Letting Dante read Petronius

Letting Dante read Petronius,  e'en old Ez realized

Every Canto's contango is but Belief backwardized

As a virus made the Dutch tulip precious

The Wireless, Beauty more infectious.

Ontological dysphoria

   The Anthropic principle tells us that Physics is supervenient on Biology, Biology on Discourse, Discourse on Rent Seeking Availability Cascades, which are themselves supervenient on random stuff  like coprogphagic Celebrity hysteresis effects - and so everybody almost all the time is in a state of ontological dysphoria- i.e. feels they are living in the wrong Universe.

   But this begs the question- is there any sense to the phrase 'shit happens'- as expressing the fundamental empirical truth of lived life- which does not also imply that intersubjectivity is a monadology of incompossiblie Universes whose harmony is pre-established by a fractal whose human form might be some utter shite like Piers Morgan or Simon Cowell or whatever?

Parrhesia, De Profundis

Son, Truth to Power, sure, 'tis 'cheap talk' to speak

Save Wealth's cock cram thy tongue in cheek

Or up thy arse, fruit, the forbidden tree

To evolve 'costly signals' or Poetry.

Mystic Union and the price of onions.

' The poet says- his tears make him thirsty for onion.'

'Onion?'

'Onion with the Divine. That is true wine of the Saqi'

For a mere mirror holding habit turns Saqi e'en thy Christ-white hand

Yet must Wine’s bloodthirst  parch khaki- being so blindly poured

Now the dearness of the onion is Democracy's firebrand

 How tether Mystic Union Tears’ Mongol horde?

I often dream I'm translating Orhan Pamuk

I often dream I'm translating Orhan Pamuk

into something marginally less gay

So, Stan Bull 'spite Galip's galehaut of a book
Bard not Self-buggery for aye.

 Abreeze, thoughts ribald as these, here to hear rattle sere leaves
 Brompton Cemetery trees : Cities' Autumn oneiric weaves
In vain. Twain vane to this, in vein, Rabelaisian gust

Yours deaf & mine dust.

Worst aspect of Jallianwallah Bagh atrocity.

I am far from being an acolyte of Barrister M.K. Gandhi. However, I have today resolved to return all the orders, decorations, and titles, posthumous or otherwise, bestowed on me for meritorious conduct and outstanding service to the British Empire in protest at what constitutes, in my considered opinion, the worst aspect of Gen. Dyer's recent frightfulness.

Indeed, as I write this now- more in sorrow than anger- my heart goes out to the gentle and suffering Moti and Jawahar Lal Nehrus, and their toiling team of  fellow Indian National Congress lawyers, as they take depositions from witnesses to the Amritsar Massacre and the blood drains from their faces and they stare at each other in wordless horror trying for the life of them to figure out how precisely they are supposed to uphold their sworn duty, as seasoned officers of the court, to most royally fuck these peasants over even unto the seventh generation.

'Cometh the hour, cometh the man'. I have lately learnt that Barrister Gandhi- whom I feel it would be churlish to further deny the honorific 'Mahatma' or 'great soul' as the Bengalis have it- has taken charge of this nice bit of legal business.

Rent Seeking, Identity and Politics

Rent seeking is the attempt to capture the returns to something in fixed or inelastic supply thus gaining wealth or power without actually adding value to Society. As such, Economists tend to be suspicious of rent-seeking.

Ricardo's model of the economy, featuring diminishing returns, gives rise to the fear that the landowners (assuming land is in inelastic supply) would continually get richer while the capitalists and the workers would get poorer.  This 'Classical' model lies at the heart of Marxism as well as Populist Radicalism- such as that of Henry George who wished to tax the 'unearned increment' landowner's receive thanks to the industry of others.
The problem with this line of thought is that Land isn't really inelastic in supply. Transport Technology can change the picture completely. Trains and motor cars and refrigerated ships and so on have the effect of depressing rents on land. Heavy taxes on land, however, would remove the incentive for landowners to accommodate what the market requires and new technology has made possible. The same point can be made about any other factor of production which appears inelastic in supply. Tax it to the hilt and the economy suffers. This is because all factors are elastic in the long run. There is no such thing as economic rent- only quasi rent.
Another reason to tolerate rent seeking has to do with its incentive effect. Essentially, rational agents will always strive to turn profits into rents as the latter are more secure. But anything tending to reduce uncertainty in the economy is, ceteris paribus, positively correlated with output.
Indeed, the cost of rent seeking behaviour- i.e. the things people do so as to corner a rent- may be either very positive or negative for Society.

