[Reader-list] Re: A Welcome to Those Who Come

Fri Apr 14 12:28:13 IST 2006

Dear all

I've been living with Jaanu's letter over the last few days which  
resonates deeply with my own sense of the different stakes in the  
power relations embedded in the encounter between the host and  
visitor. What does it mean to talk from a place, unavoidably/ 
reluctantly feeling the approval or disapproval of those who come? As  
Fanon tells us, even if recognising that the priorities of the  
visitor are not one's own, the visitor represents the possibility of  
transformation for the host even when the visitor does not know it.  
How does the visitor/friend feel? Possibly not at all, or not what  
might be expected. How can the visitor/friend be made to understand?  
The visitor/friend cannot lose their cognitive (and pragmatic)  
accountabilities to other places, no more than the host can lose  
their at home-ness. This is not to fix the identity of host/visitor  
in a person but to recognise a dynamic, a process.

Anthropology is predicated on the learning of the visitor as they  
explore new lands and people, which is then trafficked back to the  
home of the visitor (or perhaps not - but simply deployed in other  
spaces to gain support for other visits). It is clear to me that  
those who have been visited by anthropologists (professional or not)  
have learnt much about this dynamic, whether or not they have been to  
the anthopologist's home. It is only recently that this literature is  
making an appearance among "native anthropologists" (esp. e.g. in  
Hawaii - see Haunani-Kay Trask), whose knowledge of the visitor is a  
tremendous source of power that cannot be acknowledged by the  
visitor. It lays bare the way the visitor has been blinded by their  
material ability to leave and move to a new situation when the hosts  
begin to seem less friendly.

I greatly value Jannu's acceptance of those who come as friends.  
However, as someone who visits many places, and is less-often  
visited, I sometimes find myself resisting generous offers of  
friendship, and wishing my hosts would be more suspicious of me. This  
is not because I do not want to be friends, but because the material  
and subjective divides that constrain and enable friendship must be  
made visible if the friendship is to be for real. What does it mean  
to be friends, really? Across the bridge between a here and a  
somewhere-else that others come from? I do not wish to resist  
openness, as it is the way we must behave if we can ever do things  
together. But I also think we can instead hold the space of  
friendship as an ideal, which we move toward, and which is tested, as  
one tests one's footing on a rocky path, over time learning which  
rocks will hold one's weight and which will deposit one on one's back  
with a sore ankle.

Thanks to Jaanu and Shveta for this valuable text.

Danny

--
http://www.dannybutt.net

On 11/04/2006, at 12:05 AM, CM at Nangla wrote:

