'How a Corporation slowly evolved into an aggressive, strategic colonial power!'

William Dalrymple | Company turns Corporate Raider

Recently, I had the blessed opportunity of listening to William Dalrymple in New Delhi, just this last Saturday, to be precise! I was quite interested in the historic sweep which seasoned his impressive talk, that he spoke with such gusto to an ardent audience in rapt attention to every word and every line of what he had to say! (YouTube link follows!)

Acclaimed historian and author Dalrymple, was speaking extensively from his just released book, titled, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire!

‘One of the very first Indian words to enter the English language was the Hindustani slang for plunder: “loot”’, he started off, and went on to register his remarkable insights into this corporate plunder of epic proportions, even going to the extent of calling the East India Company, the world’s first corporate raider!!!

Yet another interesting observation that he made on the dais, caught my attention real well! He alluded to a medieval Welsh castle, in Powys, Wales, that goes by name Powis Castle! This Castle was built by the last hereditary Welsh prince, Owain Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, way back in the 13th century! History has it that, this huge manorial estate seems to have been gifted on a platter unto him for vacating Wales and handing it over to the English monarchy!

Now, Dalrymple’s question is this: This castle seems to sport some of the rarefied gems, war spoils and treasures that were brought back home by Robert Clive and his son, Edward Clive, from off India, which included: some good old master paintings, along with the bounty accumulated after the Battles of Srirangapatna and Plassey, a vintage collection of intricately carved French and English furniture, amongst a host of such rare treasurable heritage collections! Now, how on earth, did this Castle of yore, come to house such a huge and exalted collection from off the imperial plunder, room after room!? he wonders!

He piled up one shocker after another by observing that, this private property on the quiet Welsh countryside - Powis Castle, - houses Mughal artefacts stacked beyond number – more and beyond the Mughal artefacts on display at any one place in India – even the National Museum in Delhi! These treasure-troves were far more valuable and much more of heritage value than even the Kohinoor diamond, he quips!

Be it the palanquins, be it the hookahs of burnished gold inlaid with ebony, spinels and jeweled daggers, green emeralds, ornaments of jade and ivory, talwars with yellow topaz, rare statues of the Hindu pantheon of gods, and more, how-o-how did it happen? he avers!

When he had visited this Powis Castle this last summer, one of these rich paintings, on a hugely framed canvas seemed to have caught his attention! And this painting contained the cue and the clue to how all these bounties from India had made their way, across climes and times to this private property, he observes!

The audience was all blued, glued and wooed! Not a soul stirred! We were all in such dazed, amazed attention to all that he was telling us, corroborating them all with ample evidence to his side of the defence!

This picture-painting that he witnessed at Powis Caste, was hanging in the shadows at the top of a dark, oak-panelled staircase, and although it was not a masterpiece of any high order, the painting seemed to repay a close study, he quipped. An Indian prince, wearing clothes of gold, is seen sitting on his throne under a bright silken canopy. To his left are seen standing ‘spear-bearing’ officers from his own army and to his right are seen a motley group of powdered and periwigged Georgian gentlemen!

The prince on the painting, is seen quite eagerly thrusting a scroll into the hands of a ‘slightly overweight’ Englishman in a red frock coat, he pointed out. [Since the picture he pointed out on screen wasn’t easy to look at from a distance, thought of giving it y’all here!]

The scene depicts a fine day in August 1765, when the young Mughal emperor Shah Alam, exiled from Delhi and defeated by East India Company troops, was pressurized to go for involuntary privatization! The scroll that is seen in the scene, is then an order that was meant to dismiss his own Mughal revenue officials in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, and replace them instead, with a set of English traders appointed by Robert Clive – the new governor of Bengal! And that’s how the collecting of Mughal taxes was from thence on, contracted to a powerful multinational corporation!

