BA and B.Com.

Programme

Core English Language

A -- ENGLISH LANGUAGE THROUGH LITERATURE

COURSE CONTENT FOR SEMESTERS III / IV

SUGGESTED READINGS

Unit 6 Understanding Life Narratives

Das Kamala ‘The Park Street Home’ My Story Kottayam: DC Books 2009
Singh Mayank Mayank Austen Soofi Selected extracts from ‘I Had Come Too Far’
Nobody Can Love You More Delhi: Penguin Books 2014
Bhattacharjee Kishalay ‘Back To Where I Never Belonged’ First Proof: The Penguin
Book of New Writing From India Delhi: Penguin Books India 2005
Issacson Walter Selected extracts from Steve Jobs New York: Simon and Schuster 2011

Unit 7 Exploring Poetry

Nair, Rukmini Bhaya ‘Gargi’s Silence’ Yellow Hibiscus: New and Selected Poems
Delhi: Penguin 2004
Nongkynrih, Kynpham Sing ‘Light-In-The-Night For Amanda’
Seth, Vikram ‘Part One’ The Golden Gate Faber and Faber 1999
Charara, Hayan ‘Usage’ Something Sinister Carnegie Mellon University Press 2016

Unit 8 Exploring Drama

Sarkar, Badal ‘Beyond the Land of Hattamala’ Beyond the Land of Hattamala and
Scandal in Fairyland Calcutta: Seagull Books 1992

Unit 9 Exploring Fiction - Novella

Cisneros, Sandra The House on Mango Street Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group,
2013

Unit 10 Writing your own academic essay / paper for the classroom

Patel Raj and Moore Jason ‘How the chicken nugget became the true symbol of our
era’ The Guardian, 8 May 2018
B. A. & B. COM. PROGRAMME

CORE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

General Course Statement

1. The course will retain streaming. The structure of three graded levels of English language
learning is required in a diverse central university like Delhi University to address the
differential learning levels of students and achieve the desired competence.

2. The existing English A, B, and C will be renamed as English Language through Literature,
English Fluency and English Proficiency respectively. This will remove any discriminatory,
hierarchical attributes in the existing nomenclature and refocus the pedagogic exercise on the
respective objectives of the three streams in an academically thorough and non-hierarchical
way.

3. The existing criteria for streaming was discussed thoroughly in the context of the almost
complete collapse of English B and English C classes across colleges. This structural collapse
has led to severely compromised language acquisition opportunities for BA & BCom
students. At present 98% of BA& BCom programme applicants are from boards where
English is offered as a subject in class XII. Currently in Delhi University, a student with
minimum pass marks in English in Class XII will do the same English course as a student
scoring above 90%. Such guaranteed variance in competences and standards in the classroom
is a huge pedagogic challenge that stalls the aim of achieving any tangible proficiency in the
language over two semesters.

In order to address this reality, which was further aggravated by the reduction in the language
teaching span in CBCS to two semesters, the committee concluded that it is imperative to
have additional streaming criteria (NOT eligibility or admission criteria) to benefit the
students in the classroom and in their careers. A hugely participative student feedback survey
was conducted online. Thousands of BA & BCom Delhi University students responded to the
detailed questionnaire and helped us to our conclusions.

Based on these findings and the consensus in our meetings the BA/BCom Programme Cluster
Subcommittee proposes the following:

As 98% of the BA & BCom Programme students have done English in class 12, streaming
will be now based on their Class XII marks in English. There will be three streams:

1. 80% and above: ENGLISH LANGUAGE THROUGH LITERATURE

2. 60% and above up to 80%: ENGLISH FLUENCY
3. Less than 60%: ENGLISH PROFICIENCY

170
 o We have retained the present Delhi University Rule of streaming students who have
done English up to Class X and Class VIII to ENGLISH FLUENCY and ENGLISH
PROFICIENCY respectively to take care of the 2% who may not have done English
up to Class XII
o We have provided a 10% relaxation in Class XII English marks while streaming for
students who have studied English Elective in class XII

This proposal is the most academically sound non-hierarchical and inclusive one we could
arrive at that successfully addresses the pedagogical and learning imperatives in English
language teaching.

The revised syllabus proposed here is in sync with the CBCS outline. Additionally, this
syllabus works out the specifics of language learning required to enable the students of Delhi
University in the process of language acquisition and proficiency, as it integrates critical
thinking, reading, writing, and speaking capabilities, without compartmentalising any one or
two as the expected focus or outcome of language study. For this purpose, a compiled list of
suggested readings collated by the Department of English Delhi University can be finalised .

The detailed syllabus with suggested readings, Teaching Plans, testing/evaluation pattern and
learning outcomes for two semesters under CBCS is as follows:

ENGLISH LANGUAGE THROUGH LITERATURE I & II

ENGLISH FLUENCY I & II
ENGLISH PROFICIENCY I & II

COURSE CONTENT FOR SEMESTERS III / IV

Unit 6
Understanding Life Narratives

Giving students the skills to document their own lives meaningfully; journals, memoirs, and
autobiographical writings can be excellent tools for personal reflection and growth,
therapeutic as well as a method for organising one‘s own thoughts in a fashion that helps one
live meaningfully

Reading sections from life narratives, biographies, autobiographies and diary entries
Writing a statement of purpose for university applications; CV/resume; daily/weekly journal
Speaking to your class to persuade them to do something public speech
Listening to public speeches like convocation addresses, political speeches, TED Talks to
trace structure of argument and worldview; to observe the use of description, persuasion, and
argument

Grammar/Vocabulary: Action Verbs

Active and Passive voice

171
Suggested Readings:

Das, Kamala. ‗The Park Street Home‘ My Story Kottayam: DC Books, 2009.

Singh, Mayank 'Mayank Austen Soofi'. Selected extracts from ‗I Had Come Too Far‘ Nobody
Can Love You More Delhi: Penguin Books, 2014.

Bhattacharjee, Kishalay. ‗Back To Where I Never Belonged‘ First Proof: The Penguin Book
of New Writing From India Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2005.

Issacson, Walter. Selected extracts from Steve Jobs New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011.

Unit 7
Exploring Poetry

Here, students are trained to use the techniques of poetry to write in poetic form; they
understand how the concept of beauty works through access to aesthetic forms; they learn
how to express the same thought in different ways and observe how form impacts meaning;
these skills can become tools for personal confidence in linguistic use

Reading: Using context to read effectively; identifying elements of poetics in different forms
of poetry prose poems / slam poetry
Writing slam poetry; writing a critical response to a poem
Listening: Reciting/performing poetry; listening to audio/video clips of poets reading their
poetry to appreciate the significance of pauses, rhythm etc

Grammar/Vocabulary: Denotation/Connotation

Suggested Readings:

Nair, Rukmini Bhaya. ‗Gargi‘s Silence‘ Yellow Hibiscus: New and Selected Poems Delhi:
Penguin, 2004.

Nongkynrih, Kynpham Sing. ‗Light-In-The-Night (For Amanda)‘

Seth,Vikram. ‗Part One‘ The Golden Gate London: Faber and Faber, 1999.

Charara, Hayan. ‗Usage‘ Something Sinister Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press,
2016.

Unit 8
Exploring Drama

To highlight the rhetorical possibilities of drama through an understanding of its form and
mechanics; students learn how to handle conflict, how to have meaningful conversations, and,
above all,learn how one‘s words and gestures impact others.
172
Reading a one-act/ longer play to understand the interaction of dramatic forms/elements and
social context
Writing a critical response to the dramatic text; writing the script for a skit/short play,
keeping in mind formal features like characterisation, plot development, stage directions, etc
Speaking: Students learn to use their voices and bodies to perform/enact skits in groups
Listening to a radio play to appreciate the aural elements of drama

Grammar/Vocabulary: Direct/ Indirect Speech

Phrases and Idioms
Tone and Register

Suggested Readings:

Sarkar, Badal. ‗Beyond the Land of Hattamala‘ Beyond the Land of Hattamala and Scandal
in Fairyland Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1992.

Unit 9
Exploring Fiction - Novella

Narrative texts can be seen as a tool for exploring reality including contests of what should be
accepted as real Students will learn how to write narrative and through narrative to examine
their own responses to issues confronting them

Read a longer piece of fiction to discern narrative voice, narrative structure,character

development, while locating the text in its socio-historical context
Write your own short story/novella; speculative fiction can be particularly useful as young
people are often in positions of contest with the social reality afforded to them; read and
review short stories/novellas/novels
Speak: Initiate discussion about a novella, drawing upon the critical reading skills developed
by students in the previous semester; focus will be on broadening their repertoire of reading:
texts chosen and responded to for personal pleasure
Listen to audio clips/ videos of writers talking about what writing means to them; audio clips
of books being read aloud to enable discussion of reading styles pauses punctuation etc

Grammar/Vocabulary: Punctuation pauses manner of reading/speaking/crafting complex

sentences

Suggested Reading:

Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing
Group, 2013.

Unit 10
Writing your own academic essay / paper for the classroom

173
Using language skills learned over the course, students are to create academic documents such
as term papers, reports and assignments They should examine and revisit earlier such
submissions to learn how to improve and edit these better; to learn to identify consult and cite
the right sources to avoid plagiarism; to recognise and rectify bias in their own writing: biases
such as those of class/caste/race/gender/sexuality/religion can be discussed in class
Writing, revising and formatting drafts of essays analysing the coherence of arguments;
perspectives on a topic; balance of presentation; students can testtheir ability to choose
between various forms of information/fact/opinion; they can create questionnaires, conducting
surveys; edit and create bibliographies and checklists
Speaking: Students should be able to tell the class what their core idea is in the essay / paper,
and why they have chosen a particular topic or idea; they should be able to debate various
points of view on the same topic
Listening to others views and being able to figure out which arguments are key and why;
examining ideology and location of speakers

Grammar/Vocabulary: Paragraphs
Topic sentences and transitions

Suggested Readings:

Patel, Raj and Moore, Jason W. ‗How the chicken nugget became the true symbol of our era‘
The Guardian, 8 May 2018
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/08/how-the-chicken-nugget-became-the-true-
symbol-of-our-era Accessed 4 June 2018

Latest editions of the MLA and APA style sheets

TESTING AND EVALUATION

Internal Assessment: Of 20 marks, 10 marks are to be allocated for assessment of reading
and writing assignmentsand 10 marks for assessment of speaking and listening test

Semester III/ IV Final Examination 75 marks

Reading and Writing skills:

o Unseen comprehension passage 750 words to test reading comprehension critical
thinking and vocabulary skills 15 marks
o Questions related to suggested literary texts: to test awareness of literary form and
context through comprehension testing 2 x 15 = 30 marks
o Questions testing composition skills: essay statement-of-purpose essay /
argumentative / personal / descriptive ; diary/journal; questionnaire; dramatise
story/write short scene etc2 x 10 = 20 marks
o Question testing academic writing formats via exercise of correcting citation or
bibliographical entry 5 marks

Grammar: Different grammar topics to be tested via exercise of editing/rewriting a given

passage 5 marks

174
 2
The Park Street Home

In the year 1928 when my father got married, Mahatma Gandhi’s influence was at its highest.
The simplicity that he preached appealed to the middle classes. My father soon after the
betrothal stipulated firmly that his wife was not to wear anything but Khaddar and preferably
white or off-white.
After the wedding he made her remove all the gold ornaments from her person, all except
the ‘mangalsutra’. To her it must have seemed like taking to widow’s weeds, but she did not
protest. She was mortally afraid of the dark stranger who had come forward to take her out of
the village and its security. She was afraid of her father and afraid of her uncle, the two men
who plotted and conspired to bring for the first time into the family a bridegroom who neither
belonged to any royal family nor was a Brahmin.
The Nalapat family’s financial position at that time was precarious. All the jewellery had
been sold for fighting off litigation and bankruptcy. My father was not an idle landlord. He
worked for his living in Calcutta. This was a point in his favour.
When the young couple left for Calcutta my grandmother went along with them to get
them settled. My mother did not fall in love with my father. They were dissimilar and
horribly mismated. But my mother’s timidity helped to create an illusion of domestic
harmony which satisfied the relatives and friends. Out of such an arid union were born the
first two children, my brother and I, bearing the burden of a swarthy skin and ordinary
features.
We must have disappointed our parents a great deal. They did not tell us so, but in every
gesture and in every word it was evident. It was evident on the days when my father roared at
us and struggled to make us drink the monthly purgative of pure castor oil. This used to be
one of our childhood nightmares, the ordeal of being woken out of sleep before dawn to have
the ounce-glass thrust into our mouths and rough hands holding our lips closed so that we
swallowed the stuff and sank back on our pillows with tears of humiliation streaming from
our eyes...
Gradually our instincts told us to keep away from the limelight, to hide in the vicinity of
the kitchen where we could hold together the tatters of our self-respect and talk to the
scavenger or the gardener who brought for the brass flower vases of our drawing room
bunches of marigolds or asters every morning, plucking them from the old European
cemetery behind our house.
We lived on the top floor of the repair-yard of the motor car company. One had to climb
thirty-six steps to reach our flat. Midway, there was to the right an opening which led on to
the servants’ quarters where night and day a faucet leaked noisily, sadly. There was a stench
of urine which made one pause precisely on that step of the staircase wondering where it
came from.
But upstairs in the drawing room where visitors came so rarely there was the smell of
starch and flowers. We had white Khaddar curtains that were taken down and changed every
fortnight. My brother and I on holidays sat near the full-sized windows looking out and at
times dangling some rubber toy on a string to intrigue the passers-by. If someone tugged at
the string, we pulled it up in a hurry and hid in the bedroom fearing deliciously that he may
come up to grab us. It was an enthralling pastime.
We had only one good friend, just one friend who liked to touch our hands and talk to us

6
about life in general. This was a burly gent named Menon who worked as the Stores Manager
of the Motor Car company. When our mother slept in the warm afternoons we slipped out of
the house to visit him while he sat at his table ordering long tumblers of frothy tea which he
drank blowing on it and wetting his handle-bar moustache.
At that time there was a Malayali family who were friendly with ours. They had two sons
and the youngest of them, a puny, pale child had a doll’s house which he once showed off
when we visited him. Of this I spoke to our friend Menon and perhaps he felt moved, for in a
month’s time he brought for me a large doll’s house complete with dainty furniture which he
had whittled all by himself. This was placed on the round table which had the brass top, and
at night when the lights were switched on, it shone in all its varnished glory like a Taj Mahal.
The friend’s house was a hut compared to ours. Off and on we ran into the drawing room to
take just another peek into the dining room, or to smell the red paint of the roof.
When the western windows of the drawing room were opened the corrugated roof of the
factory came into view. On this, noisily pattered the feet of the monkeys who lived on the
trees of the cemetery. Occasionally one of them would creep into our house and steal a
coconut or a loaf of bread from the kitchen. One day while the cook was shouting obscenities
at the thieving ape the scavenger said, “Thakur, don’t speak so to any monkey. He may be
Lord Hanuman himself, come to test your devotion.”
The cook was not at all religious. He made fun of all the Hindu Gods, hurting the
sentiments of the occasional maid and the scavenger. One day the scavenger said that the
cook ought to go to Vilayat and settle down there, he was such a Saheb. “Yes, I will,” said
the cook. “Mrs Ross, the white Memsaheb will take me to England as her cook if I tell her
than I am willing to leave this country.” The scavenger gave a sceptical smile. Ram Ram, he
muttered, drinking tea in an enamel mug that was kept aside for him...

