Story of A BSA SLR On The Day of Kafka Centenary Celebration

 Today, June 3rd, 2024 marks the day of Franz Kafka's centenary celebration. Today, rather, yesterday since midnight, I have been missing my BSA SLR cycle as soon as I remembered that June 3rd , 2024 is Kafka's centenary year of celebration. The reason behind missing the BSA SLR is quite associatively simple. The centenary year reminds me of Kafka's conversation with the crying girl in the Steglitz Park of Berlin who had lost a doll. Every day, Kafka and the girl would meet at the Park and Kafka would hand over a letter on behalf of the doll to the girl. The letters used to bring solace to the little girl telling her not to cry as her beloved doll had gone on an adventure to see the world. The doll through Kafka would tell the little girl a story using a letter which would be given by Kafka to the little girl. Gradually, one day the doll had come back to Berlin as Kafka gifted the little girl the doll along with a letter which said that the adventure trips had changed the doll. When finally Kafka died, the girl discovered  an unnoticed, tucked letter in the doll which said that - "Everything we love would be lost someday but at the end of the story it comes back in a different form". 

Today's centenary day has made me almost like that little girl. However, while the little girl was looking for the doll, I was looking for my BSA SLR back. The earliest model of bicycle was gifted to me when I was in Class IV with which came our middle-class dreams of exploration, pain, love, despair, aspiration, heartbreaks. Every time I rode the bicycle, I felt like Oliver Right, Jay, Veeru of Sholay, Amitabh Bacchan of Muqaddar Ka Sikander. Some times I also felt like the Elliot, Gertie of ET after I had watched them in Nandan. My BSA SLR then reminded me of Mick Doohan of 90s'. It immediately used to take me off to the scale of Yezdi, Enfield, Yamaha and I would feel high up in the ladder. 

My BSA SLR reminded me of Uttam Kumar of Soptopodi with Suchitra Sen being at the back seat of a motorcycle and of so many Hollywood, Bollywood, Tollywood films. BSA SLR was love for me. It helped me to transcend from reality to my space where all heroes from pages of literature, comics, cinema will come and play with me. I used to imagine myself as being in the pages of Blue Lotus of Tintin with my Indie Street Dog and Trampy Snowies who were equally beautiful. 

However, gradually, the images of my magic realism faded but the memories didn't go away. My BSA SLR also started to get old. An adolescent BSA SLR became an adult gradually and started to become old as I grew in age from Class IV to BSc in Economics till I did not leave Kolkata. I did everything to ensure that my BSA SLR stayed in the same old rented house of our 11/1, Upendra Biswas Sarani, Jadavpur just near the closed meter box as soon as the door of the house was opened. It was metaphorical of me on why I loved to always keep my BSA SLR in that position in the house. One was there was no other space left for the large memory that the physical structure of my BSA SLR carried with itself. The other reason was as soon as you opened the gate of 11/1, Upendra Biswas Sarani, my BSA SLR even then in 2001 was old but would greet every new visitor with its memories which were my memories too of 11/1, Upendra Biswas Sarani. 

As years passed by from 1999 to 2002 and I was getting ready to leave Kolkata for my masters in JNU, my BSA SLR was crying for elderly care. This was because my joint rides with my BSA SLR to keep riding on life and moving on through its mental health conditions had stopped by. In my times of depression, BSA SLR took care of me. It took me to Jharnar Math, Jadavpur University ground, the corners of South Kolkata, Bijoygarh, Garia without ever failing and letting me know that it had got old and needed elderly care. It also demanded a therapy from counsellors while I secretly rode on it and went to Baul Mon near Ibrahim Pur Road being troubled by existential questions of life. It was silently doing everything. In 2002, once I came to New Delhi, I left my BSA SLR alone at Upendra Biswas Sarani. After that, two times I went back and would ask my Dad how my BSA SLR was doing. It was lying lonely. I would rub my hands on its handles trying to show my care. But I think my BSA SLR had faced its mental obsolescence by then. I suffered a lot of guilt during the entire 2002 about not getting my BSA SLR back to JNU campus and in my hostel Jhelum. Everytime, I saw a student in a bicycle in JNU, my BSA SLR was in front of my eye and I could not do anything for my SLR. 

