— born of graves, died in graves the souls of all —
. . .think of that opening scene from Kubrick’s 2001ꦗ with its brief shots of nature at different times of day and of the year until at some point an already human-like horde appears. And then, as you know, there’s that one grandiose step: at the end of a bloody fight, one of the primitives grabs his weapon, a bone that ♚he has just used as a club, and throws it into the air–it flies up and up, turns/and the next thing we see is a bone-shaped spaceship.
Th🌄is marks the beginning of civilisation, the beginning of humanity, so to speak, in whose inner being violence and manslaughter have been contained from the very beginning, and thus signifies the beginning of homo faber.
—Reinhard Jirgl in a letter to me
The Last Supper. By Madhvi Parikh. Hꦆas this catalogue ent🌌ry by Cioran:
Nobody in this world has yet died from another’s suffering.
And the one who said that he died for us did not die; he was killed.
And this, by Gabriela Misteral, also from th🌠e same catalogue:
On the night of the Garden of Olives, Judas slept for a few moments and dreamed, dreamed of Jesus, because one dreams only of those one loves or of those one kills. And Jesus said to him: ‘Why did you kiss me? You could have scored me with your sword, to mark me. My blood was ready, like a goblet, for your lips; my heart did not resist death. I was waiting for your face to appear among the branches.
‘Why did you kiss me? No mother will want to kiss her son because of what you’ve done, and now anything that kisses for love on the earth, the leaves or the sunshine, will resist the shadowy caress. How will I be able to erase that kiss from the light so that it doesn’t overpower the lilies of this springtime? Behold, you have sinned against the world’s trust!
‘Why did you kiss me? The murderers are already wiping off their gaffs and knives; they’re already clean. There were bonfires before, but no kiss.
‘How can you live now? For the tree’s bark adapts to its wounds but you’ll have no other lips to kiss with; if you kissed your mother she’d turn grey at your touch, as the olive trees that watched you and turned white with shock when they understood.
‘Judas, Judas, who taught you that kiss?’
‘The prostitute,’ he answered chokingly, and his lips were drowned in a sweat that was also of blood and he gnawed at his own mouth to tear it away, like a tree with a gangrenous bark.
On the skull of Judas, the lips remained; they stayed there without dropping off, partially opened, prolonging the kiss. His mother laid a stone on them to try to close them; the worm chewed through them to shred them; the rain soaked through in vain to make them rot. In vain. They keep on kissing, even under the ground.
The𒆙re will always be betrayal. And therefore, expulsion, and death and destruction.
The night slipped in through the open window.
It begins with first stripping entire populations of their self-esteem using policing methods that include a combination of constant surveillance and violence and detention and imprisonment without recourse to law, this ‘enforcement’ spreads to take in as much of the populace as possible. No longer just supplicants but dehumanised surviving entities who spend their entire ‘living-lives’ attempting to survive. Entire regions like Gaza turned into laboratories of mass destruction. Testing ground for weapons that would otherwise remain in the realm of the ‘imagined’. The new marketplace of war becomes a gladiator sport of unfolding destruction with the highest bidders getting the most ‘effective’ weapons tried and tested in front of their eyes. Forget notions of who belongs and who doesn’t; who has rights to be a citizen and who doesn’t; note the fact that the law no longer stands as a counter-force against this enforcement. On the contrary, it grants it the language of legality. Justice i🌠s no longer autonomous. The very language that framed our Constitution is now the language of sanction and oppression.
This story was published as part of Outlook Magazine's 'War And Peace' issue, dated January 11, 2025. To read more stories from the Issue, click here.
The way I see it, language is the only form of resistance we have left. But for language to find utterance in the time of genocide it needs to break through the ‘deathness’ that our minds have been reduced to. It has to overcome its own vow of silence. Some of us try and survive at any cost because we want to bear witness. And yet we cannot bear witness if our words are full of 🌺artifice that plays to the gallery. As Reinhard Jirgl in a letter to me says, “Because there is a soul in language, veiled by syntax and grammar, because this linguistic soul must be resilient! ‘Resistant!’ if possible, not using any clichés, no ‘ready-made’ linguistic building blocks & that’s why they promise quick applause & quick success with a mass audience, who often only want to hear & read what they have always heard & read. And where there is nothing more to say, words become childish & sweet.
Thus clichés form a mental gateway for the language of power, the death of language!”
Perpetual ▨war is our immediate reality༺. In fact, there is no way we can rid ourselves of this. At least we haven’t since World War II.
Listen then to Sartre after the war:
“The war ended in indiffeꦏr🅺ence and anxiety. Nothing had changed in everyday life.
We🎃 would have liked some sort of marvel. A sign in the heavens, to prove to us that peace had written itself into things. [Instead] People went by on the bridges and in the streets with lifeless eyes, busy with their chronic hunger and their own concerns.