'For new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition'

Bob Dylan  | On Gentleness

When Dillon, aka Dylan - Bob Dylan’s name was announced as the Winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize, there were a host of bouquets and brickbats as well! We were one of the firsts to give a beauteous bouquet to Bob on this, our past post!

The reasons are more than meets the eye! 

Well, Dylan for one, openly rebelled against existing pop music conventions, and even on the folk front, he had sought to create quite a stir and a sensation when he brandished electric instruments in his folk concert, a sheer disregard for the rule of the land as concerns folk! 

One reason why his studio album Bringing It All Back Home alienated him from some of his pals in the folk music community!

His protest songs, especially ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ made him to be categorized as a protest singer, and a politically charged artist with an agenda!

When Dylan premiered 'Blowin' in the Wind', 16 April 1962

In fact he assumed world-wide fame, laudations and celebrity status with this amazing number, that posed a volley of intense rhetorical questions dealing with freedom, war and peace.

Such was the rage and such the craze on the release of this single album on 16 April 1962, that Dylan, from thence on, was seen as a saviour of the oppressed! 

It is no little wonder then that, ‘Blowin' in the Wind’ has always been described as an anthem of the civil rights movement! 

The song also prompted the renowned Civil Rights activist and singer Mavis Staples to remark, ‘I just could not understand how a young white man could write something that captured the frustration and aspirations of black people so powerfully’.

Such was the threat, and suchmuch the hazard it posed to those in power, who oppressed and suppressed the ‘voiceless’ beyond measure!

‘Masters of War’, is yet another protest song, such an impeccable song, filled with anti-war rhetoric. The song also lays claim to being one of the most angriest anti-war songs ever to be composed on the planet!

When the JFK regimen in the US was keen on a military action in Vietnam, Dylan pens this number that literally rips apart a motley group of bureaucrats who were like the harbingers of death, orchestrating wars from behind their desks, and provoking young soldiers to wield their guns and go on a killing spree! 

These bureaucrats, to Dylan, are like ‘Judas of old’ who keep spreading a grand lie again and again, by propagating a Cold War which was not there in the first place, until it went on to assume flesh and blood.

What a way with words he’s got when he stands up, as a gentleman, tall and bold, against the atrocities of ‘man over man’ [‘violence of beast on beast’ as Walcott woulda put it!] perpetrated behind the desks with such Judas-like cunning!

Here goes the number for y’all -

Masters of War

Come you masters of war

You that build all the guns

You that build the death planes

You that build the big bombs

You that hide behind walls

You that hide behind desks

I just want you to know

I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin’

But build to destroy

You play with my world

Like it’s your little toy

You put a gun in my hand

And you hide from my eyes

And you turn and run farther

When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old

You lie and deceive

A world war can be won

You want me to believe

But I see through your eyes

And I see through your brain

Like I see through the water

That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers

For the others to fire

Then you set back and watch

When the death count gets higher

You hide in your mansion

As young people’s blood

Flows out of their bodies

And is buried in the mud

You’ve thrown the worst fear

That can ever be hurled

Fear to bring children

Into the world

For threatening my baby

Unborn and unnamed

You ain’t worth the blood

That runs in your veins

How much do I know

To talk out of turn

You might say that I’m young

You might say I’m unlearned

But there’s one thing I know

Though I’m younger than you

Even Jesus would never

Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question

Is your money that good

Will it buy you forgiveness

Do you think that it could

I think you will find

When your death takes its toll

All the money you made

Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die

And your death’ll come soon

I will follow your casket

In the pale afternoon

How much truth there is to these intense lines that flow from a paroxysm of pain on the poet! No wonder his songs were intense socio-political commentaries with a ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ impact to their lines!

Let me now proceed to highlight one last song that I felt deserved a pertinent mention! 

The song is titled, ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’. 

It was written by Dylan based on an incident that had affected him greatly. It gives a factual description of the shocking murder of a 51-year-old African-American barmaid, Hattie Carroll, a mother of ten children and several grandchildren, at the hands of a white and wealthy young man from a white tobacco farming family. 