Often, at midnight when I would not sleep in the hostel and study in the mess room, I would silently go to the place where all cycles of hostels would be parked. Those were not the days of car or motorcycle in JNU but of bicycles. I would secretly touch any BSA SLR model (if they could be found) and try to communicate with my BSA SLR back at Jadavpur, Kamarpara. I would try to feel the memories of my BSA SLR and the smell of my growing up from 80s to 90s through the entire socio-cultural set up of Kamarpara, Jadavpur, rural, suburbs, townships of West Bengal. After sometime, during December 2002, one night while I was trying to feel my BSA SLR again by touching a similar cycle at the Jhelum Hostel when everyone was asleep and I was studying in the mess-room, I could hear a cry. After that, my communication with my BSA SLR was over. I could not let it go away from me on the November 2002 chill of Delhi. The night was horrible. I could not sleep and went to the toilet of Jhelum Hostel around 3.00 am and was looking at the mirror with a shaky tremor. 

It was 2002. Almost after 21 years back, last year during June 16 - June 23, 2023, I went back to my elder brother's house at the Central Park, Jadavpur which is very nearby to our child hood house of 11/1, Upendra Biswas Sarani. I saw an abandoned cycle at the balcony of the Central Park House which also was crying just like my BSA SLR whom I had abandoned in my life. 

I immediately asked my elder brother, Dabhai to take out the cycle on a Sunday and fill it up with air. He immediately pampered me by taking out the cycle from the Balcony and filled it up with the air. I got up in the Bicycle and started following my Dabhai and their son "Kakai" (as he calls me) in a rickshaw. 

The rickshaw started moving from Central Park to 11/1 Upendra Biswas Sarani of Kamarpara. It felt like I was chasing their rickshaw and was going back to my past of Kamarpara of 80s and 90s. I was going back to my BSA SLR who I had abandoned and could not take to JNU when I left Kolkata for good.

However, just like Kafka's little girl at the Park in the Centenary Year, last year, my love of BSA SLR came back to me while I chased the rickshaw that was taking my "Dabhai" and "Kakai" in a rickshaw back to Kamarpara and to the past of my memories of BSA SLR. Love moved away but it came back last year during a Sunday as I reached my old childhood house and memories through a new cycle while chasing that rickshaw. It reminded me of this little girl at the Park whom Kafka had gifted the letter of the "Doll".

A Pleasurable Act of Enjoying a Psychopath in The Other: Animal, Kabir Singh, Bhakshak, Dahad, Mirzapur, Darlings, and many more in the infinite order…………….

 The society of India has been worshipping the act of enjoying a Psychopath in the Other. The trends and patterns of the success achieved by some of the recent films indicate such a paradigm. Society today worships and enjoys the act of seeing a Psychopath in the other. When such a Psychopath takes a larger-than-life measurable form in the shape of a character in the films – “Animal”, “Kabir Singh”, the bonhomie reaches a new pinnacle.

The booming box office numbers, whistling in various cinematic frames, and clapping, and jeering crowds within the cinema halls are a testimony to this worshipping of the Psychopath in the other. The most disturbing and astonishing element of this worship lies in the following statement – “While the family members of the Psychopath are disturbed and struggling to deal with the Psychopath in the film, the audience is cheering fully to the phenomenon and clapping to the Psychopath”.

This was a statement by Konkana Sen Sharma in the latest interview. Then why does the audience clap and whistle and create a box office hit while the family of the Psychopath in the cinematic frame struggles in a film called – “Animal”. This is because, in a way, the audience is celebrating the psychopath in the other on the visual frame by escaping his/her/their internal psychopath lying within the psychoanalytic zone. As a society, we tend not to do our Psychoanalysis and identify the innate one while we celebrate the same when we see the Psychopath in the other.

The other in the characters of various films, and web series in recent periods has only strengthened this hypothesis of – “Society Celebrating the Psychopath” in the “Other” while escaping the own inner one. This is also happening in most of the celebratory content of all the audio-visual medium web series on the Web. The society also in a way has started to believe that to come out of the inner ills of psychopathy within individuals and in society a larger Psychopath might be needed.  When that Psychopath and the Psychopathy are visually projected on screen, the mass escapes from their psychopathic self; and celebrates the rescue of a psychopathic society by a psychopath while the actual character in the film or the audiovisual medium struggles or troubles the characters around him/her/they in the communication medium. The infinite chain of such a psychopathic order has been already established and it will continue in the infinite loop in the future.

Heat Stress and Energy Consumption - An Act of Jouissance?

