Why do when you can simply be? is Alif Mohammed's motto. All he wants is to be left to his history lessons and visits to ruins, but the world around him is relentless in its repeated trials to tip him off his ivory tower- either well-meaningly in a grab-the-present-by-the-collar exhortation or maliciously in a your-time-is-up kind of a warning. He has made his peace with the smallness, the inconsequentiality compared to the historical figures he teaches about, of his life, and he both revels in their stories, enjoys tripping on the contingencies and strong-willed characters that shape the narrative of the world, and uses the ambiguities it offers as a way to evade acting decisively in the present. The past is his refuge because it does not intrude upon his present, or so he thinks, until it starts to.

It has been a while since I've related so much to a literary character. Here is a man who is happier in the world inside his skull than the one outside- and that is both a sign of his genuine love for thinking and his inability to deal with other real people. I wouldn't call it solipsism because his world is rich and colourful and interesting and complex and consists of people not him, and I'm not sure if it's simply escapism. Everyone lives in their heads for the most part, and even those who are worldly, act and manipulate others so that their fantasies are fulfilled. Alif has just gone one step further and doesn't need other people because he is content to stay with his thoughts. Then is he some sort of a yogi/sufi? He thinks so, he thinks he has transcended petty motivations like anger, lust, and vanity, until life starts opening these doors slightly and he can't help but want to peek inside, to enter.

Contentment can be construed as enlightenment when what it usually is is passivity. One way to look at knowledge is from a purely instrumental-lens: what you know should somehow make you live better; That need not be material or inter-personal success but, say, bring more "aliveness" (which we can find ways of defining). But I wonder if that's a very 21st century "Modern" way of looking at it. What if what you read, experience, are taught, observe-deduce-surmise shapes you, transforms you way more subtly, changes what you see and how you see it so much so that the way you are is an expression of that learning; your being is your doing?

"ఏది చదివితే ఏది చదవనిది తెలుస్తుందో అది చదువు", అని చెప్పారు ఒకసారి సిరివెన్నెల గారు. I love the duomorphism of the word చదువు there- acting both as a noun (చదువంటే ఇది అని define చేయటం) and verb (the exhortation). I'm reminded of the Zen parable of a student who went to his master and told him all that he was being taught and read was slipping through his mind like it was a sieve prompting the master to teach him that while indeed the mind was like the sieve and knowledge like water, the point was never to use it to carry water but to cleanse the sieve.

Which brings us back to Alif- as the book comes to an end, both the personal and sociopolitical aspects of his life are far from being comfortable or even legible. Now passive inaction too will have consequences. So will he use his knowledge as an instrument, a boat that'll help him sail through turbulent waters, to bring a change in his world or will he retreat further, incorporating the present events into his historical world model, spending more time interpreting, understanding, changing his being in pursuit of that all-illuminating theoretical diamond? Between a world that chooses to further reduce the gap between indidivual and symbol, and insist on demarcating with unerasable lines, and a mind that wants to weave even more complex tapestries, question and complicate, and make a case for "infinite infinities" (to borrow dex's phrase from last night's conversation), which will prevail?

And the decision is important because it's a vote for what is more real- what a human feels and thinks, or what the world infers and decides? The easy answer is its both; I suspect, though, that the true answer is it's one of them. So much of the pleasure and pathos of reading Anjum Hasan's History's Angel comes from trying to align the changing outside with the persistent inside, from realising that while the model is internally consistent, and perhaps even beautiful and just, maybe Naipaul was more right and so "the world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it".

And yet, yet, yet, the other voice refuses to abate. What if its current reality that's the "stubbornly persistent illusion", a myopic/ tunnel-visioned snapshot of the immensely expansive space|time, constrained and constraining, and an individual's learned knowledge of the world much more expansive and illuminating - mapping onto the Herzogian Accountant's Truth/ Poetic Truth Dichotomy- and therefore more reflective of the world in a deeper sense? But to be able to access that deeper, richer vein - lest we mistake our particular collection of incapabilities, excuses, refusal to learn and change ("నాకు చాతకానిది నాకు అక్కర్లేదు అంటే సరిపోతుంది") as the world's faults and degradations - we must be constantly triangulating using other, more empirical modes.

Out or in, instrumental or not, to do anything properly, we must be able to harness attention. And that's only possible if we set aside the self, stop it from blocking or manipulating our vision. Alif does well when he's able to lose himself in the larger currents but its when he brings the focus to himself, his feelings, fantasies, and justifications, that he bungles it. The question then is not which is the master but how one is able to bring both into focus and do what is the right thing. What's that right thing then? Easy- the action, or inaction too, that keeps the inside and the outside in balance so that the self disappears; Only attention remains.

Although I think there's another, third component there. If the self is what's inside, the world is what's outside coming in, I can align them simply by imposing my image onto the world with as much force as I can muster. Everything from being pissed off until the other person concedes to (violent) acts of racism are acceptable since they bring those two components into balance. What transforms this into general stewarding the flame goodness is acknowledging and attempting to empathimagining other minds, thereby acknowledging that others have as much a claim on the world as you do, and the way to nudge it in a direction you prefer is by engaging, convincing, and negotiating with the other.

This I believe is the holy trinity for mindful living. Alif has a really deep, interesting self, allows the world to, albeit reluctantly, engage with him, but predominantly lacks the ability or interest to engage with other minds and try seeing through their eyes. Despite that shortcoming, he's better equipped than most, and I'm glad he's inspired me to try and live better.