Robot Bees

            On Sunday morning I worked out the chords for the intro and the first few lines of “Dépression au-dessus du Jardin” (Depression Hangs Over the Garden) by Serge Gainsbourg, the melody for which is lifted from Chopin’s “Étude Opus 10, No. 9 in F minor. I’ve deviated somewhat from the chords that were posted online as I try to follow Jane Birkin’s voice. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I copied the movie that I’d made of the half-finished video for my song “Instructions For Electroshock Therapy” and brought it over to the new computer. I played it and was glad to see that the choppy sound glitches that would come up in the playback while making the video were all gone and everything so far looks and sounds good. I just have to replace the clip from Rosemary’s Baby that I’d had to delete because it had gone black after I mistakenly deleted the source film. I redownloaded Rosemary’s Baby and a version of Windows Movie Maker 6 from Pirate Bay. At first I couldn’t figure out how to get Movie Maker up and running because I thought that I hadn’t followed the instructions properly of running it as an administrator, but Windows required that I run it as administrator automatically when I moved it to Program Files. I finally figured that I had to move the whole folder and it seems to work now. 

            I weighed 86.1 kilos before lunch. I had crackers with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. It was a warm day for April and the people on the streets were in a good mood. I rode to Yonge and Bloor, south to College, west to University and then south to Stapes to check out their office chairs. They’ve moved their furniture section to the front after many years of it being at the back. I was walking around in the back for a while before I asked an employee where it was. They only have one armless office chair and it was high up on a shelf. I decided to punish them for being so inefficient and so I asked an employee to take it down. He went to get a ladder but came back saying that all their ladders were in use. It seems really dumb that they sell chairs that people can’t try out. Maybe it’s a modern trend that comes from people being used to taking chances by buying things online. I wonder if stores will do the same thing with clothes soon. Anyway, the chair was their Radnor mesh-backed chair and it was $170. Walmart has a mesh-backed chair for half that price. On the way home I stopped at CB2. They have some very stylish furniture but nothing that I was looking for. I’ll be going up to Yonge and St Clair to get my hair cut tomorrow and I’ll check out some more furniture stores on my way back. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos at 18:00. 

            I got caught up on my journal at 19:20. 

            I copied the folders of photos from the old computer that had names from A to J. and pasted them into the Photos folder of my new computer. 

            I returned to my Anti Gravity’s Rainbow photo and worked on making the graffiti on the brick wall more legible. 

            I had the last of my bacon with an egg, sunny side up, a slice of toasted Bavarian sandwich bread, and a beer while watching the first two episodes from the second season of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story, the underground kingdom of Antillia is being ruled by a tyrant named King El Doobie with his super troopers enforcing his dictatorship. After the king orders human children ten years old and up to become slave workers, two robots, Donald and Ronald, who look similar to C3P0 and R2D2 decide they must go and ask for help from Astro Boy. I wonder if George Lucas watched Astro Boy in 1964. 

           So Ronald flies to North America to fetch Astro Boy. Astro Boy agrees to come and he flies as a passenger inside of Ronald. But shortly after Astro Boy arrives and learns the situation, the super troopers raid Donald and Ronald’s hideout. Astro Boy captures a troop of super troopers. He ties their hands together and makes them walk as a chain back to their king. A little boy sees them and sings, “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” 

            Astro Boy wants to go to the king’s Dogma Palace but it is guarded by three giant insect robots named, Scratchious, Scorpius, and Ugly. Astro Boy defeats Scratchious and Scorpius but by the time he gets to Ugly he is out of power and subdued. He is taken to the palace and tied up crucifixion style to a disk. Doobie reveals to Astro Boy his plan to conquer the world. His swarm of robot bees each carries a hypnotic poison in their stingers that will make anyone that is stung his slave. 

            Astro Boy has no energy to break his bonds but he sees a robot bee and attracts it into his chest. From the bee he gains just enough power to break free and then nearby he finds a power charger to renew his strength. At the heart of the palace Astro Boy finds the robot beehive and smashes it. Doobie releases the giant robot queen bee to attack Astro Boy. After a tough fight, he defeats the queen with his buttock guns. 