Indeed, Public and 'Merit' Goods- things like Defence and Education and Courts of Justice or Representative institutions like Parliament- may arise or continue to be sustained by rent-seeking behaviour. The State- in so far as it monopolizes coercion- provides Justice and Defence. Generally, it raises taxes to pay for this. If people don't or can't pay enough for Law Courts and Armies they may still get it. But, at the margin, the State's willingness to combat every threat to Public Order or sovereignty is reduced to the extent that its efforts can't be sustained by taxes levied locally. Such areas may be de jure subject to the State but contain large de facto autonomous areas.
Education is linked to Credentialism- i.e. rent seeking by an artificial restriction of the supply of skilled labour such that only those with the proper paper or other qualifications are allowed to work.
Compulsory education, apart from being a rent to people in the Higher Education racket, is also a way to reduce wage competition from adolescents. If young people could start work once they hit puberty, peak disposable earnings for men would be between 16 and 22. There would be very little crime and drug addiction and so on.  Social mobility would be greatly increased. Anyone could change their class status- itself dependent on capital from savings- simply by changing their date of marriage.
In other words, Educational and other Credentialism may evolve as a first strike in a potential generational conflict. It may also be used to underline ethnic or credal or caste based divides.
I mention all this to show that Rent seeking costs are fundamental to both social stratification and class or other cohesion.
Now let us turn to Identity and the notion of Identity based Rights. The most basic sort of Identity is personal Identity. It is by no means clear that all Societies at all times have considered personal identity and individual rights to be indefeasible. In less developed economies, if I hire you as a cook but you send your brother instead, some people might think you had satisfied your contract. Similarly, if you killed my brother but hand over someone else from your tribe felt to be of equal value for my people to kill- some might think that Justice had been served.  Clearly, there are both costs and benefits to the notion of personal identity and individual rights. One might say that to insist on one's distinct, unique and individual identity is to seek a rent on oneself. It would not be rational to do so unless the potential benefit outweighed the cost.
We currently have the notion of Citizen's Rights and 'Human Rights'- including things like a Right to Sustenance, Education and so on. The individual is constituted as the owner of rents to himself. The cost of that rent-seeking would never be borne by a rational individual. Why? A superior alternative is substitutability across an Identity category- if you can afford the cost of enforcing a rent on yourself, what is to stop you enforcing it for yourself plus some weaker other. You are better off if you can collect a rent on a gross substitute and discharge the penalty of any action of your own by offering up this weaker member, or members, of your Identity category. This gives you an incentive to widen your Identity category and for others to narrow it.
We can term this sort of conflict- which is the essence of the political- contested Meta-rent seeking.
Prescriptive claims re. Universal Rights are maximally meta-rent seeking. Their contestation imposes punitive costs on the claimant's rent to himself. Universal Rights becomes a self-imposed Individual slavery and narrowing of agency. Of course, the current cost of this might be evaded by  recourse to hedging on an inflated derivatives market for Identity.
Which is why w now face this huge overhang of Toxic Rights.

South African Satyagraha as origin of Gandhian Corruption

'A movement takes its downward course from the time that it is afflicted with a plethora of  funds.  When  therefore  a  public  institution  is managed from the interests of investments, I dare not call it a sin but I
do  say  that it  is a  highly  improper  procedure.  The  public   should be the bank for all public institutions, which should not last a day longer than  the  public  wish.  An  institution  run  with  the  interest  of accumulated capital  ceases  to  be  amenable  to  public  opinion  and becomes autocratic and self-righteous. This is not the place to dwell upon  the  corruption  of  many  a  social  and  religious  institution managed with permanent funds. The phenomenon is so common that he who runs may read it.'
M.K Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa.


