Man in the Mirror: Michael Jackson as Tramp
by Farzana Versey
Counterpunch, June 26-28
There may never be a Graceland for Michael Jackson. He was the wrong kind of Bad. He could not be the rake you would love to hate. He did not have the charisma that made women go weak in their knees. If he ever took out his shirt to throw at the audience, they would see his skeleton covered with skin.
He died long ago. And was born many times. It was the rebirth of a wilful retard. Oscar Wilde wrote, “For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die."
Some might say he does not even deserve a tribute because he was accused of several crimes. Social morality is as pat as it is divisive. The American media made late-night jokes of his exploitation which proved just how exploitative they were.
If he was a joke, then it is more likely it was, as Bob Fosse said, in the Charlie Chaplin mould. He was the quintessential tragi-comic hero. Dangerous more to himself than anyone else.
The Child
Chaplin explained to Mark Sennett how he worked on the tramp character in these words: “You know this fellow is many-sided – a tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure. He would have you believe he is a scientist, a musician, a duke, a polo player…However, he is not above picking up cigarette butts or robbing a baby of its candy…”
Between a lost childhood and delayed adulthood, Jackson created an adolescent haven. Neverland was his utopia – a teenaged Shangri-La of fairytale rides and bubbles that never burst and chocolates that didn’t melt; it was a protection from a world that was not growing up but moving away. He could not grasp it. He was losing it. There was no boyish mop, no sideburns, no devilish rolling stone, no dervish rant. Imagine, no Imagine!
Jane Fonda got it right when she said, “His intelligence is instinctual and emotional, like a child's. If any artist loses that childlikeness, you lose a lot of creative juice. So Michael creates around himself a world that protects his creativity.”
He was comfortable with older women because they comforted the child in him, the thumb-sucker.
The Man
He was the wilful arbiter of his own life. Michael in the raw stood for something intangible. The emotional possession was cut short at some point. It was then that he made bold to insinuate that we liked him for his inadequacies, not ours. He made us feel good about ourselves.
How must it feel to be man, woman, child and product, all rolled into one, fashioned into a most exquisite piece of crystal, but always afraid of the mere nudge that could drop you to the floor into a thousand shards, each with a distinct identity and that terrible piercing feeling? Like a gymnast on a beam who wanted to perform a perfect 10, he was not unduly worried about falling down because there was a safety net.
He took umbrage in asexuality. Chaplin had chosen this path for a while and reasoned that like Balzac who believed that a night of sex meant the loss of a good page of his novel it took away precious time. It was only natural then for Michael who wanted to give a lot and take a lot to be lost to himself. He unabashedly created an androgynous persona and wanted to look and sing like Diana Ross at a high feminine pitch.
To make up for this sexuality-denying gesture, he performed the public shag. He was thrusting it in the faces of the spectators. According to an American critic, it was "to reassure himself the arguably Virgin King keeps publicly touching it".
It would appear that much like the low whisper which seemed to hold secrets he was rising above the body to become "someone who has connected with every soul in the world".
The Commentator
If Chaplin was inspired by the two world wars and the Depression, Michael had the Gulf War and the post-Woodstock yuppie punks to cater to. The gizmos he used onstage were those in-your-face things that appealed to the me-too generation of pretender beatniks.
There was orgiastic release through sex and scandal, but it had the veneer of ‘I smoked but did not inhale’ and the crustacean judicial impeachment that was rather soft within. Michael did not have too many social messages. He was the social message. However absurd may have been his attempts to become fair, straighten his hair, sharpen his nose, soften his lips, he was caricaturing himself. Is that why he rehearsed for hours in a room without mirrors? Was he avoiding his own image, the creation of a persona that he thought would be deemed acceptable? He was escaping Black and therefore rarely spoke up for it. He was the caustic commentary of our times.