 The word jouissance was coined by Lacan which means “satisfaction of a drive and not as the satisfaction of a need”. The French term means – “Pleasure- In – Pain”. Lacan associates the word with a repetitive act or a compulsive act which we do over and over again even though in the end it causes us pain. The act of human-induced climate change coupled with our unbridled growth and energy consumption drive can be seen as a “Jouissance”. The perpetual satisfaction of greed and drive to chase money and orient an economy and demand system of chasing money forces an unsustainable energy consumption behaviour and economic growth. It creates a demand for fossil fuel consumption and leads to human-induced climate change from GHG emissions arising from such economic activities and unbridled energy consumption.  

The human-induced climate change then causes heat waves, climate disasters, heat stresses, and urban heat islands which causes pain to the urban civilization who was the cause to the creation of such a pain. In the perpetual need to sustain an urban civilizational behavior of energy consumption through energy-efficient or inefficient AC in urban heat islands, the pain and pleasure continue for eternity for urban heat islands of modern civilization. 

Therefore, pleasure stays in the form of larger energy-efficient AC consumption at a higher rate, while pain in the form of increasing heatwaves in cities and urban heat islands also prospers. The continuation happens to an extent where cities like Delhi of North India which are more prone to heatwaves and already have created heat islands have to be more worried to be prepared for a daily peak load demand of around more than 8 GW in the summer season of 2024. 

Given the international net zero commitment of India in 2070, a city like Delhi which is a victim as well as the creator of urban heat islands and heat effects from human-induced climate change is forced to think of procuring power from renewable energy sources to address the forecasted peak demand of 8 GW in the summer season of 2024. 

The onus of supplying electricity by procuring from renewable energy sources therefore falls upon the loss-making DISCOM sector of India. Delhi is also not an exception. Hence, in Delhi, distribution companies like Tata Power DDL, BSES Rajdhani Power, BSES Yamuna Power have to make arrangements for sourcing renewable energy based electricity to meet the rising electricity demand. Tata Power DDL has a consumer base of 19 lakh whereas BSES has 2 crore 50 lakh residents in South, West, East, and Central Delhi. In each of these zones, wherever the peak demand goes up due to say higher AC consumption during summer, it creates a higher propensity of urban heat effect while the summer heatwaves also continue in a homogenous way across all zones of Delhi. Hence the act of pleasure and pain continues simultaneously in the urban, civilizational landscape of Delhi. 

In the meantime, for the Jouissance to continue complemented by renewable energy sources, the loss-making DISCOMs get into long-term power purchase and banking arrangements with other neighboring states to supply power to Delhi amid the heat waves of summer. Through a power banking arrangement, DISCOMs of Delhi ensure to get 670 MW. Around 2100 MW of green power is sourced from solar, wind, and waste-to-energy sources to sustain the pain and pleasure game of heat effects and energy consumption behaviour of Delhi residents. Out of the 2100 MW of green power, 888 MW comes from solar power, 500 MW arises from wind power and 40 MW is generated from Waste-to Energy, and 160 MW of roof-top solar power is installed on roof-tops which will also be utilized to mitigate the peak load demand of the summer months. 

The question is are these sources enough to reduce the fossil fuel-based electricity consumption of Delhi which can thereby reduce the human-induced impacts of climate change and also reduce the heat effects, and heat stresses caused by human behavior while the heat waves of Delhi summer months continue. Clearly, the answer is NO! Rising energy consumption behaviour needs to be checked by Battery Energy  Storage Systems (BESS) but that also adds to the cost of supplying power and electricity and might not always be viable for ailing DISCOMs and cost friendly for the consumers. However, the good news is that Delhi already has its Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) at Rohini and Rani Bagh and it promises to support in providing continuous and reliable power to key customers during any exigency in summers. 

However, the cost economics of BESS driven power supply by DISCOMs across various cities of India still needs to be worked out. According to many, pumped storage works out better than BESS. However, some successful BESS-driven Power Purchase Contracts are operational where concessional loans were given to set up the BESS by DISCOMs. However, there is no definite answer to this aspect. Heat effects in the peaking summers of Delhi can cause eventualities for which mobile distribution transformers, additional staff, dedicated round-the-clock teams, and supply restoration infrastructure for sub-transmission systems have to be created. All of these would mean additional costs and investments which can be a challenge for loss making DISCOMs. 

