Too costly

My hunch feeling is that everything cannot be analyzed in black and white, that is, in writing, i.e. in language, specially written language. You watch a scenery, it touches you but it takes pages to transfer it to another person through a letter or essay; or even verbally. The limitation of the medium has to be recognized. The professional critics ignore this point.

Take the empathy between mother and baby; or between a pair of lovers (man and woman); or even between a master and his dog). It is intuitive, needs no language or medium. Both human art and language are mediums. Then what is the message?

I liked the piece on time space cubic analysis of the Singaporean mind or personality the first time I had come across such an approach. I had resided near Singapore for ten years, and was a regular visitor to Singapore. It is the island mentality, like the English or the Japanese. Singapore is much smaller with a small heterogeneous population. But too materialistic. Not interested in small talk and drawing room adda (the Bengalees are different). After shopping, what to do in this country of high standard of living? I kept away from the bania mentality. On the other hand, the Malays have the Kampong touch, and employ Chinese managers to look after their business. I also did not like Hong Kong.

The human touch is missing in materialistic societies in the industrial world. In fact, I preferred Asia to the West, after travelling in more than thirty countries. I felt more at home in the Asian countriesthe cradle of civilization. The strong sense of individualism in the West (industrialized developed nations) is well mirrored by the mobile cellular telephone-the world is at your fingertips (GSM), but the two-way communication is controlled one-way. This system or effect is due to the break up of the society's nucleus, namely the family?

Our son in Dhaka (in his 20s, a senior honors student and working his way through the university) is a victim of this modern malady-cooped up in his room (den) with door shut and lost in his individualistic world of mobile phone, PC, CD and second-hand car. Mind it: I did not contribute to his material acquisitions.

Good photography (capturing three dimensions in two dimensions) is more communicative and can contribute more to understanding than pages of the written word. Some photographs of tribal life were very good. The point is the mood has to be transferred to the common reader or viewer, without technical jargon and high-brow analysis by the critics. The question is now to click without trying (ion both sides).

Why Indian writers and critics have so much fondness for adjectives? I generally avoid Indian critics (and most writers). They are too sensitive and want to emphasize something more than once in a paragraph. Is it a sign of inferiority complex? Too much hammering. Take it easy!

Anyway, the birth of this "Journal" is to be welcomed-better than nothing. The test lies in the next six issues-click or flop. How to come down to earth-matribhumi.