Pujit Aggarwal Redivivus - Shorts

 

    Before the invention of the script, there was nothing to read in the current sense of the word.  Speech precedes script. In the beginning, was the Word. It stood not only for God but also represented the sacred infinity of Creation. Since all communication was by voice, listening enjoyed the primacy over reading which came much later.

    To ‘read’ is a polysemous verb.  It means to survey, scan, sense, infer, detect, and decipher in addition to its prevalent meaning i.e. to decode text with a view to understanding the message. The Spread of literacy has made the technology of reading and writing accessible to large swathes of the population all over the world. 

    But there is a discordant note of irony in the ubiquitous progress. The supremacy of hardware not only overrides software but also enfeebles it. George Steiner was amongst the most prescient of critics to forewarn us against the downside of a media revolution.

     The proliferation of spoken and written words has led to a deficit in genuine, effectual communication and a diminution of understanding. Nations do not war with one another with the deployment of lethal weapons. They crush the enemy with propaganda, economic sanctions, trade embargo, and strong arms tactics in the diplomatic conclaves.

    An alarming increase in divorce cases in the subcontinent has baffled sociologists and lawyers who are unable to reconcile a higher level of education and prosperity with sheer cussedness to arrive at a compromise or salutary readjustment on both sides to rescue immature children from the torment of parental wreckage.

     In comparison, a viable liaison between two unmarried, childfree man and woman is far less stressful and destructive than the self-lacerating martyrdom of marriage. According to the practitioners of polyamory, the expiry of such a bond is seldom tainted by conflict, disharmony, or recrimination. It slowly self-destructs without leaving behind debris of toxic waste. The cessation of occasional cohabitation is executed with a lightness of touch. No matrimony, no acrimony.

     The Director of an elite school had a dozen of his gifted students tested and clinically examined by a band of seasoned educationists, neuroscientists, and psychologists for some of the disturbing symptoms the students manifested when they were totally deprived of digital media. The report was a disturbing diagnosis of subnormal listening, vision, orientation, and highly unstable, wobbly attention span. Their sensory apparatus was also marred by fluctuating memory often subject to blank-outs.

     The Anthropocene, in collusion with the digital media, and the shifting time zones, is insidiously insinuating itself into the high-tech bedroom.

     Both of them, the man and the woman, are in their late thirties. They are sharing the bedroom after more than a month. He has just taxied home from the airport while she has an early morning flight to catch for Singapore. They eye each other with a smile and an inaudible sigh. Too pooped even for a short chat by way of phatic communion, they yawn at each other listlessly. Neither is disappointed by the other’s lassitude because the compatibility of their anxiety, stress, and forward-vaulting ambition has raised their aspirational levels to a toxic pitch.

      She falls asleep as soon as she closes her eyes. The man sits in the lotus pose and begins to meditate, fantasizing a sylvan, silent, Shinto shrine where the elusive satori abides.      

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