Terrain as cautionary.
Pause.
How do you receive imbibe hear read listen to what I am saying. Our modes of reception have become tainted. You may not always hear what I am saying. Too many “disruptives”. Layers. Technology. Social media. Attention deficits. As popular modes of communication.
We tend to arrive at “conclusions” well before a complete sentence has been uttered. You the listener-reader already know what I am about to say before I have said it.
Terrain + Location + Earth + Firma + Surface or pliable soil. Dharti + Bhumi + Prithvi. All devout “commitants” to the Literary. The literary being. One with committed capability to plant within their own inner landscape a “devotion” to a literary and if I may add, philosophical life. One that arouses a tactile loyalty to the written spoken word thought. A life that is thought-filled. Not always visible for it is very often “beneath” the surface. Like Lava before it erupts. An exhilaration comparable to uncontrolled eruption. Or to put it simply the excitement of sharing a fresh deep thought. One that is the opposite of “static” for it is in a state of constant making and re-making; motion and change; an evolution of ideas; knowledge that continues to explore. The notion of the “real”. Reality and its supposed opposite: fiction.
No literal interpretation for terrain. I offer instead the possibility that the “fragment” or what I often call “my fragmentary” is as much a “geological trope” as anything literally and or literary!
“I am rooted, but I flow.”
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves (1931)
For those that thrive on “meaning” and the “securities” that come from dictionaries, here is a description:
A geological trope is the use of Earth science concepts like soil, sediment, strata, erosion, or tectonic forces as metaphors to explain abstract ideas, especially in philosophy (Heidegger’s “soil of history,” Husserl’s “sedimentation”), literature, or cultural analysis, to describe deep, layered, or foundational aspects of human experience, history, or knowledge, highlighting stability and change over vast time scales. It’s a figure of speech where geological terms represent historical depth or fundamental structures.
Let’s push this further.
We must belong. This italicised “urge” for belonging forms the essence of our existence, our heritage, our cultural inheritance. A layered belonging that is tethered to this earth-world; layers imply an almost simultaneous ‘transport’ across time – past present future and not always in that order; to add another layer would be to suggest that we humans tend towards a “sharing” – at war with itself, and often, with others – of possibility. Or if you like “history”. To borrow from Heidegger’s “soil of history” this sharing of heritage/histories is not simply a passive observance/experience of events as they unfold upon us. It is often a “catapulting” into. In other words we are often thrown into Time with its inevitable capital T; a thrownness – yes this word exists albeit in German! – that stems from the inheritance I spoke of earlier; an almost ancestral handmedown of time-worn “heritages” snatched even torn from history and all its deviants including “Circumstance” and that word again “possibility”.
Push.
This “soil” is in essence our heritage One that needs to be accepted from the past “handings” and passed on to future “receivings”. A sincere and repeated continuity versus a false one. We must either be ethically “authentic” or slide into the “inauthentic”.
To stretch our “soiled” metaphor further:
The words we mine or knead or mould or clayshape into a thing of beauty can equally be used to destruct destroy lay barren scorch earth on one hand and reduce Being itself or Beings themselves into Others. This othering is the new “thrownness”. It is this fascist agenda that we find ourselves in. Or to articulate our present-day state of Being-numb and give it a name: a state of dehumanisation.
Laboratories of the “real” that become land become entire nations become warlords become experiments become wastelands.
Power and money as terrain-ical instruments of destruction?
And to dear Woolf I would have said: No longer the rootedness nor the flow.
Let me return to our own sense/worship of terrain here in Indian thought. The way we view dharti. As a mother. Dharti Maa. The maa is often a synonym for Goddess. One who provides. Nature as an all-encompassing “mothering”. Food and air for example. Providing “suckling” to a vastness of species. Prithvi/earth as a Benign entity.
Bhoomi puja. When you are about to lay a foundation for a dwelling for example. The act of “defiling”/digging the earth could also be a reason for offering prayers. Or. A prayer for stability and sthirtha as in stillness; almost meditative; what some wish to call “vaastu”; one with strength comparable to the spinal column; offering suppleness and solidity. Another thought: the earth or prithvi, to bring home the “rootedness”, is also a “bearer” of witness; as in it nurtures us through all the upheaval. Both man-made and ecological – as in human actions that are both nurturing and those that destroy. The good and evil sides of the coin. Somewhere it also implies a vast patience. A patient bearing of all that is inflicted upon it. Good and bad. Forbearance. And divinity.
[Questions: Isn’t earth as mother a limited concept? I have always wondered that if Earth is mother, then who provides the male requirements to make her fertile – and fertility is an important aspect of her being mother: the very name “mother”. What is the male component? Or does she not require one. If so, why not?]
Flip.
