Tuesday, March 21, 2006
right? no. wrong? no.
About two years ago, after I woke up in the morning with a deadline holding a sword over my neck, and then hurried off to office in extreme haste, extreme stress boxing me on my ears repeatedly repeatedly, I got into an autorickshaw which midway went bust and then I angry and furious started walking away when the rickshaw driver angry and furious called me back and demanded his fare up to the point that the rickshaw went bust but I naturally refused to pay but he persisted and then I told him no and then he said let's go to the police station and then we both walked to the police station and in between we met two constables and put forth our points of view, mine being that since I took the rickshaw to a particular point, going halfway does not help me because I would have to take another rickshaw and thus pay more and his, the rickshaw driver's, point being that his rickshaw has used fuel up to that point and he has also given his time and labour up to that point and so he is entitled to the fare up to that point and this is how we put forth our arguments to the two constables who agreed with me and told the rickshaw driver to pay but he did not and insisted that we go to the police station and so we walked on to the police station where surrounding a table sat four constables and we put forth our arguments again and this time they sided with the rickshaw driver and asked me to pay up the fare but I refused and said that I would not pay him and then they told me to pay him at least something so that this situation is resolved and so I paid him half the fare up to the point where his rickshaw went bust and they told the rickshaw driver to accept that money and so we both, equally happy and equally unhappy, returned, he to his bust up rickshaw and me towards the deadline whose sword just got bigger thanks to the time wasted in this silliness but I am still not sure who was the right in it and therefore this is what I call a moral dilemma and I don’t think there is an answer to it and I dont think there are answers to most things in life but there are solutions
Thursday, March 16, 2006
listen, for i speak
My agonies are exhausted and so I have a brief moment of respite before they rear their hydra heads. I use this, this becalming moment, to speak what I otherwise cannot, will not.
Since we will never meet, since you will never be near, I shall say what I could not once and then did, yes I did, but in a language which perhaps had no existence, no future. I understand that now. I understand much now but this wisdom has not come easy. I have had to journey much, not in furlongs and miles, or moments. My travels took me through different states of misery and miseries are not understood within time and space. Every sorrow is eternal when it is happening. I have waded through much and understood this: if words will make words glitter, then words also abrade meanings but then, words, which I write to expiate another silence, other abrasions, will also echo because if there is destruction in words, then there is also redemption in it.
It is important that you hear, that you understand, that you listen. And you will listen to my words which I throw in empty space knowing well that this is empty space. I know that they shall reach you because words travel faster than me and you, and they travel farther than you will ever go from me, because they travel with the wings of thought and heart, and these wings go far.
Other thoughts, other hearts will listen to me and through them you will listen. Yes, you will listen. You will perhaps not know that these words come from me, that in my silence there was much that was said and when I spoke, there were many things silent. I so wish for that silence to return but it will not. And so I create words now and I create words for you. I craft them, I design them, slowly sculpt them, give them feature, let them flow back and forth, let them ebb and bounce and sometimes let them free to do as they will. I do this with great care so that they, these words, shall travel, not in a raging mass submerging all that they meet, rather, I wish them to go one by one, letter by letter. Perhaps then, these stray sounds will be heard by someone, who will understand and from him it will take another form, a different feature and then another will hold on to it. From another to another and thus they will travel in single files until they reach your ears and you who must have forgotten me will stop and remember hard, you will think that these words are familiar and they speak in tongues you understand, and you will know then, you will know then that you know these words and what you hear has come from you.
Since we will never meet, since you will never be near, I shall say what I could not once and then did, yes I did, but in a language which perhaps had no existence, no future. I understand that now. I understand much now but this wisdom has not come easy. I have had to journey much, not in furlongs and miles, or moments. My travels took me through different states of misery and miseries are not understood within time and space. Every sorrow is eternal when it is happening. I have waded through much and understood this: if words will make words glitter, then words also abrade meanings but then, words, which I write to expiate another silence, other abrasions, will also echo because if there is destruction in words, then there is also redemption in it.
It is important that you hear, that you understand, that you listen. And you will listen to my words which I throw in empty space knowing well that this is empty space. I know that they shall reach you because words travel faster than me and you, and they travel farther than you will ever go from me, because they travel with the wings of thought and heart, and these wings go far.
