A Passage to India - Life Between Worlds

There's a wondeful passage that seems to define life as a transcient trifle where what is really important is the snatching and appreciation of moments of beauty, for it is beauty that characterises this quick burst of humanity and makes it beyond bearable, but enjoyable:

'The poem had done no 'good' to anyone, but it was a passing reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale between two worlds of dust. Less explicit than the call to Krishna, it voiced our loneliness nevertheless, our isolation, our need for the Friend who never comes yet is not entirely disproved.' - p.119

Religion vs Beauty. It recalls a particular metaphor in a poem I can't for the life of me recall where life is reduced to a bird flying in from the cold to enjoy the warmth and tremendous excitement of a festive feast in an instant before exiting through another open window. Two worlds of dust separated by life.

If anyone knows the poem, please put me out of my misery, there's a connection awaiting conclusion.

A Passage to India - Colonialism. Why are we here?

Like many explorations of colonisation there is always a fundamental difficulty that no matter how deeply investigated and logically reasoned fails to be fully addressed; the coloniser despite just and reasonable justifications has no choice but to trail off into silence or obscurity. Marlowe in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' is just as guilty of this as Ronny here arguing with his perhaps naive mother who maybe comes as close to the issue as possible:

''We're not out here for the purpose of behaving pleasantly!'
'What do you mean?'
'...We're out here to do justice and keep the peace. Them's my sentiments. India isn't a drawing room.'
'Your sentiments are those of a god,' she said quietly...
...'India likes gods.'
'And Englishmen like posing as gods.'
'There's no point in all of this...I am out here to work, mind, to hold this wretched country by force. I'm not a missionary or a Labour Member or a vague sentimental sympathetic literary man. I'm just a servant of the Government...We're not pleasant in India, and we don't intend to be pleasant. We've something more important to do.'
   He spoke sincerely. Every day he worked hard in the court trying to decide which of two untrue accounts was the less untrue, trying to dispense justice fearlessly, to protect the weak against the less weak, the incoherent against the plausible, surrounded by lies and flattery. That morning he had convicted a railway clerk of overcharging pilgrims for their tickets, and a Pathan of attempted rape. He expected no gratitude, no recognition for this, and both clerk and Pathan might appeal, bribe their witnesses more effectually in the interval, and get their sentences reversed.
...He spoke sincerely, but she could have wished with less gusto. How Ronny revelled in the drawbacks of his situation! how he did rub it in that he was not in India to behave pleasantly, and derived positive satisfaction therefrom!'
...'I'm going to argue, and indeed dictate, ' she said...'The English are out here to be pleasant.'
'How do you make that out, mother?' he asked, speaking gently again, for he was ashamed of his irritability.
'Because India is part of the earth. And God has put us on the earth in order to be pleasant to each other. God...is...love.' She hesitated, seeing how much he disliked the argument, but something made her go on. 'God has put us on earth to love our neighbours and to show it, and He is omnipresent, even in India, to see how we are succeeding...The desire to behave pleasantly satisfies God...The sincere if impotent desire wins His blessing. I think everyone fails, but there are so many kinds of failure. Goodwill and more goodwill and more goodwill.'' -pp.69-71

A Passage to India - Privacy, conventions and the weather

'[Mrs Moore] Accustomed to the privacy of London, she could not realise that India, seemingly so mysterious, contains none, and that consequently the conventions have greater force.' - p.68

This is certainly true, there is no privacy; fear of liberal talk proliferating keeps one self-consciously in check. Everyone knows everyone who knows anyone who talks to everyone such that noone can afford to adopt an entirely independent 'who cares what anyone thinks' attitude because there will always be someone who cares. Obstacles of interconnection are everywhere; only the white tiger can break through at great personal cost and tremendously destructive consequences.

'There's nothing in India but the weather...it's the alpha and omega of the whole affair' - p.68

Lethargic. Soporific. Heat. I miss it.

My Passage to India

Back from India and what an excellent experience! I hesitate to say crazy because somehow I wasn't shocked at all, everything was just as i had pictured it. So many people had raved about how crazy it was, the pollution, the bustle, the noise, the crowds, the lack of health & safety and the list goes on to include just about every opposite quality of the west.  Of course, in true developing third world fashion, the extreme poverty is modestly off-set by the not so modest marvels of luxury hotels, restaurants and bars complete with exceptional first-calss service.  Then again, with every statement about the country, there is an aspect of india to contradict it, so the best way to describe it is to say that it is absolutely everything, just with fewer white people.

 

Naturally, my first venture to India had to be accompanied by E.M. Forster's 'A Passage to India', which presents some rather incisive comments on the British colonisation of the country with wider explorations as to the fundamental incompatibilities of two cultures. Upon my return, in keeping with the region, I have also gotten through the engaging and quick read of Aravind Adiga's 'The White Tiger', which I recommend as a kind of modern day assessment of Indian mentality and life in contrast with the comparative order of the West.

The Wasp Factory - Signs & Symbols, Systems & Processes

All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their patterns and influence other people’s, the weak have their courses mapped out for them. The weak and the unlucky, and the stupid. The Wasp Factory is part of the pattern because it is part of life and – even more so – part of death. Like life it is complicated, so all the components are there. The reason it can answer questions is because every question is a start looking for an end, and the Factory is about the End – death, no less. Keep your entrails and sticks and dice and books and birds and voices and pendants and all the rest of that crap; I have the Factory, and it’s about now and the future; not the past. –pp.117-8

The Wasp Factory - Children; the sexless

I killed little Esmerelda because I felt I owed it to myself and to the world in general. I had, after all, accounted for two male children and thus done womankind something of a statistical favour. If I really had the courage of my convictions, I reasoned, I ought to redress the balance at least slightly. My cousin was simply the easiest and most obvious target.
  Again, I bore her no personal ill-will. Children aren’t real people, in the sense that they are not small males and females but a separate species which will (probably) grow into one or the other in due time. Younger children in particular, before the insidious and evil influence of society and their parents have properly got to them, are sexlessly open and hence perfectly likeable. –p.87