            Doobie attacks Astro Boy with his sword but Astro Boy connects Doobie’s blade to high voltage. The electrical shock wakes Doobie up, at first not knowing who he is. He was a good king with a bee-keeping hobby. His favourite bee was a very large one from outer space. It stung him and then began to control his mind. Doobie realizes he must destroy the robot bees and so he orders the population to evacuate to the surface and then sets off a bomb. Doobie plans now to build a peaceful Antillia on the surface. 

            In the second story, Astro Boy is flying home from a robot conference in the north when he sees an iceberg behaving strangely and moving much too fast. He goes down to investigate but is attacked by Dr. Harold Hart. But then Hart recognizes Astro Boy and apologizes. He explains that inside the iceberg is his laboratory. He shows Astro Boy his artificial sun project that would save the kingdom of Icelandia that is too frozen to grow vegetables. He says the device is now finished. 

            But two spies, Willy and Nilly, in a submarine disguised as a whale, have been listening and they report back to their boss, Dr, Cheddar. Cheddar plans to steal the heat generator and claim it as his own invention. He goes to see King Feebo and tells him of the device. As payment he wants to be made Minister of Industry and he wants to marry Feebo’s daughter Rosanna. If these demands are not met Cheddar will destroy the machine. To save his people, King Feebo agrees. 

            Cheddar goes to propose to Rosanna but she says her heart is pledged to Harold Hart. While pushing Cheddar away Rosanna accidentally loses a bracelet given to her by Harold. Astro Boy finds it and sees that it contains Harold’s picture. Astro Boy goes back to Harold and sees Willie and Nilly attacking Hart’s iceberg in their giant whale, which can also fly. Astro Boy causes the whale to crash. Harold asks Astro Boy to return the bracelet to Rosanna along with a note. On the way, Astro Boy is attacked by a helicopter flown by Cheddar. Astro Boy punches the chopper and Cheddar falls out. He saves him from falling but it turns out to be a robot version of Cheddar that is also a bomb. The bomb goes off and Astro Boy falls to the Earth incapacitated. 

           Then Willy and Nilly blast Harold and knock him out. Harold is strapped to a table and a time bomb is set for two hours. But then Cheddar ambushes Willy and Nilly and then straps them to tables beside the bomb as well. Then Rosanna suddenly notices she’s missing her bracelet. She goes back to the coast where she finds the bracelet beside Astro Boy along with a note for her from Harold. She takes Astro Boy to the best robot doctor in Icelandia. Astro Boy is revived and then battles Cheddar and his giant robot whale. After destroying the whale he saves Harold, Willy and Nilly from the bomb. Harold has a fistfight with Cheddar, beating him, and then he turns on his artificial sun to heat and save Icelandia.

April 25, 1992: I found a young woman offering $40 blowjobs but she had nowhere for us to go since I didn’t have a car

Thirty years ago today

            On Saturday I picked up my daughter at around 9:30 and she fell asleep on the way home. I stopped to buy a six pack of Formosa Springs draft. The baby slept for a couple of hours while I got some work done. We played games of imitation and we sat on the front steps. She didn’t eat much today. Nancy called at 15:30 to ask me to bring her back, so I did. But when I got there Nancy wasn’t home and so I headed with her to Bamburgh Plaza. Nancy caught up with us with her mother in the car just as I got there.    

            Nancy had the negatives and slides from some pictures I took of the baby. I asked for them back but she hadn’t done anything yet and so I threatened to take her to small claims court. She seemed to think she owned the world. 

            When I got home, I watched Neon Rider and Counter Strike, then I did some cleaning. 

            I went out that night looking for a cheap hooker. I walked up River Street, across Dundas, and all around Wellesley from Church to Ontario and back. There was an older woman on Bleeker Street who had blowjobs for $40, and I said I’d think about it. But when I decided to come back and take her up on it, I couldn’t find her. I wandered around back and forth until late and only found one young woman with the same price, but she had nowhere for us to go if I didn’t have a car.

Snow Lion

            On Saturday morning I finished working out the chords for the first two verses of “Le régiment des mal aimés” (The Regiment of Broken Hearts) by Boris Vian and part of the chorus. Once that’s done the whole song should fall together. 

            I finished memorizing “Dépression au-dessus du Jardin” (Depression Hangs Over the Garden) by Serge Gainsbourg and found a set of chords for the song online. I’ll try them out tomorrow. 

