Small town as ‘Inbetween’

Jack played the truism of teenage, being a poet. His slurry ad-hocship as a poet singled out no more than a mere ideal. Hundred kilometres north to the city of Kolkata. In touch with ways, village and city. Its contact zone being the liminal out goes of citizenship. City never existed as a pure ‘in-itself’ status. Cities are at a con with it’s being ‘for-itself’, its impure solutions of being with for the other. On the other hand, small towns are nullified zonal write ups, being with for the selfhood of non-ad-hocship.  It is static like jellyfish, yet, as a point of contact, it aspires change. City playing the big role of omnipotence for- ‘in-itself’, with non-vestibular stasis. From this perspective, the in-between small town is always on a move, for everyone moves outside the ring of vestibular solitude.  City never reaches its ultimate status, for the small towns lives in it, being for the daily commuter.  Village on the other hand never existed except for Cultural Revolution.  Dhrubo’s beloved letter, Joydip’s slurry unfathomable half inch drowning, Bena’s mimicking of Mega Death and Rajesh Khanna. Inbetweenness as ego’s curbing of desire, endless shooter stuff. Life’s imbecility proved to the core by the endless rings that surround the small town. Inbetweenness as miniature tombstone. Its self being non-committal to ad-hoc invigilator, stasis of being with for the self. Its root being the nestling ground below. The rootedness is based on the non-rootedness of the other. The agency stumbles to prove its own selfing, while the gazing other reconciles with the visitor, though they get back to office with jerking effect of leading backwards to the small townish greyish home special. Unholy trip of heroine sees itself in the other, the positive method of philosophical sciences.  I am you and what I see is me. City, village, small towns mingles together in the disposition of carefully arranged dreaming of monetary impermanence.  Villages play truant from the big city through the outreach of small towns. The inbetween play acts with both the trodden paths, they re-visit the inbetween, time to time. Inbetweenness is a super combo of ad-hocship and stasis.  In small towns, due to lack of ego sustaining intellectual boomers, the individual psyche sustains the boredom of infiltrating neibourghs. Through these struggle, the ad-hoc intellectualship proves more than the city lights, where mediocre intellectuals round up in groupism.  The ad-hoc professor from small towns grows with both the stasis and impermanence.  Their struggle proves them to be the ideologue of inbetweenness of becoming.  City’s mob stricken Professor goes the Romeo journey. Life reckons the inbetweenness as a more being onto self, with obnoxious bypasser‘s lane from the city. With village, it is the high road, which connects each other.  As the inbetween small towns live ways, city and village, the eternal vestibule sustains everywhere. It is onto-photographic image; it is still, with vast spaces, and denotative places.  Who’s who of Romeo and Juliette succumbs to the intellectual passages from the rooted small towns. The passages are rooted, in its stasis and as a changing point of contact.  Life wants to be the outside of nerve gas chamber Robespierre realm. Small town idolises the individual icon, while today’s city has no individual. It is a stop gap for earning and thence, back to the small towns. Small town offers space and its denotative places more conjugality, and visibility, to be, at oneness with the individuation of modern.

I am indebted to Dr. Ranjani Mazumdar and Dr. Gayatri C. Spivak for sharing their views with me. 

Jeet Bhattacharya
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