The Tradition of All Dead Generations

 

I like to think of my complicated relationship with religion as being informed by both my quarrels with its theology and also with its social manifestation. When adhered to faithfully, there is an undeniable relegation of women to a passive (if not secondary) status. Where I do find meaning in religion is in its instrumentalization as a call to action. During my religious education, I remember the explicit discouragement of living the life of a recluse. Retiring from society, and being unbothered about what ails your fellow citizens was considered inherently unislamic.

The privilege of disengagement is obviously something only afforded to the more well-off sections of society. Islam, as a religion born from a call to action, makes sense as one refusing to endorse such disengagement. Prayer, to the believer, is as much about standing up to injustice as it is prostrating before God. There is, of course, the story of Abu Dharr expressing shock that a man who finds himself hungry does not immediately take up arms against the society that leaves him to this fate. Ali Shariati drew lessons from that; an important part of being Muslim to him was to be able to respond to injustice with action. A thread of liberation theology is visible there. If you pull at it, you might end up in the present day and able to understand why someone would start a losing war against one of the world’s most sophisticated militaries in response to their colonial project.

Of course, it is just as possible (if not easier), to instrumentalize religion as a form of social control. Its historical function has been to maintain social order. Individual behaviour is controlled and kept in place – for the most part – at the site of the family. Religion continues to be an incredibly potent tool to that end. Its revolutionary potential and ability to move a people to incredible bravery in the face of injustice has historically also given way to the imposition of an unjust world order that instrumentalizes (or at least hides behind) religion to justify it. It is, I believe, reasonable to maintain that no part of this  instrumentalization is inherent to Islam, but a result of the material conditions and the deliberate intentions of the actors who got to wield the religion at particular historical moments. As a wise man once said, men do make their own history, “under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”

Invalid

 

I stare at a screen. I have been staring eleven hours. Sifting page after page, looking for the mildest indication that the next call might offer personhood. I cannot feel my legs just now. It is sunny outside, but I prefer the natural invisibility of my room over the pronounced one of the outdoors. Sounds of everyday life are at my window. Children calling out to each other, the booming laughter of men, music blasting from a speaker somewhere. Every single one of these individuals must possess the right documents to prove they exist. I have no recollection of how I got here. But when I did, it was without the means to announce my arrival. Day and night pass and people live their lives; not unlike how they did where I came from, but with more to live for.

I have not been able to determine how I can get noticed, but something tells me it is by proving my utility to whoever is in charge. I think it has been two years since I started trying to make myself so useful. Even a measure of hostility would not be unwelcome now. I would know I was being perceived. I cannot always believe that I am completely invisible to every living thing that I see on this planet. The alternative – that they are all in on an elaborate plan of being indifferent to my presence – is, however, even more improbable. Why do I think there is a way to get noticed? Where does this faith in integration and assimilation come from?

I pause for a second. This call seems promising. ‘Planetary onboarding for Invalids if applicable,’ the last line says. That sounds like me. I take a deep breath. At least the rest of the day will feel like meaningful work.

Nothing Works Out

 

Nothing works out. I feel like the defining way in which I think about myself is that I cannot belong. I am not from anywhere and they want me nowhere. There is a level of hyperbole in this. This is hardly the biggest tragedy. But I do feel immensely jealous of everyone who gets to be from somewhere, who gets to recognise a place as home, and have people tied to that place they can go back to.

As I stare into being forced to the first place I have enjoyed living in, I have to ask myself, ‘where to?’ Go back to where I came from? I literally cannot. Go back to where my parents are from? How is that going ‘back?’ The only thing I can say for sure is that wherever I end up, there will be no sense of ‘return’ in that journey. I will be going to another unfamiliar (if not unwelcoming) space, and be made to start from zero again.

I remember reading a James Baldwin book earlier this year which contained the sentence ‘There is a home for you to go back to, as long as you do not go there.’ It made me feel something. There are several places I can look at in this way: Kuwait, Patiala, Kasaragod, and soon, also the Netherlands.  

Nothing works out, there is nothing to look forward to.