The whole nation was shocked and enraged when the young white and wealthy man walked away with just a ‘six month’ sentence from the ‘noble’, ‘able’ ‘graceful’ ‘honourable’ and ‘gentle’ judges.

To do a quick take on the US Justice system from our own times would sure merit this post. Rajat Gupta, one of the first Indian corporate honchos who made it to the top most echelons of the US corporate world, when he was convicted and sentenced to prison by the US law courts!

Rajat Gupta observes in the Prefatorial to his memoir titled, Mind Without Fear [which we’ve discussed earlier on, over here, on this past post of ours!]

Says Rajat Gupta about the US Courts of Law - 

The judge went out of his way to block any reference to my character and to the aspects of my work that mattered most to me. The prosecutors were skillful in manipulating the press. And I missed that opportunity to tell my own story, and to let the jury, and the public, see who I am directly. For that, I take full responsibility. This book is that story.

Coming back to the case at hand, 

Well, Dylan quite couldn’t come to terms with the shocking miscarriage of justice by the Courts! Hence this song! This song with such a sting!

Me thought of giving y’all the song, to feel the import of the lines, and to magnify Dylan, Bob Dylan, on this, his immense social responsibility, as a song writer, when any many of his ilk were busy doling out romantic chart busters by the day and hogging the limelight at the billboards! 

Thanks to Dylan, we still speak about the 51-year old Hattie Carroll.

That’s where Dylan clearly outlines for us all, the role, the relevance and the transformative power of poetry to society, subtly hinting that, a pop song could be both a means of social commentary, and as a vehicle of protest that doubles up as a form of self-expression (poetry) as well!

So here goes the song –

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll

With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger

At a Baltimore hotel society gathering

And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him

As they rode him in custody down to the station

And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder

But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears

Take the rag away from your face

Now ain't the time for your tears

William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years

Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres

With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him

And high office relations in the politics of Maryland

Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders

And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling

In a matter of minutes, on bail was out walking

But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize fears

Take the rag away from your face

Now ain't the time for your tears

Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen

She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children

Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage

And never sat once at the head of the table

And didn't even talk to the people at the table

Who just cleaned up all the food from the table

And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level

Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane

That sailed through the air and came down through the room

Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle

And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger

And you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears

Take the rag away from your face

Now ain't the time for your tears

In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel

To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level

And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded

And that even the nobles get properly handled

Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em

And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom

Stared at the person who killed for no reason

Who just happened to be feelin' that way without warnin'

And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished

And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance

William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence

Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears

Bury the rag deep in your face

For now's the time for your tears

Just take some time to observe his intense lines on the rule of the land and the rule of law. Also take even more time to observe carefully the last lines of each stanza, and how they taper off to a bold acme towards the end!

The song greatly impacted me with its take on gentleness! Dylan subtly contrasts the ‘gentlemanly’ high brow behaviour of the wealthy pig Zanzinger with the real life gentle and graceful Hattie, who ‘carried the dishes and took out the garbage, and never sat once at the head of the table, and didn't even talk to the people at the table, who just cleaned up all the food from the table’! 

Then he proceeds to say, that the cane of Zanzinger sailed through the air and came down through the room determined to destroy the gentle Hattie, who never harmed the wealthy Zanzinger in any way whatsoever!

Clifton and Anne, Dylanologists, ;-) in their article titled, ‘Bob Dylan and Religion’, have an enlightening observation on this count! 

Say they –

In one of the song’s most beautiful lines, associating Hattie Carroll with the ancient poor and forsaken so often remembered by Isaiah or Jeremiah, Dylan speaks of her death as betokening the destruction of “all the gentle,” drawing the irony from the last word with its Latinate origin as a term referring to the well-born. 