Other thoughts, other hearts will listen to me and through them you will listen. Yes, you will listen. You will perhaps not know that these words come from me, that in my silence there was much that was said and when I spoke, there were many things silent. I so wish for that silence to return but it will not. And so I create words now and I create words for you. I craft them, I design them, slowly sculpt them, give them feature, let them flow back and forth, let them ebb and bounce and sometimes let them free to do as they will. I do this with great care so that they, these words, shall travel, not in a raging mass submerging all that they meet, rather, I wish them to go one by one, letter by letter. Perhaps then, these stray sounds will be heard by someone, who will understand and from him it will take another form, a different feature and then another will hold on to it. From another to another and thus they will travel in single files until they reach your ears and you who must have forgotten me will stop and remember hard, you will think that these words are familiar and they speak in tongues you understand, and you will know then, you will know then that you know these words and what you hear has come from you.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Seek you much, oh so much, to shield yourself from chances and dangers
Even so, how will you, migrant, ward off the kindness of strangers
Which come unattended , unwanted even, reminding of other ways of being
Making you, blind so far, discover new ways of seeing, questioning:
For life could be so, then why is it not, why is it not so
I looked for it, in corners, expanses, sideroads and plateaus
While there it was all along, from the beginning, abreast
Why then did I, who sought it with so much fervour, always say no
Even so, how will you, migrant, ward off the kindness of strangers
Which come unattended , unwanted even, reminding of other ways of being
Making you, blind so far, discover new ways of seeing, questioning:
For life could be so, then why is it not, why is it not so
I looked for it, in corners, expanses, sideroads and plateaus
While there it was all along, from the beginning, abreast
Why then did I, who sought it with so much fervour, always say no
Sunday, March 05, 2006
THE ANNOUNCEMENT
Every man is allowed to die once. We have been dying since eternity: one death for every day as one and apart.
Today is the announcement. Our ambulant dreams shall now stall. Having all assembled, we wait for the Vazir in anticipation to what he has to say and also to finally see him. Will everything change? So far we have only seen his hands on the silver screens lined on the streets from which we have always known him talking to his subjects. Those hands would gesticulate as he spoke. But when he proclaimed the announcement the hands were still as death. We could see the veins then, taut like vines in abeyance. We imagined the blue blood flow through them. A little shudder passed through us.
Later, he said that he would personally address the gathering. There was one massive shudder then followed by clamorous after-silence. Apprehension flowed through the barren streets isled by people standing in front of giant television screens watching a hand speak.
I alone was relieved.
I am not here for the announcement.
I have come to find her and having found her to look her in the eye.
I
Once we were always together never looking each other by eye. Afraid of truths which only the glance departs, timid at the affinity of the union which only the eye can bring (the desire so extreme to remove the final barrier but protective of the comfort that anonymity brings, alas alas). Alas alas.
These are times of unreason. People change in metaphors. We started shedding off the body. Flakes littered the path we trod (I conjecture the disorder’s infestation to be the force anti-force resulting from the conflict of our desires fears).
How is it that which we fear and do our best to avert finally end up consuming us because we tried to do so? What is this parody? Why are there only evenings in this age?
Today is like the day before she left. I remember us walking beneath the open sky with twilight eating us in its early gloom and me holding her hand tight and she letting me do it. Thus we walked till the end where we sat down and watched the palm trees sway to the molten breeze. The world was a shade of fire-brown then. Today is somewhat like that. When my palms were wet with sweat as I held her hands tight. It must have hurt her a little but she let me do it then.
II
I stood at the portal watching her go and she turned. At that moment of time, had I returned the look, folly would have been averted.
From folly has sprung repentance, remorse, regret -- the disorder has struck me again. That it was she who took the chance; that it was I who refused the dice. But the change is different, in that whereas previously I changed form and face to become plain (or faceless), the present transmogrification is making me grotesque. Exacerbating the pain is the realisation that she, because of her willingness to look me in the eye, must have metamorphosed to something more beautiful, like a whitewashed second sky. I want to therefore look her in the eye and return to my original form, face and feature.
III
I promise myself that my story shall be of hope and end in fruition. I keep promising myself that.
I was the first to come here in this large slab of land carved from the tundra to stand the living world. I wanted to stand near the gate and watch each one come in. Then I will spot her and having spotted her look her in the eye. There is a problem though.
Having never looked at her, I do not know her appearance. How do you find someone whom you never saw and who has since changed form twice? The only way is to look her in the eye because having never done so, once I do it, I will instantly recognize her. Logics must swirl or they lead you to a judgment.