He wasn’t trying to be the White man; he was only wearing a mask. He was telling them, “You're throwing stones to hide your hands”. He always wore gloves, diamond-studded gloves, and rhinestone jackets. He did not want to play the poor guy with Harlem knocking on his door wearing baggy trousers and a baseball cap, walking like he would in the streets looking for leftovers. He was the boy who had made it. He was not going to be apologetic about it.
He chose the moonwalk, a formless form, where the ground was never too close and yet not too far. “Who am I, to be blind? Pretending not to see…”
For him the baubles were discardables, a stinging statement on the state of entertainment itself, which is why he truly began to perform only when shorn of all those appendages, punishing his sinewy body to perform impossible feats because somewhere deep down he felt, "though you do not need me now, I will stay in your heart".
Unlike many pop icons, he broke the barriers of restrictive nationalism and race, and gender too. The oxygen mask he wore was perhaps not to protect him but to create an illusion of posterity. His own little tribute to the breath of life, a self-created obituary: "Just call my name and I'll be there."
Nothing can beat it.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Writer in a Wasteland
Maverick: The Writer in a Wasteland
by Farzana Versey
Covert, June 16-30
I must admit that the first thing I wanted to know when Kamala Das died was about her last rites. Critical as I was of the reasons for her conversion to Islam, it seemed par for the course. However, do we accord writers a similar courtesy of political and religious views? More importantly, are those views to be considered personal or potent weapons of change?
We have in the past had whore to writer, seller of toothpastes to writer, upright police officer to writer, retired army person to writer, drug-addict to writer, criminal to writer. It would appear that you need to be something other than a writer to be a writer.
T. S. Eliot dismissed the “mystical belief in herd-feeling” that he felt was apparent in extreme nationalism and communism, but he made a spirited defence of Christianity, when faith is also about a herd feeling. If he was truly a proponent of individualism why did he reject George Orwell’s Animal Farm, dismissing it with, “I take it to be generally Trotskyite. We have no conviction that this is the right point of view from which to criticize the political situation at the current time”?
This was during World War II, and silence would not have been an option for the sensitive thinker. Isn’t literature supposed to voice those very thoughts that rebel against prevalent beliefs? The Orwellian dystopia is even more apt today; he used his characters in a minimalist fashion to show us how debates can be dumbed down.
It is indeed surprising that writers have to pen elegies and get co-opted by ideologies. This applies to dissent as well. Nadine Gordimer is known for her activist role in the anti-apartheid movement in her country, South Africa. Some of her books had been banned during the time. She remains an outspoken critic of various leaders. I was, therefore, a bit distressed to hear her say, “Looking back, it would have been an insult if they hadn’t been banned. It was an honour.”
What was she trying to convey? That the protest would have been in vain had her works been accessible through legitimate channels in her country? Or was she aiming to reach only the outside world? Isn’t the role of the writer as activist to well and truly portray such angst and make it known to those who are suffering from it?
What about the millions who go through privations without either the benefit of a voice, literary or otherwise, and swallow the indignities heaped upon them? They are not banned or sent off – they become slaves of society and give writers and artistes the raw material required to portray the trauma.
This is not to suggest that writers are exploiters – although, in some ways it is true because all of us who choose the medium of expression are using people and places imbued with our understanding and biases. Can we make a blanket call for freedom of speech without fathoming its deeper undercurrents and repercussions?
Salman Rushdie got tetchy when his bodyguards decided to reveal a bit of tittle-tattle about him while he has been happily holding on to his expose of religion for better understanding. What about the freedom of speech of those who oppose his views and think a book of religion is literature? Many of us were told to read the Bible in our convent schools only for its literary merit. Has Rushdie been able to deconstruct the Quran’s seminal message?
The moment a writer uses a position to affect opinion, s/he become responsible for it. Therefore, it was disingenuous of Arundhati Roy to state, “I am a writer and want to be identified as a writer only. One should not define me as an activist. I am not an activist.”
After The God of Small Things, she did not write anything that was not activist in nature. Her collections of essays and interviews were about subjects that have to do with a society in turmoil. Surely, a committed writer ought to be able to stand up for what she did all these years.