By this clever inversion, a technique Dylan borrowed straight from the prophets, the well-born have destroyed their claim to gentleness and passed judgment on themselves, even if the corrupt judge won’t do the same; and if any gentleness remains, in the way of virtue, it has been passed on to the servant class.

Her death, therefore, to Dylan signals the destruction of ‘all the gentle’ or the ‘noble’ or the ‘highbrow’ or the ‘elite’! 

Moreover, it also helps in a paradigm shift – a shift of core values of gentleness – once the forte of the wealthy and the rich – to the so-called working class, referred to here as the ‘servant class’ by Dylan for that much-needed emphasis!

It would do a world of good to sum up this little post on Dylan, Bob Dylan with his own sweet lines -

Come you ladies and you gentlemen, listen to my song,

I’ll sing it to you right but you may think it’s wrong,

It may make you mad, but I mean no harm!

No wonder, he like Ali, Mohammed Ali, floats like a butterfly, and stings like a bee!

The topping on the cake would be from a book I consider so precious and so dear, gifted to me by my sweet cousin! It’s titled, Why Dylan Matters, by Richard F. Thomas, another Dylanologist of the highest order! ;-)

When talking about Dylan’s fan base, Richard F. Thomas here remarks –

Bob Dylan may not say anything to his audience, but he is curious about who’s out there; he’s taking it all in. “What are you seeing from the stage?” Robert Love asked him:

Definitely not a sea of conformity. People I cannot categorize easily. I see a guy dressed up in a suit and tie next to a guy in blue jeans. I see another guy in a sport coat next to another guy wearing a T-shirt. 

I see a woman sometimes in evening gowns, and I see punk-looking girls. I can see there’s a difference in character, and it has nothing to do with age. 

I went to an Elton John show; there must have been at least three generations of people there. But they were all the same. Even the little kids. They looked just like their grandparents. It was strange.

This inclusivity, this variety, this multicultural ambience, was, is, and will continue to be his forte and his sure reward too!

Well folks, now you woulda sure known the devil and his angels who woulda opposed tooth and nail the conferring of the grandest prize in Literature – the Nobel – on Dylan - Bob Dylan! Now go ahead and read the first two paragraphs once again. ;-)

Thank you ladies and gentlemen!

To be continued…

images: Michael Ochs/Gettyimages, Maria Zlatani

Wilson’s subjects are rendered like “the great fictional characters of literature”

James Wood | On Romanticized Gentlemen

‘What is history, but a fable agreed upon?’, said Napoleon!

‘What is truth, but a lie agreed upon’, said Nietzsche!

‘Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter’, said Achebe.

‘There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge’, said Foucault.

Putting two and two together, we get the broader picture - that all history is written by the victor and power has its sway and its way in the history of the hunt!

As such, some people, although they might have been in reality, goody goody gentlemen could have been, quite possibly demonized by the power-knowledge correlative that circulates in society, while at the same time, some who had committed crimes against humanity might have been canonized as gentlemen! And at other times, some people, just because they wielded power, were quite possibly ‘romanticized’ as gentlemen, for mass appeal of the highest order!

Edmund Wilson, is one such historian, writer and critic who falls in the latter category of having ‘romanticized’ people as gentlemen, says Wood! James Wood!

Well, Wood, James Wood is one of the foremost literary critics of our times! And in this, his book titled, The Fun Stuff And Other Essays, [which we had already glimpsed once, in this past post] speaks to this romanticizing of Lenin as a gentleman!

And this shocker of a critique he does after having read through Edmund Wilson’s book titled, To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History, published in the year 1940.

Says James Wood,

Wilson had come under the tutelage of the historian Max Eastman, for whom the culprit was Marx’s mysticism, and for whom Lenin was a hero. This explains the romanticizing, at the end of Wilson’s book, of Lenin, who is portrayed as ‘the gentlest and most selfless of men, a lover of Beethoven and War and Peace who once, Wilson moistly reports, refused to shoot a fox because he thought it “beautiful.” A pity then, wrote Nabokov tartly, that Russia was homely’.