Hence, a radical push need to come in to implement all the above measures to take the entire system out of this Jouissance. Apart from regulatory, policy, and financial measures and incentives to take out the system from this Jouissance of Heat Effect and Energy Consumption, a complete shift in the social and economic system is required. In the long term, a city life structure like Delhi is not sustainable if heat waves, and climate disasters increase. With the rise of such climate events, Delhi as a city cannot afford to continue its behavior of raising heat islands through rising AC loads. New forms of city lifestyles, value systems, social nudges for reduced energy conservation and nature conservation behavior by preserving trees, and lakes have to be worked out. Cars in the city have to be reduced by pushing a degrowth-centric city lifestyle which incentivizes community-based lifestyles facilitating energy and nature conservation by incentivizing it for the citizens on a larger scale. Incentivization can be thought through in the form of a complementary money or currency system where citizens who help in reducing heat effects , heat islands or energy consumption are allowed to transact in alternative or complementary forms of currencies for the exchange of goods and services and are allowed to create a society which has an optimal amount of heat effects or heat islands. Even though it sounds like Fiction, An Act of Jouissance needs a fictional reality to secure the city civilization from future heat effects. Covid did rescue nature from us for sometime in the recent past through such a fictional reality. 

Can Constitutionalisation of Climate Justice Create Social Tipping?

 Few days back a verdict of the Supreme Court has recognised Climate Justice as a part of the Constitutional Rights. Adverse effects of human induced climate change which pose a threat to human life can now be considered as unconstitutional. Hence, Supreme Court has given a ruling that climate crisis impairs the constitutional rights to life. What does this ruling mean in terms of a social nudge to reorient the behaviour of society which is more environment friendly?

This ruling gives a citizen the legal power to question any human action or economic activity which can create adverse impacts of human induced climate change through global warming. So if a community near a thermal power plant feels that the smoke, pollution from the thermal power plant can create a climate crisis and impact their lives, they can go to court and challenge the operation of the thermal power plant?

But does that mean, the thermal power plant will stop operating given that coal driven electricity is still less costly to reach households in comparison to decentralised solar panel based or solar thermal power plant based electricity?

Will this mean that coal based thermal power plants can afford to close down and lead to unemployment of millions of people whose lives are dependent on the value chain of coal based electricity production from thermal power plants? These transitions can only happen if it is economical to produce electricity from renewable than from coal. They can only happen if there are systems in place to absorb the communities who loose jobs from shut down of thermal power plants triggered by a legal appeal of one community to close down thermal power plants as their lives are threatened due to climate crisis from coal based thermal power plants.

An appeal by a community at the backdrop of the violation of rights to life from climate crisis arising from thermal power plants might not be enough to close those plants. The economic system has to degrow, go through a structural shift to stabilize the accelerating growth of economy which demands more of coal based electricity in the absence of comparable economic sources of electricity from renewable, clean sources.

However, if more communities start going to court and appeal for changes in the production system of electricity, goods, services in an economy, a social tipping can set in creating a pressure on the energy supply systems and economic systems. A social tipping point if achieved on the demand side can create a pressure on the supply side systems to transit to cleaner goods, services and electricity production systems. However it might not necessarily induce a shift on the supply side immediately. For the shift to happen nudges in the form of economic , behavioural incentives have to be given to energy supply and supply side of economic goods and services systems which can help them to attain short and long term economic gains. If the supply side systems change towards cleaner energy systems with larger profit, benefits arising from such cleaner systems then the potential chance of climate friendly supply side systems will evolve in a society. 

All of these together needs to happen to sustain the success of the declaration of the Supreme Court which has the potential to set a social change but might not be enough to create a social tipping. A social tipping towards addressing the adverse effects of climate change from human induced actions of fossil fuel based economic activities needs to be necessarily be complemented by nudges and economic incentives on the supply side.

Once, all of these happen together, A Green Day will arrive when climate crisis will not impact the constitutional rights of a healthy human life within India any more!

মোবাইল মেঘ

  মোবাইল পিওন নিয়ে এল

  মেঘের চিঠির গর্জন

  হাত বাড়িয়ে চোখ বলল

  বসন্ত উৎসব অর্জন

   চোখের জলে পা ডুবিয়ে 

   কুড়িয়ে নিলাম বাড়ি

   জানলা দিয়ে বাইরে তাকিয়ে

    হঠাৎ সেই ছাড়াছাড়ি

    মোবাইল চিঠির জলের রেশে

    হয়ে উঠল বাগান

    সব শেষে এক নিমিষে

    বাগান গাছের ঐকতান।

The Psycho-Analysis of People Centric Energy Transition

 Since the time, I have started working on rural energy transition from 2003, one question that bothered and disturbed me was  my inability to find out a psychological structure behind rural energy definition.