"The Black Act applied to the Chinese as well as to the Indians whom they therefore joined
in the Satyagraha struggle. Still from first to last the activities of the two communities were
not allowed to be mixed up. Each worked through its own independent organisation. This
arrangement produced the beneficent result that so long as both the communities stood to their
guns, each would be a source of strength to the other. But if one of the two gave way, that
would leave the morale of the other unaffected or at least the other would steer clear of the
danger of a total collapse. Many of the Chinese eventually fell away as their leader played
them false. He did not indeed submit to the obnoxious law, but one morning some one came
and told me that the Chinese leader had fled away without handing over charge of the books
and moneys of the Chinese Association in his possession. It is always difficult for followers to
sustain a conflict in the absence of their leader, and the shock is all the greater when the leader
has disgraced himself. But when the arrests commenced, the Chinese were in high spirits.
Hardly any of them had taken out a permit, and therefore their leader Mr Quinn was warned to
appear along with the Indians. For some time at any rate Mr Quinn put in very useful work."
ibid
Leung Quinn disappears from history in 1911. Did he really abscond with the money of the Chinese Association? It is difficult to reconcile his exemplary record of personal courage and sacrifice with so sordid an end.
A book by Melanie Yap, '

Colour, confusion and concessions: the history of the Chinese in South Africa

reveals how acrimonious the split between the 'passive resisters' and the 'no resisters' became
- indeed, it featured a full scale gun battle!- and also chronicles the manner in which the Court froze
the assets of the Chinese Association and ultimately used its funds for the endowment of a
Chinese only ward at the Johannesberg hospital.


Writing 'Satyagraha in South Africa', in Gujerati, some years after he'd left South Africa, Gandhi can
be pardoned lapses in memory.


Still, even to the casual reader, Gandhi's jaundiced view of passive resisters like Leung Quinn, Pundit Ram Sundara and Thambi Pillai appears 
appears to be based on gossip. He makes a grave charge against Quinn based on what his enemies said about him
once he. himself, had been deported and had no means to defend himself.
Why does Gandhi quite gratuitously defame Quinn? Well, he is trying to make two points
1) Only celibates can do Satyagraha. Otherwise, like Ram Sundara, passive resisters will fall for the temptations of the flesh and 
disappear from the scene. THUS only celibacy (brahmacharya) is free from corruption (brashtachara). The essence of
Corruption is intermingling of the pure with the impure. Gandhi point out that though the Indians and the Chinese were
in the same boat, they kept their struggles separate. Thus, his own support of Khilafat had not rendered him impure
though no one believed he actually wanted the re-establishment of the Turkish Caliphate. The Gandhian principle here is
that alliances are purely tactical and involve no long term commitment. There can be no intermingling or harmonizing
of intent. That would be corrupt.


2) Money entrusted to an institution breeds corruption. Thus the only truly worthwhile institution in public life is the 
Saintly Gandhian who, because he is celibate, has no private life at all. In the language of Carl Schmitt- the Gandhian alone
is the fitting Homo Sacer to rule society.


How does Gandhi make his case?
By repeating gossip and mean-spirited slander. He was a barrister by profession. The paper he edited was called 
'Indian Opinion'- which Indian's opinion?- his own- it had nothing to do with objective news or rational analysis.


But if Gandh's 'Satya' (Truth) turns out to be whatever gossip he chooses to hear or whatever nonsense he happens t
to chance upon in some pamphlet by a faddist, and if moreover, Gandhi admits no objective test- utilitarian or deontological
- of these received truths, then Gandhian Truth is Corruption merely and the Struggle for it a fool's quest.


Gandhi felt that money entrusted to him was not subject to the sort of scrutiny and accountability that characterize 
money held by an Institution for a Charitable or Social purpose. To argue otherwise would be to subject his disposal 
of funds to a Utilitarian calculus. Later, the 'Harijans' would object that money collected in their name was being used
to maintain high caste lawyers in idleness. Clearly, this sort of thing is best nipped in the bud.