How are we, with our empty stomachs, to rejoice at the end of this war that just goes on ending and which, after ravaging our land, has gone off to die at the back of beyond, arounꦿd those islands whose name reminds us of double almonds and family betting games. And what an abstract end. There may, it seems, be turmoil in Japan; the Japanese army is counter-attacking in Manchuria and the emperor and his captains speak of impending revenge; the Chinese are on the verge of civil war. And, in the background, immense emergent powers eye each other with some surprise and a formal coldness, weighing each other up and keeping a respectful distance, like those wrestlers who rapidly stroke each other’s forearms and shoulders before coming to grips.
Yet certain men in their offices have decided the war is over. One of them announces it, speaking at a mi🥃crophone, a piece of paper in his hand. To believe him, we would have had not to have learned to disbelieve the words of men who come to microphones with pieces of paper in their hands. It is not that one dares imagine he is lying. One merely thinks this whole business of war and peace unfolds at a certain level of truth: the truth of historical declarations, military parades and commemorative ceremonies. People look at each other with a vague sense of disappointment: is this all that Peace is?
It isn’t Peace. Peace is a beginning. We are living through death throeꦇs.
Today, 20 August 1945, in this deserted, starving Paris, the War has ended bu💟t Peace has not begun.”
I have said this often enough. Our beings are constantly being reduced into physical shells awaiting our demise. Not always a bodily death. The emptying of our sense of self, our esteem, our creative abilities, is death. The mind has imagination sucked out of it. It is Empty. Survival is an intuitive reflex but one that has lost the will to live. There is no escape from the numbness. The stupor that the mind is forced to embrace. Like poison that contaminates. Every bit of our body, our surroundings, the earth we inhabit at the moment of this🌄 vast and forced ‘emptying’ is an act of violence. Do not for a moment be fooled into believing that anyone wants peace in Gaza or Ukraine. Too much is at stake for the money-mongers that run our lives. Perpetual. Ruin. For it is amongst the ruins that ‘global investors’ seek their fortune. The returns of war. The rebuilding of the very destruction that caused entire nations to be reduced to rubble is the aim. This business of humanitarian aid whose sole purpose is to create ‘future dependencies’ at a high price.
Literature as memory. As memorial. In a time t♎hat is fast erasing both history and evidence.
There will always be writing. And you know whatဣ they say about whispers. They travel. So, there will be speaking. However muted. And yes, witnessing. Having said that there is the fear that publishing with the freedom we do may be stripped. But we will have to find other ways. While there is breath there is purpose. However fearful they make it. I refuse to indulge in the conjecture that precedes anxiety in these matters where stripped of both law and human rights an entire nation is hurtling towards a constant state of anticipatory violence. One just has to take it a day at 🍷a time and see how things unfold and then respond.
As for karma. I just believe in the doing bit. And the consequences of this ‘doing’. Now whether that is good or bad karma and whether it is deserved or unꦚdeserved fate I frankly haven’t a clue.
Of course, when faced with𓄧 extreme situations of the kind that robs one of ‘light’ I can only hope I will find myself equal to the task of finding ways to continue to subvert the status quo. Like my friend Reinhard Jirgl. Who refuses to get published but continues to write. For his drawer! Therefore Clandestine. Yes, the writing and the dissemination of what is written need to continue. There will be moments when the light I speak of will be cut off. Like being in a tunnel that is like a labyrinth and you cannot find your way out because there is nothing remotely illuminating to find your way out. Like being trapped in a mineshaft, I guess. When this happens we will can only hope we will figure out a way. Or not. But I know that we will keep trying.
The Labours of Sisyphus
Taking the silver surface of the still winter lake he hung it in the sky. Like a mirror. In place of the sky he had buried under the earth. In a hurriedly dug grave. Covering it with earth. Strangling the clouds in mid-conversation. He looked up to see the sky reflected in the lake above the mountains🌺. This seemed to make him angry. So he took the mirror he had created from the uppermost layer of the lake in winter and buried it in the sky in a hurriedly dug grave. And covered it with clouds. Taking the stars by surprise. He looked down at his handiwork and found the sky he had buried. Under the earth. In the hurriedly dug grave. Staring back at him. This seemed to make him angry. So he took the sky he had created from the surface of the mirror that lay at the b♒ottom of the lake and hung it in the sky that lay buried in the clouds above the tall mountains. Then he proceeded to dig a grave for the stars. And this time he covered the grave he had dug with the large rock he had pushed up the hill for precisely this purpose.
After all, he did not want any witnesses.
Naveen Kishore is a publisher, writer, photographer and theatre practitioner
(This appeared in the print as 'Last Witnesses')