The grand betrayal.
We repay this beneficence this “nurturing” with “destruction” “disregard” and “violence”.
“Prithvi/earth as a Benign entity?” One is reminded of a more ferocious mothering – not protective but punishing and far from benign. Famine and drought as acts of wrath. One doesn’t know if the climate disaster we have manufactured has made us more Earth-fearing than God-fearing. Maybe we should be more Earth-fearing.
This then is our simultaneous reality. More layers. The changing relationships with the way we treat our very own terra-dhara firma. Almost as if we are at war with anything that offers a nurturing embrace.
Flip again.
Panchabhutas. The concept of the elements earth, water, fire, air, and ether and the role that the earth plays in keeping everything on even keel. The earth as balance. And order. If here was a commandment that addressed itself to the maintenance of this balance it would be “give us this day our daily blade of grass”.
One can go on but it would be useful to study the role of this mother earth in our Vedas and philosophical thought and the deep-rooted connection between us as humans and this our earth.
Trample and destroy.
Only the whistling wind ruled. The dust. And
the sand. Of the riverbed. Buried deep. The ghosts
of fish. The ones that had failed to swim. Fast enough.
The river. Had long since dried.
I am a man of theatre. Before this “being reincarnated” or dug up from the soil as a publisher.
The theatre space one inherits is both “bare-empty’ and full of “voice-histories”. Much has happened here. In this space. This stage that is full of stories. Containing memory. A “singular” whose plurality, is obvious when you learn how to listen to all that has taken place. The “stagings” over time, have leant memory to this space where actors have played their parts. Taken on roles. Time and memory. Remembrance. A layered terrain that turns the fiction of our performances into reality? Perhaps. Memory and repetition as truth. Our daily enactments in the lives we “undergo” are a combination of performative histories and make belief. But they don’t just stay static and “writ in stone”. They change as the present begins its distancing as it marches both into our past and our future which in turn continues to add the layers we are preoccupied with here. Also terrain!
In my practice of light design for the theatre I tried my best to light the air around the actors so that the sensitive amongst them could sense the presence of stories that may have been enacted there. Moving in and out of this “lit” air they felt a part of a larger, even longer, continuity. This sensing created both a certain yearning and a melancholy for the past. Not the kind that breeds nostalgia. Though why not? A desire to know more. Discover. Explore their own lineage as actors. This too is terrain.
I walk into an empty space. A phrase made famous by Peter Brook. Feel it. Understand its stirrings. I know the play I am about to design. I have been sitting through readings and rehearsals to almost know all the parts. But I still need to find a point of “incision” that allows me to slice through to its core. Seek a stillness through my “intuitive”. A shape begins to emerge. My designs were never in isolation. Always connected to what may have already happened – in the “actual” world and in its doppelganger, literature – and that which may unfold.
restless wanderers her dreams
in an old house of blindnessshe poured the night into her eyes [acid burns]
I persuade her into the light twirl her around without malice
her naked back to an audience that has fledI signal the man in the wings as one often does in a waking dream about the theatre
to raise the bloodsoaked curtain
Like a wordfinder. A Thesaurus blinded by the dark. I could smell the smoke. The stench. Charred. It was going to be a long night. One that would burn ceaselessly, endlessly, incessantly, unceasingly, interminably, constantly, perpetually, continually, relentlessly.
I would suggest
that the thought you think about a thought
in what you see as an endless chain is not
what I call incomplete.
Yes thought is not finite.
But
I would argue that the moment we put a thought
out there
in the form of what for better or for worse
is a “completed” sentence or idea
it is considered complete.
Having completed a thought
what occurs is a fresh thought?
Perhaps.
It isn’t as if it is a continuation of the previous thought.
Though it could be
if you refused to punctuate it
or take a breath
while elaborating it!
For me the term 'unfinished' or
'incomplete' simply implies that
you often begin in mid-sentence
and end without exploring something enough.
A string of such “fresh” beginnings
and abrupt “endings” are termed fragments.
Thought carries on begetting thought.
One distinguishes the “fragment” from
my description of “completed thought”
somewhat
in the way one senses poetry through instinct and
prose through the internal logic of the writer’s intent.
That is not to say that the poet-writer has no intent. God forbid!
The poet for me has no urgency to make logic
out of the stringing of her or his words.
The poetic logic is hinted at.
Sensed.
Tempted here to compare to the photographic tradition
I often speak about wherein
your omissions are your saving grace.
I don’t seek reassurance
in what I call “completeness” or the opposite.
I simply want to be able to write thought
down as it makes its presence felt in my head. That moment
of apparent revelation. Thought beginning
to reveal itself without
the fetters of training or
education
or discipline. Thought for thought’s sake?
Maybe.