 Over the last twenty years of struggle, every work that I have been doing related to energy transition or rural energy transition had its core being based on people. If it was, is or has been based on people, then ideally, a real, symbolic, imaginary definitional space of rural energy transition should also be there. I struggled to find it out for 20 years. Then, I came across the new nomenclatures of just, people centric energy transition and a close reading of Lacan helped me to find out finally a broad structure to my last twenty years of work on energy transition. The broad structure of the last twenty years of my work on "Energy Transition"  or if I may call it as "People Centric Energy Transition" can be largely seen through the below structural flow shown in the exhibit below :

Once, I framed or superimposed this structure to my twenty years of work and reading on energy transition and juxtaposed Lacan into it, the spaces between Real, Imaginary (The Gap Between Real and Symbolic), Symbolic opened. 

It is over here, I finally got an answer to the struggle led education of the past. Yes, the last twenty years of my work or many work that I read was always having a human being and a Freudian pyschoanalytic construct of that being within. In that pyschoanalytic construct of the Real Lens of People Centric Energy Transition, the being was like a Real Ego. The Symbolic Lens of People Centric Energy Transition was like a Ego Real and the Gap or The Imaginary Lens of People Centric Energy Transition was  like the Super Ego. The Real Lens of People Centric Energy Transition is like the Idealised Real Version of the Psychological Self whereas the Ego Real (Symbolic Lens of People Centric Energy Transition) is the Self which wants to mould itself the way the Other wants to see it. It is over here the Ego Real or The Symbolic Self of People Centric Energy Transition uses algebra, arithmetic, modelling to do projections, scenario buildings to create and project a self that has to be seen by someone else or the other in the society within its various actors.

However, the Gap between the Real and Symbolic Lens of People Centric Energy Transition is the Super Ego which is always having an ethical or moral clash in its definitional lens through its varied forms of evolutionary frameworks.

Finally, after twenty years of struggle, I could discover the Psychoanalytic Self imbibed within the definitional frame of Energy Transition or People Centric Energy Transition. The idea emerged on the New Day of New Year 2024.

On a year when a Green Day is coming, the new day told me to be more grounded in research to find out the psychoanalytic self of People Centric Energy Transition more and more!

Why Dunki will stand by the test of time?

 In today's time, there is a normalcy of excess pleasure, desire to consume pleasure again and again. There is a pressure within the society to consume pleasure more and more. Mass scale cinema with spectre, big budget, high promotion, story, characters, plotline often are consciously playing to this psyche of excess consumption. This excess consumption through the aesthetics of cinema often leads to a harassement. In such a harassement process of cinema, the excess and the passion of excess in a cinema hurts the object. Knowingly and unknowingly the cinema watchers can become such an object of a 1000 crore hit or a flop film. So, often a great film can create such a hurtful object of passion or might not. A hit, flop, average, mediocre film can create such hurtful objects unknowingly even through best crafts in a cinema. Hence cinema can create passion which then hurts and leads to harassement even for a fan of a certain cinema or for a one time watcher of the same cinema. Even before the art and craft of cinema comes in, the excess of pleasure, passion can create hurtful harassement. 

The society as it evolves often demands such passion led hurtful objects. In many developed societies, such hurtful excesses are reduced through human right declaration and definition for necrophaliacs. Such right spaces reduces excess of consumption, pleasure, harassment of objectified passion. 

It is over here, even before technical craft of a cinema comes, the characters, stories of characters, plots of a film can win over the excess in a society of excess. Hence characters, story plots of Dunki characters of the latest SRK film does this and wins over Pathan, Jawan and Animal even before the art, craft of cinema sets in. 

Within a society of excess, Dunki regulates our excess through the characters, stories, plots and makes us more human within the passion of an Animal, Jawan, Pathan. Dunki slowly and steadily inspite of its stretched cinematic art, craft, wins our excesses by making us laugh and cry at the same time. In hindsight, the cinema of the camera of Dunki turns out to be the watch tower of a pleasured society and questions its trajectory in the long term.