Property, representation, and serial killings

The connections are weak at the moment. They may seem like they will snap but please bear with me.

The last week of Indian media was dominated by the images of scurrying out skulls from a drain, a bearded man who had killed more than a few children and women, and a servant who took his job a bit too seriously and abducted, kidnapped, and killed on his employers orders. Yes, also, hordes of aggrieved parents, relatives, brothers, sisters, friends. But they were just the hordes: angry, stone pelting, demanding justice. The regular crowds of regular people.

Usually when I see these things, when I happen to be passing through a news channel towards clever comedy or tacky music, I get increasingly disturbed and most of the times I don't know what disturbs me in that moment. I think the constant onslaught of images of similar kind has led to a situation, which I like to call, sensory deprivation in me. The characteristics feature of this situation manifests in me through my inability to relate to these 500 images per frame thrown at me, not in the moment, not in retrospection. It just leaves a dull taste and that's about it and that also only lasts till the time I manage to find my comedy or my music.

In my present situation (of sensory deprivation), the only time I remembering actually looking at an image or beyond it was when one channel (and I am just assuming it was all the channels as well) were airing this news clip about a rescued young girl from the wraths of her employer. The employer couple, I think even their children (though I would like to spare them), would beat her up with sticks, chains, whatever they could lay their hands on, burn her with hot rod, etc. There she sat, the rescued girl, with scars so deeply etched on her that she didn't need to lift her little frock to show where they hit. Her eyes were splattered, I am not trying to be poetic, but there is no other word that I can use to describe what I saw of her. Her breathing was slowing down by the tears that were clogging her and the incessant questions of the reporters she had to answer. The reporter, who I am sure is a very considerate person in real life, was pushing down the huge mike (for better sound quality through the sobbing?) and repeatedly asking, 'so, did they beat you' (I don't understand why they have to ask questions as such, doesn't the fact that the news-piece is about the child being beaten and yes rescued through the efforts of the conscientious channel enough to establish that?), 'so, haan beta, yes, child, where did they beat you' (okay, I would still give this question some journalistic liberty) but the last question, 'did it hurt, my child' completely threw me off my saddle. Whose intelligence is one challenging, the reporter's, the viewer's or the child’s.

All of this questioning about the program, I am able to do at the moment but while the news clip was playing (and I could not even get my remote to do what it does, shift my attention), I just broke down. Not heavily, not sobbing but without my wanting to, the situation of sensory deprivation still gripping me, the tears kept coming. I have been beaten (thankfully by family member, how that makes it better, I don't know but still...) when I was young and not so young and I knew what exactly the child wanted. She didn't want to be questioned or even held but just some respect. Respect, darn' it. When you are that young and are beaten, the sense of helplessness grips you. You loose all groundings, if they were ever established, of love, trust, respect, honor. Only and the only thing that restores a bit of these lost moments is Respect.

Anyway, in regards to the present situation, I did not think much about it. I did not want to think much about it. I don't have children and do not fear whether they will suffer the same fate. My childhood, most of it, has been taken care of. But still, as I mentioned it earlier, it left a dull taste.

In reading two texts, E.M.Forester's My Wood in 75 readings and Tim Crane's The Mechanical Mind (sorry, the links to the books suck but will give an idea) (the first chapter, The puzzle of representation) I was struck by the following, a bit about the texts first:

Forester, after acquiring the first property he ever owned, A wood, is writing about how the ownership of the property makes him feel heavy, makes him want it, the property to be larger, and lastly, makes him want to do something about it, to extend the boundaries, to claim the territories over and over again. Crane is dealing with questions of philosophy, asking basically how the mind works? Can it be explained through the naturalistic, everything has its place theory, or through the higly mechanized, everything moves because of the motions it is made of or follows, mechanistic theory? In doing so, he raises significant questions about representation. Through trying to understand representations, Crane, aims to raise a few more questions about the working of the mind than offering solutions. How do we understand what an image, word, music represents? What allows for us to make immediate and effective connections between these and the ideaS?

What I drew from one strand of his theoretical inquisitions is that (and the point of connections to this long rambling), that representations of things, ideas, words, music, images (images as representations) are understood because they have a certain resemblance to the thing they are representing or are represented by. However, this resemblance is not enough (as a theoritical consideration and as everyday matter of articulation) to establish or reinforce the representation or the represented (Crane also suggested the same). In between resemblance and representation, there is an important link of interpretation, contextual interpretation. How I understand this (especially vis-à-vis the relations between the powerful and the not so powerful) is that representations are established, understood, and sustained through re-assembling resemblances to that 'thing' in different contexts (or even in one established contexts). These re-assembling and resemblances are carefully selected by the select few. And once these re-assembled resemblances are reinforced as representations they themselves begin to assume the convention of what that thing, word, image stands for.

So much for Forester and Crane.

In the present situation of the serial killer, it is interesting to note that he is placed against the hordes (the crowds) through the property associations and ownerships. The bearded man in questions, Mr. mohinder, was the owner of the rather lavish bunglow in the 'posh' colony of Noida, a suburban city to Delhi while all the victims were from the nearby 'urban village'. Owning this coveted property at the prime location is the only connection I can draw to his sense of confidence to dispose off the bodies in the drain right next to his house. Considering none of his neighbours ever complained about anything (there must have been an occassional shriek, the shovel moving, the children walking in and never walking out, which I am not ready to concede that none of the neighbours ever noticed) also has its roots in the largeness of the property Mr. Mohinder owned. Like Forester, property gave a sense of heaviness, largeness, and an authoritative right to do something about it (which Forester wasn't too happy with) to Mr. Mohinder and his neighbours. No knows about him, everyone claims they had no idea what he did, in short, his property, his lavish bunglow, was his fortess. I cannot help thinking whether the residents of the same colony, same area would have maintained the policy of diginified indifference and non-interference if a resident from the neighbouring 'urban village' would have attempted to do something of this sort. So, this is how Mr. Mohinder continued and continued with his sprees.

What about the hordes, the crowds? Why were their complaints not registered or followed? Obviously, this points out the pitfalls in the judicial and law systems. However, not going into that area, I would still like to reverse the situation and imagine if Mr. Mohinder was complaining about his missing son/daughter. Would the policemen still advise him to 'take care of their wards', 'make sure his daughters do not loiter around' or say, 'accept that your daughter was a prostitute only then we will register the complain?'. I think not. The story about the man, whose persistence apparently led to the developments on the case, who has nothing left in his village was made to admit (and sign, i think) statements saying that his daughter was a prostitute. They even played the recorded statement in his village. The policemen, for what I can think of only cheap thrills, were dutiful enough to carry the recorded tape to the man's village, arrange for the suitable technology to play it, but not investigate the matter where it was reported.

How does being a prostitute take away your legal rights?

And this is where, when people are denied the basic rights because some think they are of a certain kind, I think the convenient re-assembling of resemblances in regards to the people from 'slums', 'urban villages' as 'criminals', 'vagabonds', 'whores' is represented and has been re-presented over and and over again so much so that these now define the conventions.

Unfortunately, I don't have any solutions but only hope that homogenized, re-assembled resemblances, are not sought to represent reality, realities, on TV or otherwise.

Some links:
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1072356
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1014784.cms
http://premendra.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/12/brain-research-serial-killers-noida-gurgaon-gutter.htm
(The traffic on this site is worth noticing if not an outright concern for worry)