            I had a good song practice probably because I’m feeling relaxed now that school is over until September. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I went to No Frills, where I bought five bags of grapes, a pack of pork chops, dental floss, cayenne-scotch bonnet sauce, spoon sized shredded wheat, extra virgin olive oil, and a tube of hair conditioner. 

            I copied about half my videos from the old computer into a USB drive. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before lunch. I had a toasted five-year-old cheddar and tomato sandwich with a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. All along Bloor I was on the lookout for stores that might sell office chairs, but there was nothing all the way to Yonge Street. I went into the Hudson’s Bay Centre and was surprised to find that the store at that location is closing and everything is being sold, including the fixtures, and shelves. They had furniture, but nothing on wheels. I rode south on Yonge and there are no furniture stores until the Eaton Centre. I’ll check that out later but today I went into Home Sense where they only had two chairs on wheels. I tried them out but only one of them felt comfortable. I didn’t really like the light colours either and the store models were already stained a bit. So far, I would pick the $60 chair at Walmart, but I’ll check out five more stores. I’ll probably visit Staples tomorrow. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 18:20. 

            I copied the rest of the video files from my old computer, but not my Movie Maker project. That’s half done but I can’t finish it on the old computer and I’ll have to download Movie Maker to the new one. I don’t think I can copy the unfinished project and start from where I left off on the new computer. So I’ll have to make it into a movie as it is, then copy it and bring it to the new computer. Then make it part of a new project in order to finish it. 

            I started making dinner and then went back to the old computer to look at my Movie Maker project. It was as I feared. I had used a clip from Rosemary’s Baby and then deleted the original movie, thinking that the clip was a copy. But it wasn’t. Until the project is rendered it draws from the source files. So when I tried to make my project into a movie the program told me I had to either remove or replace the missing file. I removed the clip and rendered the movie but now I will have to copy it to the new computer and start the project again. Then I will have to re-download Rosemary’s Baby and edit out the clip to repaste it into the project., then I’ll need to resynchronize the video and audio after the clip in order to get caught up so I can continue the project on the new computer from where I left off on the old computer. 

            I had three strips of bacon, a fried egg sunny side up, toasted Bavarian sandwich bread, and a beer while watching the final episode of the first season of Astro Boy. 

            In this story it’s Christmastime and snow is falling on the city but an old man who looks like a wizard is standing on a rooftop with a white lion. The old man is cackling and saying that the snow is living snow from the star Risel and it will bury Earth so his own people can take over. It turns out the snow really is alive and it’s drawn to anything powered by electricity, draining it of its power. All of the robots and machines of the Earth are incapacitated except for Astro Boy, whose power cell is too powerful. 

            Astro Boy looks for the source of the snow and finds ships high in the sky that are producing and dropping the snow. As he approaches the ships he is attacked by the snow lion. He realizes while fighting it that it is also made of the living snow. The snow lion is draining Astro Boy’s energy and gathering his strength in itself. Astro Boy crashes to the Earth. The lion attacks the Institute of Science and Astro Boy has just enough strength to get there. He pushes over a vat of hot wax and traps the lion. But then the police arrive and try to destroy it with ray guns but the lion absorbs the energy and now can break free of the wax. Astro Boy tries again to attack the lion but now his strength is drained and he collapses. 

            Then Mr. Pompus is abducted and placed under glass on one of the invading spaceships. The invading force arrives from Risel and Earth is powerless to stop it. Dr. Elefun carries Astro Boy to place him among the other robots who stand forever as monuments to heroism. But then Elefun hears Astro Boy’s voice in his head telling him not to give up. Elefun starts working on ways to create electricity and shovels away the living snow when it tries to break in. 

            Meanwhile, when the old man leaves to inspect the other ships Pompus escapes from the glass. He finds a room where there are files that outline the invasion plans while also warning that the snow is not immune to x-rays. Pompus drops the file from the ship and returns to pretend to still be a prisoner. Elefun finds the file and develops a super fuel that is also laced with x-rays. Astro Boy is revived with the new fuel and flies to fight the lion. Now with the help of x-rays, he easily beats the lion. Then Pompus escapes again and beats up the old alien, who was also made of snow. Then Astro Boy destroys the spaceships and the Earth is saved. 

