22/01/2016
T.S. Eliot famously wrote about measuring out life with coffee spoons. We mostly measure past life with sarcophagi, masks and pottery - by means of relics - and call them our culture.
Turkey has waged a 'culture war' to bring back to the country the pieces of their history from the famous museums across Europe. Wonder what future generations would dig up while searching for our culture.
We often mistake 'cultural heritage' - the archeological findings, traditional art forms, classic literature - as culture.
Raymond Williams said: "We use the word culture in these two senses: to mean a whole way of life - the common meanings; to mean the arts and learning - the special processes of discovery and creative effort."
Culture, in a way, is a frozen timeframe of a lifestyle. So, if the present is the 'culture,' what are we leaving behind as a people?
The thought is disturbing.
Kerala is a vibrant place, a literate society, and Keralites are a dynamic people. But let’s take a look at what we are 'freezing' for the people who come after us.
If the entire Kerala is frozen at this moment, what would a group of archeologists a few hundred or thousand years later make of our society?
How did we live? Was it an agrarian society? Was it an industrial one? Or was it one of traders?
They won’t find any tools of cultivation because we don’t do it anymore. They don’t find any remnants of factories because we don’t really have them here. They don’t find any proof of trading because we are not a trading community.
Perhaps, since the 14th century deluge in Periyar, which swallowed Muziris and in the following tectonic shift carved out Kochi, we haven't suffered any natural disaster. Neither rain nor drought has altered the course of our life.
So, what are we?
Can we preserve the polemics and brilliant discourses of political leaders in a time-jar so that years down the line they can open it and listen to them?
Can we keep as digital record the expositions of our News-at-Nine editors and the 'intellectual brilliance' of their panelists? Or, our ephemeral fights of faiths and doctrines, gender brawls in Social Media, celebrated religious bigotry and the parochial propensities to find fault?
Have we built any architectural landmark in our lifetime with a leitmotif of our living ways? Or, is our contemporary literature reflective of our society?
Where are the poets calling out and crying out for the wrongs we commit? Where are the novelists etching a broad picture of our society with its good and bad? Where are our engineers dreaming of building the next Eiffel or Qutab Minar or Taj Mahal? Where are our scientists throwing light on the mystery of creation?
What we leave behind is what we contribute - to our family, to our society and to our country. So, what are we leaving behind?
Malayalees live like a patina over all continents. But in the pages of history, are Malayalees just a race of people who mostly lived silently scattered across the globe? Or, are they just a people engrossed and lost in the hues and noises of party politics? Or, debating endlessly whether to kiss or not to kiss? Or, should menstruating women be allowed in temples? Are we a society of moral-policing? A bunch of clannish hypocrites? A must-see tourist destination where beer is served under the table in newspaper-wrapped china mugs! An alcohol-restricted land where serpentine queues at liquor shops spill over to highways!
What is our identity? What are the footprints that we leave behind?
Along with Kerala Yatra smokescreens, Emerging Kerala fantasies, solar aspirations, we should also look at culture with far more seriousness.
The government should look into our identity and culture with equal enthusiasm and eagerness with which it handles tourism and investment potential.
It would be far more creative if our ‘pedigree media’ stop surviving on party politics and sleazy sex scandals and get involved more in society-building and engaged in constructive criticism.
We would be in safe hands if our young engineers stop dreaming of hefty pay-checks from back-end offices of overseas IT businesses. It would be better if our teachers live up to the role of moulding a curious, creative society. It would be far better if our doctors remember the oath they have taken and consider theirs as a privilege profession—much nobler than a price-tag for wealth-transfer (read dowry).
Let our poets cry out loud. Let the novelists essay their magnum opus. Let the sculptors immortalize our life.
What Turkey has tried to bring back from various museums in Europe is not their culture. It is their heritage. Culture is not about art forms, artefacts or grave stones from the past. Culture is what we are at the moment.
What are we at the moment? What are the compulsions that shape our lifestyle, which will shape our culture? Think. And, the answer is our culture.
An oxymoronic God’s own country.
(Kerala photos by Vinod Kumar. `Kiss of Love' photo by V.V. Biju)