force you to follow any linear or non-linear logic where hate travels along a lattice-bridge and arrives at a predestined location. I suspect hate is haphazard, with a mind of its own, and a reckless impatience that prevents it from charting its own course with flowcharts. Even if we stylistically try and recreate the texture of every other old-maidâs tale, we must remember that hate is not always obedient to plot. It has ambition,it believes in unlimited possibilities and places its trust in tangents. And yet, we need to make peace, seek out the order in the chaos, the regularity in the randomness. That is why it is easier if you see some underlying formula that anchors you to the last vestiges of actuality. It would be better than making you chase every story on the caste violence unleashed on the untouchables in every cheri in every village. So, let us begin the quantification. I am giving you some options so that we formulate an atrocity-plot-generator for the East Tanjore district. All you will have to do is pick and choose. Never mind your own erratic choices, real news would have been far more frightening.
Attacking Force
Police, Paddy Producers Association, Landlords,
Landlord-employed rowdies
Chief of Command
Name of Inspector, Name of Landlord
Nature of Atrocity
Looting, Rampaging, Whipping, Rape, Murder, Burning homes, Mass arrest
Extent of Damage
Deaths, Rapes, Hospital admissions, Homes burnt, Items stolen, Livestock missing
Ruse for Attack
Protest, Assertion, Refusal to join PPA, Activities of Communist Party, Convenient excuse Number Five, and So On
Victims
Women, Men, Children
Venue
Name of Cheri
Date and Time, etc .
All that needs to be done now is filing a newspaper report. You have everything right here. Spend some time over that lead paragraph, please. And, yes, donât forget that inverted triangle format. Yes, yes, the chopping. Depends on the photos that we will run with it. Yes, yes, the captions have to be written. I will take care of it. Keep me posted.
Coming back to this chapter, the rest of this story that does not go into your story hangs like a snake around my throat. I am tired of the way it keeps moving in circles. I amafraid that it will never allow me the space for annotations. I have to surrender everything to someone else, someone on the outside. I am content with writing; the readers can do the commentary. This is how one turns readers into great pillow sobbers like Messers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Period, place and people.
Shall we get started?
Yes. It is important to engage.
When women take to protest, there is no looking back. This time it is the tractors. This time it is a Polydol death. This time it is a disappearance. This time it is a strike for higher wages. This time it is the demand for punishment for a rapist â the issues came and went and came again. Sometimes their demands are related to women alone, like when they demanded daily wages instead of the weekly wage for women. Or when they demanded their right to take breaks to attend to their infants, because babies left under the shade of trees cried to their deaths in their makeshift sari cradles, or rolled over and drowned in the mud. Most of the time, they fight for everybody. Once they smashed pots to protest their poor wages. Once, when the Paddy Producers Association put up its yellow flag in their village, they hauled it down, set fire to it and broke the flagpost. Once they went to the fields to harvest in the middle of the night, saying that they alone would harvest the crops they sowed, and that the landlords had no business employing outside labour. They are arrested for such transgressions, and because the police are such a benevolent force, they arrest the infants, too. The jails are full of fighting Madonnas. They are not afraid. They are not afraid of arrests. They are not afraid of hurt. On any given day, they can outweep the wailing police sirens. The women are adept in
Attacking Force
Police, Paddy Producers Association, Landlords,
Landlord-employed rowdies
Chief of Command
Name of Inspector, Name of Landlord
Nature of Atrocity
Looting, Rampaging, Whipping, Rape, Murder, Burning homes, Mass arrest
Extent of Damage
Deaths, Rapes, Hospital admissions, Homes burnt, Items stolen, Livestock missing
Ruse for Attack
Protest, Assertion, Refusal to join PPA, Activities of Communist Party, Convenient excuse Number Five, and So On
Victims
Women, Men, Children
Venue
Name of Cheri
Date and Time, etc .
All that needs to be done now is filing a newspaper report. You have everything right here. Spend some time over that lead paragraph, please. And, yes, donât forget that inverted triangle format. Yes, yes, the chopping. Depends on the photos that we will run with it. Yes, yes, the captions have to be written. I will take care of it. Keep me posted.
Coming back to this chapter, the rest of this story that does not go into your story hangs like a snake around my throat. I am tired of the way it keeps moving in circles. I amafraid that it will never allow me the space for annotations. I have to surrender everything to someone else, someone on the outside. I am content with writing; the readers can do the commentary. This is how one turns readers into great pillow sobbers like Messers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Period, place and people.
Shall we get started?
Yes. It is important to engage.
When women take to protest, there is no looking back. This time it is the tractors. This time it is a Polydol death. This time it is a disappearance. This time it is a strike for higher wages. This time it is the demand for punishment for a rapist â the issues came and went and came again. Sometimes their demands are related to women alone, like when they demanded daily wages instead of the weekly wage for women. Or when they demanded their right to take breaks to attend to their infants, because babies left under the shade of trees cried to their deaths in their makeshift sari cradles, or rolled over and drowned in the mud. Most of the time, they fight for everybody. Once they smashed pots to protest their poor wages. Once, when the Paddy Producers Association put up its yellow flag in their village, they hauled it down, set fire to it and broke the flagpost. Once they went to the fields to harvest in the middle of the night, saying that they alone would harvest the crops they sowed, and that the landlords had no business employing outside labour. They are arrested for such transgressions, and because the police are such a benevolent force, they arrest the infants, too. The jails are full of fighting Madonnas. They are not afraid. They are not afraid of arrests. They are not afraid of hurt. On any given day, they can outweep the wailing police sirens. The women are adept in
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