IV
I was therefore the first to be here -- even before the shanty dwellers who were evicted to make way for the maidan. Giant siphons spouting mineral water (no less) washed the bare earth clean of the excrement which these shanty dwellers for want of space had spread. These evicted ones are also here. They are curious to their fate. They do not know whether, once the announcement done, the Vazir has decreed them to return. They miss their homes. They cannot sleep without the stench of shit.
V
What is better: a staff or a block of stone on the weary back?
Who is better off: a soldier in the army of notaries or a poet-who-does-not-war?
The poets-who-do-not-war carried this huge block of stone together in regiment. This is the Vazir’s stage from where he will speak. The Vazir decreed them to the bottom when he reviewed the order. They were relegated because possessing all the mannerisms, eccentricities and temperament of poets, they refused to poetise because they did not want to. They did not even serve the necessity of unfructuous dissent. So one day from the screens, the hand pointed its shaking index finger and it spoke ‘Down’. The notaries immediately rounded them up. The poets-who-do-not-war were easy to recognise – sophisticated, clean but short and three front teeth missing.
(Here, I shall interject to mention my personal poet-who-did-not-war. He had sheaves of paper on which he constantly wrote. But whenever we tried to sneak a glance, the papers were always the blank side up rustling on his lap. One day, and this was long ago, much older than this age, together we forced the papers off him, looked behind the mystery and saw
The whole U in your eyes
The whole U in your eyes
The whole U in your eyes
The whole U in your eyes
The whole U in your eyes
U for Universe. He was also rounded up. I tell you this to make you understand why it was so perilous to look her in the eye. I refused to be a poet-who-does-not war. I did not want to be rounded up)
The notaries were also short but had all their teeth intact. They carried the staff with pride. They were given it when the Vazir decided that policing is best when it rests with those who channel the protest. On the other hand, the notaries were genetically incapable of aspersions to power having for centuries only attested petitions. Up.
V
Once when we were always together never looking each other in the eye, we were individuals on longer. We were, I can safely say, one. Thus having given ourselves up to the togetherness, we escaped the Vazir’s plan to create a uniscient society of no self.
After she has left, I have felt my self dissolving in waves with the Vazir’s. It is a luxury that scares me. I want me to be me and for that I must find her and having found her look her in the eye.
VI
I was the first to be here. I wanted to stand near the gate and watch each one come in. The maidan however had no gate. It just stood there open, far and beyond. It will be difficult now. I will just have to move and keep moving, look and keep looking, for an eye that I will recognise because I have avoided it always.
VII
There the gypsies shorn of sleep, there the clerk with eyes always in shade, there the women of paint, there they who live with the ghosts of the dead (whom they refuse to leave and who therefore do not leave them), there the swamis of power, the seducers, the survivors, there the poets-who-do-not war, the heroes who do not dare, there the judges who pass the limited judgments, there the eunuchs of fractured dreams, there the shaking bottlemen, there beauty hidden behind seven veils, spotless white and fresh as cold water, there the women, the lamenters, the managers…so many, so many people.
There a murmur, murmurs, murmursssss. The announcement?
There the Vazir. No, not the Vazir.
VIII
No, not the Vazir. I should not look at the Vazir. Or should I? (What is after all the value of an eye?) No one knows what will be said. Oblivion heralded; castes reworked; return to the penury principle; termination by random numbers: what is definite is that there will be change. Does his very arrival in person not signal that. Change will follow no curve. Change has already swept me in its wake; I chose it when I decided to find her and having found her to look her in the eye. I must choose again. Shall I abandon my search and look at the Vazir and hear what he has to say? Or shall I continue it knowing well that I shall fail? It is getting late. The night is getting darker still.
Every man is allowed to die once. We have been dying since eternity: one death for every day as one and apart.
Today is the announcement. Our ambulant dreams shall now stall. Having all assembled, we wait for the Vazir in anticipation to what he has to say and also to finally see him. Will everything change? So far we have only seen his hands on the silver screens lined on the streets from which we have always known him talking to his subjects. Those hands would gesticulate as he spoke. But when he proclaimed the announcement the hands were still as death. We could see the veins then, taut like vines in abeyance. We imagined the blue blood flow through them. A little shudder passed through us.
Later, he said that he would personally address the gathering. There was one massive shudder then followed by clamorous after-silence. Apprehension flowed through the barren streets isled by people standing in front of giant television screens watching a hand speak.