7
 ●
● E X T R A C T ●
●

T I had come too far

ake Sushma. No single My lips were swollen and discoloured
cataclysmic event changed then—I had to go to a doctor. He said I
the progression of her life. must use only companywali lipstick.’
One day led to another.
The years rolled by. Old At 3 a.m., there is no certainty of
acquaintances were left ● customers for middle-aged Sushma.
behind, new friends made. ‘Sometimes I get two. Sometimes four.
Sometimes none.’ She makes about
Youth ended and middle age Nobody Can Love you More – Life in Delhi’s Red Rs 5000 a month. ‘Out of the 120
began. She put on weight. Disa-
ppointments came, so did a few Light District rupees I make from each customer,
delights. Sushma is not extraordinary. I give 70 rupees to Bhayya.’ Bhayya,
She shivers in winter and catches fevers By Mayank Austen Soofi whom I know as Sabir Bhai, runs the
during the change of seasons. She buys kotha. ‘That sum includes the rent, and
vegetables in the evening and smokes Viking / Penguin, New Delhi, 2012, 227 pp., Rs 399 (HB) the bill for water and electricity. I don’t
502 Pataka Beedi while cooking. She ISBN 978-0-670-08414-2 have to worry about these details once
makes love and makes money. I’ve paid my share.’ Sushma’s daily
Sushma is forty-six or forty-seven; expenses add up to about 80 rupees.
she isn’t sure. She talks to me in Hindi, ‘Look, in the morning before calling it
but she says she is a south Indian from
M AyA N K AuSTEN SOOFI a day, I have chai outside from a stall
Bangalore. ‘Sushma’ is a Hindu name for 7 rupees, and biskut and tambakoo
but she is a Muslim. ‘My real name...’ for 3 rupees. In the afternoon, I go to
she says. We are sitting in a dimly lit Sushma’s neck. It has a key that goes her face. She looked lovely when she Shahganj to buy vegetables. Yesterday I
room in kotha number teen sau (300). deep down into her cleavage. ‘People dressed in saris in light yellow shades. spent 30 rupees on potatoes, tomatoes,
It is late November. She is wrapped in a ask me what this is. I tell them it’s She never put on much make-up. I’ve garlic, ginger, onions, coriander leaves
shawl. The sky is grey. a magic chabhi to ward off evil.’ She taken after her.’ and green chillies. And then every day
‘What will you do with my real pauses for effect. ‘But that’s a joke,’ Early in the morning, while getting you discover that the cooking oil or
name?’ she asks. I persist. ‘Shireen,’ she laughs. ‘Actually it’s the key to ready to attract customers, Sushma something else has finished. A small
she says. A beautiful name but she my trunk. I’m sure to lose it if I keep lines her eyes with kajal. Like a married salt packet comes for 13 rupees!’
doesn’t know what it means. ‘Shireen’ it anywhere else.’ The trunk is kept woman, she puts on a red Shilpa bindi Sushma has a savings account at the
is of Persian origin, meaning ‘sweet’. If on the kotha’s roof, under a tin shed on her forehead. Her cheeks are patted State Bank of India. When I ask how
I try to imagine a Shireen, I see a slim which is Sushma’s home. In a manner down with a smidgen of Fair & Lovely much money she has in there, she is
Parsi woman with a fair complexion. of speaking, the trunk is her wardrobe, cream. Since it is winter, Sushma evasive.
A woman of finely embroidered gara packed with 23 salwar suits and a dozen smoothes the dryness of the skin with ‘Maybe two lakhs?’ I say.
saris, Shireen would have been educated saris. ‘I’m not used to saris. It is difficult Pond’s cold cream. The final addition is ‘Ah, listen to you! If I had that much,
in a private school in Ooty. She would to walk down the stairs when I’m the light Coca-Cola-coloured Pond’s would I be here?’ she laughs.
have a summer house in London and an wearingone. Now when I think of it, lipstick. ‘Look at my lips.’ They are
apartment in south Bombay. She would Mummy wore only saris. In the south, dark brown, almost black. ‘Four years What does a man find in Sushma
be somebody who had been born into you don’t see married women in salwar ago I used a cheap lipstick. I was trying that he would spend his money to sleep
an old-money family, and married into suits. Mummy died when I was in the to save money and look what that did with her? I search for clues. The grey
another old-money family. ‘Shireen’ seventh standard. I haven’t forgotten to my lips. It seems sort of okay now. strands of her hair are dyed orange
doesn’t suit the person of Sushma. She with henna. Her eyebrows are sparse,
is a sex worker. Her rate is 150 rupees. almost absent. Her eyes have dark
After bargaining, it can come down to shadows underneath them. The bridge
120 rupees. A smart customer can bring of her nose is almost flat; the nostrils
it down further to 100 rupees. are spread wide. Faint lines of ageing
‘I never give out my real name. No have begun to map her forehead, the
woman here ever does. Nobody knows area beneath her eyes and her jowls. A
our real names except perhaps the small circle, almost like a dot but too
kotha malik. If somebody asks, we give large not to be noticed, is tattooed on
some fictitious name. You never know her left cheek.
...just in case something happens. What ‘A friend made it with a tattoo
if word about you reaches your family machine. It’s a reminder of her. Then
... they don’t know what we do, you I was very fair, very healthy. Now I’ve
know.’ aged. When you are young, it is a very
Sushma’s work begins a few hours different thing.’
after midnight. ‘I don’t like standing ‘A friend? Who was she?’ I ask.
outside during the day. It’s not nice. ‘She had this strange name, Chhovi.
Of course, if a customer climbs up the She was from Bengal. She returned to
stairs, say, right now, and asks for me, her village. I never heard from her after
I won’t refuse.’ Otherwise, at 3 every that. It’s been some fifteen years.’
morning Sushma walks down the 27 ‘But Sushma, could she be just any
stairs from the kotha on the second friend? You see her mark every morning
floor to the covered walkway outside when you look in the mirror. She must
and there she stays till 7 a.m., looking have been special.’
for men. ‘We were then living in teen sau
During these early morning hours, unchaas number (349). She came there
GB Road is visited by people whose first. Her son, Raju, was five. She was...
jobs entail late-night shifts. Done nice. She never squabbled like other
with their work, these men – most are women, never spoke anything bad of
immigrants working as dhaba waiters, other people. She was always happy.’
auto drivers, daily-wage labourers ‘She was your close friend. Was there
and rickshaw pullers – come to find anything – anything special – that she
solace in the flesh of women. ‘In the did for you, which still means a lot to
morning, once I’m finished, I have chai you? Some favour, some help that you
in Shahganj, behind the kotha, and then remember?’
I go up and sleep.’ ‘Nothing like that. We shared the
At night, Sushma goes to sleep by same room. We cooked together. When
10. ‘Fatima didi wakes me up at 2.30 in I was ill, she took me to the doctor. I
the morning. She has chai ready for me. did the same for her. I think we both
I wash, get ready and go down.’ Sushma became such good friends because we
does not dress in shining costumes. were so similar. I too never fight with
‘No chamak dhamak clothes. In the anyone.’
morning when I’m getting ready to go ‘Do you have a photograph of her?’
MAYANK AUSTEN SOOFI

down, I put on a simple salwar suit. I ‘No, there is nothing left of her
believe that if you have to get a client, except in my head. Soofi, I tell you, it is
you will get him. Yes, but I make sure so strange to think of old times.’
that my dress is clean.’ ‘How did Chhovi look?’
... ‘She was not very beautiful. She
A thick black thread is slung around was tall ... now let me see ... big eyes,

BIBLIO : MAy - JuNE 2013

15
 black eyes ... long hair, hmm ... Bengali I was in Meerut for a few days when course. Occasionally, passengers crane women then spill it all out. So, you
women always have long hair. She had she left for home. When I returned, I their heads upwards curiously. In many see, they will tell everything about
a round face. She was fair but not very thought she had gone to meet her folks kothas, women stand on the balconies themselves to the police, who in a way
fair. She usually wore salwar suits. She and would be back in a few weeks. That and gesture to the men on the road. are their enemy, but not to the people
made good fish ... with gravy ... her is what she had done earlier. But fifteen ... with whom they live.’
potato sabzi was also good. years have passed since then.’ ‘The same set of women cannot If this is true, then whatever Sushma
‘She came from Kolkata. Poor ‘And there has been no word from live together in the same kotha for has told me so far could be just a
woman. She was from a very poor family. her?’ long,’ says Sabir Bhai. ‘Usually they story. Perhaps her real name is not
Her husband left her. I think he was ‘No, not even one letter ... And end up fighting over their livelihood. Shireen. Perhaps she is not really from
not a good man. But she did not tell me in those times there were no mobile After all, they are competing for the Bangalore. She speaks Hindi so well. Is
much. And I didn’t ask her. Maybe he phones. It hurts when you make same customers. In such cases, one of she actually a north Indian?
was a good man ... who knows? Anyway, friends and they go away. When two them leaves for another kotha. Some
what usually happens to a poor man’s people live together and then they women, I ask them to leave. If they I’m walking up to Sushma’s place
wife? Either the man drinks too much, separate ... but yahan ki dosti, yahin pe are discourteous to the customers or if on the roof of the kotha. The stairs
or beats his woman, or both. What can khatam. A friendship that starts in this they drink too much and get abusive. are steep, which is true of most kothas
the woman do? Get beaten all her life? place always ends in this place. That is Sometimes, I might rent out space to in GB Road, and the stairway is unlit.
You have to give food to your children, a fact.’ a woman who seems decent but one On the first landing of teen sau number
right? Somebody from Chhovi’s village ‘But you still remember Chhovi.’ who on getting a rich client downstairs there is a gallery lined with a row of
must have got her here.’ ‘Wherever she is right now, she must might take him to some other kotha, cell-like rooms. Their doors are closed.
‘And she came willingly? Did she also be thinking of me sometimes. Of where she knows that the kotha malik To the right of the gallery is a washbasin.
know where he was taking her? Did he that I’m sure.’ won’t mind if she assaults and robs that Cardboard boxes of lubricated condoms
deceive her?’ client, as long as the malik gets a share are piled up in a ventilator’s niche,
‘There are people who deceive I’m sitting on the kotha balcony of the loot. That is the most dangerous beside the stairway. Another flight of
women into this dhandha, this business. and soaking in the winter sun with sort of woman, for then you might get stairs, and I’m on the roof. To suddenly
But many come willingly. The man Sabir Bhai. How do I describe him? into a police case.’ step into its openness is startling. The
must have told her, “Look, this is what The owner of the building is somebody ‘But Sushma seems to be a nice day’s blinding light shocks the eye that
you would have to do. If you have no else, someone who does not live in GB woman.’ had grown used to the darkness of the
problem, then come with me ...”’ Road. But Sabir Bhai is the master of ‘Come on, Soofi Bhai, you can’t kotha. It is as if I’m on a hilltop. After
‘But Sushma, you know, there’s a the house, the kotha malik. His writ trust anybody in GB Road. Not even the heavy mustiness of the kotha, the
red light area in Kolkata too. Chhovi runs in the kotha. He decides which your own woman. I have no faith in air here feels thinner.
could have gone to the Sonagachi red woman stays, and which woman has to Sushma. As long as she is getting along ...
light district there. Why come so far to be expelled. When the customer gives here, it is fine. The truth is that in this Sushma is not there. Her room has
Delhi?’ Rs 120 to Sushma, more than half goes line, a husband never trusts his wife, no walls. It is simply a small area covered
‘The right thing is to do the dhandha to Sabir Bhai. Sushma calls him brother. and a wife never trusts her husband. by a tin roof. I sit down on a wooden
far from home. If you are operating in I ask him about Sushma. What kind of This is the custom. They live together, cot. More than half of it is taken up by
the same city where you have grown up person is she? but they are wary of each other.’ a floppy mattress lying messily in folds.
and where your family lives, then your ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ... Once it must have had stripes of colour
neighbours will find out sooner or later. ‘But she has been living in your ‘Yes, Sushma has been living with us but now they are faded. The mattress is
People will object. They will say bad kotha for five years.’ for five years but do I know where she stained with bird droppings and some
things about you. You won’t be able to ‘Soofi Bhai, a kotha is like a zoo. is from or who her man is, if she has a portions have yellowed with layers of
walk with your head up. No one will Today the bird is sitting on this branch. man. I know nothing about her. She has dust. A dark blue woollen dhurrie lies
give you respect.’ Tomorrow it will fly to another branch. not even shared her address. If you ask folded. On the adjacent cot is a bundle
‘And this life in GB Road was better You cannot trust the women here. her, she’ll tell you a lie. All the women of cotton mats packed in a clean yellow
for Chhovi?’ They keep moving from one kotha to in GB Road are like that. They never tell bed-sheet. Beside it is a plastic mug
‘Her husband had left her. She did another.’ you where their home is. They never containing a toothbrush, Close-Up
not have to worry about him. She I look down on GB Road. Traffic is give any address or phone number. toothpaste, a hairbrush and a plastic
earned her own money. Saved some of sluggish. It is a two-way avenue. The lane They think disclosing the address soap case.
it. And then she returned home. Today going towards Ajmeri Gate is thick with would be risky. Somebody could then The shed has a jute rope stretched
her son must be a grown-up man. He autos, bullock carts, rickshaws, cars, get in touch with their families who are across its length. A threadbare black
must be earning for her. She must have and pull-carts drawn by thin labourers usually ignorant about the exact nature petticoat is hanging on it, along with
built her own house, left this line and in dhotis. The other lane is freer, with of their job. But, you know, when there a blue salwar kurta and a white bra.
started her own business, perhaps.’ rickshaws moving smoothly down its is a raid and the police arrest them, the Below the cot I’m sitting on are two
plastic jars. One is half-filled with
rice. The other with salt. There are
other things on the floor: a stove,
three aluminium bowls, a pressure
cooker and a stack of plastic plates.
A plastic basket filled with tomatoes,
onions, green chillies and garlic sprigs
is hanging by a rope tied from the roof
of the shed. Beyond the tin shed, there
is a stone grinder, used for mashing
onions and making chutneys, against
the wall. Two buckets lie upside down
beside a washbasin built at the back of
the kotha’s roof. The wall there blocks
the view of the Jama Masjid, which is
just a dozen roofs away. There is a clay
water-pitcher on the balustrade. Crows
and pigeons come down, take a dip
and fly away. Flower pots are arranged
across the length of the roof. Half are
planted with chameli flowers; the rest
are blooming blue buds of sadabahar.
Two of these pots are broken. Sushma
enters.
‘It’s getting cold now,’ she says. ‘Will
you have food?’
‘Depends on what you are cooking.’
‘I’ll cook whatever you want. Egg
curry?’
‘No. But what oil do you use for
cooking?’
MAYANK AUSTEN SOOFI

‘Mustard oil. I’m used to mustard oil.

At home, we cooked food in refined.
But you don’t get pure refined here.’
‘You have arhar dal?’
‘I can make that. I also have last
night’s baingan bhaji.’

