My earliest and clearest memory is of the mountains visible from the windows of the living room of our flat in Muttrah, Oman. They were a mix of an unrelenting ocher and a darker shade of brown for 355 days of the year. And then with the winter rains , suddenly they burst forth in an abundantly rich green growth interspersed with tiny gushing white rapids of rainwater. This phenomenal display lasted about ten days and sometimes less. I don't remember feeling anything particularly by way of emotions looking at the scene. But I do remember not being able to look away. My four year old self of course had no specifically profound thoughts to think about those mountains. Neither does my adult self come to think of it . Perhaps this was when I began appreciating beauty for beauty's sake. And that isn't such a bad thing you know.
In any case I often wonder ( when I do wonder) about my identity in some vague and wondrous way. I do not seem to have one as an Indian at least not in the ways that I think about myself as an Omani and otherwise hopelessly restless wanderer. Can I possibly think of myself as an Omani because my earliest ( and happiest) memories are all of Oman? How could I possibly be an Indian if the only thing about India that I can say is that this is where my parents are from and this is where I studied for a few years in young adulthood. And yet, I suppose I am Indian too in more ways than a couple of pieces of paper can attest. And my parents themselves have in fact lived in Oman far longer than they have ever lived in India. Now you see why my profile says 'undecided'. I am a work in progress and quite confident will always be even as all that I am evolves and dilutes and concentrates in different ways. I am a mixed-up, deconstructed, reconstituted, twisted, completely wholesome, thoroughly unwholesome, thoroughly Omanized, Anglicized, 'Americanized', Indianized, 'Muslimized' ,'completely at peace with my mixed-up potpourri of an identity' mess. And I love every minute of it and all the perspectives it provides even to the point of a cultural schizophrenia. 'Cosmopolitan' does not even begin to define the messy, twisted spaghetti-noodleness of all the things that I am and will be.
And the point here, if one must be made , is that some time last year I found this beautiful piece written by that beautifully, achingly brilliant man , Tony Judt , just before his death and it's called Edge People. And this is what he had to say in it :
"I prefer the edge: the place where countries, communities, allegiances, affinities, and roots bump uncomfortably up against one another—where cosmopolitanism is not so much an identity as the normal condition of life. Such places once abounded. Well into the twentieth century there were many cities comprising multiple communities and languages—often mutually antagonistic, occasionally clashing, but somehow coexisting. Sarajevo was one, Alexandria another. Tangiers, Salonica, Odessa, Beirut, and Istanbul all qualified—as did smaller towns like Chernovitz and Uzhhorod. By the standards of American conformism, New York resembles aspects of these lost cosmopolitan cities: that is why I live here.
To be sure, there is something self-indulgent in the assertion that one is always at the edge, on the margin. Such a claim is only open to a certain kind of person exercising very particular privileges. Most people, most of the time, would rather not stand out: it is not safe. If everyone else is a Shia, better to be a Shia. If everyone in Denmark is tall and white, then who—given a choice—would opt to be short and brown? And even in an open democracy, it takes a certain obstinacy of character to work willfully against the grain of one’s community, especially if it is small.
But if you are born at intersecting margins and—thanks to the peculiar institution of academic tenure—are at liberty to remain there, it seems to me a decidedly advantageous perch: What should they know of England, who only England know? If identification with a community of origin was fundamental to my sense of self, I would perhaps hesitate before criticizing Israel—the “Jewish State,” “my people”—so roundly. Intellectuals with a more developed sense of organic affiliation instinctively self-censor: they think twice before washing dirty linen in public.
Unlike the late Edward Said, I believe I can understand and even empathize with those who know what it means to love a country. I don’t regard such sentiments as incomprehensible; I just don’t share them. But over the years these fierce unconditional loyalties—to a country, a God, an idea, or a man—have come to terrify me. The thin veneer of civilization rests upon what may well be an illusory faith in our common humanity. But illusory or not, we would do well to cling to it. Certainly, it is that faith—and the constraints it places upon human misbehavior—that is the first to go in times of war or civil unrest.
We are entering, I suspect, upon a time of troubles. It is not just the terrorists, the bankers, and the climate that are going to wreak havoc with our sense of security and stability. Globalization itself—the “flat” earth of so many irenic fantasies—will be a source of fear and uncertainty to billions of people who will turn to their leaders for protection. “Identities” will grow mean and tight, as the indigent and the uprooted beat upon the ever-rising walls of gated communities from Delhi to Dallas.
Being “Danish” or “Italian,” “American” or “European” won’t just be an identity; it will be a rebuff and a reproof to those whom it excludes. The state, far from disappearing, may be about to come into its own: the privileges of citizenship, the protections of card-holding residency rights, will be wielded as political trumps. Intolerant demagogues in established democracies will demand “tests”—of knowledge, of language, of attitude—to determine whether desperate newcomers are deserving of British or Dutch or French “identity.” They are already doing so. In this brave new century we shall miss the tolerant, the marginals: the edge people. My people.