In a world where wastelands thrive, memorials to such mortuaries deserve a bit more than a few good metaphors.
by Farzana Versey
Covert, June 16-30
I must admit that the first thing I wanted to know when Kamala Das died was about her last rites. Critical as I was of the reasons for her conversion to Islam, it seemed par for the course. However, do we accord writers a similar courtesy of political and religious views? More importantly, are those views to be considered personal or potent weapons of change?
We have in the past had whore to writer, seller of toothpastes to writer, upright police officer to writer, retired army person to writer, drug-addict to writer, criminal to writer. It would appear that you need to be something other than a writer to be a writer.
T. S. Eliot dismissed the “mystical belief in herd-feeling” that he felt was apparent in extreme nationalism and communism, but he made a spirited defence of Christianity, when faith is also about a herd feeling. If he was truly a proponent of individualism why did he reject George Orwell’s Animal Farm, dismissing it with, “I take it to be generally Trotskyite. We have no conviction that this is the right point of view from which to criticize the political situation at the current time”?
This was during World War II, and silence would not have been an option for the sensitive thinker. Isn’t literature supposed to voice those very thoughts that rebel against prevalent beliefs? The Orwellian dystopia is even more apt today; he used his characters in a minimalist fashion to show us how debates can be dumbed down.
It is indeed surprising that writers have to pen elegies and get co-opted by ideologies. This applies to dissent as well. Nadine Gordimer is known for her activist role in the anti-apartheid movement in her country, South Africa. Some of her books had been banned during the time. She remains an outspoken critic of various leaders. I was, therefore, a bit distressed to hear her say, “Looking back, it would have been an insult if they hadn’t been banned. It was an honour.”
What was she trying to convey? That the protest would have been in vain had her works been accessible through legitimate channels in her country? Or was she aiming to reach only the outside world? Isn’t the role of the writer as activist to well and truly portray such angst and make it known to those who are suffering from it?
What about the millions who go through privations without either the benefit of a voice, literary or otherwise, and swallow the indignities heaped upon them? They are not banned or sent off – they become slaves of society and give writers and artistes the raw material required to portray the trauma.
This is not to suggest that writers are exploiters – although, in some ways it is true because all of us who choose the medium of expression are using people and places imbued with our understanding and biases. Can we make a blanket call for freedom of speech without fathoming its deeper undercurrents and repercussions?
Salman Rushdie got tetchy when his bodyguards decided to reveal a bit of tittle-tattle about him while he has been happily holding on to his expose of religion for better understanding. What about the freedom of speech of those who oppose his views and think a book of religion is literature? Many of us were told to read the Bible in our convent schools only for its literary merit. Has Rushdie been able to deconstruct the Quran’s seminal message?
The moment a writer uses a position to affect opinion, s/he become responsible for it. Therefore, it was disingenuous of Arundhati Roy to state, “I am a writer and want to be identified as a writer only. One should not define me as an activist. I am not an activist.”
After The God of Small Things, she did not write anything that was not activist in nature. Her collections of essays and interviews were about subjects that have to do with a society in turmoil. Surely, a committed writer ought to be able to stand up for what she did all these years.
In a world where wastelands thrive, memorials to such mortuaries deserve a bit more than a few good metaphors.
Friday, June 5, 2009
The Oprahfication of Obama
The Oprahfication of Obama:Walk like an Egyptian
by Farzana Versey
Counterpunch, June5-7
Barack Hussein Obama was not addressing the Muslims; he was talking to the American people to seek legitimacy for himself. The once-upon-a-time Muslim’s landmark speech was about the Other World. A distant Barbaria.
To make the otherness more palpable, he used a couple of literary/marketing devices: Empathy and Confession. A good novelist or advertiser employs them to get under the skin of the characters. As creator, Obama appeared to be playing devil’s advocate when what he was in fact drawing attention to is that the devil has no horns, thereby demonising a whole community and making suspicion a valid possibility for the ‘potent minority’ is invisible.
