IT is a required skill in a stage-play for an actor to be centre-stage and be ready to become invisible to the audience.
The trick, as theatre gurus such as Stanislavsky or Brecht would prescribe, is to harmonise your silence with the running dialogue of other actors on stage, to merge your measured stillness with the props as the tiger camouflages its imposing
presence with the surrounding foliage.
Did anyone notice where the Chinese are on Libya, or with regard to the wider mayhem in the region described
euphemistically by many as the Arab Spring? Where are they on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran or Kashmir for that matter? How do they respond to the potentially game-changing Hamas-Fatah pact, or to Israeli postures on stalled peace, the seasonal flotillas of solidarity with Palestine?
Of course they hold clear views on all of the above and they also express them, but only when they must and only where they
have to. This contrasts with daily screaming headlines in the West on the progress of global chaos. Quiet presence is even more alien to us in South Asia. We have to declare our love and hate from our rooftops. The grovelling by India and Pakistan to the American president to land his troops in their country to invade Afghanistan contrasts starkly with the derisive Chinese description of US presence in Taiwan. The alienated Chinese island had become an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” that
Washington must vacate even if it takes a hundred years, says Beijing.
Categories: Documentary or movie, Entertainment