Upon this subtle yet scathing critique of Lenin, Vladimir Lenin, I was so tempted to go for the book to get to read for myself and to ascertain where things stand! Well, Wood, James Wood may be right or may be wrong. Same here with me, when I give out my stance on these two chapters! May be right or may be wrong! [I just read through from Part 3 of this book, Chapters one through six!]

Well, I personally felt that Edmund Wilson was writing more like an obsessive, ‘fan’atic fan of Lenin, than as an historian! So his perspectives are highly personal. He foregrounds Lenin at the expense of demeaning or ‘backgrounding’ someone else! And in this, he triumphs high-o-high! Take for example, the chapter headings of chapters five and six where he says,

‘Trotsky identifies history with himself’, whereas ‘Lenin identifies himself with history’!

Paavam! Trotsky then becomes more sinned against than sinning! Alley!

One reason why, Wood, James Wood towards the end of this article, says with such cynical oops critical acumen -

Rereading Edmund Wilson, one’s admiration for him both expands and contracts. His literary portraiture is remarkable, and lastingly fine. Meyer Schapiro once remarked that Wilson’s subjects are rendered like “the great fictional characters of literature”, and it is true that Wilson extends to Marx, to Chapman, to Dickens, to Holmes, to Ulysses Grant, to his father, a kind of negative capability that he never truly summoned in his own fiction: [Acho! Deivameyyy!] he is willing to give these men the benefit of the doubt, to leave them in a dapple of ambiguity rather than drag them out into any prematurely decisive light of judgment! [Emphasis added] ;-)

How can I ever thank the most chellamest person on this planet who gifted me this amazing delightful read, almost a year back, in November 2018, and that explains this post and its import for us all!

To be continued…

image: amazondotcom

'Following a particularly heinous insinuation against his employer, my father brought the car to an abrupt halt'

Kazuo Ishiguro | The Remains of the Day

In continuation of our little literary takes on gracefulness and gentleness, shall we turn our attention next to Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro who again has some wonderful takes on the subject.

The renowned Eliotian phrase, ‘The what might have beens of life’ would sure augur well with his Booker prize winning 1989 novel titled, The Remains of the Day. Most of the characters in this highly intriguing novel, go into counterfactual mode, and think about how things could have turned out differently. Be it the protagonist Mr. Stevens, the head butler of Darlington Hall, or his father William Stevens, or the butler’s romantic interest Miss Kenton, each has a pining for the counterfactual, for their own personal reasons!

But nay! Counterfactuals and reminiscences are not for our takes here on this particular post. This one’s for an amazing character in the novel who endears himself to us because of his gracefulness and gentleness all through!

Stevens the butler and protagonist to the novel, wants to be always dignified, gentle and graceful in his demeanour and code of conduct towards Lord Darlington, his master and employer! Though Stevens intuitively believed that Darlington was being used by the Nazis to serve their hidden agenda, he had an unswerving loyalty and trust on his master that he did not even warn him on this aspect.

Stevens here takes after his father [Stevens Senior] who was always known for his loyalty towards his master. The gentleman that he was, Stevens Senior had eschewed gossip, vain and frivolous talk all through his life!

There’s one particular incident, when he [Stevens Senior!] had to chauffeur around three gentlemen. These three ‘gentlemen of repute’ were found all the time gossiping and indulging in vain talk all through their ride in the car, and things became worse when the trio began speaking ill of Steven’s own employer!

Here goes just excerpts from off this particular scene from the novel that serves such an amazing piece of character study! Every line has a subtle take on the quality of a ‘gentleman’! Shall we then, together now,  proceed to read from Kazuo's Remains of the Day! 

Well, here we go - 

One afternoon, Mr Charles to his shame and regret had allowed himself to become inebriated in the company of two fellow guests - gentlemen I shall merely call Mr Smith and Mr Jones since they are likely to be still remembered in certain circles.

