Chhota Nagpur.A little known province of the empire

Greed Is Back and Even More Wolfish Than Ever

Sudarshan Ramani 

For a lot of Indian cinemagoers, The Wolf of Wall Street will be familiar yet strange. It’s based, like most of Martin Scorsese’s films, on a real-life figure, a wealthy stockbroker named Jordan Belfort who has since abandoned his flamboyantly wayward high-lifestyle to re-engineer himself into a much-sought-after motivational speaker. What makes the film exceptional, however, is that it projects the corrupt financier as a different kind of criminal altogether.

Belfort starts out as an “honest” broker, one who hopes to make a living through commissions from every stock his client purchases. The young Jordan, who is cast out of paradise on the Black Monday of 1987 when Wall Street famously crashed, lives in a small apartment with his first wife, scouring classified ads for job listings for unemployed stockbrokers. Now if that picture of a jobless stockbroker looking up jobs in his trade (under classifieds literally listed as “Wanted – Stockbroker”) reminds you of a political cartoon, then you’re watching the right film.

काया परिवर्तन की टीक टीक घड़ी........

See the movie clip

काया परिवर्तन की टीक टीक घड़ी,
जब मेढकों ने पहनी थी घोड़े की नाल,
जहाजों में किया था सफ़र,
ढूंढें थे नगर जहाँ सापों का डर  नहीं था,
जब अंगूठे पे छापा था भविष्य पुराण,
टैडपोलों ने प्रश्न किये थे 
किसी अक्ल की क्या वजह है,
किसी  शक्ल की क्या वजह है,
क्या इस दादुर की हरी खाल के भीतर,
किसी टैडपोल  का मन बसा है,
उन जातीय स्मृतियों  के रिवर्स यात्रा के दौरान,
मैं आतंककारी टैडपोलों  के संपर्क में आया,
वहा टर्रों के सम्राट कम्पयूटर  का  साम्राज्य था.
आतंककारी टैडपोलों ने मेंढक बनने से इनकार कर दिया था,

Gharib -E- Ashena(Familiar Stranger) an Iranian Song by Googoosh

You came from an unknown city, a city without any sign
You came on a white horse of kindness
You came from far way lands across dusty roads
You came looking for someone who understands you
As soon as you arrive covered in dust
All my waiting ends with spring
It's so good seeing you, it's so good you staying
It's so good when I wipe away the dust off your body

Familiar stranger, come. I love you
Take me away with you, to the land of fairytales
Take my hands in your hands
How good is our roof, when its one for two of us
I'll be waiting till you come back to me again
I'm in a prison, but with you I am free

ZAMEEN

ZAMEEN is the first major performance from The DAM(N) Project, a large-scale interdisciplinary art venture that connects Australian and Indian communities around the common concern of global water security. ZAMEEN presents the lives of remote communities in the Narmada Valley of North India, displaced by large-scale dam development securing hydropower for Indian cities. This holistic project integrates innovative technology, diverse community perspectives and true stories of resilience to create an immersive performance combining projections, choreography and multi-channel soundscapes.

चेंद्रू भी मर गए, गुमनामी में ही मरते हैं ऐसे कई नायक

चेंद्रू भी मर गए। लकवे के कारण उनका पूरा शरीर जड़ हो गया था, उमर भी कोई 76 साल हो गई थी। हकीकत तो यह है कि चेंद्रू को खुद भी नहीं पता था कि वह क्या थे? उनके पास कई यादें थीं 50-60 साल पहले की। जब देश-विदेश से कई लोग केवल उन्हें देखने और फोटो खींचने आते थे, वह अचंभित रहते कि आखिर उनमें ऐसा क्या है? आज उनकी मौत पर समाज भी यही पूछ रहा है कि उस मुरिया आदिवासी में आखिर ऐसा था क्या कि उसे याद किया जाए?

Come And See The Blood In The Streets:Pablo Neruda

Chile Street Art

Listen 

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I’ll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

युगन युगन हम योगी ...

Click the image to listen the song

अवधूता युगन युगन हम योगी
आवै ना जाय मिटै ना कबहूं
सबद अनाहत भोगी
सभी ठौर जमात हमरी
सब ही ठौर पर मेला
हम सब माय सब है हम माय
हम है बहुरी अकेला
हम ही सिद्ध समाधि हम ही
हम मौनी हम बोले
रूप सरूप अरूप दिखा के
हम ही हम तो खेलें
कहे कबीर जो सुनो भाई साधो
ना हीं न कोई इच्छा
अपनी मढ़ी में आप मैं डोलूं
खेलूं सहज स्वेच्छा

Where Are You Really from?

Sociological Cinema

In the U.S. people are often asked where they are from, but Asians, Latinos and other people of color often share the distinction of being confronted with a follow up question: "No, I mean where are you really from?" It is useful to examine what this common exchange reveals about how whites draw on race as a means of navigating and reasserting symbolic boundaries between insiders and outsiders, or between substantive citizens and non-citizens. This ridiculous scenario is humorously reenacted in the above comedy sketch, which features an Asian woman sharing a casual conversation with a white man. The man asks her where she is from, but after the woman explains she is from San Diego, the man becomes confused and attempts to clarify, "No, I mean, where are you really from?" His awkward questioning about the woman's "true" origin is a symptom of what law professor Frank H. Wu refers to as the "the perpetual foreigner syndrome." As Wu points out, when a person asks, "why aren't you married?" they are clearly signaling a measure of disapproval, and similarly, the question, "Where are you really from?" communicates something more than a curiosity about one's place of birth (see also, "My, you speak English so well!"). The question constitutes an effort to catalog a person on the basis of a perceived racial difference, but the effect of asking the question is exclusion, and as such, it can be understood as a microaggression, a term that refers to the “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color” (Sue, et. al. 2007). The comedy sketch also serves as a means of broaching an important discussion about how this type of symbolic exclusion is part and parcel of a much broader historical pattern. To name just one particularly vulgar example, during the Second World War, Japanese Americans living on the U.S. West Coast were forced from their homes and relocated toconcentration camps. Irrespective of whether they immigrated or were born in the United States, high ranking military officials and state representatives joined media columnists in amplifying the viewpoint that Japanese Americans were perpetual foreigners who could not be trusted. Despite living in the United States their entire lives, many assumed Japanese Americans were not really Americans.

Neoliberalism, or the catastrophic management of catastrophe

By Jerome Roos 

There is no doubt Warren Buffet was right when he said that his side is making and winning the global class war. The question is: for how much longer?

Neoliberalism is the chaotic theory of economic chaos, the stupid exultation of social stupidity, and the catastrophic political management of catastrophe.

— Subcomandante Marcos of the EZLN