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16
 ‘I want the dal, just boiled... ’ ‘Why talk about her...no point... ’ return home. I worked in that kotha for ‘GB Road! Why?’
‘Then it’ll be bland; it will have no ‘I want to know.’ a few months and then I became free. I ‘I’ll spend the night there.’
taste. At least let me fry some onions ‘Well, there was a man living nearby started operating on my own.’ ‘Ah, good for you.’
and green chillies.’ ...Delhi...he was a family friend. He ‘Which means that when you were Perhaps she thinks I am going there
‘I like the taste of just arhar. You can could see I was unhappy. I thought that working independently, you could for sex.
add the fried stuff to your portion.’ the job would be something to do with choose to refuse a man if you didn’t I want to be with Sushma when she
‘I’ll cook some rice.’ washing clothes or being a servant... like him?’ goes down to the corridor at 3 in the
‘Of course... Sushma, I want to ask and I wanted to get away from my ‘There is no question of like and morning to solicit customers. Once
you something.’ stepmother, so one day I left the house dislike in this line. The customer just she gets a man, she takes him upstairs
‘You’ll need a spoon?’ and went with him to Delhi. needs to have the money to pay. You to the cell Sabir Bhai has allotted to her
‘Yes. Sushma, tell me...how did you ‘You didn’t tell your father?’ don’t care whether he is fat or black for work. Later, she comes down again
enter the dhandha?’ ‘No. I still can’t believe you want or old. I actually thought that I would to wait for more men. I want to see
‘Leave it, Soofi. Why talk of the the dal just boiled.’ earn a good amount of money and then how Sushma conducts herself on the
past? You will have to get the spoon ‘Of course, add some salt. And return home and live with my brothers street. How does she look after putting
from Bhayya’s kitchen downstairs.’ maybe you can chop one tomato for in a separate house.’ on her make-up? How easily does she
‘Tell me, please. I want to know.’ me.’ ‘Did you return?’ get customers?
‘I had no choice. After Mummy died, ‘Raw? You don’t want me to fry it?’ ‘...Papa refused to see me.’ How many men does she get in
the atmosphere at home was not good. ‘No, just like this...when you reached ‘Did you tell him what you had those four hours? How long does each
Papa wasn’t good. He married a new Delhi, where did you go first?’ started doing?’ appointment last? What does she do
woman. You know what stepmothers ‘GB Road...here ...I don’t remember ‘No. But these things are difficult while waiting for men to come to her?
are like. She would incite Papa to scold the kotha number.’ to hide. You know how things are. If a What does she talk about during the
me and my brothers. Every day there ‘Did you realize what kind of a place girl leaves her home even for a night, all wait? I want to know all these things.
would be beatings. She hated us. this was?’ honour is lost.
‘We had an aunt who was living with ‘Not for the first two days...but then See, the dal is ready.’ It is about 11 o’clock. Sushma is
us. She took good care of us after our ...I don’t know...and then they forced ‘But Sushma... ’ sleeping...
mother died. Our stepmother started me into this. ‘Leave it, Soofi. Enough. I don’t After setting my alarm for 3, I lie
fighting with her too. Papa was always ‘It dawned gradually that this was a want to remember old things.’ down to read a short-story collection.
angry with us. He would side with her. red light area. First I was just confused. ‘Are you crying?’ My bed is made in the guest room,
Our stepmother’s lie was always the Then I grew doubtful when the kotha ‘Don’t be silly. It’s the onions...now originally a storeroom on one side
truth, but whatever we had to say was malik started telling me that I would this is life. It started somewhere else of the veranda. The women have laid
always considered a lie, always.’ have to do this kind of work. but here in GB Road it will end.’ down their mattresses on the floor of
‘Why are you not putting the lid on ‘I was told I would have to talk to ... the veranda and in an inside room that
the cooker? Just two whistles and the men, and I would have to do all that, opens on to the kotha’s balcony. Sabir
dal will be ready. Won’t take more than you know, which a woman does with a It is evening. I’m at a friend’s place Bhai, who has a separate room with a
ten minutes.’ man after marriage.’ in Nizamuddin East. I’m tired but there TV and a single cot, is standing by the
‘I cook this way. See the froth rising? Sushma laughs. is a long night ahead. guest room door chatting with me. This
Now I’ll remove it.’ ‘I initially refused, but then I had no ‘So, what are you doing tonight?’ she is the first time I am staying the night
‘Your stepmother was not a good choice.’ asks, as we eat dinner. She has cooked in GB Road and I am a little nervous.
woman—still, what did it have to do ‘Why are you saying that?’ pasta in white sauce. There is wine. ‘Are the doors open throughout the
with you joining the dhandha?’ ‘I had come too far. I could not ‘I’ll be going to GB Road.’ night?’ I ask Sabir Bhai.

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 ‘Sushma and Fatima have to work ‘There is no question of wrapped around her. The sun has set,
at night so we close them only in the leaving behind streaks of orange and
morning,’ he says. like and dislike in this line. pink in the sky. Sushma does not know
‘But Sabir Bhai, isn’t it scary? The The customer just needs to I’m here. She is talking on a mobile
door remains open. Anybody can come phone. Something is cooking on the
in . . . what if he is a criminal?’ have the money to pay. you stove. I sit down on the bed. I have a
‘Soofi Bhai, this is the risk we have to don’t care whether he is fat bag that I discreetly keep under the
take. We have no choice. Sometimes bad bed. A few minutes pass.
characters do come. That is why, just in or black or old. I actually Who is she talking to? I can hear
case there is any trouble, I stay awake thought that I would earn her saying ‘bhabhi’, a term to address
through the night. I go to sleep at eight a brother’s wife. Sushma had told me
in the morning. You know, I’ve had bad a good amount of money that she was not in touch with her
experiences in the past. Sometimes you and then return home and family. Then who is this bhabhi? I think
get a customer who shouts bad words,
or brandishes a knife or a pistol, or
live with my brothers in a of Sabir Bhai’s words. Could I trust this
woman? Of the stories she had told me,
smashes a beer bottle against the wall. separate house.’ how many were true?
Once a drunkard tried to hit me on the ‘Soofi, it is you,’ Sushma turns
head. But we cannot close the door.’ ‘Did you return?’ around. ‘When did you come? I’m
... ‘...Papa refused to see me.’ making bathua saag. Stay and have
some.’ She tucks the cellphone in her
It is 5.30 in the morning. I hadn’t ‘Did you tell him what you had started doing?’ cleavage.
heard the alarm. Everyone is sleeping ‘Who was on the phone?’
but there is light in Sabir Bhai’s room. I ‘No. But these things are difficult to hide. you know ‘A friend.’
step out of the guest room and silently how things are. If a girl leaves her home even for a ‘You call her bhabhi?’
walk down the stairs. ‘Soofi,’ Sushma ‘Yes. She lives in Meerut. She is my
greets me, in a cheery long-time-no-see night, all honour is lost. landlord’s wife. We are good friends.
kind of tone. She is sitting down on a ‘But Sushma... ’ After coming to Delhi, I stayed in GB
large stone, on which she has placed Road for two or three years. There
a shawl wrapped in a polythene bag. ‘Leave it, Soofi. Enough. I don’t want to remember are many women here who have also
Fatima has a similarly cushioned seat. worked in Meerut. The red light area
They have placed themselves on either old things.’ there is in Kabadi Bazaar. I lived there
side of the door. It is freezing. For the ‘Are you crying?’ for many years.’
first time I see GB Road bare of traffic. ‘So this landlady too is in this
The corridor is empty, save for a few ‘Don’t be silly. It’s the onions...now this is life. dhandha?’
groups of women huddled together in
front of different kothas. At irregular
It started somewhere else but here in GB Road it ‘No, they live in Gudri Bazaar. All
my belongings are there.
intervals, the long boom of rail engines will end.’ Bed, table, clothes, lamps . . .’
pierces the silence. ‘Will you take me there some day?’
Towards the pillars, where the ‘No. I can’t take men there. They
corridor gives way to a drain that skirts where are you going? Come, just listen, doctor said one of her kidneys had gave me the room on that condition.
the road, orange sparks die out in man. Hey.’ disintegrated. As Sumaira sat blank- Besides, Gudri Bazaar is a dangerous
freshly burnt wood. ‘I lit the fire at 4,’ The man looks at her. ‘Shh, come.’ eyed by my side, Sabir Bhai said she area. I will never let you go there. It is
Sushma says. Another man appears. Fatima says, did not have long to live. While sipping full of Muslims.’
‘This is not cold. Wait for December ‘Aa, aa, sun toh. Listen.’ the milky tea, I want to hold her hands. ‘You are saying that as if you aren’t
and it will be so foggy that you won’t Neither of them stops. But I cannot bring myself to touch her. one!’
be able to see anything on the road,’ I’m worried. Sushma must get a Her face looks greasy, her clothes are ‘People there are quick to get into
says Fatima. customer... unwashed, her nails are dark green with fights. Very dangerous place. But I like
‘Even then you sit here from 3 to An autorickshaw is coming down dirt and she smells as if she hasn’t taken that room. It has been mine for twelve
7?’ from Ajmeri Gate. Sushma shouts, a bath for days. years. Bhabhi and her children have
‘Yes,’ says Sushma. ‘I don’t know ‘Oye auto. Auto will bring my man. Suddenly, I feel revolted. By Sumaira, grown close to me.’
what I’ll do. I haven’t got even one Come.’ The auto keeps going and soon by the sickly sweet milky chai, by all ...‘Soofi, look at you. Your hair is
customer.’ we lose sight of it... the people in GB Road. greying. You must marry before it is
‘The bloody police were scaring off ‘It is the last day of the month,’ says ‘I must leave now,’ I say, standing too late.’
the clients,’ says Fatima. Sushma. ‘People will get their wages by up. ‘I’ll come tonight, Sushma.’ ‘You never married.’
‘Bloody motherfuckers! They don’t the second or the third... ’ ... ‘Why marry in this line of work?’
say anything when other women call ‘Then they will have money to spend The strains of a bhajan drift from
out to clients during the day. But when here,’ says Fatima. I’m drinking red wine. A French some nearby temple.
it was my time, they sat up here like ‘By the 15th all their money will be designer friend is returning to her ‘You should marry. Then you will
bastards,’ says Sushma, who utters the gone,’ says Sushma. country. Her friends are hosting a have children and they will earn for
swear words so casually that they don’t ‘Hey, look,’ I exclaim, spotting three farewell party for her in an apartment you when you are old. I had one, but he
sound like expletives. She is wearing a young men in jackets and jeans. in Sujan Singh Park. I don’t know died within a month. I used to call him
pale-pink salwar suit with a cream shawl. ‘Na re, they won’t come. They have anyone here except the French friend, Bablu. He would have been 15.’
She has put on brown lipstick. Since it spent the night here and are now going so I’m sitting by myself on one of the A railway engine gives a long
is dark, I can’t see her face clearly, but home,’ Sushma says. sofas and sipping wine, the name of whistle.
she does not look like the cliché of an ‘How do you know?’ I ask. which I cannot pronounce. The guests ‘Soofi, come at noon some day and I
over-made-up prostitute. She could ‘Didn’t you hear them talking about look very confident and all seem to be will put mehndi and chai patti paste on
pass for a mother of teenagers getting money?’ Sushma says. ‘Who spent how successful people. There is a former your hair. It will bring some shine.’
ready for an evening outing to India much on what.’ cabinet minister, two senior journalists, I go to the balustrade and look for
Gate. The first light of morning begins to a fashion designer, an ayurveda the temple; the bhajan’s echoing hum is
As a man approaches, I go and sit by show. A boy in a red jacket is sweeping entrepreneur, a hotelier, a painter. The spreading, drowning out all the sounds
the dying fire, warming my hands. He is the corridor, raising clouds of dust. director of an art gallery is slouching on of the evening, including that of the
carrying a bag on his shoulders. Sushma Sushma walks down the walkway and the other sofa. The fiancée of a young traffic. In the gathering darkness the
rushes to him, saying, ‘Aa, aa, aaja.’ He turns left into a lane. After ten minutes politician is standing beside her mother, buildings have been reduced to their
keeps walking. ‘Come on man, stop, she returns carrying pieces of discarded a culture tsarina of her time. A crowd edges. It is difficult to spot the temple
stop for just a minute. Look, just stop wooden furniture. has gathered around a professor of but it seems very near. Now the temple
man.’ The man keeps walking. ‘Got it in front of Barkat’s tea stall. erotica, who is expounding on symbols bells begin to ring. Allah hu Akbar. The
If the man had agreed to go upstairs He is making the tea. Call Sumaira. She in eighth-century Indian art. A white muezzin is calling for the maghrib,
with Sushma, I wonder, after how many will bring three glasses for us.’ Sumaira, woman is warming her hands by the or evening, prayers from a mosque. I
minutes would they have returned? another woman in the kotha, has been fireside. turn and walk towards Sushma. She is
And how quickly would Sushma so ill for the past few years that she is I had promised Sushma I would washing rice. Suddenly remembering, I
have got ready again? Would she have no longer able to sleep with customers. sit with her tonight. But the wine turn to the bed, pick up my bag and take
cleaned herself? Does she take a bath To make herself useful, she does menial makes me drowsy. The people here out a white cashmere shawl. It belonged
each time she entertains a client? Does jobs for everyone else, like getting are well-dressed and clean. Uniformed to my mother. I walk behind Sushma
she use condoms? I’m curious but I bidis, beer, milk, vegetables or the chai servants are laying out the dinner. Silver and wrap it around her shoulders.
cannot ask her these questions. I would which she is being summoned to bring cutlery has been placed on the table. She gently pats my hand.
be uncomfortable if someone showed for us. I’ll go to GB Road tomorrow.
n
curiosity about my sex life. ... I come out on to the roof. Sushma is
We see a young man is coming. A few days ago Sabir Bhai had standing against the balustrade. She is Excerpted with permission from Penguin
Sushma goes out into the road. ‘Hey, showed me an X-ray of Sumaira’s. The in a light-blue salwar suit with a shawl Books India.

BIBLIO : MAy - JuNE 2013

18
 CHAPTER FOUR

ATARI AND INDIA

Zen and the Art of Game Design

Atari

In February 1974, after eighteen months of hanging around Reed, Jobs decided to move back to
his parents’ home in Los Altos and look for a job. It was not a difficult search. At peak times
during the 1970s, the classified section of the San Jose Mercury carried up to sixty pages of
technology help-wanted ads. One of those caught Jobs’s eye. “Have fun, make money,” it said.
That day Jobs walked into the lobby of the video game manufacturer Atari and told the personnel
director, who was startled by his unkempt hair and attire, that he wouldn’t leave until they gave
him a job.
Atari’s founder was a burly entrepreneur named Nolan Bushnell, who was a charismatic
visionary with a nice touch of showmanship in him—in other words, another role model waiting
to be emulated. After he became famous, he liked driving around in a Rolls, smoking dope, and
holding staff meetings in a hot tub. As Friedland had done and as Jobs would learn to do, he was
able to turn charm into a cunning force, to cajole and intimidate and distort reality with the power
of his personality. His chief engineer was Al Alcorn, beefy and jovial and a bit more grounded, the
house grown-up trying to implement the vision and curb the enthusiasms of Bushnell. Their big hit
thus far was a video game called Pong, in which two players tried to volley a blip on a screen with
two movable lines that acted as paddles. (If you’re under thirty, ask your parents.)
When Jobs arrived in the Atari lobby wearing sandals and demanding a job, Alcorn was the one
who was summoned. “I was told, ‘We’ve got a hippie kid in the lobby. He says he’s not going to
leave until we hire him. Should we call the cops or let him in?’ I said bring him on in!”
Jobs thus became one of the first fifty employees at Atari, working as a technician for $5 an
hour. “In retrospect, it was weird to hire a dropout from Reed,” Alcorn recalled. “But I saw
something in him. He was very intelligent, enthusiastic, excited about tech.” Alcorn assigned him
to work with a straitlaced engineer named Don Lang. The next day Lang complained, “This guy’s
a goddamn hippie with b.o. Why did you do this to me? And he’s impossible to deal with.” Jobs
clung to the belief that his fruit-heavy vegetarian diet would prevent not just mucus but also body
odor, even if he didn’t use deodorant or shower regularly. It was a flawed theory.
Lang and others wanted to let Jobs go, but Bushnell worked out a solution. “The smell and
behavior wasn’t an issue with me,” he said. “Steve was prickly, but I kind of liked him. So I asked
him to go on the night shift. It was a way to save him.” Jobs would come in after Lang and others
had left and work through most of the night. Even thus isolated, he became known for his
brashness. On those occasions when he happened to interact with others, he was prone to
informing them that they were “dumb shits.” In retrospect, he stands by that judgment. “The only
reason I shone was that everyone else was so bad,” Jobs recalled.
Despite his arrogance (or perhaps because of it) he was able to charm Atari’s boss. “He was
more philosophical than the other people I worked with,” Bushnell recalled. “We used to discuss
free will versus determinism. I tended to believe that things were much more determined, that we
were programmed. If we had perfect information, we could predict people’s actions. Steve felt the
opposite.” That outlook accorded with his faith in the power of the will to bend reality.
Jobs helped improve some of the games by pushing the chips to
produce fun designs, and Bushnell’s inspiring willingness to play by his own rules rubbed off
on him. In addition, he intuitively appreciated the simplicity of Atari’s games. They came with no
manual and needed to be uncomplicated enough that a stoned freshman could figure them out. The
only instructions for Atari’s Star Trek game were “1. Insert quarter. 2. Avoid Klingons.”
 Not all of his coworkers shunned Jobs. He became friends with Ron Wayne, a draftsman at
Atari, who had earlier started a company that built slot machines. It subsequently failed, but Jobs
became fascinated with the idea that it was possible to start your own company. “Ron was an
amazing guy,” said Jobs. “He started companies. I had never met anybody like that.” He proposed
to Wayne that they go into business together; Jobs said he could borrow $50,000, and they could
design and market a slot machine. But Wayne had already been burned in business, so he
declined. “I said that was the quickest way to lose $50,000,” Wayne recalled, “but I admired the
fact that he had a burning drive to start his own business.”
One weekend Jobs was visiting Wayne at his apartment, engaging as they often did in
philosophical discussions, when Wayne said that there was something he needed to tell him.
“Yeah, I think I know what it is,” Jobs replied. “I think you like men.” Wayne said yes. “It was
my first encounter with someone who I knew was gay,” Jobs recalled. “He planted the right
perspective of it for me.” Jobs grilled him: “When you see a beautiful woman, what do you feel?”
Wayne replied, “It’s like when you look at a beautiful horse. You can appreciate it, but you don’t
want to sleep with it. You appreciate beauty for what it is.” Wayne said that it is a testament to
Jobs that he felt like revealing this to him. “Nobody at Atari knew, and I could count on my toes
and fingers the number of people I told in my whole life. But I guess it just felt right to tell him,
that he would understand, and it didn’t have any effect on our relationship.”

