Certain ideas need to be allowed to persist, even if there is no evidence of their having any value. The reasons for doing this might not be immediately apparent but they need not be known for this allowance to be given. Ideas need to be allowed to continue on the basis of what they need. If they do not ask for attention, do not ask for money, do not ask for practitioners and do not ask for validation, what is the harm in letting them do what they need to do? Sanctuaries are structures that give such inert desires that do not require much a nestling space. A nestling space only means that a space to develop from a spark to a fire is available. Resources for adding fuel to the fire exist.

But what are the criteria of such an offer of nestling space? The criteria is purely instinctive. When we feel that a desire has yet not become enveloped in a puddle of cynicism, we include it in the sanctuary. Cynicism does not allow a desire to achieve its ends. The desire gets stuck in limbo, not being able to reset and not being able to go ahead and pursue its ends either. This sanctuary does not have only a personal implication for us. It has a wider implication even if you do not care about us or the Museum. We are not saying that culture is infectious so we indirectly and invariably have some influence on the way things will shape up. But we are stating that till the total annihilation of all the sanctuaries that offer nestling spaces is completed, there is no victory for either side. Sanctuaries are detested and their role in fermenting opposition is not easily tolerated.

But this depends on what the nestling space offered is able to trigger. Provided the nestling space is actually able to seed a drastic set of alternatives, it will really end up meaning something. The truth is that there are far fewer resources available for causes that are taking a bet on the future that might never be realised. There is a simple one-to-one correlation between investable futures and liveable realities. If an idea does not have the desperate desire to become investable, then it is an empty symbolic gesture and cannot be taken seriously. Not being take seriously means that there we retain no power and remain a benign entity on the landscape.

The service of translation learns to spell out words already uttered in another language. The transference of guilt that happens in this exchange is a bonus process. If you specialise in doing translation for a mafiosi, you will form phantom memories of crimes you never did. Or rather you will form phantom memories of the effect of performing the narration of things you never did.

You won't know what it feels like to kill someone in cold blood (till you do it). But you will know what it feels like to talk about it. Those are the risks of mediation. If you have someone play a game for you, you also have to forsake the fun.

So mediation will not exist as a service any more. It will be like telling a story by showing my shopping receipts. You will see the hints, the clues, the third-hand messages. But you will not see the message. We will apologize and confess that the message got consumed on the way. Like you asked me to go buy an ice-cream for you. I did go. I did buy. But on the way back I ate it.

Mediation was supposed to work in the days gone-by because of an overabundance of faith. Faith in transcription, messenger services, faith in the eventual generosity of service providers. But now no one gives a shit. So mediation is being peddled as an act of pure magic, performance. Mindless, immoral and with no restraint.

Gifts are always reciprocal. Elephants are huge, maybe bigger than the picture we have of them before we have seen one. What would such bigness be in reciprocation of? Tracing the path of transactions can be fun, but it takes all the time. All the time in the world (and in our tiny lives).

So I will leave this one incomplete. This transaction is not mapped out fully. What happened is that one day Daya arrived in a ship at the Tokyo port. It was accompanied with all the regalia of a new (and old) state. A state with old habits, big ambitions and strict codes of returning favours. The Tokyo bay was sleeping when the elephants arrived. Nobody was there. The elephants knocked down the walls of their container and strolled around.

Gifts become funny when they come with grand invocations, magnanimous desires, leaving options open for repeat-acts. this magnanimity sometimes asks for so much, so so much, that even a little bit received feels like something. Also when a gift is another coin than one that can be traded easily, a cascade begins. You struggle to communicate yourself and I struggle to communicate and we keep exchanging gifts.

I was actually taught not to participate in the messy politics of gifts and keep life simple. But I have missed out. With the mess comes that which becomes the reason sometimes. Warmth is constructed sometimes and when warmth is warm enough, transfers happen. A chain of gifts was triggered by Nehru by a gift of a baby elephant to Japan. This was repeated by a gift of two baby elephants by Indira, around 35 years later. They were in a way too heavy to return. Heavy with what is another story.

This story is about the elephants who reached the Tokyo port. And drifted off in some direction and found their way in a zoo amongst children. Who find them too big, too big to take them for real. Sometimes. But they love the quiet hugeness, the shock. The funny thing is being in Tokyo and going to meet the Elephants and doing an audit. Were the gifts well-received? Being the stand-in for all the elephants stood for, being the gifter all of the sudden and taking everyone by surprise.

What is not here? How does the remote imagine us, the people standing in for the local and drawing the line? I am traveling for the most parts, I have traveled from a house to a room, the sense of home contracted from a plot of land to a desk. What travels with me and what stays behind?

What remains remote and what gets localised again and again? We can get the easy responses out of the way first. So remoteness is not about coordinates. It is not about centres, peripheries and suburbs. For a moment, let's consider the idea of the labyrinth. If the labyrinth wanted to be navigable and easy to unravel, it would publish maps. It doesn't. A part of the idea of the labyrinth is the nature of a labyrinth, a map which is now scrambled. It plays games and it wants us to play-along.

The shape of the remote is similar. It is not something that we can map with individual bodies and questionnaires - it takes more. As a traveler there is present a constant duality in every singular experience. There are conversions of currency happening in the head, there are translations happening, there is a comparison of us and them. For how long? The duration of this span of time is the time it takes for the remote to come home. For distances to travel and flatten out. The remote comes back to itself and disappears.

Coherence in character is a fluttering concept. I can never be the same person again. Let alone for years and years. I can not make it across a few instants. What I do is peddle records, what I do is wear the same name. But in the middle of the scene, I request time. Go behind the curtain and quickly change my clothes. Measuring a person against her actions and speech is weird. What about the biggest freedom of them all, the freedom to do and say bullshit. Even our jokes have to be intelligent, now?

We use many different ways of understanding who a person is. We have many different ways of parameterizing a presence. We are still sensory beings. My discomfort is with dealing with the diagnosis of a person's mal-constitution on the basis of her actions and speech. I mean, everything a guy might do or say might be meaningless. But she might still be a wonderful person to hang-out with. Dis-engaging, stopping the reading activity, rising above and developing a macro-perspective is a problem. The benefit of a false hind-sight looming large over you.

I refuse to fit into the trauma of your specifications. I really have somewhere else to go. I can really pretend to misread, not-read, noise-read and be scott free of repercussions.

Coherence demands the strength to consistently speak the same lie. When you travel this becomes apparent. Nothing remains the same and learning to read new maps is the task at hand. Travel demands a bridging-over tackling new faces asking question, habits dry and crumble. People can compare us only across days or weeks. We can be inventive (and re-inventive) and tentative. If everyone was compulsively traveling all the time, there would be no wars, no murders. People would just wait for a new travel-cycle to kick in. People you don't like will just move on.

Maybe if anyone stays at any place for too long, they should blow up? That sure will make people follow their compulsions. That sure will ensure definitive incoherence.