SAMEER RAWAL

1. Have you ever felt ‘terrorized’ by something? Have you ever told/described it to someone? Has it found an expression in your work?

No, I have not felt terrorized by anything. But I have seen, heard, and observed many terrorized people and I can well imagine what it would be like. It seems like an extreme fear, a special kind of fear which symbolizes the end of everything one has ever known, felt, thought, imagined or lived. It looks as if it may be a prelude to the actual, clinical death. It can be incited by many agents: diseases, mental problems, social success/failure, violence, words, symbols, love/hate etc. I have not told or described it to anyone especially, but I do converse about my observation on terror with the people I know: my friends, family and others. It has definitely found expression in my work: I express what I see, what comes to me. Usually I embellish these expressions with other similes, metaphors, and literary labyrinths, to make the reader/addressee try to grasp what I am saying employing extra effort, to make him/her realize these feelings as I have, taking place at another plane.

2. At a psychological / aesthetic / philosophical level, can terror be ‘represented’ in art? Would you like to name certain works (art/writing) in which it has been done effectively?

Of course, terror can be represented at a psychological / aesthetic / philosophical level in art. Art and life are not two parallel poles; they are entwined in never-ending embrace. Terror is a very live feeling, it makes one feel one is living, may be to die the next moment, and so it is so deep-rooted and primordial that art which bases itself on purely expressive, disinhibitory and courageous inspirations has to represent it, repack it or resume it.

I am quite poor at citing art/writing or anything in general so I am sorry for that. ‘El orfanato’ is a recent Spanish movie that I associate with terror: the suddenness of images or audio surprises put one’s self in a space-time where space-time actually stops, and the sense, be it hearing or seeing, is the only given reality. One is transported and transformed. One may not like this experience afterwards. The Scream by Edvard Munch may be one such painting where one can see the hopelessness of terror, though I don’t associate the painting with actual terror itself. At this moment I believe that the written word may not be the most effective medium to convey terror. There are many other examples I could give but I think I have explained myself sufficiently.

3. Which would you consider to be the most terrorizing moment / event / ideology you have known?

The concept of one’s own self seems to me the most terrorizing ideology. We ourselves trying to understand our own selves seems to be the most terrorizing event to me. And when we think we know ourselves, this becomes the most terrorizing moment for me.

4. How do you respond to the rhetoric of terror(ism) in mainstream media and politics?

I prefer not to respond; mainstream media and politics are to be used by us, and not vice-versa. If one can read between the lines one can see where the rhetoric of terror and terrorism in media and politics takes us. The rest is up to us.

Q5. Have the (serial) blasts around made you feel insecure?

Not really; I narrowly missed two serial bomb blasts in India: at Mumbai in 2006 and at Delhi in 2008. One is as insecure as one wants to be. As things stand there is no security guaranteed anywhere in the world in these times. With due respect to the feelings of the people related to the casualties of the serial bomb blasts I would like to say that death is one of the certainties of life, and we are not as important in the universe as we might believe.