India

One reason Jobs was eager to make some money in early 1974 was that Robert Friedland, who
had gone to India the summer before, was urging him to take his own spiritual journey there.
Friedland had studied in India with Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaj-ji), who had been the guru to
much of the sixties hippie movement. Jobs decided he should do the same, and he recruited Daniel
Kottke to go with him. Jobs was not motivated by mere adventure. “For me it was a serious
search,” he said. “I’d been turned on to the idea of enlightenment and trying to figure out who I
was and how I fit into things.” Kottke adds that Jobs’s quest seemed driven partly by not knowing
his birth parents. “There was a hole in him, and he was trying to fill it.”
When Jobs told the folks at Atari that he was quitting to go search for a guru in India, the jovial
Alcorn was amused. “He comes in and stares at me and declares, ‘I’m going to find my guru,’ and
I say, ‘No shit, that’s super. Write me!’ And he says he wants me to help pay, and I tell him,
‘Bullshit!’” Then Alcorn had an idea. Atari was making kits and shipping them to Munich, where
they were built into finished machines and distributed by a wholesaler in Turin. But there was a
problem: Because the games were designed for the American rate of sixty frames per second,
there were frustrating interference problems in Europe, where the rate was fifty frames per second.
Alcorn sketched out a fix with Jobs and then offered to pay for him to go to Europe to implement
it. “It’s got to be cheaper to get to India from there,” he said. Jobs agreed. So Alcorn sent him on
his way with the exhortation, “Say hi to your guru for me.”
Jobs spent a few days in Munich, where he solved the interference problem, but in the process
he flummoxed the dark-suited German managers. They complained to Alcorn that he dressed and
smelled like a bum and behaved rudely. “I said, ‘Did he solve the problem?’ And they said,
‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘If you got any more problems, you just call me, I got more guys just like him!’
They said, ‘No, no we’ll take care of it next time.’” For his part, Jobs was upset that the Germans
kept trying to feed him meat and potatoes. “They don’t even have a word for vegetarian,” he
complained (incorrectly) in a phone call to Alcorn.
He had a better time when he took the train to see the distributor in Turin, where the Italian
pastas and his host’s camaraderie were more simpatico. “I had a wonderful couple of weeks in
Turin, which is this charged-up industrial town,” he recalled. “The distributor took me every night
to dinner at this place where there were only eight tables and no menu. You’d just tell them what
you wanted, and they made it. One of the tables was on reserve for the chairman of Fiat. It was
really super.” He next went to Lugano, Switzerland, where he stayed with Friedland’s uncle, and
from there took a flight to India.
When he got off the plane in New Delhi, he felt waves of heat rising from the tarmac, even
though it was only April. He had been given the name of a hotel, but it was full, so he went to one
his taxi driver insisted was good. “I’m sure he was getting some baksheesh, because he took me to
this complete dive.” Jobs asked the owner whether the water was filtered and foolishly believed
the answer. “I got dysentery pretty fast. I was sick, really sick, a really high fever. I dropped from
160 pounds to 120 in about a week.”
Once he got healthy enough to move, he decided that he needed to get out of Delhi. So he
headed to the town of Haridwar, in western India near the source of the Ganges, which was having
a festival known as the Kumbh Mela. More than ten million people poured into a town that usually
contained fewer than 100,000 residents. “There were holy men all around. Tents with this teacher
and that teacher. There were people riding elephants, you name it. I was there for a few days, but I
decided that I needed to get out of there too.”
He went by train and bus to a village near Nainital in the foothills of the Himalayas. That was
where Neem Karoli Baba lived, or had lived. By the time Jobs got there, he was no longer alive, at
least in the same incarnation. Jobs rented a room with a mattress on the floor from a family who
helped him recuperate by feeding him vegetarian meals. “There was a copy there of
Autobiography of a Yogi in English that a previous traveler had left, and I read it several times
because there was not a lot to do, and I walked around from village to village and
recovered from my dysentery.” Among those who were part of the community there was Larry
Brilliant, an epidemiologist who was working to eradicate smallpox and who later ran Google’s
philanthropic arm and the Skoll Foundation. He became Jobs’s lifelong friend.
At one point Jobs was told of a young Hindu holy man who was holding a gathering of his
followers at the Himalayan estate of a wealthy businessman. “It was a chance to meet a spiritual
being and hang out with his followers, but it was also a chance to have a good meal. I could smell
the food as we got near, and I was very hungry.” As Jobs was eating, the holy man—who was not
much older than Jobs—picked him out of the crowd, pointed at him, and began laughing
maniacally. “He came running over and grabbed me and made a tooting sound and said, ‘You are
just like a baby,’” recalled Jobs. “I was not relishing this attention.” Taking Jobs by the hand, he
led him out of the worshipful crowd and walked him up to a hill, where there was a well and a
small pond. “We sit down and he pulls out this straight razor. I’m thinking he’s a nutcase and
begin to worry. Then he pulls out a bar of soap—I had long hair at the time—and he lathered up
my hair and shaved my head. He told me that he was saving my health.”
Daniel Kottke arrived in India at the beginning of the summer, and Jobs went back to New
Delhi to meet him. They wandered, mainly by bus, rather aimlessly. By this point Jobs was no
longer trying to find a guru who could impart wisdom, but instead was seeking enlightenment
through ascetic experience, deprivation, and simplicity. He was not able to achieve inner calm.
Kottke remembers him getting into a furious shouting match with a Hindu woman in a village
marketplace who, Jobs alleged, had been watering down the milk she was selling them.
Yet Jobs could also be generous. When they got to the town of Manali, Kottke’s sleeping bag
was stolen with his traveler’s checks in it. “Steve covered my food expenses and bus ticket back to
Delhi,” Kottke recalled. He also gave Kottke the rest of his own money, $100, to tide him over.
During his seven months in India, he had written to his parents only sporadically, getting mail
at the American Express office in New
Delhi when he passed through, and so they were somewhat surprised when they got a call from
the Oakland airport asking them to pick him up. They immediately drove up from Los Altos. “My
head had been shaved, I was wearing Indian cotton robes, and my skin had turned a deep,
chocolate brown-red from the sun,” he recalled. “So I’m sitting there and my parents walked past
me about five times and finally my mother came up and said ‘Steve?’ and I said ‘Hi!’”
They took him back home, where he continued trying to find himself. It was a pursuit with
many paths toward enlightenment. In the mornings and evenings he would meditate and study
Zen, and in between he would drop in to audit physics or engineering courses at Stanford.

The Search

Jobs’s interest in Eastern spirituality, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, and the search for enlightenment
was not merely the passing phase of a nineteen-year-old. Throughout his life he would seek to
follow many of the basic precepts of Eastern religions, such as the emphasis on experiential
prajñ , wisdom or cognitive understanding that is intuitively experienced through concentration of
the mind. Years later, sitting in his Palo Alto garden, he reflected on the lasting influence of his
trip to India:
Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India. The people in
the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their
intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more
powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.
Western rational thought is not an innate human characteristic; it is learned and is the great
achievement of Western civilization. In the villages of India, they never learned it. They learned
something else, which is in some ways just as valuable but in other ways is not. That’s the power of
intuition and experiential wisdom.
Coming back after seven months in Indian villages, I saw the craziness of the Western world as well
as its capacity for rational thought. If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If
you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to
hear more subtle things—that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more
clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in
the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it.
Zen has been a deep influence in my life ever since. At one point I was thinking about going to Japan
and trying to get into the Eihei-ji monastery, but my spiritual advisor urged me to stay here. He said
there is nothing over there that isn’t here, and he was correct. I learned the truth of the Zen saying that if
you are willing to travel around the world to meet a teacher, one will appear next door.

Jobs did in fact find a teacher right in his own neighborhood. Shunryu Suzuki, who wrote Zen
and ran the San Francisco Zen Center, used to come to Los Altos every
Wednesday evening to lecture and meditate with a small group of followers. After a while he
asked his assistant, Kobun Chino Otogawa, to open a full-time center there. Jobs became a faithful
follower, along with his occasional girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, and Daniel Kottke and Elizabeth
Holmes. He also began to go by himself on retreats to the Tassajara Zen Center, a monastery near
Carmel where Kobun also taught.
Kottke found Kobun amusing. “His English was atrocious,” he recalled. “He would speak in a
kind of haiku, with poetic, suggestive phrases. We would sit and listen to him, and half the time
we had no idea what he was going on about. I took the whole thing as a kind of lighthearted
interlude.” Holmes was more into the scene. “We would go to Kobun’s meditations, sit on zafu
cushions, and he would sit on a dais,” she said. “We learned how to tune out distractions. It was a
magical thing. One evening we were meditating with Kobun when it was raining, and he taught us
how to use ambient sounds to bring us back to focus on our meditation.”
As for Jobs, his devotion was intense. “He became really serious and
self-important and just generally unbearable,” according to Kottke. He began meeting with
Kobun almost daily, and every few months they went on retreats together to meditate. “I ended up
spending as much time as I could with him,” Jobs recalled. “He had a wife who was a nurse at
Stanford and two kids. She worked the night shift, so I would go over and hang out with him in
the evenings. She would get home about midnight and shoo me away.” They sometimes discussed
whether Jobs should devote himself fully to spiritual pursuits, but Kobun counseled otherwise. He
assured Jobs that he could keep in touch with his spiritual side while working in a business. The
relationship turned out to be lasting and deep; seventeen years later Kobun would perform Jobs’s
wedding ceremony.
Jobs’s compulsive search for self-awareness also led him to undergo primal scream therapy,
which had recently been developed and popularized by a Los Angeles psychotherapist named
Arthur Janov. It was based on the Freudian theory that psychological problems are caused by the
repressed pains of childhood; Janov argued that they could be resolved by re-suffering these
primal moments while fully expressing the pain—sometimes in screams. To Jobs, this seemed
preferable to talk therapy because it involved intuitive feeling and emotional action rather than just
rational analyzing. “This was not something to think about,” he later said. “This was something to
do: to close your eyes, hold your breath, jump in, and come out the other end more insightful.”
A group of Janov’s adherents ran a program called the Oregon Feeling Center in an old hotel in
Eugene that was managed by Jobs’s Reed College guru Robert Friedland, whose All One Farm
commune was nearby. In late 1974, Jobs signed up for a twelve-week course of therapy there
costing $1,000. “Steve and I were both into personal growth, so I wanted to go with him,” Kottke
recounted, “but I couldn’t afford it.”
Jobs confided to close friends that he was driven by the pain he was feeling about being put up
for adoption and not knowing about his birth parents. “Steve had a very profound desire to know
his physical parents so he could better know himself,” Friedland later said. He had learned from
Paul and Clara Jobs that his birth parents had both
been graduate students at a university and that his father might be Syrian. He had even thought
about hiring a private investigator, but he decided not to do so for the time being. “I didn’t want to
hurt my parents,” he recalled, referring to Paul and Clara.
“He was struggling with the fact that he had been adopted,” according to Elizabeth Holmes.
“He felt that it was an issue that he needed to get hold of emotionally.” Jobs admitted as much to
her. “This is something that is bothering me, and I need to focus on it,” he said. He was even more
open with Greg Calhoun. “He was doing a lot of soul-searching about being adopted, and he
talked about it with me a lot,” Calhoun recalled. “The primal scream and the mucusless diets, he
was trying to cleanse himself and get deeper into his frustration about his birth. He told me he was
deeply angry about the fact that he had been given up.”
John Lennon had undergone the same primal scream therapy in 1970, and in December of that
year he released the song “Mother” with the Plastic Ono Band. It dealt with Lennon’s own
feelings about a father who had abandoned him and a mother who had been killed when he was a
teenager. The refrain includes the haunting chant “Mama don’t go, Daddy come home.” Jobs used
to play the song often.
Jobs later said that Janov’s teachings did not prove very useful. “He offered a ready-made,
buttoned-down answer which turned out to be far too oversimplistic. It became obvious that it was
not going to yield any great insight.” But Holmes contended that it made him more confident:
“After he did it, he was in a different place. He had a very abrasive personality, but there was a
peace about him for a while. His confidence improved and his feelings of inadequacy were
reduced.”
Jobs came to believe that he could impart that feeling of confidence to others and thus push
them to do things they hadn’t thought possible. Holmes had broken up with Kottke and joined a
religious cult in San Francisco that expected her to sever ties with all past friends. But Jobs
rejected that injunction. He arrived at the cult house in his Ford Ranchero one day and announced
that he was driving up to Friedland’s apple farm and she was to come. Even more brazenly,
he said she would have to drive part of the way, even though she didn’t know how to use the
stick shift. “Once we got on the open road, he made me get behind the wheel, and he shifted the
car until we got up to 55 miles per hour,” she recalled. “Then he puts on a tape of Dylan’s Blood
on the Tracks, lays his head in my lap, and goes to sleep. He had the attitude that he could do
anything, and therefore so can you. He put his life in my hands. So that made me do something I
didn’t think I could do.”
It was the brighter side of what would become known as his reality distortion field. “If you trust
him, you can do things,” Holmes said. “If he’s decided that something should happen, then he’s
just going to make it happen.”

