December 2016 fms

“These must be good days for you, given your obsessions with mystery novels?”

“Why not! These are days of mystery; everyone is a protagonist and a reader rolled into one.”

“The question is: What kind of protagonist? And also, what mystery are they playing into?”

“In this mystery, non-human protagonists play at par with the human, collide with the human, and blur the line in between.”

“Who are these protagonists?”

“Electronics, digital, bank, cash, ATM, password, cards.”

“Hmm. So these have displaced the vintage ones: Food, Clothing, Shelter.”

“Hah! Those overflow. Everyday we walk on roads, past row upon row of shoes, of clothes, of eateries, of empty buildings. These protagonists have fallen weak; they have been sidelined by the new ones.”

“Everyone seems to speak of figures like 15 lakh crore, as if they can see them. Amazing.”

“This is what I draw into my mystery novel. A sense of a new spread. A sense of connectivity, scale, and speed that everyone seems to talk and think with. A new affect has taken over. I wonder, why not think this outside money, without money.”

“Whoa, what a sudden out of joint spin! As if you are possessed by that ever-curious questioner: the eternal, the undead, Betaal.

“Ha ha. Yes I guess I am. Betaal stands in disjoint to time and to our daily acceptances, and queries us to examine values, ourselves, and life. Today, in our immersion, it is best to recall that spirit.”

“Let me message my friends and ask them to play ‘becoming Betaal’, and send me questions, out of beat, out of turn, out of time, like Betaal has been posing them.”

Faridabad Majdoor Samachar (Faridabad Workers’ News)
Issue # 342
December 2016

Page 1: Betaal Asks: Why Not Reject Money?
Page 2: Of Irrelevance of law; When certainty is uncertainty, then why fear.
Page 3: Twisted logic to twisted logic; Increasingly insecure companies; Commoning
Page 4: Report from Mayapuri Industrial Area, Delhi; The Shimmer of Self-Activity

PDF enclosed.

Contributions welcome

We currently print 16,000 copies at the monthly print cost of Rs. 14,000/-. We are able to meet this through contributions. To sustain us, you can send a bank transfer. Please write to us, and we will send you the bank details.

Distribution is over one month from 25 places in Faridabad, Okhla, Gurgaon, NOIDA and Manesar. Through this, we enter into thousands of conversations. Please write to us if you would like to join us; we will let you know of the place and time.

December 2016 Fms by baatein1 on Scribd