Authentica Habita

Freedom of movement in the pursuit of sacred knowledge was one of Barbarossa's Authetica Habita's key tenets.  That was back in the medieval days, when Bologna and Paris were clearly the capitals of knowledge, where it all originated, perhaps.  Knowledge was often dispensed by monks, and the foreigner-pilgrims made their journey from faraway lands to be initiated into the ways of the wise. 

Elsewhere knowledge was still very much embodied, visceral.  In parts of Africa, bodies were marked and chiselled into adult forms.  In India, gurukuls were run in line with the guru-shishya parampara, where knowledge was imparted in teacher-student proximity.  Here too, the student had to suffer physical ordeals, sacrifice his desires, harness his mind and intellect.  At the end of initiations, the student was re-born, this time into knowledge.  His face glowed and he could now legitimately lead the masses (Atharva Veda).

Today, universities are also thriving on the fragile peripheries, opening doors to learners from all geographies.  I'm not trying to essentialise the categories, in practice, the centre-periphery distinction would be more fluid.  In fact, they come closer through the objects of their transactions.  One of the universities' key projects is to share and sponsor research, the knowledge-making device that feeds into the global brain. 

Yet, not all shared forms share equal currency.  Some matter more than others.  We all know that to evolve as a scholar, one needs to publish a fixed quota of articles in peer-reviewed reputed journals, often ready-made in the centre.  For that, one needs to first be accepted as part of the erudite knowledge community.  Acceptance itself is hinged on the ability to address the centre's issues of concern and to live up to its highly convoluted evaluation criteria.  And to persist in projecting an image that does not necessarily aggregate to the sum of our shared stories nautical miles away.  When then does one begin to share the more textured, localised, grassroots experiences, the stuff indigenous knowledges are made of?  And be valued for them.  How does one escape the double-bind of reproducing knowledge or its paradigms at the centre?

The shared forms are fuelled by a knowledge-power deadlock, the means and end of years of all pursuit.  Knowledge is becoming its own reflexive noun, not an incrementally virtuous spiral.  It is less embodied for sure.  It is losing its sanctity, it's a necessary condition for the piling of ostentatious degrees.  And the teacher-student proximity is doubtful to say the least.

The traditional players are almost expendable.  The game feeds itself and its sponsors, to which teachers and students remain anonymous.  The games' rules are set by the age-old monopoles and played out in ways that stretch the divide.  They are not driven by savants or monks, but by aggressive magnates who tweak what the wise can conceive of and share with avid young minds.  Perhaps religion, the man-made construct and power were never so distinct anyway.  Just step back a few centuries.  Didn't Louis XIV, in a row with the Church over shared power, declare absolute monarchy on his people?  In fact, he proclaimed himself, 'Le Roi Soleil'.  The sun-god incarnate. 

Sure, the world has become a global village, but the disparities have only become more flagrant.  Sure, travel is no more a luxury, but a necessity.  Sure, 'Authentica Habita' is a given.  A necessity too.  In fact, student trans humans feeds directly into universities' estimated incomes.  So the money circulates too.  Often, the funds trickle out of the war and poverty-struck third world territories.  Where knowledge is generally sought for succour. 

But at the centre of those very 'temples', the movement of thoughts, possible ideas, remains a sure myth.  In fact an uncanny paradox.  An inauthentic promise.  The centre's thinking blueprint has been cemented in the rock, the ink runs deep and shall not be moved.  Can you and I transcend?

Where are the roosters?

The dust is settling again. The roosters cannot sing. The rooftops boast of few pigeons. They sunbathe until mellowness is all juiced out. And now, the town is going back to sleep.

They've been induced in it for few years now, the swallows young and old. Some fledglings were never taught to fly. They were fed the pleasure pill too soon. Earning one's worm had become an afterthought. The town out there was now a blur. One could hire any stuff right here: colourful feather, soporific bubble. One could revel in earth's meek charms, disparage its hidden secrets. Yet stay oblivious.

They lived in a multi-spaced tangle, those birds. They latched onto its blinds like rabid spiders. It was a hook that secured them to their nest. It had its own marshmallow alibis. There, their minds were bogged in soggy labyrinths. There they resolved twisted mobius strips, did facelifts by puffing up their plumes, chirped to their echoes believing them to be other birds.

Meanwhile, out there, the town was ablaze. The hawks had piled their straw too high, exposed it to the scorching new sun. They thought they could rule the sky, pinch straw from other nests, as the little ones tumbled in their crafted tangle. The hawks thought they could soar higher. That they would never need to fly. But now the fire was consuming their spoils, licking everything on its path, even the miserly glow-worms and the slave ants.

The fledglings could faintly sniff the smoke. They pulled the blinds up for a peep. They were puzzled. But they figured the town was the tangle, its mirror. So, with droopy eyes, they re-entered the labyrinth and aggressively put the fire out.