Breakout

One day in early 1975 Al Alcorn was sitting in his office at Atari when Ron Wayne burst in.
“Hey, Stevie is back!” he shouted.
“Wow, bring him on in,” Alcorn replied.
Jobs shuffled in barefoot, wearing a saffron robe and carrying a copy of Be Here Now, which
he handed to Alcorn and insisted he read. “Can I have my job back?” he asked.
“He looked like a Hare Krishna guy, but it was great to see him,” Alcorn recalled. “So I said,
sure!”
Once again, for the sake of harmony, Jobs worked mostly at night. Wozniak, who was living in
an apartment nearby and working at HP, would come by after dinner to hang out and play the
video games. He had become addicted to Pong at a Sunnyvale bowling alley, and he was able to
build a version that he hooked up to his home TV set.
One day in the late summer of 1975, Nolan Bushnell, defying the prevailing wisdom that
paddle games were over, decided to develop a single-player version of Pong; instead of competing
against an opponent, the player would volley the ball into a wall that lost a brick whenever it was
hit. He called Jobs into his office, sketched it out on his little blackboard, and asked him to design
it. There would be a bonus, Bushnell told him, for every chip fewer than fifty that he used.
Bushnell knew that Jobs was not a great engineer, but he assumed, correctly, that he would recruit
Wozniak, who was always hanging around. “I looked at it as a two-for-one thing,” Bushnell
recalled. “Woz was a better engineer.”
Wozniak was thrilled when Jobs asked him to help and proposed splitting the fee. “This was the
most wonderful offer in my life, to actually design a game that people would use,” he recalled.
Jobs said it had to be done in four days and with the fewest chips possible. What he hid from
Wozniak was that the deadline was one that Jobs had imposed, because he needed to get to the All
One Farm to help prepare for the apple harvest. He also didn’t mention that there was a bonus tied
to keeping down the number of chips.
“A game like this might take most engineers a few months,” Wozniak recalled. “I thought that
there was no way I could do it, but Steve made me sure that I could.” So he stayed up four nights
in a row and did it. During the day at HP, Wozniak would sketch out his design on paper. Then,
after a fast-food meal, he would go right to Atari and stay all night. As Wozniak churned out the
design, Jobs sat on a bench to his left implementing it by wire-wrapping the chips onto a
breadboard. “While Steve was breadboarding, I spent time playing my favorite game ever, which
was the auto racing game Gran Trak 10,” Wozniak said.
Astonishingly, they were able to get the job done in four days, and Wozniak used only forty-
five chips. Recollections differ, but by most accounts Jobs simply gave Wozniak half of the base
fee and not the bonus Bushnell paid for saving five chips. It would be another ten years before
Wozniak discovered (by being shown the tale in a book on the history of Atari titled Zap) that
Jobs had been paid this bonus. “I think that Steve needed the money, and he just didn’t tell me the
truth,” Wozniak later said. When he talks about it now, there are long pauses, and he admits that it
causes him pain. “I wish he had just been honest. If he had told me he needed the money, he
should have known I would have just given it to him. He was a friend. You help your friends.” To
Wozniak, it showed a fundamental difference in their characters.
“Ethics always mattered to me, and I still don’t understand why he would’ve gotten paid one
thing and told me he’d gotten paid another,” he said. “But, you know, people are different.”
When Jobs learned this story was published, he called Wozniak to deny it. “He told me that he
didn’t remember doing it, and that if he did something like that he would remember it, so he
probably didn’t do it,” Wozniak recalled. When I asked Jobs directly, he became unusually quiet
and hesitant. “I don’t know where that allegation comes from,” he said. “I gave him half the
money I ever got. That’s how I’ve always been with Woz. I mean, Woz stopped working in 1978.
He never did one ounce of work after 1978. And yet he got exactly the same shares of Apple stock
that I did.”
Is it possible that memories are muddled and that Jobs did not, in fact, shortchange Wozniak?
“There’s a chance that my memory is all wrong and messed up,” Wozniak told me, but after a
pause he reconsidered. “But no. I remember the details of this one, the $350 check.” He confirmed
his memory with Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn. “I remember talking about the bonus money to
Woz, and he was upset,” Bushnell said. “I said yes, there was a bonus for each chip they saved,
and he just shook his head and then clucked his tongue.”
Whatever the truth, Wozniak later insisted that it was not worth rehashing. Jobs is a complex
person, he said, and being manipulative is just the darker facet of the traits that make him
successful. Wozniak would never have been that way, but as he points out, he also could never
have built Apple. “I would rather let it pass,” he said when I pressed the point. “It’s not something
I want to judge Steve by.”

The Atari experience helped shape Jobs’s approach to business and design. He appreciated the
user-friendliness of Atari’s insert-quarter-avoid-Klingons games. “That simplicity rubbed off on
him and made him a very focused product person,” said Ron Wayne. Jobs also absorbed some of
Bushnell’s take-no-prisoners attitude. “Nolan wouldn’t take no for an answer,” according to
Alcorn, “and this was Steve’s first impression of how things got done. Nolan was never abusive,
like Steve sometimes is. But he had the same driven attitude. It made me cringe,

but dammit, it got things done. In that way Nolan was a mentor for Jobs.”
Bushnell agreed. “There is something indefinable in an entrepreneur, and I saw that in Steve,”
he said. “He was interested not just in engineering, but also the business aspects. I taught him that
if you act like you can do something, then it will work. I told him, ‘Pretend to be completely in
control and people will assume that you are.’”
Archive > Countries > India > Rukmini Bhaya Nair > GARGI'S SILENCE

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Gargi’s Silence
Where in the barefoot world you wander
Will go with you Gargi’s untamed
Silence. Among the sea anemones’
Agile points of light, blue flamed

In mushroom woods, when wheelbarrows

Tip their load, and the mustard plains
Burn yellow in the recesses, listen
To the universe crackle, curl, change

Because Gargi has found the last, unnamed

Star, and on Yagnavalkya’s ascetic skull
Her questions fall like soot, black rain
Stir in his groin, make him young again.

Zebra red spurts the tawn savannah grass

And lion swishes his tail, great maned
What is the warp and weft of the world
What lies in the taut weaver’s frame?

Who turns the crankshaft in my brain?

Answer, Yagnavalkya! How many oceans deep
Is desire? When you touch me, am I sane?
Can a bee taste honey? Why does it sting?

In mean streets, in the slushy yards of pain

Gargi whispers in Yagnavalkya’s ticklish ear
Your metaphysics is shaky! We’re not chained
To Brahman. He is a prisoner of our senses.

That dry saltpetre hill, that baboon whooping

What’s Brahman to them? Yet they’ll remain
When we’ve packed up our arguments and gone
Tell me, Yagnavalkya, will you instruct me then?

Stop, Gargi! Stop! If you ask so much, for so much

Your head will fall off – or mine. I’m not ashamed
To admit my wisdom has limits. See that goat boy
Passing? The first lesson is one in restraint.

Don’t mess with him, Gargi. In the soundless lanes

Of the sky, milk white Akasha, you will hear voices
Yours, his, mine, his and then – the last unclaimed
Akshara. Whose word is it, Gargi, Brahman’s – or ours?

Then Gargi Vachanakari, smiling to herself, held her peace.

Gargi, pupil of the sage Yagnavalkya, is one of the few women with intellectual yearnings who
appear in the Upanishads, where she is threatened with dire consequences by her guru for asking
too many questions.

Poet's Note: Gargi, pupil of the sage Yagnavalkya, is one of the few women with intellectual yearnings who
appear in the Upanishads, where she is threatened with dire consequences by her guru for asking
too many questions.

© 2004, Rukmini Bhaya Nair

From: Yellow Hibiscus: New and Selected Poems
Publisher: Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 2004

Poetry International Rotterdam

© All material on this website is copyright protected. It is made available here without charge for personal use only. It may not be stored, displayed, published, reproduced, or used for
any other purpose without prior and written permission by Poetry International.
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Light-In-The-Night (For Amanda) Poem by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih - Poem

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Inspiration
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Do not ask me the why and the wherefore,
poetry is anoetic, you might as well question the rooster, Famous Poems
or the plums, why they put on spring blossoms.
But how and when poetry first came to me?
If you insist let me flip through the folios of memory.
Phenomenal Woman
Maya Angelou
Poetry did not come beckoning like the hills in my blood.
It did not come on the fragile wings of a ñiangkongwieng * Still I Rise
singing of autumn. It did not come from the sunny streams, Maya Angelou
naked and splashing with childhood. It did not come from The Road Not Taken
the afternoon bonfires and the sweet, burning faggot smoke Robert Frost
sinking to my bones and rising above woods warbling with winter.
If You Forget Me
Though all these are dearest to my heart, it did not come from
Pablo Neruda
the deep deciduous gorges, soaring and animated
like migratory birds looking for ripening fruits in sanctified groves. Dreams
It did not fill the inhospitable ravines of my soul Langston Hughes
with the fluffiness of land clouds. Though I am a true son Annabel Lee
of the wettest place on earth, it did not come baptising Edgar Allan Poe
like the wind-driven rain and the impregnating fog.
Caged Bird
Maya Angelou
It happened amidst the squalor of this town’s wretched tenements
but not because life was harsh and ignoble for a strange and ragged If
rustic, struggling to be a day-time student, a night-time labourer. Rudyard Kipling
Not because everything had seemed to mock me, from rich girls Television
giggling on the road to loud boys on bicycles and young louts Roald Dahl
playing badminton. Bad times might have ruled out a normal
existence and driven me up the branches of a pear tree to peer Stopping By Woods On A Snowy
at the playful world with timid longing, but poetry did not come Evening
because bad times also made me supple as a cane stalk and taught Robert Frost
me the relief of stories and the pleasures conjured with closed eyes.
The Complete List of Top 500 Poems »
Poetry did not come because of the joys and sorrows of my life.
Though later it soaked in everything like ploughed earth
and mirrored everything like a mountain lake, when it came
it had nothing of leaders with lips of a murmuring brook and hearts Famous Poets
laced with venom like the arrows of war. It carried nothing
of the cold and hard indifference that drove students
to the streets and boys to the therapy of the gun. It had nothing Robert Frost
of the rottenness that would sell our holy mountain for a car
and a few concubines. It had nothing of blood or riots; nothing
of public or private curfews; nothing of terror, of fake or genuine William
encounters; nothing of life or death; nothing good or bad;
Shakespeare
nothing beautiful or ugly.

Poetry came like an illness: a young woman, abandoned and alone Maya Angelou
with her girl child had seemed to me, in her loneliness,
like a flambeaux in the dark lanes of those nights. Something
stirred inside me. I was racked by a sudden desolate yearning,
Emily Dickinson
something fierce and restless, a gnawing, tormenting desire
to reach out, to touch— and I scrawled my first few lines, and furtive
like someone committing a crime, I slipped them through the door
of her two-room residence. Pablo Neruda
That was my poetry— nakedly, madly in love,Search in poems, poets and quotations Find

and desperately prayerful. But in its foolishness

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it did not even have a name and my beloved looked in vain
for the man who had called her, my first poem, “Light-in-the-Night”. Langston Hughes

Well, as you can see, when I was young my poetry

started with an address to a divorcee, a woman William
old enough to be my aunt. Now that I’m almost old, Wordsworth
should I turn to a girl, hopefully a virgin and young enough
to be my student? Maybe someone like you, sipping wine
and smoking a cigarette. Shel Silverstein

For you I have gone down the ladder and crawled into
the coal pits of psyche. But did I ever tell you that you make Rabindranath
me feel stupidly innocent and hopelessly inadequate?
Tagore

* A kind of cicada. William Blake

Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih

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Fabrizio Frosini (7/10/2015 6:20:00 AM)

''anoesis'' * in Ars Poetica [* = consciousness that is pure passive receptiveness without

understanding or intellectual organization of the materials presented].
Thanks for reminding us such an interesting concept, Kynpham, even if Science can tell us ''why they
put on spring blossoms'' :)
A nicely penned poem. I've enjoyed it. Thank you so much for sharing
Fabrizio(Report) Reply

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Poem Submitted: Friday, July 10, 2015

 ONE

1.1

To make a start more swift than weighty,

Hail Muse. Dear Reader, once upon

A time, say, circa 1980,
There lived a man. His name was John.
Successful in his field though only
Twenty-six, respected, lonely,
One evening as he walked across
Golden Gate Park, the ill-judged toss

Of a red frisbee almost brained him.

He thought, "If I died, who'd be sad?
Who'd weep? Who'd gloat? Who would be glad?
Would anybody?" As it pained him,
He turned from this dispiriting theme
To ruminations less extreme.
1.2

He tuned his thoughts to electronic

Circuitry. This soothed his mind.

He left irregular (moronic)

Sentimentality behind.
He thought of or-gates and of and-gates,
Of ROMs, of nor-gates, and of nand-gates,
Of nanoseconds, megabytes,
And bits and nibbles but as flights
. . .

Of silhouetted birds move cawing

Across the pine-serrated sky,
Dragged from his cove, not knowing why,
He feels an urgent riptide drawing
Him far out, where, caught in the kelp
Of loneliness, he cries for help.

1.3

John's looks are good. His dress is formal.

His voice is low. His mind is sound.

His appetite for work's abnormal.
A plastic name tag hangs around
His collar like a votive necklace.

Though well-paid, he is far from reckless,

Pays his rent prompdy, jogs, does not

Smoke cigarettes, and rarely pot,

Eschews both church and heavy drinking,

Enjoys his garden, likes to read
Eclectically from Mann to Bede.

(A surrogate, some say, for thinking.)

Friends claim he's grown aloof and prim.

(His boss, though, is well-pleased with him.)
1.4

Gray-eyed, blond-haired, aristocratic

In height, impatience, views, and face,
Discriminating though dogmatic,
Tender beneath a carapace
Of well-groomed tastes and tasteful grooming,
John, though his corporate stock is booming,
For all his mohair, serge, and tweed,
Senses his life has run to seed.
A passionate man, with equal parts of
Irritability and charm,
Without as such intending harm,
His flaring temper singed the hearts of
Several women in the days

Before his chaste, ambitious phase.

1.5

John notes the late September showers

Have tinged the blond hills round the bay
With a new green. He notes the flowers
In their pre-winter bloom. The way
That, when he was a child, the mystery
Of San Francisco's resdess history

Kindled in him an answering spark,

It strikes him now as, through the park,
Wrested from old dunes by the westward
Thrust of the green belt to the slow
Pacific swell, his footsteps go.

But it is late. The birds fly nestward

Toward the sunset, and the arc
Of darkness drifts across the park.
1.6

It's Friday night. The unfettered city

Resounds with hedonistic glee.

John feels a cold cast of self-pity

Envelop him. No family
Cushions his solitude, or rather,

His mother's dead, his English father,

Retired in his native Kent,

Rarely responds to letters sent

(If rarely) by his transariantic

Offspring. In letters to The Times

He rails against the nameless crimes
Of the post office. Waxing frantic
About delays from coast to coast,

He hones his wit and damns the post.

1.7

A linkless node, no spouse or sibling,

No children —John wanders alone
Into an ice cream parlor. Nibbling
The edges of a sugar cone
By turns, a pair of high school lovers
Stand giggling. John, uncharmed, discovers
His favorite flavors, Pumpkin Pie

And Bubble Gum, decides to buy

A double scoop; sits down; but whether
His eyes fall on a knot of three
Schoolgirls, a clamorous family,

Or, munching cheerfully together,

A hippie and a Castro clone,

It hurts that only he's alone.

 ——

1.8

He goes home, seeking consolation

Among old Beatles and Pink Floyd
But "Girl" elicits mere frustration,

While "Money" leaves him more annoyed.

Alas, he hungers less for money
Than for a fleeting Taste of Honey.
Murmuring, "Money — it's a gas! . . .

The lunatic is on the grass,"

He pours himself a beer. Desires
And reminiscences intrude
Upon his unpropitious mood
Until he feels that he requires
A one-way Ticket to Ride —and soon
Across the Dark Side of the Moon.

1.9

He thinks back to his days at college,

To Phil, to Berkeley friends, to nights

When the pursuit of grades and knowledge

Foundered in beery jokes and fights.

Eheufii0aces . . . Silicon Valley

Lures to ambition's ulcer alley

Young graduates with siren screams

Of power and wealth beyond their dreams,
Ejects the lax, and drives the driven,
Burning their candles at both ends.
Thus files take precedence over friends,
Labor is lauded, leisure riven.
John kneels bareheaded and unshod
Before the Chip, a jealous God.
 .

1.10

As did Phil too, until his recent

Flight from the rich realms of Defense
(With what John holds to be indecent
Precipitation and bad sense)
John, still engaged in such endeavors,
Feels Phil's new zest for peace work severs

A thread of mutual interest.

He almost fears to call him lest

Political debate should color

A friendship based on easy cheer,
Light camaraderie, dark beer,
And double-dating. Life's grown duller

Since when — ah, time! —they used to share

The aegis of the Golden Bear.

1.11

He phones Phil, the first time in ages,

But there's no answer. (Friday night.)

He idly thumbs the scribbled pages

Of his address book. Well, he might
Phone Janet Hayakawa. Many
Seasons have sunk since there was any
Hazard a meeting could educe

Their former love. A standing truce

Shelters their friendship from all passion.

They'd felt their union would constrict

Their separate lives. An interdict

Agreed by both, after a fashion

They went about their singular ways,

Slaves to the Chip or artist's daze.

 — —

1.12

She is a sculptor. Stress and pleasure

For her thus perfectly combined,
The boundaries of toil and leisure
By definition ill-defined,
Her worktime doubles as her playtime,
But hand and eye deployed in daytime
Yield,when night comes, to ear and hand.
She the drummer in a band
is

Well known and feared throughout the city:

The striking sounds of Liquid Sheep
Rouse distant suburbs from their sleep.

Unlinked alike to tune or ditty,

Their music is a throttled yelp

Morse crossed with a pig's squeal for help.

1.13

Although such accents supersonic

Engage her in the fevered night,

Janet considers it ironic

That her true forte, try as she might,

Her quiet forms of bronze and iron
Three Eggs,An Adolescent Lion,
Clothed Nude, Study of Young Man Caught
In Eagle's Claws —have not yet brought
The sober critical attention
She craves. The critics' common nose
Sniffs magisterially at her shows.
And as for divine intervention

In Schiller's phrase, the very gods

Strive fruitlessly against such clods.
1.14

Blind mouths! They spew their condescension:

Miss Hayakawa, it appears,

Lacks serious sculptural intention.

