To use a famous pronouncement from the Polish poet, Adam Zagajewski: you must praise the mutilated world. Consider the words again – you must praise the mutilated world. How it staggers you, with its flat and no-nonsense sentiment that floats loudly around the consciousness like a faint trail of cigarette smoke, every time you go through the phrase. Indeed, it must be pointed out, Zagajewski’s words offer us no healing balm with which we can soothe our wounds today. But what it does offer, without question, is a compass – a direction towards which humanity ought to steer itself.
Yes, we are residents of a mutilated world in every sense. We have always been. Human history is littered with devastation after devastation, wrought by humankind as well as forces of nature. And even today, we find ourselves with no escape from such devastations occurring across the globe even as this column is being written. To pick the easy examples: Turkey, France, the US, Armenia, Somalia, Congo, Iraq, Bangladesh – where armed violence has, to use the poet’s word, mutilated the world.
Closer home, in Nagaland, the devastation is no less in scale. You see, mutilation doesn’t have to be in physical terms only. Our society has been mutilated by corruption, backdoor appointments, outrageous acts of serving schoolchildren with worm-infested rice, total absence of governance, extortion, fuel adulteration – the list is endless and we are only citing some recent happenings. This has resulted in a scenario where utter hopelessness and pessimism have come to grip us all.
It is in these dark moments that we must remind ourselves to bear courage and revisit Zagajewski’s words. To praise a mutilated world simply means to remind yourself that there is hope in the wake of devastation. The philosophical conviction is clear and simple: one must learn to accept or praise the faults of the world to enable us to see the beauty and help heal the mutilated world. It is indeed very easy to allow the mutilated world to darken our days and colour our perception of it, engulfing us with despair in the process. There is much that is damaged, broken and mutilated. And we grieve for it.
But as a society, we must not forget that good things exist in the midst of horrors and disappointments. We cannot fail to remember that, as a people. By reminding ourselves so, we are not deceiving ourselves into denying the prevalence of darkness that swirls around us. We are, as a people, simply acknowledging that pain and joy co-exist, and that the latter is the only apparent antidote to the former.
Indeed we must praise the mutilated world, for the very reason that praising itself is a hard task –even more so in our context. We of the mutilated earth can enjoy light amid the darkness of hopelessness. We can and we must. Long may we continue to find light in the dark.