In confessional mode he revealed his roots; it was the sort of thing Oprah Winfrey does. Take a situation, look pained about how it has come to such a pass, and regurgitate it. Repetition is the true modus operandi of a confession. In Obama’s case it was: I am a Christian, but I have a little Muslim skeleton in my cupboard.
That immediately imbued him with a halo. He was the come-back kid, the prodigal had returned, the baptism was complete. When such an admission is made, people are forced to listen. The assumption is that the person knows his marbles. By quoting from the Koran, Obama was drilling home the point that you cannot talk to the Muslims without bringing in religion. The Obama Empathy essentially gave a travel guide version of Islam, with algebra and calligraphy as throwaway pebbles in the stream of stereotypes that he was swimming in.
It is typical retail therapy when he says, “America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition”. He is buying a stereotype. Make no mistake about that. “And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”
Why is it his responsibility? Is he in some ways accepting that the US is responsible for creating those stereotypes? Where was the Taliban before the Russian occupation of Afghanistan and the US decision to assist it? Why did Ayatollah Khomeini sweep through the Iranian landscape after the Shah of Iran was being wooed by both the Cold War chiefs? What happened to the modern state of Iraq?
His idea of negative stereotypes was no different from the good guy versus bad guy dumbing down that has become so popular. They keep a roster and at last count some one billion Islamic fundamentalists were said to be stomping all over the world.
That gave him a perspective to get down to the serious business of trying to seek a connection between 9/11 and “tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate”. It was a pathetic attempt at using the religious wars when making a case for the United States, which made him sound more like Rev. Jesse Jackson than Martin Luther King.
He was bringing in a simplistic version of history by making it seem that the West is a single conglomerate. Worse, he referred to it as a “Cold War” between the West and Muslims, quite forgetting its implications. Some commentators have already said that Afghanistan is Obama’s Vietnam. By doing so there is passive aggressiveness being conveyed about how tough the US is.
The reason being touted was reeking of the superficial Obama empathy: “the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam”.
Does modernity mean the vivid imagination that could conjure weapons of mass destruction and imagine that by bombing civilian areas they would find Osama bin Laden? Does globalization mean intervention and feeding the Americans such xenophobia? No one wishes to deny 9/11, but 9/11 is not the symbol of world devastation. A world where countries have 3000 people dying in a single communal riot, or when cities are bombed. If the US government wishes to use this as an example, then it must remember the several acts of terror in other Western societies or else it will be a selfish motive.
Like Hollywood, Obama used the guilt perspective. It is a Zionist model and naturally a good place to start. There was absolutely no reason to refer to the Holocaust during the speech, because the Palestinians or the Arabs or the Muslims – and the President must know these can be disparate groups – were not responsible for it.
The President made one of the most educated people in the world, the Palestinians, seem like they needed help “to develop the institutions that will sustain their state; to recognize Israel's legitimacy”. The most vicious occupation was dismissed as “continued Israeli settlements” whereas the “Palestinians must abandon violence”.
The passive aggressive quality is again manifested in his pursuit of al Qaeda. Recently, he talked about moving 17,000 troops to Afghanistan. But at Cairo he said, “We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.”
It is all about America. He talked about money being given to set up schools, hospitals; he did not mention money given as military aid. He had earlier pledged to “invest in Pak democracy” to “get the job done”.
It did not take long to see that the knight-in-shining-armour persona was carrying a sheathed sword: “Among some Muslims, there is a disturbing tendency to measure one's own faith by the rejection of another's.” This is the very nature of religion. You are a believer of a faith only when you accept it unconditionally. The purpose of measuring it is about pitting it against another. It does not mean that people do not accept the existence of other faiths, but they will nullify that ideology if it does not suit them. This also applies to nations. Colonialism is proselytisation; it need not be geographical. US colonialism sells the American Dream. The issue of tolerance is touted, but it comes on its own terms.