My lot

 

The trajectory of most of my life’s worries revolve around not having a place to call home. As I stare now into yet another forced farewell from somewhere I looked forward to calling home, I am reminded once again how me and my kind are not wanted here. In one of the lame afterseasons of Arrested Development, Lucille tries to let her son know the police is no longer looking for him by adding ‘un-‘ to the ‘WANTED’ posters all over town. It’s what employers do the moment you admit you come from a lesser nation. The unpleasantness of stepping outside to realise that the barriers to full realization of your personhood do not really apply to most people is hard to convey. I remember this story I read as a child; a man walking in the cold sees a snake freezing to death. Taking pity on the poor animal, he puts it inside his shirt. The rejuvenated viper bites the man and wriggles its way out. Dying, the man asks “ Is this my reward for saving your life?” The snake replies “you did what was in your nature, and I what is in mine.” I always wonder about the moral of this story. It is deeply conservative and unmistakeably casteist. Everyone has their lot in life, determined by the accident of birth. Any attempt to live outside your station comes at your own peril. Perhaps my lot is to live in a succession of states as a perpetual outsider.  

Waiting

 

During Covid, it used to feel like you spent all your time waiting. Waiting at the public health centre, at the village office, at hospitals, in the car. Even being at home often felt like waiting.

There is always some waiting going on. A permanent impatience to already be done with whatever it is that has you engaged. Not unlike moving the cursor to check how long is left on the video, no matter how interesting it is. As if the knowledge that things must end prevents complete engagement with them. An easy avenue is the mobile phone. But disengagement does not always require external stimuli. You could just as well be staring into space, willing time to skip ahead to the next plot point. Everything that happens happens while waiting for something else.

Today I was at a conference where most of the attendees knew each other. Every lecture had you waiting for the break, naturally. Every break had you waiting for the next lecture, perhaps less naturally. Ramadan had me waiting for Eid. You could extricate this sentiment from 94:7 as Pickthall read it: “So when thou art relieved, still toil.” The exhortation never to be ‘done,’ so to speak, does resonate. Something Jeff says while shooting the alien movie in the last season of Community.    

  

Nothing ever happens

 

Since the start of the Ukraine war, ‘nothing ever happens’ has been a popular refrain used in memes online in a post-ironic reference to the complete failure of the ‘end of history’ theory. Fukuyama, of course, has long admitted a mistake on that front. ‘Nothing ever happens’ does seem to be the defining feature of my day-to-day. A quarter century of letting life just happen to me has brought me to a not disagreeable condition. A general feeling of unfulfillment, not uncommon amongst my generation, is little to complain about.

Every day feels like a slog, but we zoomed past the new year into March in the blink of an eye. Everything is fleeting. I choose deliberate obfuscation in my articulation frustration. Everything is in the undercurrent; at best, it invites questions. I am unconvinced this isn’t bad writing, just as well then that no one actually reads it.

I used to hate that quote ‘hell is other people’. I still hate it, but only because I think it is incomplete. Heaven is also other people. Everything is other people. Like the question about a tree falling in a forest without anyone to observe, I think there is little to be said for a life lived without other people. That is not to say that life is about performance. Perhaps it is performance, but it about more. Even as I do not seek an audience, I do take considerable care to chronicle. It is often in ways easily accessible for anyone who tries. Maybe it betrays the failings of deeply repressed urges of actually wanting to centre the self. It would not be without merit to suggest every post here is a step in that direction, with a deliberately easy way to get here hidden in plain sight.

Part of feeling unrealized as a person is thinking there is more to personhood than what you are voluntarily or involuntarily limiting yourself to. The bottlenecks are institutional; they are material. I am not sure what a rational reaction would be. It is almost in my interest to hurry the Sun up and down every day, and to ensure that nothing ever happens.

Valour

 

There is a sense of always running away. I think it is borne out of cowardice. I’m not sure where it comes from, but I’ve always known myself to be a coward. It’s not innate, of course. Nothing is innate. But it is ingrained. Choosing the path of least resistance is all I’ve been good for. It is almost an abuse of privilege to instrumentalize it almost exclusively in carving exits. A rare avenue where spending does not seem inherently excessive. Every room has a backdoor and I can avoid calling attention to myself.

This obsession with not calling attention to myself leads to me creating narratives. I am the narrator, ‘observing’ the human condition. It is my lot to take account, making sure not to influence the story. Despite what I say I want, this sounds not unlike a most degenerate version of being the protagonist. No one is in control of a story like the narrator. Invisibility only enhances their agency. The story does not take shape but for their will. For a story as creation, the narrator’s role is not unlike the creator’s. This characterization of my role here calls for self-criticism. Positioning myself as non-participating other – which I also used to try by being the banker in Monopoly – does not actually remove roles or responsibilities inherent to participation.

This is also just cope. What is a narrator without an audience? Was a story ever written that was not shared? What good is this refusal of reckoning when I am not unconvinced there might be a Day of Reckoning? A dear friend asked recently why we still persisted with fasting. I replied, half-jokingly, ‘so Eid will not be stolen valour’. Takbir?