            I tried to watch the first episode of the second season of Astro Boy but its download was still only at less than 80% and the sound wouldn’t work. There was an extra file that was above 80%. The sound didn’t work on that either but there were subtitles. It was a colourized version of the Moon Monsters episode and the English translation used the Japanese names of the characters, plus Astro Boy was called “Atom.” Also, the words “bastards” and “damn” were used, which wouldn’t have been accepted in a 1963 children’s cartoon. 

            The snow lion is the emblem of Tibet and a celestial animal. It was believed that they lived high in the mountains. There is no evidence of any prehistoric lions in Tibet but there are snow leopards and the oldest bones of prehistoric big cats similar to snow leopards. There is a small wild feline called the Pallas’s cat in Tibet whose face looks something like the snow lion.

April 24, 1992: While I carried my daughter in Bargain Harold's she grabbed a red t-shirt, so I bought it for her

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday I picked up my daughter at around 9:30. I’d promised Nancy I’d buy some diapers but first I went down Coxwell and enrolled in the Lucky Driving School. My first lesson would be on Sunday night. As I carried my daughter south on Coxwell I went into Bargain Harold’s, which was having a closing sale. I was looking for diapers but there weren’t any. As I carried the baby down an aisle she reached out and grabbed a red t-shirt that looked like it would fit her, so I bought it. I bought some strawberries before we caught the bus, and the baby stained my jacket with them. She fell asleep before we got to Shoppers Drug Mart where I bought the diapers. She slept a couple of hours at my place while I got some cleaning done. We left my place fairly late, at around 20:00 I guess. It was nice that I finally had the money to buy beer but by the time I’d dropped her off at her mother’s place the Beer Store was closed.

Robot Elephant

            On Friday morning I finished posting my translation of “Digital Delay” by Serge Gainsbourg and memorized the first verse of his song “Dépression au-dessus du Jardin” (Depression Hangs Over the Garden). There are only two verses, so I’ll probably have it finished tomorrow. I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast. I called Topcuts and made an appointment for a haircut with Amy on Monday. 

            I called my doctor’s office and found out that he’s finally doing in-person physicals after two years, so I made an appointment for May 11. 

            I copied a lot of files from the old computer to the new one, but I still have a lot more to do. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before lunch. I had McCain’s Superfries with salsa, yogourt, ketchup, and piri-piri sauce. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride up to The Dufferin Mall and went to Walmart to see what they had for office chairs. They have the same kind as mine, which broke after several years, for $60. I’ll look at six more places before I decide where I’m going to buy a new one, but I need one soon. Upstairs at Walmart, I bought a six-pack of black tank tops. 

             I looked around the mall for other furniture stores but there was nothing. I went into Marshal's and if someone had blindfolded me and taken the blindfold off inside, I would have thought I was in a Winners store. It's the same basic concept of clothing, home items, and gourmet food. 

            I rode up to Bloor and east to Dovercourt and then south. I found some good books: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, The Great Wall of China by Franz Kafka, Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre, A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, and Létranger by Albert Camus in French. The person also had a lot of books about Hitler and Nazis but I didn’t take any of those. 

            I went to Freshco where I bought five bags of grapes, two half-pints of raspberries, a pint of strawberries, two jars of apple sauce, a container of skyr, a bag of kettle chips, and a pack of Sponge Towels. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos at 17:40.

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:15. 

            I copied all the eBooks and music files from my old computer to the new one. I still have the videos and pictures to copy. The pictures will be a big job. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story, a scientist asks for Dr. Elefun’s help because his son, Heck Ben is so obsessed with the wild west that he took his father’s time machine 150 years into the past. The time machine returned empty and so the father wants Elefun, Mr. Pompus, and Astro Boy to go back to the past to find his son. 

            When they arrive in the past they see some robbers chasing a stagecoach but Astro Boy stops the bad guys. When they run away they leave their bag of loot behind. Elefun, Pompus, and Astro Boy use some of the money to buy clothing so they will blend in. 

