Developmentitis
Phnom Penh: June 16 - 22, 2024
let's not begin with the punctuated laugh but
with the smallness of the underprise, its
variance with the line and its underbelly
of memory that which goes deeper than the
I of sink, that which goes softer than the
blue of see as surely as the mad are freeIt’s a familiar work travel routine: plush hotels, bucket list food, occasional novelty, less-than-yous glossed over by the exotica, faarigh goras and uss se bhi faarigh local goras. In short, ‘D’evelopment ballay ballay!
And then there was this ambivalence to Development - perhaps even resistance - we witnessed in the Chitral valley just two weeks back. And I don’t think it a coincidence that the smiles in Chitral come from a place diametrically opposed to where modernity lies, smug in its well-mannered solitaryness.
Flying over Bangkok, the symmetric geometry reminded me of a similar european city flyover years ago. At the time, there was awe; now, not. Holding on to what is all-too-human is a challenge after such vivisection.
what is differentiable is not duality but the circumference
of the possible how the two taos can intersect without
exchanging DNA how the commingling of variables
are born into fear and the opposite of fear the dance of
undifferentiated duals cringing at the prospect of
being set apart by prose, by war and their priests -