Being witness to life's realities

When three hijacked planes crashed into the majestic towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the world became witness to a devastation unimaginable. At that moment, the desperation to make sense of the events displaced any possibility of accepting the fact that one simply did not know who was responsible. The credibility of many inferences and assertions, says LATAMANI, rests on presuppositions that have little substance.

TWO days before the events that decimated the World Trade Center and gouged the side of the Pentagon, I attended a satsang with the U.S. advaita teacher, Gangaji, at a church in Berkeley. Gangaji is a wonderful exponent of the practice of self-inquiry taught by Sri Ramana Maharishi, who was the guru to her own teacher, Sri H. W. L. Poonjaji. As she works one-on-one with those who bring to her their deepest questions, we see self- inquiry come alive. The nature of the mind and its tendency to perpetuate suffering by refusing to be present, regardless of what might be discovered, is brought into sharp relief. Even those who have never meditated before experience powerfully the human penchant for narrating, for seeking to habitually insert every thought, feeling, emotion, event, into a story, whether about self or other.

This hunger for narrative is not innocent; nor is it cunning. Rather it reflects our fears, hopes and desires. These sentiments, in turn, are expressed in our multiple (even contradictory) investments in who we think we are, or ought to be. The audience also glimpses the broader implications of this predilection to corral consciousness into the persistent making of meaning. For this refusal to be present to what is, just as it is (and its corollary, the desire to flee) is at the root of our inability to become a witness proper to life's events.

The relevance of this wisdom echoed in my mind, as I, like others, incredulously watched the unfolding of events on September 11. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, when shock predominated, one experienced a rare period of narrative openness or inconclusivity. Media persons and the citizenry alike were confounded that such a thing had happened. That and the uncertainty of what may yet occur took precedence over the questions that were to become key to later discussions: who did it and how, and what should be the appropriate response to it. Interestingly, and not coincidentally, it was as the full extent of the damage and loss of life gradually became evident, that one saw the scramble to impose meaning, to draw the events into some circle of logic, however insanely defined.

Where initially anchorpersons remembered to insert a cautionary note against mistakenly jumping to conclusions as they had after the Oklahoma blast, the desperation to make sense of the events soon displaced any possibility of accepting the fact that one simply did not know. To rest in unknowing would have required embracing uncertainty even more deeply than events had already, by their nature, required of us. The deliberate crashing of commercial planes into two densely populated symbols of U.S. economic and military power had destroyed the illusion of secure knowledge and physical safety. The resulting crater could have given us pause to reconsider everything from ground zero. But instead, we moved away from its edge and got busy turning it into a landfill for stories fabricated from pre-packaged memory.

George Bush leads the charge, stressing revenge and retribution. At first, the objective is to hunt down and punish the perpetrators, but soon the first war of the 21st Century is declared and it is implied that this will be a perpetual war intended to eliminate "terrorism" altogether. The turn to prayer and the weak statements that U.S. Muslims should not be persecuted are almost afterthoughts. They are disproportionately outweighed by pro-war propaganda and by the racist and terrifyingly ignorant representations of Islam, as also Middle Eastern people and politics. Simultaneously, there are many stories of genuine courage, collective enterprise, and the tenderness of New Yorkers and those who have come to their rescue.

Alongside this, ostensible clues as to the identity of the hijackers are reportedly discovered. A flight manual in Arabic, a pilot's license found in the sock of a Middle Eastern individual, hair dye in a hotel room. The FBI, which, given its responsibility to ensure national security, strangely kept a low profile in the first 24 hours, claims to be unearthing an international conspiracy whose tendrils they link to Osama Bin Laden, the man the U.S. currently loves to hate.

The rhetoric of war immediately mobilises the anti-violence liberal and left political segments. Concern is expressed about the absurdity of responding to violence with violence and incontrovertible facts are marshalled about the injustice meted out by the U.S. to the peoples of the Middle East. Commentators and activists distance themselves from Bin Laden and plead that it is only abject despair that leads a subjugated people to consider such acts of violence as justifiable. They also point to ominous signs that military build up (unanimously backed by a "patriotic" Congress) will roll back the modicum of demilitarisation that had been achieved under the Clinton presidency and legitimise the erosion of civil liberties within the U.S..

The rubble of stories (that is to say the explanations that attempt to make sense of these events) piles up by the hour and, like the debris of the WTC, will take quite some time and work to sort through and evaluate. But the plot has already sidelined certain questions. Chief among these is the nature of the evidence presented to us regarding those deemed responsible. It is at best flimsy and inconclusive, at worst, hastily and amateurishly put together into a claim of guilt. The credibility of many inferences and assertions rests on presuppositions that have little substance. And yet the urgency of the talk of war has required opponents to focus on the madness of war, not the appropriateness of the rationale for deciding guilt.

In a very real sense, our collective gaze is not on the lives that have been destroyed or forever changed by the events of September 11, human interest stories notwithstanding. To commit to being present to that would be far more unsettling. The trauma of grief and loss, the painfully slow rebuilding of lives - these are open-ended processes whose course cannot be foretold or controlled. There is often nothing that we as affected observers can do, except keep vigil in our hearts for those who are suffering. There is little here for those seeking the drama of action.

To truly witness the totality of what occurred in New York and Washington DC would require us to give up the desire for easy soundbites, touching memorialisations and quick symbolic resolutions. These would falsely assure us by placating the fear of uncertainty and extending the sense of things being mended. We would, in effect, flee from what is before us, leaving those who have no choice but to live their nightmares without the solace of collective comprehension. And thus is suffering compounded. For the attention span of those who have a choice to look away is short. Is it any wonder that they are already recommending the resumption of the National Football League and other competitive games?

Lata Mani is a historian and cultural critic.

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