Rajendra Bhandari
The World is Flat. This is a book by Thomas L. Friedman.
I was astonished to see the title of the book at first. Friedman has used it as a metaphor to drive his point home that the globalization has flattened the economical shape of the world. In the sense, it is true. The world is fast shrinking into a one-dimensional marketplace, not only commercially but artistically, spiritually too.
Humans are prisoners of their own belief. This is the age when fanaticism has fructified in every respect. Be it religion, be it jingoism, be it politics of convenience, or any other discipline. The charm of mystery has vanished. Rather it is killed.
Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet , “There are many things in heaven and earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. But the twenty first century Horatios believe there are not ‘many things’ beyond their imagination. Science is their ‘New God.’ The apparent world, their only world.
This is the age of the specialists. There are specialists of body-parts: the bone, the heart, the lungs, the bowel, the eyes, the nose, the mind, the skin, the throat, the kidney and what not, but not the human being. The scientists, the philosophers, the poets, the social revolutionaries are groping in the dark to have a clue of human life. In the process, people are fighting with each other, waging war, experimenting with new ways of mutual destruction. In the pursuit of happiness people are caught in the labyrinth of power, lust, wealth and self-aggrandizement.
We talk of freedom but fear to have it. This eleutherophobia – the fear of freedom – is in the core of our eternal escapism. Escape from what? Escape from being confronted to our naked self, the inner hollowness, the mysterious loneliness. The society is the extension of our personal self. Nation, the extension of our society, the world, the extension of the nation. Today is the outcome of yesterday. What we imagined yesterday is the reality today. The external pleasure can never satiate the thirst for the inner well-being. The hunt for outward pleasure and power has paved the way for endless pursuit of treacherous vainglory.
I am not a naysayer. There are beautiful things going on in this planet. What I mean to say is that the size of the thinking or spiritual population is shrinking fast. This is leading to a one-dimensional horrific situation in our society. The writers, the poets are fighting tooth and nail to retrieve the crestfallen humanity to its dignity. They are minority and often swayed sometimes by the hostile global forces.
The outer ecology applies to deep ecology too. The three fourth part of the earth is water. The water symbolizes life. The water symbolizes fluidity, empathy, creativity, vulnerability, energy, spirituality. The water is never static .It dances, moves, transforms and enlivens the life. One should learn from water and imbibe empathy. The empathy is dying fast in today’s world. The humanity has been nurtured by a few worthy sons and daughters of this earth e.g., the Upanishadic sages, the Buddha, Einstein, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung, Mother Teresa and a host of others. The forward march of humanity is halted since the early twentieth century.
Nietzsche killed his ‘God’, followed by a prolonged killing spree. Roland Barthes killed the ‘author’. Francis Fukuyama wrote ‘obituary to the history’. Michel Foucault declared the humanity as a ‘sand-effigy’. Douglas Carswell announced the ‘death of politics’. T.S. Eliot had already declared novel a ‘dead genre’. With the much-hyped death of the grand narratives, the mini-narratives are said to have born. Many more deaths are to be announced. All these death rituals are contributing to the flattening of the world and the humans are cozily boxed inside their self-serving thoughts.
Whatever we touch, it becomes a cage. Why? We are born in a faith, so far so good. But we are easily encaged in it. We read a book and we are boxed. We listen to a mystic and we are caged. We have stopped questioning .Our real heroes knew this and they had warned not to fall prey into a rigid thought. The Upanishadic sages denied uttering truth in absolute terms and said ‘neti neti’ meaning not this much, not this much. The Buddha asked his followers not to follow him blindly. Just as Marx used to say, commenting on the French “Marxists” of the late [18]70s: “All I know is that I am not a Marxist.”
Coming to the realm of literature, the scenario is not very heartening. Our novels are becoming more and more panoramic .I d o not demean it. This is also a way of writing, but they are less thoughtful nowadays. Do panoramic novels attract easy readership? Or does it demand less cerebral exercise? I am not sure. This is not my blanket comment for all the fiction written now. This is just a general impression gathered by me. The same is the case with poetry. Pick up a poetry book and you will get the crux of ten other poetry books. The poetry boom is also striking. Almost all are writing fantastic poetry. Experimentation with form is noticeable. But there is a vexing homogeneity. Is it easier to write poetry these days? Is poetry reduced to a witty comment only? It is a question that haunts everyone who harbors a passion for poetry. The patenting of themes by the writers is also worrisome. The oppressed class is the fiefdom of some. The metaphysical writing is patented by the others. Sometimes, they set their own rule of ‘literary untouchability’.
One belonging to a particular brand of thought advocate his/her own superiority and label others as regressive. Some poems are no better than the verbal masturbation. The poets suddenly become the messiah of the oppressed class. It is alright, but when his/her messiah-hood becomes compulsive or obsessive, it becomes a matter of concern. The overall scenario looks tightly compartmentalized and monolithic.
While in school our economics teacher used to teach us the shortest and easiest definition of inflation – too much money buying too few goods is inflation. What would be the definition when too many poets write too few poems? It must be ‘poe-flation’.
(Courtesy: publiknama.com)
[Rajendra Bhandari, PhD, (b.1956) is a doctorate in Nepali literature, and a highly acclaimed Indian Nepali-language poet, critic and former academic at the Sikkim Government College in Gangtok. Bhandari has won awards for his poetry, including the 1981 Diyalo Purashkar in Poetry from Nepali Sahitya Sammelan in Darjeeling, 1998 Shiva Kumar Rai Memorial Award from the South Sikkim Sahitya Sammelan and 1999 Dr. Shova Kanti Thegim Memorial Award for poetry from the Shovakanti Memorial Trust in Gangtok. Some of his books are Hiundey Yee Chisa Raatka Pardeharuma, Yee Shabdaharu: Yee Harafharu, Kshar/Akshar, Shabdaharuko Punarwas and Itihasko Baduli. Bhandari is the only Nepali poet to be featured at the noted ‘Poetry International’. He visited Germany representing India at ‘Berlin Poetry Festival’ in Germany under the project ‘Poets Translating Poems South Asia’ in 2016. Bhandari joined ‘Grecam’, a world conglomerate of poets in Rome to stand in solidarity for Syrian Refugees in 2017.]