The reason the US is one of the most nationalistic societies is because it has no choice; it has to make sure the indigenous mental space is not trod upon. The politician needs cheerleaders. Obama himself is a manufactured totem; he appeared at a time when Americans needed to get a break from the lies that were supposed to transform them into greater patriots when their country has spent about 675 billion dollars since 2001 for nothing.
They did not vote for a war veteran.
People are not fools. Not the Americans. Not the Arabs.
by Farzana Versey
Counterpunch, June5-7
Barack Hussein Obama was not addressing the Muslims; he was talking to the American people to seek legitimacy for himself. The once-upon-a-time Muslim’s landmark speech was about the Other World. A distant Barbaria.
To make the otherness more palpable, he used a couple of literary/marketing devices: Empathy and Confession. A good novelist or advertiser employs them to get under the skin of the characters. As creator, Obama appeared to be playing devil’s advocate when what he was in fact drawing attention to is that the devil has no horns, thereby demonising a whole community and making suspicion a valid possibility for the ‘potent minority’ is invisible.
In confessional mode he revealed his roots; it was the sort of thing Oprah Winfrey does. Take a situation, look pained about how it has come to such a pass, and regurgitate it. Repetition is the true modus operandi of a confession. In Obama’s case it was: I am a Christian, but I have a little Muslim skeleton in my cupboard.
That immediately imbued him with a halo. He was the come-back kid, the prodigal had returned, the baptism was complete. When such an admission is made, people are forced to listen. The assumption is that the person knows his marbles. By quoting from the Koran, Obama was drilling home the point that you cannot talk to the Muslims without bringing in religion. The Obama Empathy essentially gave a travel guide version of Islam, with algebra and calligraphy as throwaway pebbles in the stream of stereotypes that he was swimming in.
It is typical retail therapy when he says, “America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition”. He is buying a stereotype. Make no mistake about that. “And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”
Why is it his responsibility? Is he in some ways accepting that the US is responsible for creating those stereotypes? Where was the Taliban before the Russian occupation of Afghanistan and the US decision to assist it? Why did Ayatollah Khomeini sweep through the Iranian landscape after the Shah of Iran was being wooed by both the Cold War chiefs? What happened to the modern state of Iraq?
His idea of negative stereotypes was no different from the good guy versus bad guy dumbing down that has become so popular. They keep a roster and at last count some one billion Islamic fundamentalists were said to be stomping all over the world.
That gave him a perspective to get down to the serious business of trying to seek a connection between 9/11 and “tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate”. It was a pathetic attempt at using the religious wars when making a case for the United States, which made him sound more like Rev. Jesse Jackson than Martin Luther King.
He was bringing in a simplistic version of history by making it seem that the West is a single conglomerate. Worse, he referred to it as a “Cold War” between the West and Muslims, quite forgetting its implications. Some commentators have already said that Afghanistan is Obama’s Vietnam. By doing so there is passive aggressiveness being conveyed about how tough the US is.
The reason being touted was reeking of the superficial Obama empathy: “the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam”.
Does modernity mean the vivid imagination that could conjure weapons of mass destruction and imagine that by bombing civilian areas they would find Osama bin Laden? Does globalization mean intervention and feeding the Americans such xenophobia? No one wishes to deny 9/11, but 9/11 is not the symbol of world devastation. A world where countries have 3000 people dying in a single communal riot, or when cities are bombed. If the US government wishes to use this as an example, then it must remember the several acts of terror in other Western societies or else it will be a selfish motive.
Like Hollywood, Obama used the guilt perspective. It is a Zionist model and naturally a good place to start. There was absolutely no reason to refer to the Holocaust during the speech, because the Palestinians or the Arabs or the Muslims – and the President must know these can be disparate groups – were not responsible for it.
The President made one of the most educated people in the world, the Palestinians, seem like they needed help “to develop the institutions that will sustain their state; to recognize Israel's legitimacy”. The most vicious occupation was dismissed as “continued Israeli settlements” whereas the “Palestinians must abandon violence”.
