Take Care Of Her. She Is Your First Patient. Cure Her.

I think I was/am going through a 'Writer's Block'. Not for lack of things to write, but because I have much to put down. I put words to thoughts and ideas in my brain and then grow weary of going over them all over again as I ink them. Even so, I was itching to write something here but just didn't find that shove, that moment when you know you just have to do it before you get ahead.
There are comments to be answered and I will get to that after I have given myself some time to ripen the thoughts I penned; to see where life takes me and what it makes of me and my ideas about my thoughts beyond that distance of time.
So, as always I waited to see if I would ever get a chance to say something here...

And here I am. I just read Joseph Conrad's 'Heart Of Darkness'. I had been getting directives to its 'great-work-of-artness' by way of reference to Kurtz and all he embodies, in any write-up I read on colonialism or what-exactly -is-screwed-about-the-world, or T. S. Elliot. Like all things I took it as a sign from the universe to read the book.
With a stroke of good luck I was locked out of my room for a while with the book on me. It was like one of those days you wake up thinking is going to be totally routine but a series of wrong turns make it part of 'Fond Memories'. So, fiercely rainy day, empty hostel, quiet town and a well-worn second-hand copy of 'The Heart Of Darkness' were part of one of my Perfect Days.

Coming to the book. Because I was already primed to it, I was in a hurry to know the story first. I can not keep pace of the writing and the subtle layers along with the story, nor do I try to because it leaves me with a sense of incompleteness once the story ends. Then, if the story stays with me days after I shut the book; its characters hound me with renewed understanding of them as I go through the grind of my life; its words read themselves out in hours of early wakefulness as dreams are leaving- I know I have to get back to the book.
It amazes me every time, the things that my mind retains when I read a book once (or even watch a movie, hear a song) and the thoughts it thinks and turns on their heads on re-reading. It is like a version of Free-Association.
So, the book was a similar experience and I will return to it for a more nuanced, slower reading. The writing is very captivating and demands complete attention. Kurtz and all was all there. It makes one think for oneself, sift through all the devices and motifs used and find one's own reckoning. All that was very fine.
But while reading it, especially the parts when Marlow and crew go deeper into the forest in search of Kurtz, Conrad writes of how it felt like going to Primeval times, to unchartered Earth, inhabited by 'savages' whose colour added in large parts to the 'Darkness' of the milieu, I felt the text was suddenly anachronistic. It is not a tale of time-travel. It shows what Imperialism actually was, yes, but at the same time not really acknowledging the Right of the conquered nations to just be. It still shows them as weak, ignorant, bumbling people full of witch-craft that needed the White-man's hand gently if not in the barbarous manner things came to pass.
It was just a tiny red-light that lit up in my head when I read it. I have grown to be vary of all popular ideas and things that evoke ample cheering from the world represented to us in most of the media around us.
I didn't think of how a person of African origins would read this book set in Africa.

Once I was done reading, I looked up 'The Heart Of Darkness' on the internet. The internet is such a powerful tool being yet unguarded. I once read a blog where the author was listing his childhood fantasies. One of them was a magic box/thing which would easily take him to different times or places. Then as he grew up the Internet came to be.
So, Wikipedia gave me this:Achebe: An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"
It is a Nigerian's thoughts on the book. And it is very gratifying.

My room-mate was very fond of Geography in school. She being schooled under ICSE, me SSC with the booklets made of cheap paper that passed for Textbooks, is a tad better in her fundamentals of academics. So, once we were discussing school projects and she was telling me about how she loved doing projects on the earliest Civilizations. She enumerated the four or five that were there. Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indus and one in China, from what I remember. So, I asked her what about Africa? and Americas? She said they are not counted in the early 'Civilizations' because they don't conform to its 'definition'.
I remember also reading some one who in response to some body saying-America has no culture, said-The way the Americans are is their culture, only it is not yours.
I have a problem with definitions. I can never remember them. Of course, being a medical student that is also my nemesis. But don't you think one can never give any thing the limits of words?
Define your self. Define the worst thing you know. Define Love because we live in its Age. And if it be Friendship (à la KJo) define Friendship.
Labels of 'Good' 'Bad' 'Excellent' or out-of-5-stars are convenient, but are they fair?
Some times I wonder if I would be at any peace without these things that trouble me and make me sad and angry and utterly helpless about the world. I think the worst is living in the age where even hope gives sorrow. Living long after colonialism was officially over, wars were aggressively and obviously fought, and 2 nuclear bombs were dropped in full consciousness, can one ever say some day every thing will be all right again? Just How did this come to be; and how do we let go and move on?
And when did we swap faces and names for numbers? We talk of Afghanistan and Pakistan like all these places surmise is Americans and the Taliban. What of the normal people there, you know the every day kind, plain persons. You and me. Where are they?
And those of 'us'. The stones-throwers are out of work, but are the Kashmiris ok? The Naxalites get our well-placed gasps but how will we react when one morning our mountains disappear? And our wounded pride at the 25-year no-show of the Bhopal Gas Scam must have healed because we are raring to go (and how!) at the atithi-devo-bhava-exclusively-indian hosting of the 'Commonwealth' games.

What if history as we know it hadn't happened? We know we could be different. What if we were? But then the books, and the movies and the songs and the need for heroes and fairies and great 'love Stories' wouldn't be.
May be that is why we are not.