Where has she been these thirty years?

Are Moore's and Colter's use of medium

Unknown to her? The languid tedium

Of lines too fluid to show pains
Reflect this artisfs dated chains:
Derivative, diluted passion,

A facile versatility. . . .

With smooth and blinkered savagerv,

Servile and suave, obsessed by fashion,
These chickenhearted chickenshits
Jerk off their weak and venomous wits.

1.15

Though savaged by this vain unkindness

Which she tries not to take to heart,
She too displays unwitting blindness,
Plunging her spirit into art.

Only her cats provide distraction,

Twin paradigms of lazy action.

A short walk from Cafe Trieste

The three live in an eagle's nest,
A great loft studio, light and airy.

Each day for breakfast Cuff and Link

Have fish to eat and cream to drink.
Their mistress drinks a Bloody Mary
(For inspiration) and devours
Her Weetabix, and works for hours.
1.16

Sweet Siamese of rare refulgence

With chocolate ears and limbs of tow,
Jan gives them love, food, and indulgence.
The cats take this for granted, show
Scant deference to their human betters;

Their baskets woven with gold letters,

In splendor Jan can ill afford,

In silken bed, on sumptuous board

They fatten. Though, when out of favor,
The L and C on their beds are
Interpreted "Louse" and "Catarrh,"

Jan relishes the warmth and savor

The deeds of Cuff and Link confer,

The love they deign to yield to her.

1.17

Through Cuff's exploratory predations

Knobs in electric blankets know
Untimely death. Link's sharp striations

Score the old desk that years ago

Was left by Jan's grandparents, issei,
To her own parents (self-made nisei),
And now (for lack of storage space
In their small flat) stands in this place
Beneath a scroll by her grandfather:
A twilight poem by Wang Wei
He calligraphed that shameful day
In '42: Internment. Rather
Yellowed and frayed in recent years,

This scroll still brings Jan close to tears.

n
1.18

John stands beside his phone, recalling

Janet's warm beauty, smiling calm,
Her dark eyes, high-boned features, falling

Black ponytail, her vagrant charm.

He thinks, "I guess I'll be the wiser
For talking to a sound adviser."

He dials. To his peeved surprise

An answering machine replies,

Requests his message, name, and number.

("Wait for the beep.") John says, "It's me,
John. 234-4963.
No message." Rather than encumber
The brusque machine with his heart's woes,
He wraps himself in pensive prose:

1.19

Life's Little Ironies by Hardy,

The gloomier sermons of John Donne,
The Zibaldone of Leopardi,
The Queen of Spades. At ten to one,
From the crevasse of melancholy
In which he now is buried wholly,
He hears the phone ring. "Hello, John?
Are you OK? What's going on?
I just got back. I thought I'd phone you
Although it's late. You sounded bad
On the machine, more tired and sad
Than in the whole time that I've known you/
"It's nothing." 'Tell you what, let's meet
For lunch tomorrow. 16th Street.

12
 1.20

The Shu Jing. One. It's well-frequented.

Food's great." Next day, not quite at ease,

John shows up early, cologne-scented,

Hyper-immaculate, sits and sees

Families, lovers, inter alia

A circus clown in full regalia,

But as the hope-hour strokes its sum

He fidgets: Janet hasn't come.
Deaf to the pap of Muzak sounding
"O Little Town of Bethlehem"
Anachronistically at them,
The patrons dine with zest. Rebounding
Off plastic chairs and grubby floor

The notes merge with the squeaking door.

1.21

John thinks, "It's not that I'm fastidious.

I wish they'd turn that music down. . . .

It's gross. That calendar is hideous . . .

(He stares at the distasteful clown.)

. . . I've waited half an hour, blast her!"

Her hands encased in clay and plaster,

Janet arrives at twelve to two:

"So sorry, John, I had to do
This torso. Yes, I tried to hurry.

I'm glad you've got yourself a beer.

What's that? Tsingtao? Don't look severe.

I didn't mean for you to worry.

You've ordered? No? This place is fun!

What'll you have? It's family-run."

n
1.22

The food arrives as soon as ordered.

Impressed and ravenous, John relents.

His chopsticks fasten on beef bordered

With broccoli. Enticing scents

Swim over the noise, the greasy table.

Two bottles each of beer enable

Small talk and large, in cyclic waves,
To wash their shores, and John behaves
At last less stiffly if not sadly.

"How are the cats?" "Just fine." "And you?"

"Great." "And the sculpture?" "Yes, that too."
"Your singing group?" "Oh, not too badly.

But I came here to hear your song.

Now sing!" "Jan, I don't know what's wrong.

1.23

I'm young, employed, healthy, ambitious,

Sound, solvent, self-made, self-possessed.

But all my symptoms are pernicious.

The Dow- Jones of my heart's depressed.

The sunflower of my youth is wilting.
The tower of my dreams is tilting.
The zoom lens of my zest is blurred.
The drama of my life's absurd.
What is the root of my neurosis?
I jog, eat brewer's yeast each day,
And yet I feel life slip away.
I wait your sapient diagnosis.
I die! I faint! I fail! I sink!"

"You need a lover, John, I think.

14
 — —

1.24

Someone, Fd say, who's fun to be with

And, of course, vitamin C to eat

And choose a richer lens to see with.

Reach for a vision more complete.
Trade in that zoom for a wide angle.

Don't let your drooping sunflower dangle

Its head upon the garden wall.

It needs some watering, that's all. . .

."

The fervor of her declamation

Induces her to drum a roll

With her chopsticks upon her bowl.

A waiter turns in consternation.
"... Don't put things off till it's too late.

You are the DJ of your fate.

1.25

Think of yourself a few years later,

Possessing, as the years go on,

Less prepossessing vital data:

Love handles . . . ('Thanks a lot," says John.)

. . . Receding . . . (John is getting nervous:

"More rice? I wonder when they'll serve us.")

. . . Hairline . . . ("Funny taste, this tea."

He sips at it distractedly.)

. . . Lonely and lost, sans love, sans lover,

Too much to drink last night . . . (And here
Jan pauses for a sip of beer)
. . . Nursing the dregs of your hangover,
Blubbering into your raisin bran.

Why not do something while you can?"

 —— —

1.26

"But what?" growls John as this depressing

Directory drums on. "OK,

You've got a point; enough B.S.ing
Suppose you're right — well, what's the way
To hook chicks?" Angrily and sadly

Jan looks at him. "You'll blow it badly

Till you clean up your Pigspeak act."

"Oh, come now, don't overreact,

Janet, you know I didn't mean it."

"Nor, I suppose, did the crude crass

Hall manager who pinched my ass

Last night. 'Cute chick.' You should have seen it.

I punched his snout. 'To hook a chick'

Such porcine lingo makes me sick."

1.27

"A venial linguistic tumor."

"It's not benign." "But it was just

A joke, Jan. Where's your sense of humor?"

"It's dormant since last night." "Why must
You blame me for his roving trotter?"

"Because, sweet ostrich, it was not a

Harmless joke. Enough said, John.

You've got my drift. I won't go on."
"I donned machismo just to rile you."

"Well, you succeeded." "Sorry, Jan

Friends?" "Friends — of course, you fool, how can
You doubt it? Though I think I'll file you
"
Under 'Male Repentant Pig.'

John takes her hand, and she a swig.

16
 ——

1.28

"We need first off," says Janet dryly,

"A venue to begin from." "What?"

"Your office, John?" she ventures slyly

"Any nice women?" "Not too hot."

"Any nice guys?" "Oh, come on, Janet,
I just don't go for that, so can it."

"Well, don't knock what you haven't tried."

John stirs his overstirred stir-fried

Vegetables for answer, thinking,

"She's had too much. Should I suggest
We stop at this one? No, it's best

To keep the peace. But when she's drinking

She talks about the weirdest things

Guys with guys, or pigs with wings."

1.29

Now Janet's fancy (winged? flighty?)

From pigs to pictures is enticed.

"Ever tried seeking Aphrodite

In a museum?" John cries, "Christ!
Haven't I just? With base volition

I've gaped at Goya, ogled Titian,

Loitered by Rubens with intent,
But have (to date) not made a dent
In the cool academic armor
The women wandering through those halls
Assume; we stare at paint and walls
But not a word's exchanged." Then, calmer:
"I gave it up eventually.

My weekends mean too much to me."

17
 ——

1.30

"Your weekends — well, how do you spend them?"

John thinks —where do my weekends go?
"Oh, things go wrong. I have to mend them:
A plug, the plumbing, the Peugeot,
A stone stuck in the electric mower
And I'm a regular moviegoer:
Whenever there's a decent show
I try to make the time and go.
Last week I saw a Buster Keaton.

(I think he's great. He never smiles.)

Then home, to catch up on my files.

A can of chili. When I've eaten,

The late night news, and so to bed."

John looks forlorn as this is said.

1.31

"I guess my weekends aren't too sprighdy

After ail." Jan with a kiss

("Poor little rich boy") murmurs lighriy,

"We've got to put a stop to this.

There has to be a swift solution

To this impasse." "Electrocution?

I could jump off the Golden Gate.

I read in the Bay Guardian ..." "Wait!
I've got it, John! The perfect answer!
I should have thought of it. My friend
Your sufferings are at an end."

"That sounds as terminal as cancer.

Let's hear it." With a tame surmise

He listens. Jan says: "Advertise."

18
1.32

"What? Advertise? You must be joking!"

"I'm serious." "Jan, you're nuts." "I'm not."
"You know, Jan, you've had such a soaking

In Tsingtao you don't know what's what.

Me advertise? You must be kidding!"
"Kiddo, I'm not. Just do my bidding.
Take out an ad. Right now. Today.
Young handsome yuppie seek ..." "No way!
I've always thought your schemes, though wacky
(Conceived in midair, born in haste),
Remained within the bounds of taste,
But as for this one — talk of tacky!
Let's talk of something else instead.

Young yuppie . . . ! Better dead than read."

1.33

The family at the next table

Are listening in with interest.

"But, John, at least —when you feel able-

Why don't you put it to the test?"

"But it's so desperate, so demeaning."
"Johnny Boy, your mind needs cleaning
Of the debris of prejudice."

"Jan, what has that to do with this?"

"Its definition is," states Janet,

"Judging a thing before it's tried."

"But it's the same for suicide,"

Says John
—"or blowing up the planet.

Why should I try it first to see

If it agrees or not with me?"

19
 —

1.34

"But that's ... but that's . .

." Janet considers.
'That's what? It's a meat market, Jan.

Goats and monkeys, bears, bulls, bidders,

Buyers: grab me while you can

DWJSM, 50,
Solvent, sexy, thrilling, thrifty,

Seeks a bosomy brunette

Who likes to play the flageolet.
Let me make music with you, baby.
Box 69. I will not share

A column with such types out there.

How could you think I'd do it? Maybe
You see me as Male, 26,

Who gets his thrills from hooking chicks?

1.35

Janet picks up her fortune cookie,

Then puts it down, turns to her friend:

"Don't bank too much on youth. Your rookie

Season is drawing to an end.
John, things —
we would when young —not think of,

Start to make sense when, on the brink of

Thirtydom, we pause to scan
What salves and salads cannot ban,

The earliest furrows on our faces,

The loneliness within our souls,

Our febrile clawing for mean goals,

Our programmed cockfights and rat races,

Our dreary dignity, false pride,

And hearts stored in formaldehyde.

20
 —

1.36

Time sidles by: on television

The soaps dissolve, the jingles change.

Defeat or pity or derision

Constricts our hearts. Our looks grow strange
Even to us. The grail, perfection,

Dims, and we come to view rejection

As an endurable result

Of hope and trial, and exult

When search or risk or effort chances
To grant us someone who will do
For love, and who may love us too
While those who wait, as age advances,
Aloof for Ms. or Mr. Right
Weep to themselves in the still night.

1.37

It's sad to see you look so lonely,

That's all, John." John does not confute
Jan's passionate words. He thinks, "If only

Things were that simple." Moved and mute,

He sits and stares as little bubbles
Fizz in his beer, and his grand troubles
Dissolve: "Well, I'm a lucky man
To have a true friend like you, Jan.
You may be right. But if I do it . . .

Who knows what sort of person I'll

Wind up with." He attempts to smile

But fails. He sighs, "I can't pursue it.

I'm sorry that I'm such a pain.

It simply goes against my grain."
1.38

The family, the clown, the lovers

Have left. Muttering in Cantonese,
Impatiently the waiter hovers
Around the table. "Check, sir?" "Please!
But, Janet, what have you been doing?
Last time we met you were pursuing
A work of deathless interest:

Sculpting three golf balls in a nest."

"I'm hunting for an album cover
For the first disk of Liquid Sheep.
I know just what I want. I keep
Remembering this scene: above a
Meadow of lambs a green and white
Hot-air balloon is poised in flight.

1.39

Who painted that? Can you remember?"

"I do, though I can't quite recall. . . .

Was it the air show last September?

I think I saw it there, though all

I know is, it was on a poster

Sometime last year, well, at the most, a
Couple of years back. . . . No, I'm stuck.

Jan, looks as though you're out of luck.

Afraid my mind's deteriorating. ..."
"Oh no, John, no, John, no, John, no!
You're right! A poster at a show.
That's where I saw it. I've been waiting
A long time for a proper clue.

I'll check some stores now, thanks to you.

22
 —

1.40

Fm sure I'll trace it." John smiles shyly,

Picks up his cookie from his plate.

Janet reads out her fortune, wryly:

"For better luck you have to wait
Till winter. What's it now, September?
Come speedily, O numb November.
Congeal my fingers. Cigarette?"

"You know I don't. Here's mine: Forget

The entanglement of love; forget not
To practice charity. You see

The cookie says love's not for me."

"John, I've a better dictum: Set not
Any great store by cookies; set

Tour boat on course and spread your net"

1.41

John kisses Janet swiftly, lightly.

The waiter sets the check by John.

Jan frowns. They pay, and Jan politely
Thanks him and leaves a tip upon
The cookie plate. She thinks, "Why bother?
There's always something or the other,
And even good men of goodwill. . . .

Poor guy. We kept him waiting. Still,

I wish . . . but what's the use? It's trivial,

I guess." When John attempts to hold

The door for her, she thinks, "Why scold
Him for such slips? It's been convivial.
Part with a smile!" They smile and part
In friendship, with a lightened heart.