Gandhi was brave, a good organizer and, it may be, somewhat less prejudiced then people of his own class. But, 
his positive contribution to South Africa ended with the appearance of a younger cohort of South African born, Indian,
barristers. Recognizing this, Gandhi, in fact, returned to India and set up shop as a barrister in Bombay in 1902. The 
South African Indians are at fault for calling him back. This was a mistake- though a pardonable one at the time. After
all, the British had mentioned protection of British Asiactic subjects as one of their war aims. 
But, Milner wasn't interested in the 'Asiatic question'. Kitchener, himself, had given the game away to the Boers- the
Liberals would win the next election, so Milner's 'kindergarten' was an irrlevance. The Boers would have everything
 their own way. The Chinese coolie question, artfully managed by Smuts,actually helped the Liberal victory.
 Boers received fabulous compensation awards while the Uitlanders were squeezed out
 Smuts repatriated the Chinese mine workers and showed the mine-owners who was boss. True, Smuts
had a soft spot for fellow barrister Gandhi- but Smuts was deeply hated by his own people because rather
 than in despite of the increasing admiration he won from the British.
Smuts increasing admiration for Gandhi turned out to be a bane, not a boon, for the South African Indians.


It is interesting that Gandhi starts to go completely off his rocker at precisely the time when he is forced into a no-win
political position. The Boers had lost the war but were able to win the peace by making the Asiatics the scapegoat. 
In India, the lesson of the Boer War- as a Liberation struggle- had been taken to heart by the Jugantar Revolutionists.
If the Colonial authorities had thought they could use Kaffir rights or protection for Asiatics as a moral stick with which 
to beat the rude Boers into baffled submission, they had miscalculated. Gandhi himself, not to mention the numerous other
educated Asiatics and European Liberals, were on the spot to show that Milner's 'kindergarten' was corrupt, stupid and
racist. Thus, the Asian question empowered the Boers who, in any case could appeal to the new Jingoistic racism of 
the Yellow Press.
What if the Indian Freedom Struggle had learned the lesson of the Boers? Instead of accepting the British 'Umpire' as the 
protector of 'minorities', 'women', 'Scheduled Castes' etc, they could have posed as guardians of morality keeping the lessr
orders in their place- preventing things like 'Moplah' uprisings, suppressing trafficking in Women and Drugs and so on.


 As a matter of fact, Tariff protection and Congress influence on curbing Trade Union militancy was as good for British
owned concerns as Indian businesses. All the Indians needed to do was assemble enough munitions to put up a fight
at some place where they might have a strategic advantage. A show of force, even if ruthlessly put down, would still
have yielded a settlement similar to that which the Boers received. Indeed, the Indian Revolutionists were preparing for 
precisely this outcome- arranging for a German shipment of arms with the Kaiser's son and also sending out feelers to the
Japanese and the Russians.


But the Jugantar movement was crushed by Police Commissioner Tegart.  Bagha Jatin's lieutenant, M.K. Roy goes to 
Moscow. Will he get Soviet help? Not a chance. The Bolsheviks were only interested in destroying their own country and
sending each other to the Gulags. Roy runs away from Russia and meekly comes back to India to serve out his prison 
sentence.


In my view, Gandhi goes off his rocker because he was placed in an impossible position in South Africa. Whatever move
he made, strengthened the most implacable and racist of all possible enemies. But, the India he returned to was no different


Whatever move the Congress leaders made either strengthened the Empire or destroyed the cohesion and productive
capacity of the indigenous element or did both simultaneously.


From every point of view- the Gandhian aspect of the Indian Freedom struggle was a race to dig our own mass grave.


