Saturday, March 03, 2007

Politics of Love-part 2

It’s during these experiments you experience your creative faculties. You learn to create. You have gone through too much to keep it to your self. Your knowledge is too powerful, too magnanimous to be contained. That woman fails to be a human being for you from now on. She becomes a character for you .Just a mere character. That’s the ruthlessness of love, of knowledge. You are in love with not a being but with an interesting character now. With the experiences you had with it and the experiences she had with other men. All the men in her life become your protagonists, villains, narrators…characters. You are the writer-lover now. That’s how love becomes an act of selfishness. It empowers you with the capacity to see beyond the feelings, feelings which are nothing but age old dogmas. The confession box, you were who acquired the knowledge of her guilt, crimes, joys, and struggles, has now chosen to use it for his benefit, for his enjoyment. He becomes a story teller now. You have so many characters, the ones who loved her, the ones she loved, the ones she deceived, the ones she couldn’t, the ones she desired, the ones she acquired…oh so many of them…and above all there is SHE herself. The biggest pain is to see your self as a character in her life. You have to be brutal with your self, merciless like you have been with her. It hurts to be just a character; after all you loved her to conquer her, to be a hero. But now it’s time to grow up, to be more than a hero. The desire to be just a hero is killed, and knowledge is to be given a vent to create masterpieces. If you can do that you conquer your consciousness. And then again the politics of love comes into play. At no time she should know about this aspiration of yours. Your conspiracy to attain your creative heights should be hidden. The moment she knows that you are using her for self actualization, she will become deceptive, untrue in her narration to you. Doors to knowledge will be closed. That is where you have to play the trick. You are a story teller only while holding a pen and not her hand. The moment she sees the pleasure in your eyes when she is narrating to you her tragedy, she will start lying, hiding. She is the one who has inspired you to write, to create. She is the one who has empowered you with knowledge, with courage to see the truth beyond it is seen. She has given you the chance to plunder, explore and experience. And it is she from whom you have to hide it all. She is selfish just as you are, you are there for her only till you serve a purpose. The purpose of comforting, strengthening, and helping her believe what she wants to believe. You have been given a role of a guardian, a sympathizer, a listener not for your amusement but for her pleasure. You are not supposed to be amused by it that is the condition which is placed when she confides in you. Confidants are not supposed to be story tellers. But you commit the crime of being one, and you can sustain it only if you are a smart and ruthless criminal. Love is blind and love is ruthless too.

Beyond this I think GB Shaw should take over, for he understands it more than any body else. I am quoting a dialogue from his play "MAN AND SUPERMAN", delivered by the character TANNER

“The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. To women he is half vivisector, half vampire. He gets into intimate relations with them to study them, to strip the mask of convention from them, to surprise their inmost secrets, knowing that they have the power to rouse his deepest creative energies, to rescue him from his cold reason, to make him see visions and dream dreams, to inspire him, as he calls it. He persuades women that they may do this for their own purpose whilst he really means them to do it for his. He steals the mother’s milk and blackens it to make printer’s ink to scoff at her and glorify ideal women with. He pretends to spare her the pangs of child-bearing so that he may have for himself the tenderness and fostering that belong of right to her children. Since marriage began, the great artist has been known as a bad husband. But he is worse: he is a child-robber, a blood-sucker, a hypocrite, and a cheat. Perish the race and wither a thousand women if only the sacrifice of them enable him to act Hamlet better, to paint a finer picture, to write a deeper poem, a greater play, a profounder philosophy! For mark you, Tavy, the artist’s work is to shew us ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothing but this knowledge of ourselves; and he who adds a jot to such knowledge creates new mind as surely as any woman creates new men. In the rage of that creation he is as ruthless as the woman, as dangerous to her as she to him, and as horribly fascinating. Of all human struggles there is none so treacherous and remorseless as the struggle between the artist man and the mother woman. Which shall use up the other? that is the issue between them.”

8 comments:

Varun said...

You make it all sound so political...and calculated. I disagree (or call me ignorant) on most counts...but then, it's an opinion/experience/understanding of yours which can stand disgareement of highest degree.

It's hard to tell whether GB Shaw is the starting point of this article or the finishing line. May be, you want to corroborate ur 'learnings'...but from a writing point of view, it seems redundant at the end.