            Pompus is having a drink in a saloon when a bad guy named Patch tells him to leave because his boss wants to drink alone. Pompus refuses and so he is challenged to a shootout at high noon. Since Pompus can’t shoot straight Astro Boy hides while Pompus pretends to demonstrate his shooting skills. Astro Boy does the shooting but Patch thinks it’s Pompus and backs down. 

            Then a man says his boy is sick but the doctor’s in the next town and the town is surrounded by Indigenous warriors on the warpath. Astro Boy says he’ll go so he takes a horse and heads out of town. Some warriors attack but Astro Boy takes care of them. He successfully returns with a doctor and the boy is saved. 

            Then Pompus falls and unknowingly breaks off a spur from his boot. Patch finds it and the next day it is discovered that the bank has been robbed and Pompus’s spur is found at the scene of the crime. A lynch mob mounts Elefun, Pompus, and Astro Boy on horses, each under a noose and prepares to hang them. Astro Boy asks for two hours to find the real crooks and so the leader of the mob lets him go while keeping the other two. 

            Astro Boy finds a hideout in a box canyon but there is only one gang member there because the rest are in town. Astro Boy finds a radio transmitter from his time and is told it belongs to their boss. Meanwhile the boss, Patch and the rest of the gang are threatening to burn down the town if they don’t give them all their money. The town pays up and the gang escapes but Astro Boy stops them. Then he confronts the leader and surprises him by knowing his name is Heck Ben. He makes Heck Ben feel bad about leaving his father and so he agrees to go back to the year 2000. 

            The second story is the penultimate episode of the first season. It begins with a mother elephant and her baby trying to escape from hunters but the mother is killed. The baby wanders and is attacked by a big snake but is saved by Astro Boy.

            Meanwhile, Dr. Elefun is visiting Dr. Marzipan who caused trouble in an earlier episode. Marzipan has developed several robot versions of African animals such as a rhinoceros that is also a barbecue and a gorilla that serves as a fruit vending machine. He has also created Rabby the robot rabbit that can imitate the voices of eighty African animals. His greatest creation is a robot elephant named Mack, but Mack malfunctions and goes on a rampage. 

            Meanwhile, Astro Boy has named the baby elephant Jimbo and is trying to help him find the elephant herd. But when Jimbo sees Mack he thinks it’s his mama and goes up to it. Mack is about to step on Jimbo when Astro Boy saves him. Mack has a very powerful suction force in its trunk that almost pulls Astro Boy and Jimbo in but they escape. 

            Astro Boy leaves Jimbo alone on a mountainside while he goes to look for the herd and he finds it. But Jimbo is captured by the hunters that killed his mother. They tell Astro Boy that they will shoot Jimbo if he doesn’t lead them to the elephant herd. He does so because they promise not to shoot the elephants but once they find the herd they take aim. Astro Boy stops them but then Mack attacks and so Astro Boy has to battle it. But even after he breaks it into pieces some parts can still fight such as the top of its head and its ears become a flying thing that shoots lasers. Finally, Mack is destroyed and Astro Boy turns it into a water fountain. Jimbo is adopted by a new mama and siblings.

April 23, 1992: I dreamed my daughter pointed at a photo of my father and said, "Daddy!"

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I got up fairly early and called to talk to my daughter before leaving for work. On the way to Central Tech, I stopped to pick up my negs, but they still couldn’t find them. All I got was the slides that I’d dropped off the day before, but there were some interesting shots. I worked from 15:30 to 17:30 and then headed home, stopping for some groceries on the way. After watching Star Trek, I talked to my daughter. Her mother asked if I wanted to see the baby on Friday since she had to go to the dentist. I said as long as I could take her on Saturday as well, and she said okay. I watched TV. I’d gotten three Venus collages done and lots of cleaning. I’d finished washing the kitchen ceiling and all the floors were mopped. Next, I would start on the fridge. 

            I heard that my daughter stood for fifteen seconds today and then I had a dream that she walked. I also dreamed that she was looking at a photo of my father, pointed at it, and said, “Daddy!”

Usefulness is Invisibility

            On Thursday morning after yoga, I didn’t work out any chords for the songs I’ve been working on. I got my journal and Twitter postings out of the way so that after song practice I could start working right away on my essay. I did a shortened song practice of doing only one verse and one chorus of most of my songs and started working on my essay just before 8:00. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I worked until 11:00 gathering quotes about existence, birth, and childlikeness from Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable, and then I took a siesta until 12:30. 

