bombay Café, studiously avoiding the beggar at the door, who grins toothlessly at me every day, wearing a T-shirt that says United Colours of Bonetton. 

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Future Imperfect

Future Imperfect

By José Lourenço

Browsing through my family library on a solitary evening, I came across a slim pocket book titled ‘Modern Poetry’, edited by Guy N. Pocock M.A. and published by J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, of Aldine House, Bedford Street, London. It was first published in 1920. One in the series ‘The Kings Treasuries of Literature’, of which Sir A. T. Quiller Couch was the general editor.

I flipped through the poems and reached its last poem, titled The Parrot, by Sacheverell Sitwell. But what caught my attention was a brief two page ‘Note On Futurist Poetry’, the last note in this book. This is what the editor Pocock had to say:

“When a new movement in Art attains a certain vogue, it is advisable to find out what its advocates are aiming at, for however far-fetched and unreasonable their tenets may seem today, it is possible that in years to come they may be regarded as normal. Such things have happened before. Moreover, one cannot shut one’s eyes to the very significant effect of these modern ideas in the matter of painting and music.

With regard to Futurist poetry, however, the case is rather different; for whatever Futurist poetry may be—even admitting that the theory on which it is based may be right—it can hardly be classed as Literature.

This then, in brief, is what the Futurist says: that for a century past conditions of life have been continually speeding up, till now we live in a world of noise and violence and speed, of trains and motorcars and wireless telegraphy, of aeroplanes and giant howitzers. Consequently, our feelings, thoughts and emotions have undergone a corresponding change: we live ten times as fast as our great-grandfathers did.

This speeding up of life, says the Futurist, requires a new form of expression. We must speed up our  literature too, if we want to interpret modern stress. We must pour out a cataract of essential words, unhampered by stops, or qualifying adjectives, or finite verbs. We must leap from one idea to another without check, using plus and minus signs instead of full-stops and semicolons; and regulate the pace and tone by musical signs, such as rallentando or crescendo. Instead of describing sounds we must make up words that imitate them; we must use many sizes of type and different coloured inks on the same page, and shorten or lengthen words at will.

Well, they may be right; and certainly their descriptions of battles and so forth are vividly chaotic. But it is a little disconcerting to read in the explanatory notes that a certain line describes a fight between a Turkish and a Bulgarian officer on a bridge over which they both fall into the river—and then to find that the line consists of the noise of their falling, and the weights of the officers: ‘Pluff! Pluff! a hundred and eighty-five kilograms.’

Perhaps we may explain what is meant by making up an example. Suppose the poet set himself to rewrite the Nursery Rhymes, the famous adventure of Jack and Jill might appear in this guise:

Children + clumsiness = disaster

Jack + Jill incline 1 in 8 puff pant summit + pail Bubble-bubble-splash incline 20⁰ + carelessness = biff bump rattle SPLOSH Jack minus water plus crown + abrasion of epidermis + Jill weight 4 stone 2 lb. = Misery.     

This we feel, though it fulfils the laws and requirements of Futurist poetry, can hardly be classed as Literature. All the same, no thinking man can refuse to accept their first proposition: that a great change in our emotional life necessitates a change of expression. The whole question is really this: have we essentially changed?”

The reader will empathise with Pocock’s genteel and understated outrage at the Futurist’s impudence. Poppycock and fiddlesticks, and all that. This pocket book of modern poetry after all contains poems by RL Stevenson, WB Yeats and Walter de la Mare, all worthy stalwarts of our childhood English textbooks.

Cut to 2017. Have we indeed ‘essentially changed’, 97 years later? The internet (of things, too), artificial intelligence, self-driving cars and Mars-destined rockets are propelling us at ever headier speeds. We now live a hundred times faster than our great-great-great-great grandfathers did. Really? I find the tranquillity of a jetliner quite conducive to good sleep. And the internet lets me work from home, and thus travel less and laze around more.

But what happened to the Futurists? Who were these intrepid gentlemen anyway?

Futurism (Italian: Futurismo) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized speed, technology, youth, and violence, and objects such as the car, the aeroplane, and the industrial city. There were parallel movements in Russia, England, Belgium and elsewhere. The Futurists did their thing all over the place—in painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial and interior design, theatre, film, fashion, textiles, literature, music and architecture (and even Futurist meals!).

  Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurism (published on the front page of Le Figaro in 1909!) exhorted a breaking away from all the laissez faire of the past, onward to an aggressive dynamism. There was also explicit glorification of war as ‘the world's only hygiene’, and an underlying nationalism. This futurist poet had a rather tempestuous relationship with the fascist regime in his country.

Marinetti seems to have been as high as a kite when he wrote Point No.11 of his Manifesto:  “We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot; we will sing of the multicoloured, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervour of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.”

