Nation, pride & imaginations
One often reads and re-reads history. Those are narratives that were a record - and we record them anew if we are to have a record of times gone by. Life and living is always such a testimony to their existence. That..... often after they are run over by time, we seek them. Not knowing what or whose testimonies we may find. Not knowing if what is left behind records their triumphs or tribulations. We often do not know if those that we gather as our desperate accounts of people gone by and before us are accurate. We aren't sure. Never knowing if the stream of our memories and thoughts are in alignment; if our imaginations and our streams of consciousness will flow the same terrain and widths that their life and livings did!
History is always suspect. Unfortunately, made more so by contemporary times. In their artifice and certain debauchery - in the creation of fictions - narratives take on new meanings and even new narrations. The creation of history, in how it is written, comes baying at us. Often with what is being written and how from what actually had been, with its own attendant hows, whys, whens, and their wheres and whos etc. The idea of something else bedevils the writing of history. And it often is caught in the headline of this post.
So a train engine operator (to give a certain accuracy to a job description that is manual and of a labourer - the lowest in terms of human activities and specialization) that imagines can rape even that because he or she imagines he/she created the idea and the structure that is called the railways, including the institutions and organizational structure that necessarily needs to order the machinery that had to be smelted from ore and created into the various many parts to make an engine and the horn he/she honks, we know we are entering very dangerous zones of crime, and criminality. More so, because the simple history of that engine operator's existence - as a function - already necessitates another history of the railroads. And it's existence and continued functioning.
That engine operator (there are many or some in India that lower their already low statures and statuses so further down the sewer that one wonders at the desperate lack of human resources of that place or the organization in question - if it by necessity needs hire what human society would reject and throw in the slammers or prisons!) informs the quality of people and living.We thus already are talking about the quality of the humans that inform any human enterprise (although the remnants of a wretched human excrete and how he/she impacted the functioning of the railroads as such a lowly human refuse scarce would find mention in the physical remnants of the railroads when the history of it is written ages after it has ceased to be) - and it informs and impacts stories beyond those of the mechanical leviathan. That is how most of the human history come to us. Conversely, if that engine operator was a gallant human - someone that inspires poetry like say Casablanca - then too the story often is lost.
History remains our efforts to glean out the human stories of it, amidst the great ruins that are remnants of the collective human enterprise of any period. Within it - what badges that engine operator sported and why?! Did he/she ride the engine into some great revolution of the time? Did she/he signify a great crime of that time? Did she he/she help battle some great enemy army? Or did he/she betray her calling and people in an act of a great treachery? Did his/her conduct win him/her great accolades despite his/her humble station? Or did she/he merely rub his/her lowliness in to yet lower despicable lows and stenches? Thereby marking the mettle of his/her people. In both the extremes - of what will remain part of the account of the history of the railroads.
Interwoven within the history of the time and people. What was my toilet yesterday is your bedroom today. And what was a blatant siren shame yesterday could be your glowing pride tomorrow! But those shifts and changes in narratives will continue to intrigue us, as historical accounts, including that of the railroad and whose remnants may inform some narratives of tomorrow. The in-betweens mark the subject of human history. For rarely does anyone write a history about the iron ore that was smelt by human ingenuity and human industriousness, into such a remnant. Both of which remain marked for the various turns in their stories by what we just noted! In that instance of the humble engine operator of an ordinary railways. In raising it high or strangling it treacherously low! Or the human quotient - that the existence of the railways already mark as significantly high by its very existence! The mettle!
History is always suspect. Unfortunately, made more so by contemporary times. In their artifice and certain debauchery - in the creation of fictions - narratives take on new meanings and even new narrations. The creation of history, in how it is written, comes baying at us. Often with what is being written and how from what actually had been, with its own attendant hows, whys, whens, and their wheres and whos etc. The idea of something else bedevils the writing of history. And it often is caught in the headline of this post.
So a train engine operator (to give a certain accuracy to a job description that is manual and of a labourer - the lowest in terms of human activities and specialization) that imagines can rape even that because he or she imagines he/she created the idea and the structure that is called the railways, including the institutions and organizational structure that necessarily needs to order the machinery that had to be smelted from ore and created into the various many parts to make an engine and the horn he/she honks, we know we are entering very dangerous zones of crime, and criminality. More so, because the simple history of that engine operator's existence - as a function - already necessitates another history of the railroads. And it's existence and continued functioning.
That engine operator (there are many or some in India that lower their already low statures and statuses so further down the sewer that one wonders at the desperate lack of human resources of that place or the organization in question - if it by necessity needs hire what human society would reject and throw in the slammers or prisons!) informs the quality of people and living.We thus already are talking about the quality of the humans that inform any human enterprise (although the remnants of a wretched human excrete and how he/she impacted the functioning of the railroads as such a lowly human refuse scarce would find mention in the physical remnants of the railroads when the history of it is written ages after it has ceased to be) - and it informs and impacts stories beyond those of the mechanical leviathan. That is how most of the human history come to us. Conversely, if that engine operator was a gallant human - someone that inspires poetry like say Casablanca - then too the story often is lost.
History remains our efforts to glean out the human stories of it, amidst the great ruins that are remnants of the collective human enterprise of any period. Within it - what badges that engine operator sported and why?! Did he/she ride the engine into some great revolution of the time? Did she/he signify a great crime of that time? Did she he/she help battle some great enemy army? Or did he/she betray her calling and people in an act of a great treachery? Did his/her conduct win him/her great accolades despite his/her humble station? Or did she/he merely rub his/her lowliness in to yet lower despicable lows and stenches? Thereby marking the mettle of his/her people. In both the extremes - of what will remain part of the account of the history of the railroads.
Interwoven within the history of the time and people. What was my toilet yesterday is your bedroom today. And what was a blatant siren shame yesterday could be your glowing pride tomorrow! But those shifts and changes in narratives will continue to intrigue us, as historical accounts, including that of the railroad and whose remnants may inform some narratives of tomorrow. The in-betweens mark the subject of human history. For rarely does anyone write a history about the iron ore that was smelt by human ingenuity and human industriousness, into such a remnant. Both of which remain marked for the various turns in their stories by what we just noted! In that instance of the humble engine operator of an ordinary railways. In raising it high or strangling it treacherously low! Or the human quotient - that the existence of the railways already mark as significantly high by its very existence! The mettle!
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