Like writing for the sake of writing
and not for the pleasures of the marketplace.
Thought that is incomplete
only because it has not found itself a goal
an aim
an aspiration.
Non-aspirational thought making its way
around the internal landscape
of so many of us who allow this “roaming”
without purpose.
Period-piece photographs are completed by
death.
For the subjects. For those inheriting them
these may remain incomplete lives interrupted
by the completeness of death?
I don’t know.
I often look at photographs of my dead parents and wonder
at what they would have felt
about the dark times
if they were alive.
And I make them come alive in this manner.
By thinking thoughts that become attributed to them.
Giving them a convenient excuse for non-deathness.
My conversations. Computer or phone-chats
are actually letters that you and I are capable of writing by hand.
Thing is
that the presence of the other
is both a conscious presence and
one that is not so conscious. It begins with the formality
at least in my head
with an image of the person I am writing to
and slowly becomes a not so visible blur.
The writing takes over. Thoughts take hold
of my imagination. You
remain but no longer with the clarity and
sharpness of that initial image
at the start of the conversation the writing. And
none of it is taken lightly.
None of it is thought through.
Thoughts come and go. Or stay.
Are strung together
to form other thoughts.
Images emerge that lead to more ideas.
All of it is vulnerable
and open to ridicule.
Which is also its truth.
And its terrain?
Romila Thapar in response to a long letter on “fragments”:
Fragments are always part of whole, a whole that is somewhere, even as they float about aimlessly. Then they suddenly turn up when you are writing something and you least expect to see them. You never know when you will meet up with one of your fragments when you are writing. Does one see them then as fragments or as parts of the whole that one may be attempting to write and one is surprised that they fit so well or one is horrified that they have disrupted everything, the neat picture is torn
And this:
When you write to someone, do you think that the other person will be complicit in completing the picture. They may have an entirely different picture in mind. Pictures because they are visual internally, never match.
It is essential that the pictures not match.
And this is what governments do not realise. The mismatch is vital for the survival of debate.
And without debate
there is no creative way of remaining human.
The other person is often
complicit
in putting together the fragments you think up as pictures.
But this “complicity”
is not conscious.
What is summed up in these two lines is also what makes for good theatre.
The possibility of mismatch.
The uncertainty that precedes a debate.
The art of building up suspense through scattered images.
Waiting to be framed.
One last temptation at exploring the “vulnerability” of sharing thought through the gauze-veil of layered history:
– my fragments may remain “incomplete” yet complete in themselves for some reader-listeners. Hard to say more than what one hints at. The “hinting” is never deliberate. It just is. As in one suggests a way of seeing while simultaneously parting the haze-veils and narrating the past.
– I think it is an act of solitude this state which allows the presence of writing to take shape “become” voice become language. I do not necessarily “converse” with myself when I write. I become “the medium” or “the conduit” through which my imbibed lives – yes plural – find utterance.
– The solitary helps.
– The solitude is a substitute for calm which in turn gives birth to restlessness of a kind that makes writing flow. More layers but dynamic. As in constant motion. Often described as “fluxus” – a flowing. May I offer this “flowing” as a travelogue of the mind. Without any question marks.
– Like this Now. This moment of allowing my calm my quiet my solitude to flow to respond to you with utmost respect and seriousness.
– And stop in mid-thought because I know I can resume our conversation, at any time. This stopping midway is what gives a ‘birthing’ to the fragmentary. A cyclic practice that could also be described as terrain.
I cannot “play further” with my thoughts at whim. Be it mine or yours. The hush the outpouring of thought has its own rhythm and attains its own “heights” and lows and often it goes over the abyss while chasing itself. I write with urgency for fear of running out of words and yet often find it hard to keep up with my own speed!
Also writing is my task
Yours as the readerly-listening being is to make sense out of it. Or not.
I bring you back to “meaning”. Or its flipside “interpretation”. I offer you a different rootedness in the coinage: “in-grain-ment”. What you have grown up with as “ingrained”. Not easily discernible layers or what dictionaries like calling formations; and academics, formulations that slowly distance you the cultural-heretic/being from your “original-origin”. Forgive my word play but take it at face value and conjure remembered images from the past and see how far you have moved away from your foundational beginnings/beliefs. The ingrained past is both almost-forgotten because of this sedimentary layering and almost-remembered albeit through what can best be called “a haze”. Like seeing the child you left behind as you marched into the mist of adulthood. Familiar and close yet in the guise of a benign and affectionate memory.
One last push
This forgetfulness is neither complete nor totally incomplete. The limbo I offer you is not a negative anticipatory space of anxiety. It comes with understanding of the kind that is both self-reliant and self-understanding both through the lens of our memories and our understanding of the past that continues to make possible our “current-ness”. Our present. And inform our future.