Gandhi's conclusion to his book on the South Africa Satyagraha is an extraordinary muddle. He takes the view that
since both the Boers and the British were determined to humiliate the Indians, it was his duty as a true Satyagrahi to
do everything in his power to make ineffective any action by Indians miners or laborers. They were welcome to harm
themselves by any act in the name of Satyagraha but forbidden to do anything which might hurt the economic or
other interests of any White person or property owner whatsoever. 
It is noteworthy that Gandhi was writing after the First World War. At no point does he mention the manner in which it
altered the positions of the Indians in South Africa. Purely economic considerations had already put an end to Smuts
campaign to harass the Asians as a means of endearing himself to his own red-necks. Now military and strategic 
considerations- as well as the esprit d'corps which cuts across color lines engendered by the common travails 
of Commonwealth forces- permitted a radical change in the position of Asians in South Africa. But Gandhi
was already completely off his rocker-



"A thing acquired by violence can be retained by violence alone, while one acquired by truth
can be retained only by truth. The Indians in South Africa, therefore, can ensure their safety
today if they can wield the weapon of Satyagraha. There are no such miraculous properties
in Satyagraha, that a thing acquired by truth could be retained even when truth was given up.
It would not be desirable even if it was possible. If therefore the position of Indians in South
Africa has now suffered deterioration, that argues the absence of Satyagrahis among them."






Gandhi is making two claims here- one that he improved the position of South African Indians and,second,
that they would have been better off if he had stayed with them.


These are self-serving claims. Is there any evidence at all to support either? 


Confining ourselves to the evidence he himself presents, we find his propaganda work in India had embittered not just the Boers but many
working class whites against not just himself but also the Asians in South Africa.
Indeed, the worsening in the condition of Indians in South Africa- though partly a strategic game of shuttlecock between 
the Imperial power and the dominant White community- was something his own tactics both precipitated 
and facilitated. However, once Indians in South Africa showed they were in a position to inflict considerable costs on
society- especially if they acted in concert with organized labor- including white labor- then they achieved the removal
of costly to enforce and purely obnoxious measures. However, nothing w.r.t right of representation or immigration was 
conceded as this would affect the relative balance of power. Gandhi, of course, never sought such measures. Essentially
Gandhi's usefulness to Smuts lay in the vituperative zeal he displayed in attacking and condemning as immoral any
agitation which might raise wages or working conditions for Indian labor. Clearly, if some people become better off
through Satyagraha, then Satyagraha is corrupt. Moreover, the racial argument against Indian immigrants focused on their
lower standard of living. Any economic amelioration in their condition would tend to militate against the very foundation 
of Satyagraha as wholly Indian and pure and distinct from any other sort of struggle.
Indeed, it would be no better than the Socialism espoused by the likes of Saklatvala who had married an English girl!
Gandhi and Smuts were both barristers and near in age. They certainly formed a mutual admiration society later in life. What explains their lack of rapport in 1908? Gandhi's own explanation is that Smuts was brilliant but a born equivocator. His intentions may have been honest but allowed himself to be misunderstood. The result was that Gandhi was hoodwinked into rushing off to 'voluntarily register' for which he received a thrashing from some Pathans. But why was Gandhi so keen on giving his finger-prints? That too voluntarily? It is one thing to submit to an injustice by reason of force majeure but to refuse to submit to force and demand to submit voluntarily means only one thing- the rule is just and salutary and it is offensive to suggest that those brought under the rule would not do so voluntarily. Let us say there were a rule 'Indians must wash their hands after defecation. Penalty for non compliance 5sh.' I would object to this rule because it seems to imply that Indians will only wash their hands after defecating from a motive of avarice. However, the Pass Law was not a salutary and good rule. Gandhi may have thought he was being very clever and holier than thou in claiming the right to be the first to voluntarily register under it. The apologetics he produced on this subject defy belief. As Woodrow Wyatt was to discover, Gandhi's casuistry tied no one but himself in knots. This is Gandhi on the Cabinet Mission Plan ''I have been examining the Mission's Statement with my aged lawyer's mind. Now the Cabinet Mission have put out their document they no longer have the right to interpret it. The lawgiver cannot interpret his own laws. That is for the courts. The Cabinet Mission's Plan doesn't mean what they think it means.'
Gandhi was aged, he was a lawyer- but the notion that a Plan doesn't mean what the Planners think it means is not one any lawyer can reasonably entertain. Was he senile? But if so, his senility was of no recent date.


