A MUSICIAN AND HIS HOMELAND
T.G. Jacob
Instrumental or pedestrian, music is organically evolved strength of a people at any given point of time representing the entire past packed with conflicts of multilayered dimensions. It represents consciousness in its conflicting creative beauty ruling out shallow articulations as regressive to greater momentum of the creative process. Sounds of water, a wind-blown silent mountain, a people, a nation are woven in to the realm of the battlefield of consciousness to produce music — higher or greater or simply music. High/low music may seem pedantic categorization but it is anti-historical not to see its ever present validity. Dynamic realization of a musician’s art rests with the conflicting unity of hands, instrument(s), and mind-heart. If one wishes to be aphoristic, it may be added that the equilibrium is necessarily non-static. The sounds from Hari Narayan provoke these thoughts. His writings too.
This brings us directly to the musician’s homeland, with its fascinating tradition of articulation through music in crystal/pure and derivative forms. Kerala has undergone significant material changes during the past few decades. These changes even led to euphoric clap trapping in this pronounced citadel of social democracy, which predictably and unceremoniously died out on its own. What is actually sustaining this place is financial liquidity sans production sustained predominantly by the regular but potentially unpredictable flow of petro dollars, feverish construction activities involving relatively high wages and raw materials costs, cash crop character of agriculture totally dependent on external market forces, a burgeoning service sector exemplified by the commercial tourism industry, speculative trading in land and other property, among others. All these and more are the changes. And, all these are starkly visual, hence no space for superfluous discourses or preaching.
Kerala is an explicitly consumer society. Consumerism has become an end in itself, it has become divorced from needs and even wants, and its grip is akin to a mindless ideology bored into dormant minds. Production of waste is phenomenal and equally mindless which produced some of the popular environmental stirrings during the past few years. This consumerism is ably complemented by a health services system that caters to its linear backwash effects. The traditional medical science of Ayurveda, intrinsically linked to a way of life, has been chiseled into the contours of the hedonistic service industry of international tourism. Art forms have also been subjected to brutal mutilations towards the same purpose. Consumerism fosters crimes of psychopathic nature when it becomes a mass ideology. Kerala is a vivid illustration.
Consumerism is eating away the land itself. Thousands of stone quarries are cutting away at the bone structure of the place. Since several decades the mining of sand and rock has been going on uninterrupted without taking in to account the frightening social costs and special varieties of rock like Krishna Shila and sands like black sand are since long in the export domain as raw materials supplies to high technology, high precision industries in the capitalist imperialist world. Land and immovable structures on it has become a speculative commodity where the real productive value of land goes out for a toss. Primary production itself has become a gamble since quite some time. Increased hard cash inflow has perversely resulted in the bubble getting ever larger with a certain kind of recklessness as an expression of ignorance and intrinsic feebleness getting solidified in the minds of the people.
When commercial tourism is enthroned as the macro and micro level ‘development’ model for the State as a whole it is awarding legitimacy and nurturing an out-rightly parasitic economic base. The daily basic food requirement of Malayalees is critically dependent on outside sources with the result that they have no say in the quality of the same and are forced to imbibe great degrees of toxicity. The State policy is such that when the expropriated Adivasis demand their land back while guaranteeing to feed the whole people non toxic food the political class in power smirk at them and try hard to identify barren, uncultivable land for them when forced by mass movements. There are no constraints when tourism promotion agenda is on the table- beaches, mountains, backwaters, estuaries, rivers; art forms are all made available for this service industry. Incredible confusion between what is good and bad reigns.
Political ignorance is appalling. A recent incidence is sufficient as illustration. When a committee of sensitized scientists and jurists appointed to study the serious questions of preservation of the all important Western Ghats submitted a concerned report the central ministry involved manufactured another committee report to dilute the recommendations of the original one. Kerala throughout its eastern length is Western Ghats and the rest is strategically shaped by it. The report(s) did not raise any serious objections against the large number of already settled encroachers but only recommended withholding permission for new constructions and encroachments. Organic farming was also recommended. The reaction was the church taking up the job of protecting and furthering the interests of the mining and real estate racketeers and inciting the small and medium encroacher cum settler peasants to confrontation on their behalf. The political class, rattled by potential loss of vote banks which can possibly make a difference to a few electoral constituencies, went on an overdrive on behalf of the settlers cum encroachers. The misery of the whole thing was that the entire scene got staged on the basis of outright lies. Ignorance can play so despicable a role in this ‘educated’ place to protect foul reaction. This illustration trumpets the temper of the social fiber held together by go-getters. It is rotten. But they are able to steamroller their way through using transparently dishonest means.
Of course, individual needs are bound to diversify and grow in multifarious ways with time. This is equally applicable to spiritual and material needs, conflicts as well as their resolutions. This is why history was always the greatest teacher and continues to be so. And this is why recording of history, however imperfect or loaded it may be, serves in the long run assuring the continuity and discontinuity questions of human development marking stages of cognitive progress legitimately called human progress. We know that the human mind is not simplistic. Striving to develop complexity to the possible limits of creativity in any field negates mediocrity which holds back and regresses the possibilities open to human mind-heart combine. That is why only a critical mind can be a creative one. That is why a crooner cannot be called a musician or a self satisfied pontiff can be called only a belcher. In social analysis as well as creative arts Kerala currently presents such an unfortunate picture. This is reflective of the broader stalemate.
Politically, it may not be out of place to mention that Eurocentric social democracy with its “welfare” angle of redistribution of wealth in contemporary and futuristic senses aiming at dilution of contradictions/conflicts without radical restructuring of the structure has proved still born in the context of Kerala. In fact the limits of this ‘model’ became apparent in the beginning itself. The geographical division of labor actually only got reinforced which while generating quantitative changes drew a blank on the qualitative realm. Moreover, the quantitative changes squeezed out of the given limited base of geographical division of labor have enthroned distortions as way of life leading to ever spreading malignancy of a vicious nature. The priorities of the policy makers are invariably geared to compounding parasitism with all its attendant vulgarities, denying self-respect which is the vital perquisite for real and substantial human development.
The leading characteristic of this piece of land is the migratory mindset of youth generated by global and local structural factors. Internal and external migration has enormously contributed to steep rise in the commercialization of primary economic activity, monetization of the entire economy and society, grossly disproportionate growth of consumerism, and abject dependency on factors outside the control of the people. Kerala is probably the most globalized region in the sub continent which also means greater institutionalization of insecurity and schizophrenic existential reality for millions of people, especially youth. Conflicts breaking out of this unwholesome situation are often viewed as challenges to the ‘moral’ fabric to be met with by ‘spiritual’ Quasimodos who can be conceived as the worst immoral chunks in the status quo. The rot is more deeply set in than can be comprehended through attempts at resolution in the fog of wishful thinking or delusions confusing short-living examples with social movement.
Understanding reality is the daunting task which ought to be faced head-on. Sensitized narrations of life and times goes a long way in creating the corpus from which precious nuggets can be mined for creating the non linear blaze of understanding which only can burn away rot. Let us never forget that honesty and truth are inalienable from each other and hence non-negotiable. Hari’s narrative confidently belongs to this genre of thought process which makes it highly relevant to change for the better. Its beauty is in the intensity of conflicts portrayed with great economy of words upholding basic goodness, a rare commodity in contemporary Kerala.