The passive aggressive quality is again manifested in his pursuit of al Qaeda. Recently, he talked about moving 17,000 troops to Afghanistan. But at Cairo he said, “We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.”
It is all about America. He talked about money being given to set up schools, hospitals; he did not mention money given as military aid. He had earlier pledged to “invest in Pak democracy” to “get the job done”.
It did not take long to see that the knight-in-shining-armour persona was carrying a sheathed sword: “Among some Muslims, there is a disturbing tendency to measure one's own faith by the rejection of another's.” This is the very nature of religion. You are a believer of a faith only when you accept it unconditionally. The purpose of measuring it is about pitting it against another. It does not mean that people do not accept the existence of other faiths, but they will nullify that ideology if it does not suit them. This also applies to nations. Colonialism is proselytisation; it need not be geographical. US colonialism sells the American Dream. The issue of tolerance is touted, but it comes on its own terms.
The reason the US is one of the most nationalistic societies is because it has no choice; it has to make sure the indigenous mental space is not trod upon. The politician needs cheerleaders. Obama himself is a manufactured totem; he appeared at a time when Americans needed to get a break from the lies that were supposed to transform them into greater patriots when their country has spent about 675 billion dollars since 2001 for nothing.
They did not vote for a war veteran.
People are not fools. Not the Americans. Not the Arabs.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Death be not loud
Maverick: Death be not loud
By Farzana Versey
Covert June 1-15
It was an unusual sale. Hemratna Suri Maharajsaheb, a Jain monk, died while deep in meditation. 15,000 devotees thronged to the temple town of Shahapur in Maharashtra where he was to be cremated. It wasn’t just simple piety. They were bidding to perform his last rites.
Worse, the several rituals were being auctioned for separately. The person who bid the highest amount, what the reports described as “the perfectly symmetrical sum of Rs 1,11,11,111 (Rs 1.11 crore)”, got to light the funeral pyre. The second highest bidder circled it with a pot of water on his shoulder; four families carried the bier; another carried the body to the pyre.
All the money will be used to build a temple. Apparently, other social causes are also supported.
What bothers me about this ritual that goes back 450 years is that it was started to get the believers to donate money to the temple boxes. This was the bait. You bid for a favoured guru’s last rites, begin to feel you are specially blessed and the religion is spread. People with big bucks become the most prized individuals because they imagine they are keeping the faith alive. All it takes are a couple of deaths a month, and here too there is a hierarchy. Dead gurus who are not so famous aren’t put up for auction; the ones with a small following manage a few lakh.
These facts and figures are openly flaunted. It is a great lesson in social dynamics. The concept of abjurance is embedded in almost all religions. If a community is wealthy, then austerity can be experienced by proxy. One member decides to give up everything. Should this person become one of the respected acharyas he will be up for bidding. No one has thought about using this money directly for the causes that the community wishes to promote.
Death is a fascinating concept. Although mortality is written in human destiny, choosing mortality – or giving up worldly desires – anoints the person with martyrdom.
In the days when religions were striving to find themselves, prophets and seers took their time and there was a message in the deaths – whether of Christ, or Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Imam Husain, or Lord Buddha or even the Jain saint Mahavira.
Today, it appears to be a commercial enterprise, whether it is photo-ops at the Ajmer Sharif dargah or the Siddhi Vinayak Temple or Tirupati. About a thousand Jains take diksha every year amidst much fanfare. Is there a need for such publicity?
The concept of Santhara - reaching salvation by starving to death – is undertaken “when a person feels his or her earthly life has served its purpose”. Last year 250 monks died. There could be a lot of brainwashing going on here. The religious leaders are adamant. They are at pains to state that this is not suicide. They often talk about dignity of life when they are called upon to explain such deaths. Isn’t it possible that the bare minimum that they have to subsist on could be the cause of ill-health and this samadhi is seen as a way out?