> A Welcome to Those Who Come
> by Jaanu
> http://nangla.freeflux.net/blog/archive/2006/04/07/a-welcome-to- 
> those-who-come-by-jaanu.html
>
>
> Dear All,
>
> One always waits for the one who comes. Different people relate  
> differently
> with those who come - as guests, as friends. And after a  few days,  
> the one
> who comes changes to one who has the capacity to be a host, to welcome
> others. I think of those who come, as friends. But some friends throw
> colour on our faces in a way that there is no option but to be  
> smeared by
> it.
>
> When they first come, these "friends" are really our friends, who
> participate in everything we do. And in this way they become adept at
> everything we do. They come and roam with us, make their  
> acquaintance with
> people we know, have known for years. They mingle not only in our  
> lanes,
> but also in our families. They come for our wedding, show up during  
> small
> everyday things that need to be done.
>
> At this time, we do not know how they are about to do a volte face  
> soon,
> change their colours like a chameleon. It is difficult to figure  
> out what
> it is they want.
>
> When the lane becomes familiar to them, they slowly start rejecting  
> us. We
> understand what is going on, but it is difficult to recognise it as  
> it is
> happening - because they are our friends.
>
> They waft into our lives like a dream, a dream that then halts  
> somewhere to
> fulfill its own dream.
>
> One such dream came into our lives. He spread into everyone's  
> hearts and
> minds, making his place there. The dream would appear during the  
> day as
> well - he was a day dream as well as a dream that would sleep with  
> us at
> night as well. It is easy to sleep, but waking up is difficult. But  
> one has
> to wake up some time...
>
> This dream would sit among us while we talked and did our own  
> things, his
> eyes closed, but ears listening intently. Off and on, some word we  
> said
> would sting him like a mosquito bite, and he would say, "Where did you
> bring that word from?" The mosquitoes would buzz for a while, and then
> become quiet. Then the dream would open a notebook and scribble  
> something
> in it.
>
> This much is easy to take. But then come moments when these dreams  
> desert
> us while we sleep restfully, assured of its existence. We can then  
> only
> dream of them. But when we turn over on our  cots, the side on  
> which he
> rested and slept seems empty, and we lie there, fully awake now.  
> One feels
> lonely, and as if one is alone, but the voice of the dream who had  
> appeared
> keeps making a wound in the mind. Its a wound that cannot be  
> treated by a
> doctor or a cream with medicinal properties.
>
> One walks the lanes, remembering the days when the dream had  
> accompanied us
> around.
>
> As I walked down a lane one day, a voice stopped me. I looked hard  
> and saw
> it was the same lane in which I used to take my friend around,  
> introducing
> him to people. I stopped in the lane and said to it, "He? He has  
> left us
> now and has gone very far away."
> The lane replied, "No, that's not true! He was here, just yesterday."
> I asked, "And when will he come back?"
> "That is what I have stopped you to ask you...," said the lane.
> "Listen, when he comes next, do tell me."
>
> I knew something was amiss here, but who could I talk to about it?  
> Then a
> few days later some people who were my own told me, "Your friend has
> written a letter, that he saw your house from very close." And I  
> realised,
> that letter was written as if from the bridge that passes from far  
> from my
> home, high up in the sky from the ground on which my home is. And  
> this is
> when I realised my "friend", who I had considered close, with whom I
> dreamed into the lane while roaming in the lanes, had now turned  
> into a
> stranger.
>
> One day I roamed the lanes alone. The lane called out to me again,  
> "There,
> look! Your friend. There he is, wearing a pair of sun glasses, a  
> green pair
> of trousers, white checkered shirt, a green bag on his shoulders."  
> As soon
> as I heard this, I forgot all my complaints and walked up to him  
> and hugged
> him. That day he again roamed in the lanes with me - with what in his
> heart, who is to know. But he disappeared again at the bend of a  
> lane, and
> I went home.
>
> After a few hours, he reappeared at our door, and spoke with a loud  
> voice,
> as if this was his own place, and said, "So friends, what is going  
> on here
> today?"
> "Nothing," we replied and gave him a chair to sit on. He took the  
> chair
> carefully. Maybe it recalled some days past.
> And then an environment of question-answers formed.
> "Why do friends desert us?"
> "Maybe they don't care for you," came the reply.
> "Then why did he show so much love?"
> "Maybe he wanted something out of you," came the reply.
> "Why did he have to show his rejection in a letter to the world?"
> "Maybe he wanted to leave his mark," came the reply.
> "Does he want to climb up high without a staircase?"
> "No, maybe he wants to show his splendour to the world," came the  
> reply.
> "But how are we to recognise his splendour?"
> "That is for you to think. You have to judge if he is a diamond or a
> stone," came the reply.
>
> This is a letter, delivered to you by a pigeon. You cannot ask  
> questions of
> it and demand a response from it. But what you can do, on reading  
> it, is to
> guage and understand what it is about.
>
> warmly,
> Jaanu
>
> Written: March 3rd, 2006
> Translated: April 8th, 2006
> Translation by shveta at sarai.net
>
> CM Lab, Nangla Maanchi
>
> http://nangla.freeflux.net
> http://nangla-maachi.freeflux.net
>
> -----------------------------------------------
> It quenches the thirst of the thirsty,
> Such is Nangla,
> It shelters those who come to the city of Delhi,
> Such is Nangla.
> ------------------------------------------------
>
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