Saturday, March 15, 2014

Notional Aspirations

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...I am interested only in the individual, and I am extremely suspicious of the phrase "national aspiration". It is pretentious and phoney. Each person has a private universe and lives many lives. You will be nearer to the mark if you speak of the problems, hopes and aspirations of a person: say a doctor's hope to see more sick people coming in;  the sick man hoping that his doctor is a minor god capable of holding him back from his grave; the politician's jugglery to win votes; the voter's fleeting euphoria of being a king-maker; the boy's hope that his school roof would have collapsed at week-end; the policeman's dream that the thief would walk in with the stolen property and save him all the trouble; the cobbler at the street-corner watching passing feet for worn-out soles; the house-holder's concern to keep his budget and family in proper shape; the snake charmer with his assets curled up in the bamboo basket; the peripatetic knife-grinder's cry down the street on a hot afternoon, an infinite variety of lives overlapping and complementing one another. I am moved by such patterns of life, and not by your "national aspiration". What is it really? Do you visualise six hundred million to look skyward on a given day and shout their aspiration in a single voice?...

...RKN   


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