In contrast, Smuts- the poor Scholarship boy- was very much better educated, intelligent and accomplished as a lawyer or statesman. Gandhi's inflated self-opinion would have weighed little with him.
However, Gandhi- unlike Smuts- somehow won the hearts of his countrymen and won a get reputation without achieving
anything for them. Smuts had good reason to envy Gandhi and return the slippers he made for him while in prison.


We know something about Smuts 'holistic' philosophy. As a military man, he wanted to worsen conditions for the Indians
so as to get a measure of what they were capable of so as to have a countervailing power to that of the mine-owners
and the big planters. Smuts wanted to know- as Gandhi tells us- if the 'Orientals' were other-worldly, lacking in vitality,
and a race born merely to serve. Smuts did not want a slave caste of this sort to pollute the energy and self-affirmation
of the South African 'holon'. Gandhi eagerly embraced a position of moral abasement worse than any Smuts devised
because, ultimately, he agreed with Smuts. Indians had no place in South Africa. Indeed, they had no place in India.
They should simply stop having children and die out as a race. True, towards the end of his life, Gandhi was very keen 
that his great niece should go out and get raped a few times. But, not so that she could have children. The rape should 
be enjoyed purely for spiritual purposes as the crest jewel of the Satyagrahi.
True, Gandhi had probably already gone quietly mad by 1903,  but his mean-spirited condemnation of people like Leung Quinn based
on nothing but rumor (this in contrast to his treatment of perfidious Smuts) show that he was riddled and rotten to the core
with conceit and sanctimounious humbug.


Gandhian corruption begins when it dispenses with any objective method of verification of truth claims. It clamors for 
authority without accountability- the Saint's as much as the harlot's 'prerogative throughout the ages'.
Why, then, is Gandhi still a heavy industry?
The answer is that it is a primrose path to Money, Power and self-aggrandizement.


Sheikh Abdullah spoke of the 'Gandhi topi' as a money-spinning machine. Corruption wears a Gandhi topi when seeking to spin money out of anything- even Anti-Corruption agitations. No one is too stupid or too violent or too prejudiced to wear it.
But as everything else wrong with India, this too is not our fault. Only the British should be blamed.

mimetic desire in the mahabharata?

    Both emulous Bilqis, in the Quran, and envious Duryodhana, in the Mahabharata, mistake a highly polished marble floor for a pool of water. The former lifts her skirts- giving rise to a  'free show' for King Solomon who,  thus impassioned, becomes instrumental in the breaking of her waters and thus, millennia later, for the providential provision, to the Muhajir Meccan Hanif, of secure refuge in Ethiopia- the Negus being a nested image of Solomon's mingling, in that mirror of stone, with the nethers' of the Gospel's'Queen of the South' who 'shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.'

    Duryodhana, on the other hand, visiting his nouveau riche cousins in Indraprastha, first won't step on stone, thinking it water, then falls into a pool thinking it stone. Because Draupati ridicules him for having inherited the blindness of his father- that final pool of water in which Duryodhana takes refuge sets also- like  Sagara addressing Ram in Tulsi's masterwork- a merely tribal and thymotic limit to the nature of the Ethical agon set in motion by that mirror of stone or gallehault of mimetic desire.

    A more obvious place to look for Girardian motifs, in the Mahabharata. is Chitrangada's battle with his namesake. Bhishma doesn't intervene. Why? The one thing he won't do battle to protect his family from is disease- where the body struggles with itself.  Is it the case that Adaa Vijaa, Adi Vigyan,- the casting off of one's ills onto one's image in the mirror- but, in Ind, the Gemini are healers by their mutual harmony not their homicidal rage to furnish a korban or Homo Sacer- is also at the root of Chitrangada, the Gandharva's, battle challenge to Chitrangada, the Mortal? The Human image must fight its Divine namesake- for only one can survive to attest the extensionless, therefore infinite, reverse mereology of  (Maryada Bhakti's) Pure Name.