By supporting such deaths, we are giving a slap to scientific endeavour. Can modern medicine not provide relief, if not a cure? Besides, how progressive are we really if we find every debility reason enough to feel undignified? Are we teaching the world that dependency of any kind is anathema and it is better to quit than suffer such humiliation?
Let us get this clear. Death is humiliating. It is an end to your striving, the final blow to a useful life. A corpse has grace because it is immobile, and not because of any quality that it possesses.
Many of those who enter this phase are women (the ratio is 3 women to one man) who might be seen as a burden on their families. How different is it from sati? A couple of years ago, television flashed images of one such female monk being carried to her funeral seated on a throne-like palanquin. This is the romanticisation by the living: To be blessed by a few such deaths.
By Farzana Versey
Covert June 1-15
It was an unusual sale. Hemratna Suri Maharajsaheb, a Jain monk, died while deep in meditation. 15,000 devotees thronged to the temple town of Shahapur in Maharashtra where he was to be cremated. It wasn’t just simple piety. They were bidding to perform his last rites.
Worse, the several rituals were being auctioned for separately. The person who bid the highest amount, what the reports described as “the perfectly symmetrical sum of Rs 1,11,11,111 (Rs 1.11 crore)”, got to light the funeral pyre. The second highest bidder circled it with a pot of water on his shoulder; four families carried the bier; another carried the body to the pyre.
All the money will be used to build a temple. Apparently, other social causes are also supported.
What bothers me about this ritual that goes back 450 years is that it was started to get the believers to donate money to the temple boxes. This was the bait. You bid for a favoured guru’s last rites, begin to feel you are specially blessed and the religion is spread. People with big bucks become the most prized individuals because they imagine they are keeping the faith alive. All it takes are a couple of deaths a month, and here too there is a hierarchy. Dead gurus who are not so famous aren’t put up for auction; the ones with a small following manage a few lakh.
These facts and figures are openly flaunted. It is a great lesson in social dynamics. The concept of abjurance is embedded in almost all religions. If a community is wealthy, then austerity can be experienced by proxy. One member decides to give up everything. Should this person become one of the respected acharyas he will be up for bidding. No one has thought about using this money directly for the causes that the community wishes to promote.
Death is a fascinating concept. Although mortality is written in human destiny, choosing mortality – or giving up worldly desires – anoints the person with martyrdom.
In the days when religions were striving to find themselves, prophets and seers took their time and there was a message in the deaths – whether of Christ, or Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Imam Husain, or Lord Buddha or even the Jain saint Mahavira.
Today, it appears to be a commercial enterprise, whether it is photo-ops at the Ajmer Sharif dargah or the Siddhi Vinayak Temple or Tirupati. About a thousand Jains take diksha every year amidst much fanfare. Is there a need for such publicity?
The concept of Santhara - reaching salvation by starving to death – is undertaken “when a person feels his or her earthly life has served its purpose”. Last year 250 monks died. There could be a lot of brainwashing going on here. The religious leaders are adamant. They are at pains to state that this is not suicide. They often talk about dignity of life when they are called upon to explain such deaths. Isn’t it possible that the bare minimum that they have to subsist on could be the cause of ill-health and this samadhi is seen as a way out?
By supporting such deaths, we are giving a slap to scientific endeavour. Can modern medicine not provide relief, if not a cure? Besides, how progressive are we really if we find every debility reason enough to feel undignified? Are we teaching the world that dependency of any kind is anathema and it is better to quit than suffer such humiliation?
Let us get this clear. Death is humiliating. It is an end to your striving, the final blow to a useful life. A corpse has grace because it is immobile, and not because of any quality that it possesses.
Many of those who enter this phase are women (the ratio is 3 women to one man) who might be seen as a burden on their families. How different is it from sati? A couple of years ago, television flashed images of one such female monk being carried to her funeral seated on a throne-like palanquin. This is the romanticisation by the living: To be blessed by a few such deaths.
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