Flow, once again, is good...though not as immaculate as the part -1 was. Maybe, expectations burdened u this time.

The bottomline for me is - What about us mortals, who don't even struggle with these questions of love, manipulation and survival, let alone, un-layer them?

Sumit Saxena said...

Political..well i m not making it sound like that. Thats how I see it. Thats why i named it Politics of love nd I named the article the moment I decied the subject Iam going to write on. "Wicked games" as they call it!!
GB shaw is the ending point. He wrote only about the artist man and his need for love. I wrote about his birth, about the Lover-conquerer-artist transition. Ya, true it becomes redundant in the end, Probably I could have avoided quoting the whole dialogue from the writing point of view. But then I was really startled that some one thought almost exactly the way I do, and that some one is none other than GB shaw, I was actually trying to pat my back : )
Flow did die , i felt it while writing it, thanks for keying this. yes I was concious.
About your question..havn't you heared, Ignorance is bliss. Your not struggling with those questions makes you enjoy johars, chopras, SRKs and think that it is not all that political. Probably you are still in knowing the WHATS phase or have just discovered the WHYS, wait for some time, the struggle will begin!!

Varun said...

"enjoy johars, chopras, SRKs and think that it is not all that political".

That hurts. The knowledge of being not-understood. That hurts.

Sumit Saxena said...

"That hurts. The knowledge of being not-understood. That hurts.
"
Just look at the writing style..isnt that johrish!! That i guess is exactly a scene in KANK, nd you have not even scene the film. Speaks abot your understandng of that kind of cinema!! hahaha
kidding..i know ur point and I know u know mine. Knowledge u see!!

Anonymous said...

I found an example of what you've said in a book by Milan Kundera titled 'Life Is Elsewhere', it is the story of a poet Jaromil and the way he treats the girl he loves...he gives her pain and makes her cry because he knows he has the power to make her stop crying, and that helps his ego...although his love for the girl is true, but it is a dangerous sort of love.
That is also I think the 'artist's love', he is ruthless.

Animesh said...

Interesting article in 2 parts, and interesting comment by VG.

There was a time, when I also used to try to analyze human relations very intricately, but sadly, they lose their charm if you do this. More importantly, the models we make of them are not complete, and so we begin to falter in our conduct.

Also, about the whole "A man loves only one woman, the woman who gives her knowledge about herself, about love, about life, about god, and above all, about himself. Rest all women in his life are laboratories.." thought, I beg to differ. I have come to realize that we use the word "love" in a very narrow way. It _is_ possible to love more than one person to bits, and it is also possible to learn about love, life and God from multiple people.

Interestingly, this path also brings you ultimately to a stage when although you love a whole bunch of people, you become detached. But this detachment is different - you still listen to a friend when she is sad, but you do not analyze it at all - you just offer pure love and support, and because you are not affected by it, you can help/listen in a better manner.

Having tasted both, I would anyday prefer this state of loving-all to the more narrow state of loving-[n]one.

But then again, these are my opinions, your milage may vary.

Anonymous said...

I tried publishing a comment just after finishing the first part too but technology didn't support me that moment....I felt it was required, coz the question it arose was going to be answered next....was the feeling it gave.
After reading the first part, I smiled, agreed and questioned what exactly POLITICS is. Do I understand? Why this comparison? How true and experienced u are while doing it.And its brutal clarity could only be the proof.
Yes! its true, for most of the time, but for we mortals the way truth is expressed, matters. I like your unglorifying view towards LOVE, but then there has to be some glory. Yes! it is ruthless and this only has the capacity of being the most, but why it hurts 'extra'. there has to be some extra tenderness attached.why? Why we are still not out of this biasness,neither while idolising nor while analysing it.Is it possible to dilute all the parameter and then analyse?

what is analysis then? even if we keep our parameters intact, Is something left after This brutally knowledgable analysis phase...
Is it not a politics of first putting love under glorified cloak and then start the struggle of ripping it off. I just question why this... whats this...Politics or Dynamics? I dont know? Does it matter? When it exhists..It doesnt I feel..But when it is expressed I think it does.

Raj

Unknown said...

qaasid ke aate aate khat ik aur likh rakhooN
main jaanta hooN jo wo liKhenge jawaab meiN
--- Mirza Ghalib