    But, on Earth, at least in proper English, at marriage, two come together to boast the same name. The esteemed (hopefully, soon to be) wife of Mr. Vivek Iyer is not properly addressed as Mrs. Honeytits Iyer  but as Mrs. Vivek Iyer simply. If some allusion must be made to her nominal haecceity, as for example if I were polygynous, then the correct form, surely, would be 'Honeytits, Mrs. Vivek Iyer'. Otherwise, people might think the blameless damsel, and lapdancer, in question was actually descended from the impure wombs of, my second cousins, the arriviste, for ICS gotra, Honeytits Iyers of Hampstead Heath.

   Indeed, every sacral form of marriage involves a shared and shyly darted glance into 'Ayn ul Bibi Maryam'- Mary's mirror- where groom and bride see themselves as they will be seen in Heaven, the more securely univocal for freed of all earthly blemishes.

  Only thus should be read Tagore's Chitrangada or the Mahabharata's reversal of the Rustam /Sohrab, or Cuchulain/ Connia, outcome of Arjuna's unknowing duel with his son whereby-  husband resurrected by reflection in a water nymph's marble of co-motherhood- the miracle Krishna works for posthumous Parikshit, but firmly, is put in its place.

What has all this to do with the Gita?

Is the answer not obvious?
No?
Really, no?

    Well, in that case, I suppose I'd better add something to round this off  'fore chowing down on my tonight's meed of Microwaved Takeaway.

Too much information?

Meh!

  Drinking my iced Rum & Coke, in the glorious gloaming of the one Summery day afforded me by this unlucky year- so far has my way of life fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf- I suddenly think of what a son once said to his handsome father admiring himself in the mirror- 'You haven't seen Mum's true beauty' Hubby rushes off to wrathfully upbraid wifey for wrongfully withholding dowry. 

Wifey says 'who sees my true beauty will die in a fraticidal struggle.'

'But that is your own son!' Hubby is shocked.'You jus'  cursed your own son, Hon!' 

Heeding mother's cry of pain, God says, listen Luv, I can make an exception for your lad. 

Mum says- no, make an exception for every other mother's son- not mine.

Who was that mother who could recognize herself so in the Ayn-ul-Bibi-Maryam? 

Kunti? 

Sure.
Why not?
Actually yes- if you read Gita properly. 

I don't. 

 So, this is my source-
Matir Moyna (the clay bird)

Tareque Masud is dead. I'm alive. God fucking hates us.

Rape-aXe for the Mind.

Finally, a free market solution to rape that's got real teeth- Rape-aXe- a latex sheath, invented by a South African woman, worn like a tampon, with razor sharp barbs guaranteed to disable the assailant and requiring surgical intervention to remove.

Needless to say, Career Feminists are up in arms against it coz ...urm... it's like the medieval chastity belt? and like women back then really wanted to get pregnant? and like die horribly in child-birth? and that's why  Patriarchy invented chastity belts? like to police and control wimmins' sexuality? and, it's like discrimination?  coz how come men don't gotta wear them? (Honey, trust me, we men do gotta wear 'em, at least if we want to travel on the Northern Line during rush hour and keep intact our darling little anal cherries for when you suddenly decide to hurry things along a bit and anyway you're getting your nails done tomorrow.)

What about Rape Axe for the Mind? There's bound to be a way to tap some of that Venture Capitalist silly money, we keep hearing about, by dressing it up as the next big iPhone app or something.

What?

 It already exists and has been patented?!

 No, I hadn't heard about Marxism's mutilated dick.

 Still, serves it right for trying to force itself on the Bengali bhadralok.

 It kinda gives u the warm fuzzies for Ranajit Guha don't it? Still, best to avoid not just the parts of Vienna Guha currently illuminates with his Red Light, but the whole of Austria (recently revealed as ten times as corrupt as Germany)- coz, well, there's only so much temptation flesh & blood can bear you know.