            I worked on the essay until 17:45. 

            I weighed 85 kilos at 17:50. 

            There were just over six hours to go before my essay needed to be handed in. I wasn’t fully satisfied with my essay. I had actually been working on a previous version of it for more than a month but then Apala told me I was getting too far away from the novel and I needed to focus on close reading of that. I think I was supposed to engage with a secondary text in relation to the novel but after changing the format of the essay with two days to go I didn’t have time. It would have been much better if I’d started in this direction weeks ago and I could have probably brought in other texts. 

            I had a bit of a scare at 23:30, as Shankar’s wifi was down but it’s been going off periodically for a few minutes at a time since I bought the new computer, which doesn’t need an adaptor for the internet like the old one does. It came back on in time to submit the paper and I handed it in at 23:43, with 17 minutes before the extended deadline. Here it is: 

                              To Be Useful is to Be Invisible in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable 

                                   There is no man or woman can be touched – Leonard Cohen 

            Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable demonstrates that the perceivability of people as individuals is inversely proportional to their functionality. To understand that another group exists, they must be seen, heard, and touched outside of their assigned labour role in society. This is also true and perhaps more so in regard to self-perception and can be seen in this Bildungsroman of a day in the life of Bakha the sweeper. The beginning of this day of development is symbolically a birth and I will show how birth followed by aspects of childhood reflect Bakha’s hopes for his existence. Then I will expose the forces that resist the emergence of Untouchables like Bakha as individuals, namely those attached to the benefits they derive from caste division. I will then present the ways in which usefulness works directly at odds with self-development. I will conclude by questioning whether Bakha really does emerge as an adult individual in any substantial way after resolving to return to his assigned function with nothing more than a resolution to refuse bad food and hope for changes from outside. 

            Bakha is “a child of modern India (Anand 10).” Although eighteen years of age and a young adult, Bakha is a child in the sense that his story is one of approaching existence. But in India, he is considered “illegally begotten”, ironically even by his own father, and therefore he is an illegitimate child (Anand 13) while his father sees members of the upper castes as his own “father and mother (Anand 67).” The phrase “illegally begotten” speaks to the Untouchable’s lack of legitimate existence, but also to the injustice of their enforced subaltern state. 

            Bakha is symbolically “a child,” born upon waking at the beginning of this one-day Bildungsroman (Anand 10). Throughout the story, there are references to his childlike state of being. He views the world around him with the “open, hopeful, astonished eyes of the child (Anand 64).” He feels a childlike wonder while watching the proficient labourers in the marketplace perform their crafts, such as “the skill of a woodcutter and … the manipulation of a sewing-machine by a tailor.” (Anand 37).” His ingenuous admiration of the work of tradespeople who are considered to be above the sub-caste to which he belongs causes his own people to be equated with being in a state of comparative infancy. 

            As Bakha cannot read and is not allowed the opportunity to do so because of his low status, this situation keeps him in a perpetual state of childhood. Independently of the education system that excludes him, he plans to learn to read for the empowerment that it would give him (Anand 33). But part of his education is also the realization of the powerlessness that his position affords. His coming into being through education must happen independently of his spiritual subsistence as a sweeper. 

            The emergence of Bakha’s sense of self is resisted by those whose high-born status makes them justify their belief that they are above him. The higher castes stand between and eclipse the Untouchables’ access to the idealized sky of religion (Anand 59). While requiring him to clean their dirt, they reject and resist his right to “float in the sea of existence (Anand 59)!” He wonders why he has to do what he does while being mistreated for doing it. It is only through such questions of purpose that self perception emerges. 

            The outcastes only come into being when they are useless. We see this as they rest in the sun and “their insides” are “… concentrated in the act of emergence, of a new birth ... (Anand 30)” The Untouchables cannot be made into more than a faceless hive as long as they remain focused on executing the necessary quotidian tasks that are considered unclean by the upper castes. When Bakha performs his assigned utility, he falls into the background and becomes blended with that function. That he is only noticed when he fails to be useful can be seen when the Havildar calls for him after finding that he has not cleaned the latrines (Anand 14). His failure to perform his duty has made him exist to the Havildar. Then, after the Havildar uses the cleaned latrine, he again no longer needs Bakha and therefore perceives him once again. But what Havildar sees are Bakha’s European clothes, which stand drastically apart from the traditional habit of his function, thereby making him visible (Anand 15). This is also shown in the marketplace when Bakha is not performing his duties and not announcing the name of his profession by calling out “sweeper coming.” This makes him both visible and ironically touchable as he is slapped after touching an upper caste man (Anand 39-42). 