After an hour or so of drinking, these two gentlemen decided they wished to go for an afternoon drive around the local villages - a motor car around this time still being something of a novelty.

They persuaded Mr Charles to accompany them, and since the chauffeur was on leave at that point, enlisted my father to drive the car.

Once they had set off, Mr Smith and Mr Jones, for all their being well into their middle years, proceeded to behave like schoolboys, singing coarse songs and making even coarser comments on all they saw from the window.

Furthermore, these gentlemen had noticed on the local map three villages in the vicinity called Morphy, Saltash and Brigoon. Now I am not entirely sure these were the exact names, but the point was they reminded Mr Smith and Mr Jones of the music hall act, Murphy, Saltman and Brigid the Cat, of which you may have heard. Upon noticing this curious coincidence, the gentlemen then gained an ambition to visit the three villages in question – in honour, as it were, of the music hall artistes.

'Lucky Jim is the most popular antihero of our time!' - Anthony Burgess

Kingsley Amis | Lucky Jim and his yardsticks for gentleness

Kingsley Amis would be next in our confabs, in this, our little series on gracefulness and gentleness.

Amis was part of the popular ‘angry young men collective’, a group of middle-class writers of the 1950s who were quite disenchanted with traditional British society and its priggish ideals.

When Amis was enlisted for military duty during the second World War, he pokes fun of these priggish ideals and ‘high brow’ standards that were by default, a part of Oxford’s charm and popularity! This is evidenced from the words of the army personnel while taking him on board, ‘An Oxford man was likely to be enough of a ‘gentleman’ to do all right as an officer’. Something that he gave first expression to, in his maiden novel, Lucky Jim!

His first novel titled, Lucky Jim, published in the year 1954, then went on to become his mouthpiece of sorts.

Lucky Jim is about a lower-middle class young man – Jim Dixon, who becomes a professor in medieval history! Jim is surrounded by despicable ‘high brow’ colleagues from the higher echelons of society, who have such high airs on them, and whom he loathes and despises very much.

In fact, the spark for writing this novel happened, after Amis had met up with the faculty members at Leicester University, which he had attended, in the year 1946. ‘‘Someone ought to do something about that lot’, he had then decided, and that’s how he had started working on his Lucky Jim! And howww!

Amis dedicated the book to Philip Larkin, who had played a pivotal role in shaping up the novel and its main character Jim!

Anthony Burgess has given glowing tributes to ‘Lucky Jim’, calling him ‘the most popular antihero of our time’.

'He had a spirit all rough and fierce, and that could not be tamed to lazy rest'

On Nobility and Grace | The Story of Oroonoko

Taking a leaf from one of our past posts on Oroonoko, let’s now move on to delve into qualities of gracefulness and gentleness as reflected in Oroonoko.

Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave is a novella by Aphra Behn, and Behn, as we know, is one of the first ever woman writers, who also went on to become a huge role model for a generation of women writers. She wrote under the pseudonym Astrea!

Oroonoko, then, is a story about a royal prince from Africa, separated from his lady love Imoinda, as part of a vested plot, and is then forced into slavery by an English sea captain.

As a black, Oroonoko enjoyed great respect and attention from the English colonizers because of his unusual physical beauty, his royal bearing, his endearing manners, his gentleness, and his graceful social etiquette.

What interests the reader about this novella is that, genuine grace, gentleness and refinement, is not a matter of colour or religion or caste or race, but on how one is brought up - rightly trained, with proper care!

Although Oroonoko is black and now a slave, yet, it becomes quite impossible for him to hide his royal identity and graceful mannerisms for long!

Prompts me to quote yet this once from Count Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, where he calls attention to this fact – 

And so it is with men, who if rightly trained are nearly always like those from whom they spring, and often better; but if there be no one to give them proper care, they become like savages and never reach perfection.