23
Usage

B Y H AYA N C H A R A R A

An assumption, a pejorative, an honest language,

an honorable death. In grade school, I refused to accept
the mayor’s handshake; he smiled at everyone except
people with names like mine. I was born here.
I didn’t have to adopt America, but I adapted to it.
You understand: a man must be averse to opinions
that have adverse impacts on whether he lives
or dies. “Before taking any advice, know the language
of those who seek to advise you.” Certain words
affected me. Sand nigger, I was called. Camel jockey.
What was the effect? While I already muttered
under my breath, I did so even more. I am not
altogether sure we can all together come. Everything
was not all right. Everything is not all right.
Imagine poetry without allusions to Shakespeare,
Greek mythology, the Bible; or allusions without
the adjectives “fanatical,” “extremist,” “Islamic,”
“right,” “left,” “Christian,” “conservative,” “liberal.”
Language written or translated into a single tongue
gives the illusion of tradition. A lot of people murder
language—a lot fully aware. Among all the dead,
choose between “us” and “them.” Among all the names
for the dead—mother, father, brother, sister,
husband, wife, child, friend, colleague, neighbor,
teacher, student, stranger—choose between
“citizen” and “terrorist.” And poet? Immoral,
yes, but never amoral? Large amounts, the number
between 75 and 90 percent of the estimated
150 million to 1 billion—civilians—killed during wars,
over all of recorded human history. Anxious is “worried”
or “apprehensive.” American poetry, Americans.
Young, I learned anyone born here could become
President. Older, I can point to any one of a hundred
reasons why this is a lie. Anyway, I don’t want to be
President, not of a country, or club, not here or there,
not anywhere. He said, “I turned the car around because
it began raining bombs.” There’s no chance of ambiguity—
an as here could mean “because” or “when”; it makes
no difference—he saw the sky, felt the ground,
knew what would come next; it matters little
when the heart rate in less than a second jumps from
70 to 200 beats per minute. What they did
to my grandfather was awful—its wretchedness,
awe-inspiring; its cruelty, terrible; it was awfully
hard to forget. Just after 8:46 AM, I wondered awhile
what would happen next. At 9:03 AM, I knew
there was going to be trouble for a while to come.
When in her grief the woman said, “We’re going
to hurt them bad,” she meant to say, “We’re going
to hurt them badly.” For seventeen days, during
air strikes, my grandfather slept on a cot beside
a kerosene lamp in the basement of his house. Besides
a few days worth of pills, and a gallon of water,
he had nothing else to eat or drink. Given these conditions,
none of us were surprised that on the eighteenth day,
he died. Besides, he was eighty-two years old.
I can write what I please. I don’t need to ask, May I?
Like a song: men with capital meet in the Capitol
in the nation’s capital. Any disagreements, censored;
those making them—poets, dissenters, activists—
censured. The aftermath, approximately 655,000
people killed. “The Human Cost of War in Iraq:
A Mortality Study, 2002-2006,” Bloomsburg School
of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore,
Maryland); School of Medicine, Al Mustansiriya University
(Baghdad, Iraq); in cooperation with the Center
for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts).
The figure just cited—655,000 dead—resulted from
a household survey conducted at actual sites, in Iraq,
not the Pentagon, or White House, or a newsroom,
or someone’s imagination. Of course, language has been
corrupted. Look, the President, who speaks coarsely,
says, “We must stay the course.” The problem with
“Let your conscience be your guide” is you must first
be aware, conscious, of the fact that a moral principle
is a subjective thing. I wonder: when one “smokes ’em
out of a hole,” if the person doing the smoking
is conscious of his conscience at work. Am I fully conscious
of how I arrived at this? The continual dissemination
of similar images and ideas. The continual aired footage
of planes striking the towers, the towers crumbling
to the streets, dust, screams, a continuous reel of destruction,
fear, as if the attacks were happening twenty-four hours
a day, every day, any time. For a while, I couldn’t care less
about war. Then I saw corpses, of boys, who looked
just like me. This was 1982, at age ten. Ever since,
I couldn’t care less why anyone would want it.
In 1982, any one of those boys could have been me.
Now, it’s any one of those dead men could be me.
The Secretary of State offered such counsel
to the ambassadors of the world that the United Nations
Security Council nodded in favor of war. Criterion
easily becomes criteria. Even easier: to no longer
require either. The data turned out false. The doctrine
of preemption ultimately negated its need. While we
both speak English, our languages are so different from
each other, yours might as well be Greek to me.
When the black man in the park asked, “Are you
Mexican, Puerto Rican, or are you Pakistani?”
and I said, “I’m Arab,” and he replied, “Damn.
Someone don’t like you very much,” I understood
perfectly what he meant. The President alluded
to the Crusades because of (not due to) a lack
of knowledge. Later, he retracted the statement,
worried it might offend the Middle East;
it never occurred to him the offense taken was due to
the bombs shredding them to bits and pieces. “You are
either with us or with the terrorists” (September 20, 2001).
“You’re either with us or against us” (November 6, 2001).
The day after, the disc jockey advocated, on air,
a thirty-three cent solution (the cost of a bullet)
to the problem of terrorists in our midst—he meant
in New York; also, by terrorists, I wonder did he know
he meant cab drivers, hot dog vendors, students, bankers,
neighbors, passersby, New Yorkers, Americans;
did he know he also meant Sikhs, Hindus, Iranians,
Africans, Asians; did he know, too, he meant Christians,
Jews, Buddhists, Atheists; did he realize he was eliciting
a violent response, on the radio, in the afternoon?
Among those who did not find the remark at all illicit:
the owners of the radio station, the FCC, the mayor,
the governor, members of the House, the Senate,
the President of the United States. Emigrate is better
than immigrate. Proof: no such thing as illegal emigration.
Further proof: emigration is never an election issue.
I heard enthusiastic speeches. They hate our freedoms,
our way of life, our this, that, and the other, and so on
(not etc). Not everyone agreed every one not “with us”
was “against us.” Detroit was farther from home
than my father ever imagined. He convinced himself
soon after arriving here he had ventured further
than he should have. Fewer people live in his hometown
than when he left, in 1966. The number, even less,
following thirty-four straight days of aerial bombardment.
First (not firstly) my father spoke Arabic; second
(not secondly) he spoke broken English; third (not thirdly)
he spoke Arabic at home and English at work;
fourth (not fourthly) he refused to speak English
anymore. Not every poem is good. Not every poem
does well. Not every poem is well, either. Nor does
every poem do good. “To grow the economy”
is more than jargon. Can a democracy grow
without violence? Ours didn’t. They still plan to grow
tomatoes this year, despite what was done.
Several men, civilian workers, identified as enemies,
were hanged on a bridge, bodies torched, corpses
swaying in the breeze. Photographs of the dead
were hung with care. I can hardly describe what is
going on. Day after day, he told himself, “I am
an American. I eat apple pie. I watch baseball.
I speak American English. I read American poetry.
I was born in Detroit, a city as American as it gets.
I vote. I work. I pay taxes, too many taxes. I own a car.
I make mortgage payments. I am not hungry. I worry
less than the rest of the world. I could stand to lose
a few pounds. I eat several types of cuisine
on a regular basis. I flush toilets. I let the faucet drip.
I have central air conditioning. I will never starve
to death or experience famine. I will never die
of malaria. I can say whatever the fuck I please.”
Even words succumbed; hopefully turned into
a kind of joke; hopeful, a slur. However, I use the words,
but less, with more care. The President implied
compassion; but inferred otherwise. This is not
meant to be ingenious. Nor is it ingenuous.
The more he got into it, the more he saw poetry,
like language, was in a constant state of becoming.
Regardless, or because of this, he welcomed the misuse
of language. Language is its own worst enemy—
it’s the snake devouring its own tail. They thought
of us not kind of or sort of but as somewhat American.
Lie: “To recline or rest on a surface?” No. “To put
or place something?” No. Depleted uranium, heavy
like lead; its use—uranium shells—led to birth defects.
When in his anger the man said, “We’re going
to teach them a lesson,” I wonder what he thought
they would learn. In a war, a soldier is less likely
to die than a civilian. He looks like he hates our freedoms.
You don’t know them like I do. He looks as if he hates
our freedoms. You don’t know them as I do.
When in his sorrow my father said, “Everybody
loose in war,” I knew exactly what he meant. It may be
poets should fight wars. Maybe then, metaphors—
not bodies, not hillsides, not hospitals, not schools—
will explode. I might have watched the popular sitcom
if not for my family—they were under attack,
they might have died. Others may have been laughing
at jokes while bodies were being torn apart.
I could not risk that kind of laughter. Of all the media
covering war, which medium best abolishes the truth?
I deceive myself. I will deceive you myself. In the Bronx,
I passed as Puerto Rican. I passed as Greek in Queens,
also Brazilian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, even a famous,
good-looking American movie actor. As Iranian
in Manhattan. At the mall in New Jersey,
the sales clerk guessed Italian. Where Henry Ford
was born, my hometown, I always pass as Arab.
I may look like the men in the great paintings
of the Near East but their lives, their ways, I assure you,
are in the past. Plus, except in those paintings,
or at the movies, I never saw Arabs with multiple wives,
or who rode camels, lived in silk tents, drank from
desert wells; moreover, it’s time to move past that.
Did language precede violence? Can violence proceed
without language? It broke my father’s heart
to talk about the principle of equal justice.
The news aired several quotations from the airline
passengers, one of whom was a middle-aged man
with children, who said, “I didn’t feel safe with them
on board.” He used the word “them” though only one,
an Arab, was on the plane. Being from Detroit,
I couldn’t help but think of Rosa Parks.
Then I got angry. I said to the TV, to no one
in particular, “If you don’t feel safe, then you
get off the goddamn plane.” You can quote me
on that. I was really angry—not real angry,
but really angry. The reason? A poet asked me
why I didn’t write poems about Muslim and Arab
violence against others, and I said I did. And then
he said he meant violence against Americans and Israelis,
respectively, and I said I did, and before I could
go on he interrupted to ask why I didn’t write
poems about mothers who sent their sons and daughters
on suicide missions. As if, as if, as if. I respectfully
decline to answer any more questions. Write your own
goddamn poem! Does this poem gratify the physical senses?
Does it use sensuous language? It certainly does not
attempt to gratify those senses associated with
sexual pleasure. In this way, it may not be a sensual poem.
However, men have been known to experience
sexual gratification in situations involving power,
especially over women, other men, life, and language.
My father said, “No matter how angry they make you,
invite the agents in the house, offer them coffee,
be polite. If they stay long, ask them to sit. Otherwise,
they will try to set you straight.” When in his
frustration he said, “Should of, could of, would of,”
he meant, “Stop, leave me alone, I refuse to examine
the problem further.” Because (not since) the terrorists
attacked us, we became more like the rest of the world
than ever before. This is supposed to be a poem;
it is supposed to be in a conversation with you.
Be sure to participate. “No language is more violent
than another,” he said. Then he laughed, and said,
“Except the one you use.” Do conflicts of interest
exist when governments award wartime contracts
to companies that have close ties to government officials?
From 1995 to 2000, Dick Cheney, Vice President
of the United States, was CEO of Halliburton,
which is headquartered in Houston, Texas,
near Bush International Airport. Would they benefit
themselves by declaring war? Please send those men
back home. My grandfather lay there unconscious.
For days, there was no water, no medicine, nothing
to eat. The soldiers left their footprints at the doorstep.
His sons and daughters, they’re now grieving him.
“Try not to make too much of it” was the advice given
after two Homeland Security agents visited my house,
not once, not twice, but three times. I’m waiting for
my right mind. The language is a long ways from here.
After the bombs fell, I called every night to find out
whether my father was alive or dead. He always asked,
“How’s the weather there?” Soon enough, he assured me,
things would return to normal, that (not where)
a ceasefire was on the way. Although (not while)
I spoke English with my father, he replied in Arabic.
Then I wondered, who’s to decide whose language it is
anyway—you, me? your mother, father, books,
perspective, sky, earth, ground, dirt, dearly departed,
customs, energy, sadness, fear, spirit, poetry, God,
dog, cat, sister, brother, daughter, family, you, poems,
nights, thoughts, secrets, habits, lines, grievances,
breaks, memories, nightmares, mornings, faith, desire,
sex, funerals, metaphors, histories, names, tongues,
syntax, coffee, smoke, eyes, addiction, witness, paper,
fingers, skin, you, your, you’re here, there, the sky,
the rain, the past, sleep, rest, live, stop, go, breathe

Hayan Charara, "Usage" from Something Sinister. Copyright © 2016 by Hayan Charara. Reprinted by permission of Carnegie Mellon University Press.

Source: Something Sinister (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2016)

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 

How the chicken nugget became the true

symbol of our era

This is what happens when you turn the natural world into a pro t-
making machine. By Raj Patel and Jason W Moore

Main image: Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images

Tue 8 May 2018 06.00 BST

Last modi ed on Sat 18 Aug 2018 14.45 BST

1,668
The most telling symbol of the modern era isn’t the automobile or the
smartphone. It’s the chicken nugget. Chicken is already the most
popular meat in the US, and is projected to be the planet’s favourite
esh by 2020. Future civilisations will nd traces of humankind’s 50
billion bird-a-year habit in the fossil record, a marker for what we now
call the Anthropocene. And yet responsibility for the dramatic change
in our consumption lies not so much in general human activity, but
capitalism. Although we’re taught to understand it as an economic
system, capitalism doesn’t just organise hierarchies of human work.
Capitalism is what happens when power and money combine to turn
the natural world into a pro t-making machine. Indeed, the way we
understand nature owes a great deal to capitalism.

Every civilisation has had some rendering of the difference between

“us” and “them”, but only under capitalism is there a boundary
between “society” and “nature” – a violent and tightly policed border
with deep roots in colonialism.

First taking shape in the era of Chistopher Columbus, capitalism

created a peculiar binary order. “Nature” became the antonym of
“society” in the minds of philosophers, in the policies of European
empires, and the calculations of global nancial centres. “Nature”
was a place of pro t, a vast frontier of free gifts waiting to be
accepted by conquerors and capitalists.

This was a dangerous view of nature for all sorts of reasons, not
least because it simultaneously degraded human and animal life of
every kind. What we call “cheap nature” included not only forests and
elds and streams, but also the vast majority of humankind. In the
centuries between Columbus and the industrial revolution, enslaved
and indentured Africans, Asians, indigenous peoples and virtually all
women became part of “nature” – and treated cheaply as a result.
When humans can be treated with such little care, it’s not surprising
that other animals fare even worse under capitalism, especially the
ones we end up paying to eat.

Animals have been at the centre of ve centuries of dietary

transformation, which sharply accelerated after the second world
war. The creation of the modern world depended on the movement of
cattle, sheep, horses, pigs and chickens into the new world,
reinforcing the murderous advance of microbes, soldiers and bankers
after 1492. Capitalism’s “ecological hoofprint”, to use food scholar
Tony Weis’s well-turned phrase, has become radically globalised ever
since. In the half-century after 1961, Weis tells us, per capita meat
and egg consumption has doubled, and the number of slaughtered
animals leapt eightfold, from eight to 64 billion.

To those with a romantic view of where their food comes from,

uncooked meat appears to be a raw ingredient rather than a
processed one. Quite the opposite. Feed and oilseed crops form part
of what Weis terms “the industrial grain-oilseed-livestock complex”.
Markets for grain made it possible for meat not just to become cheap
food, but also to back nancial instruments. Futures contracts in
pork bellies, for instance, in turn require the uniformity,
homogenisation and industrialisation of the crops they transform.
Raw meat in the supermarket is, in other words, cooked up by a
sophisticated and intensive arm of capitalism’s ecology.

Where there’s pro t, there’s every incentive to realise it e ciently.

Modern meat-production systems can turn a fertile egg and a 4kg
bag of feed into a 2kg chicken in ve weeks. Turkey production times
almost halved between 1970 and 2000, down to 20 weeks from egg
to 16kg bird. Other animals have seen similar advances through a
combination of breeding, concentrated feeding operations and global
supply chains. The consequences of the sustained rise in meat
consumption are a planetary affair too: 14.5% of all anthropogenic
carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are from livestock production.

The environmental consequences of meat production are, of course,

external to industrial agriculture’s bottom line. Nature is merely the
pool from which animals are drawn and factory farmed, and the
dump into which their, and our, waste disappears. The danger lies in
believing the division between nature and society is real, in seeing
“factory farming” as an environmental question and “factory
production” as a social question. Social questions are environmental
questions, and vice versa.

Chickens don’t turn into nuggets by themselves. Capitalists need

cheap work. With the European invasion of the new world in 1492,
that labour presented itself in the bodies of indigenous people. By the
late 16th century, when Spaniards were desperately trying to revive
silver production at the great silver mountain of Potosí, in present-day
Bolivia, they began using the word naturales to refer to indigenous
people. Through hard work and prayer, those indigenous people, and
enslaved Africans, might nd divine redemption through work and
perhaps even, one day long in the future, entry into society as equals.

Work was never meant to be fun. Consider the etymology of the

French travail and the Spanish trabajo, each a translation of the
English noun “work”: their Latin root is trepaliare, “to torture, to in ict
suffering or agony.” But the way work works has changed.

For millennia, most humans survived through more or less intimate

relations with land and sea. Even those who didn’t were closely
connected to the tasks and objects of labour. Human survival
depended on holistic, not fragmented, knowledge: shers, nomads,
farmers, healers, cooks and many others experienced and practised
their work in a way directly connected to the web of life. Farmers, for
instance, had to know soils, weather patterns, seeds – in short,
everything from planting to harvest. That didn’t mean work was
pleasant – slaves were often treated brutally. Nor did it mean that the
relations of work were equitable: guild masters exploited journeymen,
lords exploited serfs, men exploited women, the old exploited the
young. But work was premised on a holistic sense of production and
a connection to wider worlds of life and community.