So, this is me signing off for now firmly , stubbornly and comfortably perched on the edge.
In any case I often wonder ( when I do wonder) about my identity in some vague and wondrous way. I do not seem to have one as an Indian at least not in the ways that I think about myself as an Omani and otherwise hopelessly restless wanderer. Can I possibly think of myself as an Omani because my earliest ( and happiest) memories are all of Oman? How could I possibly be an Indian if the only thing about India that I can say is that this is where my parents are from and this is where I studied for a few years in young adulthood. And yet, I suppose I am Indian too in more ways than a couple of pieces of paper can attest. And my parents themselves have in fact lived in Oman far longer than they have ever lived in India. Now you see why my profile says 'undecided'. I am a work in progress and quite confident will always be even as all that I am evolves and dilutes and concentrates in different ways. I am a mixed-up, deconstructed, reconstituted, twisted, completely wholesome, thoroughly unwholesome, thoroughly Omanized, Anglicized, 'Americanized', Indianized, 'Muslimized' ,'completely at peace with my mixed-up potpourri of an identity' mess. And I love every minute of it and all the perspectives it provides even to the point of a cultural schizophrenia. 'Cosmopolitan' does not even begin to define the messy, twisted spaghetti-noodleness of all the things that I am and will be.
And the point here, if one must be made , is that some time last year I found this beautiful piece written by that beautifully, achingly brilliant man , Tony Judt , just before his death and it's called Edge People. And this is what he had to say in it :
"I prefer the edge: the place where countries, communities, allegiances, affinities, and roots bump uncomfortably up against one another—where cosmopolitanism is not so much an identity as the normal condition of life. Such places once abounded. Well into the twentieth century there were many cities comprising multiple communities and languages—often mutually antagonistic, occasionally clashing, but somehow coexisting. Sarajevo was one, Alexandria another. Tangiers, Salonica, Odessa, Beirut, and Istanbul all qualified—as did smaller towns like Chernovitz and Uzhhorod. By the standards of American conformism, New York resembles aspects of these lost cosmopolitan cities: that is why I live here.
To be sure, there is something self-indulgent in the assertion that one is always at the edge, on the margin. Such a claim is only open to a certain kind of person exercising very particular privileges. Most people, most of the time, would rather not stand out: it is not safe. If everyone else is a Shia, better to be a Shia. If everyone in Denmark is tall and white, then who—given a choice—would opt to be short and brown? And even in an open democracy, it takes a certain obstinacy of character to work willfully against the grain of one’s community, especially if it is small.
But if you are born at intersecting margins and—thanks to the peculiar institution of academic tenure—are at liberty to remain there, it seems to me a decidedly advantageous perch: What should they know of England, who only England know? If identification with a community of origin was fundamental to my sense of self, I would perhaps hesitate before criticizing Israel—the “Jewish State,” “my people”—so roundly. Intellectuals with a more developed sense of organic affiliation instinctively self-censor: they think twice before washing dirty linen in public.
Unlike the late Edward Said, I believe I can understand and even empathize with those who know what it means to love a country. I don’t regard such sentiments as incomprehensible; I just don’t share them. But over the years these fierce unconditional loyalties—to a country, a God, an idea, or a man—have come to terrify me. The thin veneer of civilization rests upon what may well be an illusory faith in our common humanity. But illusory or not, we would do well to cling to it. Certainly, it is that faith—and the constraints it places upon human misbehavior—that is the first to go in times of war or civil unrest.
We are entering, I suspect, upon a time of troubles. It is not just the terrorists, the bankers, and the climate that are going to wreak havoc with our sense of security and stability. Globalization itself—the “flat” earth of so many irenic fantasies—will be a source of fear and uncertainty to billions of people who will turn to their leaders for protection. “Identities” will grow mean and tight, as the indigent and the uprooted beat upon the ever-rising walls of gated communities from Delhi to Dallas.
Being “Danish” or “Italian,” “American” or “European” won’t just be an identity; it will be a rebuff and a reproof to those whom it excludes. The state, far from disappearing, may be about to come into its own: the privileges of citizenship, the protections of card-holding residency rights, will be wielded as political trumps. Intolerant demagogues in established democracies will demand “tests”—of knowledge, of language, of attitude—to determine whether desperate newcomers are deserving of British or Dutch or French “identity.” They are already doing so. In this brave new century we shall miss the tolerant, the marginals: the edge people. My people.
So, this is me signing off for now firmly , stubbornly and comfortably perched on the edge.
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| Got this beautiful pic of Jebel Shams, Oman here |
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