An art performance by
Anupam Saikia in solidarity with Rohith Vemula at North shop com, University of
Hyderabad.
duration 80 min.
Date: 6 feb 2016
Here is some link of that mishappening :
duration 80 min.
Date: 6 feb 2016
On 17th Jan 2016, A Dalit Research
Scholar named Rohith Vemula a student of University of Hyderabad committed
suicide. He was social boycotted by the administration of the University. I
was studying in the same University and because of this social injustice a
student’s movement was going through the Nation over the year. I was reading
again and again the letter and tried to understand / realized the psyche when
Comrade Rohith had written those words before killing himself.
 |
| "I have become Monster" |
Last words of PhD scholar late Rohith Vemula:
"Good morning,
I would not be around when you read this letter. Don't get angry on me. I know some of you truly cared for me, loved me and treated me very well. I have no complaints on anyone. It was always with myself I had problems. I feel a growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have become a monster. I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan. At last, this is the only letter I am getting to write.
I loved Science, Stars, Nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since divorced from nature. Our feelings are second handed. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs colored. Our originality valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt.
The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In very field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.
I am writing this kind of letter for the first time. My first time of a final letter. Forgive me if I fail to make sense.
May be I was wrong, all the while, in understanding world. In understanding love, pain, life, death. There was no urgency. But I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life. All the while, some people, for them, life itself is curse. My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.
I am not hurt at this moment. I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself. That's pathetic. And that's why I am doing this.
People may dub me as a coward. And selfish, or stupid once I am gone. I am not bothered about what I am called. I don't believe in after-death stories, ghosts, or spirits. If there is anything at all I believe, I believe that I can travel to the stars. And know about the other worlds.
If you, who is reading this letter can do anything for me, I have to get 7 months of my fellowship, one lakh and seventy five thousand rupees. Please see to it that my family is paid that. I have to give some 40 thousand to Ramji. He never asked them back. But please pay that to him from that.
Let my funeral be silent and smooth. Behave like I just appeared and gone. Do not shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being alive.
"From shadows to the stars."
Uma anna, sorry for using your room for this thing.
To ASA family, sorry for disappointing all of you. You loved me very much. I wish all the very best for the future.
For one last time,
Jai Bheem.
I forgot to write the formalities. No one is responsible for this act of killing myself.
I would not be around when you read this letter. Don't get angry on me. I know some of you truly cared for me, loved me and treated me very well. I have no complaints on anyone. It was always with myself I had problems. I feel a growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have become a monster. I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan. At last, this is the only letter I am getting to write.
I loved Science, Stars, Nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since divorced from nature. Our feelings are second handed. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs colored. Our originality valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt.
The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In very field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.
I am writing this kind of letter for the first time. My first time of a final letter. Forgive me if I fail to make sense.
May be I was wrong, all the while, in understanding world. In understanding love, pain, life, death. There was no urgency. But I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life. All the while, some people, for them, life itself is curse. My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.
I am not hurt at this moment. I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself. That's pathetic. And that's why I am doing this.
People may dub me as a coward. And selfish, or stupid once I am gone. I am not bothered about what I am called. I don't believe in after-death stories, ghosts, or spirits. If there is anything at all I believe, I believe that I can travel to the stars. And know about the other worlds.
If you, who is reading this letter can do anything for me, I have to get 7 months of my fellowship, one lakh and seventy five thousand rupees. Please see to it that my family is paid that. I have to give some 40 thousand to Ramji. He never asked them back. But please pay that to him from that.
Let my funeral be silent and smooth. Behave like I just appeared and gone. Do not shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being alive.
"From shadows to the stars."
Uma anna, sorry for using your room for this thing.
To ASA family, sorry for disappointing all of you. You loved me very much. I wish all the very best for the future.
For one last time,
Jai Bheem.
I forgot to write the formalities. No one is responsible for this act of killing myself.
This note had shaken me lot and that partially its influence on my performance.
In this performance I wanted to create a monstrous psychology
within the human. The titled was taken from the suicide note where Rohith had
written “I feel a growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have become
monster.” I wanted to create this monstrous feeling through my act of
Performance when he had written those words before he committed suicide. During
the process of performance, I transformed slowly in to a monster and tried to
develop the psychological violence which was created from the power structure,
system, caste discrimination etc. I believe that this violence or the monstrous
feeling is always within us and we should fight with this feeling which
enhances the negativity. I pasted a mirror on my chest so that the viewers can
feel the monstrousness in their mind through the mirror.
I walked towards the viewer with a knife and some people took that knife and cut slowly the things which I pasted on my body. We can interpret that they released the monster from the body.
I walked towards the viewer with a knife and some people took that knife and cut slowly the things which I pasted on my body. We can interpret that they released the monster from the body.
@Anupam Saikia
#paerformanceartinindia #artperformance #anupamsaikia #justiceforrohith