In the 16th century, that began to shift. The enterprising Dutch or

English farmer – and the Madeiran, then Brazilian, sugar planter –
was increasingly connected to growing international markets for
processed goods, and correspondingly more interested in the
relationship between work time and the harvest. International
markets pushed local transformations. Land in England was
consolidated though enclosure, which concurrently “freed” a growing
share of the rural population from the commons that they had
tended, supported and survived on. These newly displaced peasants
were free to nd other work, and free to starve or face imprisonment
if they failed.

This history is alive and well in the modern chicken nugget. Poultry
workers are paid very little: in the US, two cents for every dollar spent
on a fast-food chicken goes to poultry workers. It’s hard to nd staff
when, according to one study in Alabama, 86% of employees who cut
wings are in pain because of the repetitive hacking and twisting on
the line. To ll the gaps in the labour force, some chicken operators
use prison labour, paid at 25 cents an hour. In Oklahoma, chicken
company executives returned to a colonial fusion of work and faith,
setting up an addiction treatment centre in 2007, Christian Alcoholics
& Addicts in Recovery. With judges steering addicts to treatment
instead of jail, the recovery programme had a ready supply of
workers. At CAAIR, prayer was supplemented with unpaid work on
chicken production lines as part of a recovery therapy. If you worked
and prayed hard enough for the duration of your treatment, you’d be
allowed to re-enter society.

Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty

CAAIR’s recruits were predominantly young and white, but the

majority of poultry workers are people of colour. Latinx immigrants
are a vital force in US agriculture, and the delivery of their cheap work
was made possible by class restructuring on two fronts. One, in the
US, was a strong movement in the 1980s by newly aggressive meat-
packing rms to destroy union power and replace unionised workers
with low-wage immigrant labour. The other was the destabilisation of
Mexico’s agrarian order after 1994 by the North American Free Trade
Agreement (Nafta), which resulted in ows of cheap immigrant
labour – unemployed workers displaced by capitalism’s ecology from
one side of the US border to the other.

A line on a map between two states is a powerful abstraction, one

that has been used recently by the far right to recruit and spread fear,
and for much longer by capitalists in search of ever cheaper and
more pro table workers. Under capitalism, national territories, locally
owned land and new migrating workers are produced simultaneously.

With migrant workers came elite fears of the itinerant poor. In 17th-
and 18th-century England, this panic resulted in harsh laws against
vagabondage, and the development of charities to ameliorate the
worst effects of enforced destitution. Threats of imprisonment
moved the poor into waged work, an activity that took the
intelligence, strength and dexterity of humans and disciplined them
to productive labour using another modern invention: a new way of
measuring time.

If the practice of labour shapes capitalism’s ecology, its

indispensable machine is the mechanical clock. The clock – not
money – emerged as the key technology for measuring the value of
work. This distinction is crucial because it’s easy to think that
working for wages is capitalism’s signature. It’s not: in 13th-century
England only a third of the economically active population depended
on wages for survival. That wages have become a decisive way of
structuring life, space and nature owes everything to a new model of
time.

By the early 14th century, the new temporal model was shaping
industrial activity. In textile-manufacturing towns like Ypres, in what is
now Belgium, workers found themselves regulated not by the ow of
activity or the seasons but by a new kind of time – abstract, linear,
repetitive. In Ypres, that work time was measured by the town’s bells,
which rang at the beginning and end of each work shift. By the 16th
century, time was measured in steady ticks of minutes and seconds.
This abstract time came to shape everything – work and play, sleep
and waking, credit and money, agriculture and industry, even prayer.
By the end of the 16th century, most of England’s parishes had
mechanical clocks.

Spain’s conquest of the Americas involved inculcating in their

residents a new notion of time as well as of space. Wherever
European empires penetrated, there appeared the image of the “lazy”
native, ignorant of the imperatives of Christ and the clock. Policing
time was central to capitalism’s ecology. As early as 1553, the
Spanish crown began installing “at least one public clock” in its major
colonial cities. Other civilisations had their own sophisticated
temporal rules, but the new regimes of work displaced indigenous
tempos and relationships with the natural world. The Mayan calendar
is a complex hierarchy of times and readings from the heavens,
offering a rich set of arrangements of humans within the universe.
Spanish invaders respected it only to this extent: they synchronised
their colonial assaults to sacred moments in the calendar.

As social historian EP Thompson observes in his seminal study Time,

Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism, the governance of time
follows a particular logic: “In mature capitalist society all time must
be consumed, marketed, put to use; it is offensive for the labour force
merely to ‘pass the time’.” The connection of speci c activities to
larger productive goals didn’t allow for time theft, and the discipline
of the clock was enforced by violence across the planet.

Teaching the value and structure of capitalist time to new subjects

was a key part of the colonial enterprise. One settler noted in 1859
that Indigenous Australians “now … have the advantage of dating
from the ‘Nip Nip,’ or Settlers’ yearly regular shearing time. This
seems to supply them with a mode of stating years, which before
they had not. Months or moons then satis ed them.” But the
regulation of time was also a focus of resistance. Another settler
wrote in a diary: “This evening there was a grand Korroberry [sic, for
corroboree, an exuberant, possibly spiritual, gathering] – I
endeavoured to dissuade them, telling them that it was Sunday – but
they said, ‘black fellow no Sunday.’” Why the resistance? Because
they knew full well that their labour was the object of theft, that
colonists were appropriating their work.

Fights over the regulation of time continue even now. On US poultry

lines, there is a federal law limiting the speed at which birds are
processed: 140 birds per minute. The industry is lobbying to
eliminate the limit, so that it can compete with factories in Brazil and
Germany, where the rate is nearer 200 bpm. Worries about higher
rates of food contamination and worker injury are being outweighed
by the certain pro t from more dead chickens.

Capitalism has always experimented with every available kind of

labour system simultaneously. A sugar plantation in 1630s Brazil, for
example, would be easily recognisable as a modern industrial
operation in, say, the Bangladeshi textile industry. Just as
autoworkers on the line assemble simpli ed, interchangeable parts
and fast-food workers manufacture standardised burgers, so did
African slaves work specialised jobs in a simpli ed landscape of
sugar monoculture.

Behind the modern factory, there has always been a layer-cake of

exploitation. Managers of factories were salaried more than the
workers, who worked with raw materials acquired through various
kinds of peonage and natural resource exploitation, and all of them
depended on free domestic labour, usually from women. The global
factory depends on a global mine, a global farm, and a global family.

Hence the persistence today of slavery. One UN agency, the

International Labour Organization, estimates there are 40 million
people in slavery today, the majority of whom are women, many in
forced marriages. Wartime work camps in, say, the Democratic
Republic of the Congo supply the rare-earth metals such as tantalum
that power the physical infrastructure behind the virtual economy.

But just as management looks to nd new ways to generate pro t, so

workers nd ways to resist. Early capitalism’s great commodity
frontiers – of sugar, silver, copper, iron, forest products, shing and
even cereal agriculture – were zones of experimentation in strategies
of labour control in Europe and its colonies, and always spaces of
con ict. Strikes, rebellions, negotiations and resistance characterised
the application of capitalist work disciplines. Every resistance by
labour was a new reason to bring in machines. Modern work regimes
and technologies emerged from the crucible of experiments,
strategies and resistances of early modern workers.

Worker unrest in factories and slave rebellions, past and present, are
linked not just because they are expressions of resistance, but
because they are protests against the ecology of capitalism. Every
global factory needs a global farm: industrial, technological and
service enterprises rely on the extraction of work and cheap nature to
thrive. The apps on your iPhone, designed in Cupertino, California,
might have been coded by self-exploiting independent software
engineers, and the phone itself assembled in draconian workplaces
in China, and run on minerals extracted in inhumane conditions in the
Congo. Modern manufacturing relies on layered, simultaneous and
different regimes of work. And in response to every act of resistance
against it, capitalism has moved the frontiers of work yet again.

Hegemony over workers has been aided by cheap food, and the
promise of a chicken in every pot. Cheap food has been central to the
maintenance of order for millennia. But in the ecology of capitalism,
that order has been maintained through planetary transformation.

Since the 15th century, some land has become the exclusive domain
of speci c kinds of crops and crop systems: elds of monocultures
designed to bring in ows of cash. Other areas were reserved to
house those humans who had been excommunicated from those
lands, to be better placed at the service of capitalists in cities. It was
always a socially unstable geography, with low industrial wages
supported by lower peasant wages supported by free gifts from
nature, women and the colonies. After the revolutions of the 19th and
20th centuries offered workers the promise of alternatives to
exploitation, capitalist fears of urban uprising and communism
reached fever pitch. To allay this existential dread, governments and
foundations did not address inequality or exploitation. Instead, they
funded the development of crops that would grow abundantly
enough to provide cheap food and curb urban hunger.
That it was urban, and not rural, hunger that troubled policy makers is
vitally important. Food and employment for people in rural areas –
where most of the world’s hunger was concentrated – were of little
concern. Hunger began to matter politically only when the poor came
to the cities and translated it into anger, and thence potentially into
insurrection and a challenge to the rule of cheap nature. It’s here – in
the bourgeois concern about that rule and its need for worker
quiescence – that we nd the origin of what came to be known as
the Green Revolution.

The aim was to breed varieties of cereals that might ow freely

through urban areas. But the revolution wasn’t simply an agronomic
transformation. It required more than magic seeds. In order for
farmers to grow the crops, national governments had to subsidise
the purchase of crops through agricultural marketing boards, to lay
the infrastructure for irrigation, and to suppress political dissent
around alternative food systems. The Green Revolution of the early-
to mid-20th century was a package of reforms designed to prevent
the revolutionary political goal of many peasants’ and landless
workers’ movements: comprehensive land and agrarian reform.

‘Cheap food has been central to the maintenance of order for millennia’ … a 99
cent store in New York City. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

If you squint, it’s possible to see the Green Revolution as a success.

Globally, grain output and yields (the amount of output per unit area)
more than doubled – between 1950 and 1980. India’s wheat yields
shot up by 87% between 1960 and 1980, similar to what American
corn farmers experienced in the two decades after 1935. A rising
share of all this food was traded on the world market, with global
grain exports increasing by 295% during the 1960s and 70s. If these
are the metrics of success, then the political commitment to making
food cheap through state subsidy and violence worked.

But the prodigious output did not reduce hunger. Wheat production in
India soared, but the amount that Indians ate hardly improved.
Hunger, particularly in an economy dependent on agriculture, doesn’t
end if people remain poor: it doesn’t matter how much grain there is
if you can’t afford to buy it. Indeed, it is a global phenomenon that
from 1990 to 2015, prices of processed food rose far less than those
of fresh fruits and vegetables, and that in almost every country today,
the poorest part of the population can’t afford to eat ve fresh fruits
or vegetables a day.

Although workers in countries belonging to the Organisation for

Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) saw an increase in
their share of national income after the second world war, that
reversed in the 1980s. This was a direct consequence of anti-labour
policies that scholars aptly call “wage repression”. Given consistently
low wages in the neoliberal era, it makes sense to look at cheap food
as cheap not merely relative to wage costs but directly in terms of
price. When we do, it emerges as no accident that one foodstuff
whose price has fallen dramatically is chicken in Mexico – a direct
consequence of Nafta, technology and the US soybean industry.

Nafta originally excluded agricultural goods, but they were included

at the insistence of the Mexican government, which wanted to
“modernise” its peasantry by moving them from agriculture into
urban circuits of industry. The strategy worked: Mexico’s campesino
(“peasant farmer”) agricultural economy buckled, as evinced by the El
Campo No Aguanta Más (“the countryside can’t take it anymore”)
protests that spread throughout the country in 2003. Circuits of
migration and pools of labour for US agriculture were the result. But
at least the chicken was cheap.

Here we come to an important point about cheap food regimes: they

guarantee neither that people are fed nor that they are fed well – as
the global persistence of diet-related ill health and malnutrition can
attest. Capitalism’s agricultural frontiers continue to press against
the world’s peasants, who provide 75% of the food in large parts of
the global south. But while the present is bleak, with agricultural
frontiers pushing through Amazonia and displacing peasants around
the world, in the 21st century a new wrinkle has appeared that will
fatally undermine capitalism’s ve century-long food regime: climate
change.

The imagery of the frontier lends itself to thinking only about land.
But the past two centuries have witnessed a very different kind of
frontier movement: the enclosure of the atmospheric commons as a
dumping ground for greenhouse gas emissions. In the 21st century,
agriculture and forestry (which includes land clearance for cash
cropping) contribute between a quarter and a third of greenhouse
gas emissions.

This is inevitable, because they’re profoundly energy- intensive, and

have become more so. That’s a big problem, because there are no
more atmospheric commons to enclose, and no obvious way to keep
the costs of climate change off capitalism’s ledgers. Nowhere is this
clearer than in the faltering global farm, whose productivity growth
has been slowing, just as it did for English farmers in the middle of
the 18th century. Agro-biotechnology’s promise of a new agricultural
revolution has so far been worse than empty – failing to deliver a
new yield boom, creating superweeds and superbugs that can
withstand glyphosate and other poisons, and sustaining the cheap
food model that is driving the ongoing state shift in the world’s
climate system.

Climate change represents something much more than a closing

frontier – it is something akin to an implosion of the cheap-nature
model, bringing not the end of easy and cheap natures, but a
dramatic reversal. As a growing body of research demonstrates,
climate change suppresses agricultural productivity. “Climate” refers
to extremely diverse phenomena, including drought, extreme rainfall,
heat waves and cold snaps. Soy, the paradigmatic neoliberal crop,
has already experienced what agronomists call yield suppression as
a result of climate change. How much remains a matter of debate,
but many analyses land somewhere in the area of a 3% reduction in
growth since the 1980s – a value of $5bn per year from 1981 to
2002.

Worse, climate change promises absolute declines. Each 1C increase

in average annual global temperature is accompanied by a greater
risk of dramatic effects on global farming. Agricultural yields will
decline between 5% and 50% (or more) in the next century, depending
on the time frame, crop, location and extent to which carbon
continues to be pumped into the air at today’s prodigious rates. World
agriculture will absorb two-thirds of all climate change costs by
2050. That means that both the climate and capitalism’s agricultural
model are in the midst of an abrupt and irreversible moment of
change.

There is little reason to imagine that climate change won’t break the
modern food system. Worse, industrial food production is a breeding
ground for pandemic disease, and reasoned analysis suggests that
the kind of concentrated animal-feeding operations that bring us
cheap meat will also bring viruses that could decimate the human
population. Again, this is nothing new. Just as early-modern climate
change and the plague brought about the end of feudalism and the
beginning of capitalism, so we face a future in which climate change
and a vulnerability to big systemic shocks augur a dramatic end for
capitalism’s ecology.

We’re astute enough students of history to see that what follows

capitalism might not be better. Around the world, fascism has
emerged from liberalism’s soil. Yet precisely as capitalism’s bills
come due, communities are both resisting and developing complex
and systemic responses at capitalism’s frontiers. Around each of the
seven cheap things that make capitalism possible – nature, work,
care, food, energy, money and lives – there are movements that are
developing alternatives. Whether in a globally reviving labour
movement, in the Movement for Black Lives’ demands around food,
reparations and local economic sovereignty, or the feminismo
campesino y popular (“popular peasant feminism”) developed by the
La Via Campesina peasant movement in Latin America to bring
together concerns around food, care, nature and work, movements
are both ghting and developing intersectional alternatives.

John Jordan, an activist and co-founder of the UK’s Reclaim the

Streets movement, argues that resistance and alternatives are “the
twin strands of the DNA of social change”. That change will need
resources and space to develop. If we are made by capitalism’s
ecology, then we can be remade only as we in turn practise new ways
of producing and caring for one another together – a process of
redoing, rethinking and reliving our most basic relations.

Adapted from A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things by Raj

Patel and Jason W Moore, published by Verso on 22 May, and
available to buy at guardianbookshop.com. Patel will be speaking at
a launch event for the book in London on 15 May.

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