            That work conceals the self is further illustrated in another conversation with Havildar: “Where do you keep yourself hidden?” he asks, with the answer being, “I have to work … (Anand 86).” Bakha loses himself in his work, without realizing his actions, and ends up “completely oblivious” (Anand 17). 

            Succumbing to his function impedes even Bakha’s own self-awareness when he is not engaged with work, limiting him to merely superficial contemplation. In his almost Wordsworthian pastoral mo-ment outside of town, Bakha observes “each little stem of plant becoming a big leaf, distinct and im-portant (Anand 78).” But it escapes him that these stems emerging as individuals are a metaphor for his own potential awakening and that of his fellow Untouchables. His emergence is inhibited by his frustrated contemplativeness, and his “unenlightened will.” He is missing “the force and vivacity of thought to transmute his vague sense into the superior instinct ... (Anand 77)” Without having the time to develop an ability to explore his own interior, he has no self and therefore no being. This illusive contemplative existence that could crown Bakha’s life remains out of reach, and like the coveted solar to-pee that hangs teasingly on the wall at the regiment, “there is no way of getting it” (Anand 84). 

            The Untouchables cannot do anything to elevate their status until they come into existence. Slaves who cannot be seen performing invisible slavery cannot be liberated from enslavement. A sense of needing to exist to one’s own perception can only develop from the understanding that such a self-perception is not there. It is only after being abused in the marketplace that Bakha becomes fully conscious of his own state of non-being. At that moment he is almost swallowed by the reality of his life as an untouchable handler of dung. The self-realization of his own untouchability is more accurately a revelation that he is not Bakha, and cannot fully be Bakha as long as he is an Untouchable. This is emphasized with the ironic imagery of pregnancy. The shock of recognition that he is an Untouchable had “sent a quiver into his being.” It had penetrated him and instantaneously developed to a “quickening” which is the moment halfway through pregnancy when the fetus begins to kick at the walls of the womb. Bakha has become pregnant with his own untouchability while at the same time the Untouchable that he suddenly understands himself to be is pregnant with the unborn and unfulfilled Bakha waiting to come into being (Anand 43). 

            The end of the novel leaves Bakha still flirting with existence, with more understanding of his social status, some hope for emancipation from outside, and a “queer kind of strength” drawn from Gandhi’s wish that the Untouchables have “the strength to work out” their “soul’s salvation to the end.” He has learned from Gandhi that he must take control over what he eats, by accepting the offering of “good, sound grain (Anand 121).” Bakha likes this advice because he is already disgusted by the eating of the half-finished meals of others (Anand 70), and he understands that this small act of resistance may afford him the passive empowerment of dignity. Gandhi however does not explain how the Untouchables are going to cook the fresh grain they may receive if no one will give them water from the well (Anand 20). 

            At the end of the day, Bakha emerges from his childlike state to the threshold of a more mature understanding of his downtrodden situation and how to exist in spite of it. He resolves to continue doing the work of a scavenger and puts hope in a vague future when modern developments might liberate him from cleaning latrines (Anand 126-127). However, these three solutions: the “soul’s salvation”, the action of being choosy beggars, and the hope of being liberated in an undetermined future by flush toilets, are very internal and passive. There is nothing in them that would emancipate the Untouchables from being outcasts of the caste system. Bakha takes heart from quietly knowing that his people are objectively equal to the members of the other castes of India, but he shows no determination to stand up to the system and demand equal rights. He seems to be content with some degree of realization but there is no clear indication of what Bakha will do with this newfound sense of being, and what he will use it to become. But it does not read as a self-awareness but rather as a status awareness that may not carry him to any degree of presence. 

                                                           Work Cited 

 Anand, Mulk Raj. Untouchable, Hutchinson International Authors Limited, 1947, PDF.