I had used Baudelaire for the post pasted below because on the day  I sat to write about the CWG, nothing I wrote made any sense or captured my frustration other than the poem. Yet, as an email I got this morning reminded me, I have partially substituted one injustice with another. Since good critiques are so wonderfully rare and this one voiced so well, I cite the email below (with permission) as an amendment to my own post since my agreement with its charges are complete:

“Dear Gautam,
I was disappointed to read your post on Kafila , the one where you posted an extract from Baudelaire [http://kafila.org/2010/09/25/to-delhi/]. It is very tiring to read of woman / the feminine as characterized by caprice and associated with luxury + cruelty.
Even if it is Delhi , the city, that one is supposed to read as the woman, unfeeling, capricious, this still ties up with the discourse around women as the consumers of luxury goods, thus responsible for the exploitation resulting from the production / trade of these goods. [Off the top of my head – look at Pope’s Rape of the Lock , Gray’s goldfish-enamoured cat, and the sequel to Love Story – Oliver’s Story with the woman who works for the sweatshop-patronising firm]. I don’t see how the sexism in this piece can be excused or explained away. And to quote it without atleast pointing out the problems in it?

Also, isn’t caprice a problem in itself? Aren’t you disappointed in the reporting that characterizes the Commonweath expenditure as resulting from the caprice of a few in power? Without exploring the systems, structures of thinking/ideology that make such expenditure possible in the first place? Without connecting this, the commonwealth-exploitation, to the histories of similar exploitation?

Yes, it is possible to see that you were highlighting injustice and class – but –
the piece ends up valourizing a man who feels what – pity? guilt? A little shame. Shame is so comfortable – he can occupy moral high ground, diss the woman, use the services of the cafe, and do nothing after that.

I hope your work goes okay.
Best wishes,
Akshi.”

The original post:

“Oh!  You want to know why I hate you today.

It will undoubtedly be less easy for you to understand than it will be for me to explain, for you are, I believe, the most beautiful example of feminine impermeability one could ever encounter.

We had spent together a long day that had seemed short to me.  We had indeed promised that we would share all of our thoughts with one another, and that our two souls would henceforth be one — a dream that isn’t the least bit original, after all, if not that, dreamed of by all men, it has been realized by none.

In the evening, a bit tired, we wanted to sit down in front of a new café that formed the corner of a new boulevard, still strewn with debris and already gloriously displaying its unfinished splendors.  The café was sparkling.  The gaslight itself sent forth all the ardor of a debut and lit with all its force walls blinding in their whiteness, dazzling sheets of mirrors, the gold of the rods and cornices, chubby-cheeked page-boys being dragged by dogs on leashes, laughing ladies with falcons perched on their wrist, nymphs and goddesses carrying on their heads fruits, pies, and poultry, Hebes and Ganymedes presenting in out-stretched arms little amphoras filled with Bavarian cream or bi-colored obelisks of ice cream — all of history and all of mythology at the service of gluttony.

Right in front of us, on the sidewalk, a worthy man in his forties was standing, with a tired face, a greying beard, and holding with one hand a little boy and carrying on the other arm a little being too weak to walk.  He was playing the role of nanny and had taken his children out for a walk in the night air.  All in rags.  The three faces were extraordinarily serious, and the six eyes contemplated fixedly the new café with an equal admiration, but shaded differently according to their age.

The father’s eyes said: “How beautiful it is!  How beautiful it is!  You’d think all the gold in this poor world was on its walls.” — The eyes of the little boy: “How beautiful it is!  How beautiful it is!  But it’s a house only people who aren’t like us can enter.” — As for the eyes of the smaller child, they were too fascinated to express anything other than a stupid and profound joy.

Song-writers say that pleasure makes the soul good and softens the heart.  The song was right this evening, as regards me.  Not only was I moved by this family of eyes, but I also felt a little ashamed of our glasses and our carafes, which were larger than our thirst.  I turned my gaze toward your’s, dear love, to read my thoughts there; I plunged into your so beautiful and so bizarrely gentle eyes, into your green eyes, inhabited by Caprice and inspired by the Moon, and then you said to me: “I can’t stand those people over there, with their eyes wide open like carriage gates!  Can’t you tell the head-waiter to send them away?”

So difficult is it to understand one another, my dear angel, and so incommunicable is thought, even between people in love!”

Baudelaire, The Eyes of the Poor

From the Hindustan Times this morning