Art scholars concede that “Futurism influenced, to some extent, many art movements— Art Deco, Constructivism, Surrealism, Dada, and to a greater degree Precisionism, Rayonism, and Vorticism”. (Wtf are those last three!)

There is plenty to be found on Futurist expression on that great grunting sow of knowledge, the Internet, with its ever increasing blazing speeds. But are there flashes of Futurist styling still seen in literature around us today? There are indeed modern poets today who arrange words on a page in irregular but very deliberate breaking of traditional structure. The Futurists had a ball of a time doing this. Their poems celebrated onomatopoeia and graphic word-imagery.   

Marinetti’s ‘Zang Tumb Tumb’ was one such sound poem and ‘concrete poem’ where typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. This poem tells the story of the siege by the Bulgarians of Turkish Adrianople in the Balkan War, which Marinetti had witnessed as a war reporter. As the reader must have guessed, it is this poem that Pocock scoffs at in his note, with its battling officers tumbling off a bridge. Here’s how the poem ends, with Bombardment:

“1 2 3 4 5 seconds siege guns split the silence in unison tam-tuuumb sudden echoes all the echoes seize it quick smash it scatter it to the infinite winds to the devil

In the middle these tam-tuuumb flattened 50 square kilometers leap 2-6-8 crashes clubs punches bashes quick-firing batteries. Violence ferocity regularity pendulum play fatality

...these weights thicknesses sounds smells molecular whirlwinds chains nets and channels of analogies concurrences and synchronisms for my Futurist friends poets painters and musicians zang-tumb-tumb-zang-zang-tuuumb tatatatatatatata picpacpampacpacpicpampampac uuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

ZANG-TUMB

TUMB-TUMB

TUUUUUM”

It would seem to appear that children at primary schools are budding Futurists, with a natural talent for ‘sound poems’ in their yelling and play during recess breaks. It’s a pity we crush this potential in them, by subjecting them to formal metre, rhyme and rhythm in higher school.

Anyway, fuck all that. The venerable Pocock had dismissed the Futurists’ attempts to demolish literary structures. Sentences were clearly holy to him. They had to be strong and correct in form, rearranged carefully (where necessary) to achieve lofty verse.

I like browsing old books mouldy with mildew. But I also like reading very new books. Like Tenth of December, a collection of nine short stories by George Saunders, the American writer who won the Man Booker prize in 2017 for his first novel Lincoln in the Bardo. One very strange story in the collection is titled The Semplica Girl Diaries. Its protagonist struggles to keep up with his wealthy neighbours, recording his tribulations in a diary. His language is fractured, with awful grammar, and he sounds like an Asian immigrant whose first language is certainly not English. His diary notings don’t conform to Pocock’s notions of literature. Some samples:

“In morning kids go off to school per usual. Greenway comes at ten. Nice guys. Big guys! One w/Mohawk. Yard done by two (!). Roses in, fountain in, pathway in. SG truck arrives at three. SGs exit truck, stand shyly near fence while rack installed. Rack nice...”

“Very moving piece on NPR re. Bangladeshi SG sending money home: hence her parents able to build small shack. (Note to self: Find online, download, play for Eva. First fix computer. Computer superslow. Due to low memory? Possibly delete “CircusLoser”? Acrobats run all jerky, due to low memory + elephants do not hop = no fun.)”  

“Am so happy. Feel so lucky. What did we do to deserve” In part, yes: luck. Scratch-Off win = luck. But as saying goes, luck = ninety percent skill. Or preparation? Preparation = ninety percent skill? Skill = ninety percent luck? Cannot exactly remember saying...”

 The Semplica Girl (SG) is a grotesque decorative innovation where poor immigrant girls are strung up, dangling a couple of feet above a lawn, with a ‘microline’ passing through their skulls and tied at both ends to a rack frame. They are a symbol of prestige for the American house owner, and their job is just to smile and look good, with time out for toilet and food. Our grammatically challenged diarist wins a lottery and installs a rack with four SGs for his daughter’s birthday party.     

A very bizarre tale. It reminds us that 97 years later all our speed and dynamism has not covered us with glory, and never will. But look at Saunders’ disjointed sentence-phrases with whacky punctuation and plus signs and equal to signs all over the place. Was Pocock’s Jack and Jill eerily prophetic? This story is in a highly acclaimed book by a writer who has won a much coveted award for literature. Can’t be classed as literature? The story is dysfunctional both in story and form. Which is why it is so gripping. The telling of a story may change in style. A ‘great change in our emotional life’ may necessitate a change of expression. But the story—the pain and sound and fury— remains the same. Because we ... have not essentially changed.   
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