Shift
Silence. Language falls silent. The alphabet retreats in no particular order into a “lackness of light”. Give it a name and try again. Corner. Corners as refuge. As shadow. As the opposite of light. “Retreats” as in by choice or “is driven” into a space of utter dark. Perhaps both. So. Language loses its identity. It no longer has a presence. The meaning is drained out of it. The departure of “sound”. The “audible” of language is choked by this “new” Absence. Absence that disallows articulation. Meaning loses out to “meaning less ness”. Abruptly. Even with blatant force. Force of “Circumstance” as it un folds. An almost immediate “ab rupture.” A paralysis by choice or by some form of “command” from “external forcibles”. A deportation.
Within the silence resides a deeper silence – a thought made audible made borrowing while reading Anne Carson’s Nay Rather on translating that which is untranslatable and other thoughts – One with intent. Equally hidden. A place of implied safe ness. My use of “implied” as a word that suggests the tentative. The “almostdoubt”. Is any part of our being safe any longer? What if indeed it is. A place that is safe. Not compromised. In fact, the opposite. A place of resistance. A hiding place. Where language may find refuge. A place for recuperation. Healing. Gathering marshalling one’s defenses. Perhaps a springboard from which language has an opportunity to “bounce back”. Regain meaning.
Meaninglessness is not the opposite of meaning. It is the “lack” that swallows light. The empowerment of being a “holder of meaning” is what distinguishes our humanity from other “ities”. Losing language losing voice strips us of the “Human”. This may be a slow process or one that is accelerated in our world by an act of total destruction by a nation of power towards one without. What happens when this enforced “naked ness” acts as camouflage for a deeper humanity within? What happens to those who through “grit” and may I dare, “miracle”, manage to survive the Transport and the Camp? What happens to those who manage to survive the Transport and the Camp? I repeat this for by the time of the Stripping, all faith in the Miracle, has been buried. Faith death. The Divine that is usually responsible for making miracles happen no longer exists either as or in Belief. Grit alone, then. A Solitary that survives the Lack. We know these Beings that bear their Silences through Agamben’s Auschwitz. How will their vocabulary find Voice? Who will translate the voices whose rebirthing is designed for that even deeper silence within?
What happens when Memory fails in its sworn task to remember? When it no longer feels the marks left behind by the Vast Burning. The sensation of being singed by events that defy all that is good in us.
Some of the things I remember of last night’s dream:
A yellow coloured falling leaf. Weighed down by a dewdrop.
A crystal ball. Backlit by the twice-exhausted sun sinking deep into the earth.
A giant shadow in motion. Like an unexpected winter chill in the height of summer. A sandpaper voice singing a lullaby.
Words marching past. Regimented in khaki.
Jackboots without torsos.
Cheerleader in arms.
Rifles swinging like batons.
Spiders weaving webs of steel.
Spines of books crumbling into ash.
Sound of wings flapping.
Countless cradles being smashed against the trunks of giant tress.
Wailing caterpillars throwing a tantrum.
Crickets with butterfly wings.
Our present, under siege.
Those gestures. The ones we repeat in our denial of superstition. Rituals of repetition are a given-known part of our lives. Particularly while attempting to ward off evil. Whether it is the non-believer who from childhood has learnt to “cross” herself as she passes a roadside shrine or the mental bead-counter that mutters a gayatri mantra under her breath – a swiftly whispered “om bhur bhuva swaha…” each time the plane dips sharply and the startlement in the heart does a double take.
This doesn’t hurt anyone does it?
Thing is life occurs. Regardless. Like time. It travels single-mindedly in one direction. Death happens not because you run out of time but because of it. What about emptiness? Think of the nights that have shaken you out of deep sleep at 2 am or 3 definitely not at 4 when you are often awake for the morning walk that breathes 7548 steps out of you. Nights that have emptied your mind-body out of its numb-sleep and labelled you “vacant”, “to-let” or is that too late? Either way there is a new inhabitant. Emptiness. One that sets anchor in your within. An unwelcome guest you cannot refuse. And the boxes? The ones you have neatly sealed. And erratically ticked? Storage devices for unwelcome memories? Or “callmybluff empties!” One doesn’t know.
I dream of rust these day-nights. Clearly the fallout from rusting my “trees”. Rusted metal sheets. Scrap iron that has gathered rust before its final demise. Not filings. Never. Somehow handful of rusted filings are not what I dream of using. Remorse, this rust. Terminal and tenacious. Nails that strangle coffins are about to taste rust. In this dream of “rust”, I am busy running after words.
This was delivered as the Keynote address for the CEPT University Essay Prize 2026–27 in Ahmedabad on February 12.
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