I alone was relieved.
I am not here for the announcement.
I have come to find her and having found her to look her in the eye.
I
Once we were always together never looking each other by eye. Afraid of truths which only the glance departs, timid at the affinity of the union which only the eye can bring (the desire so extreme to remove the final barrier but protective of the comfort that anonymity brings, alas alas). Alas alas.
These are times of unreason. People change in metaphors. We started shedding off the body. Flakes littered the path we trod (I conjecture the disorder’s infestation to be the force anti-force resulting from the conflict of our desires fears).
How is it that which we fear and do our best to avert finally end up consuming us because we tried to do so? What is this parody? Why are there only evenings in this age?
Today is like the day before she left. I remember us walking beneath the open sky with twilight eating us in its early gloom and me holding her hand tight and she letting me do it. Thus we walked till the end where we sat down and watched the palm trees sway to the molten breeze. The world was a shade of fire-brown then. Today is somewhat like that. When my palms were wet with sweat as I held her hands tight. It must have hurt her a little but she let me do it then.
II
I stood at the portal watching her go and she turned. At that moment of time, had I returned the look, folly would have been averted.
From folly has sprung repentance, remorse, regret -- the disorder has struck me again. That it was she who took the chance; that it was I who refused the dice. But the change is different, in that whereas previously I changed form and face to become plain (or faceless), the present transmogrification is making me grotesque. Exacerbating the pain is the realisation that she, because of her willingness to look me in the eye, must have metamorphosed to something more beautiful, like a whitewashed second sky. I want to therefore look her in the eye and return to my original form, face and feature.
III
I promise myself that my story shall be of hope and end in fruition. I keep promising myself that.
I was the first to come here in this large slab of land carved from the tundra to stand the living world. I wanted to stand near the gate and watch each one come in. Then I will spot her and having spotted her look her in the eye. There is a problem though.
Having never looked at her, I do not know her appearance. How do you find someone whom you never saw and who has since changed form twice? The only way is to look her in the eye because having never done so, once I do it, I will instantly recognize her. Logics must swirl or they lead you to a judgment.
IV
I was therefore the first to be here -- even before the shanty dwellers who were evicted to make way for the maidan. Giant siphons spouting mineral water (no less) washed the bare earth clean of the excrement which these shanty dwellers for want of space had spread. These evicted ones are also here. They are curious to their fate. They do not know whether, once the announcement done, the Vazir has decreed them to return. They miss their homes. They cannot sleep without the stench of shit.
V
What is better: a staff or a block of stone on the weary back?
Who is better off: a soldier in the army of notaries or a poet-who-does-not-war?
The poets-who-do-not-war carried this huge block of stone together in regiment. This is the Vazir’s stage from where he will speak. The Vazir decreed them to the bottom when he reviewed the order. They were relegated because possessing all the mannerisms, eccentricities and temperament of poets, they refused to poetise because they did not want to. They did not even serve the necessity of unfructuous dissent. So one day from the screens, the hand pointed its shaking index finger and it spoke ‘Down’. The notaries immediately rounded them up. The poets-who-do-not-war were easy to recognise – sophisticated, clean but short and three front teeth missing.
(Here, I shall interject to mention my personal poet-who-did-not-war. He had sheaves of paper on which he constantly wrote. But whenever we tried to sneak a glance, the papers were always the blank side up rustling on his lap. One day, and this was long ago, much older than this age, together we forced the papers off him, looked behind the mystery and saw
The whole U in your eyes
The whole U in your eyes
The whole U in your eyes
The whole U in your eyes
The whole U in your eyes
U for Universe. He was also rounded up. I tell you this to make you understand why it was so perilous to look her in the eye. I refused to be a poet-who-does-not war. I did not want to be rounded up)
The notaries were also short but had all their teeth intact. They carried the staff with pride. They were given it when the Vazir decided that policing is best when it rests with those who channel the protest. On the other hand, the notaries were genetically incapable of aspersions to power having for centuries only attested petitions. Up.
V
Once when we were always together never looking each other in the eye, we were individuals on longer. We were, I can safely say, one. Thus having given ourselves up to the togetherness, we escaped the Vazir’s plan to create a uniscient society of no self.
After she has left, I have felt my self dissolving in waves with the Vazir’s. It is a luxury that scares me. I want me to be me and for that I must find her and having found her look her in the eye.
VI
I was the first to be here. I wanted to stand near the gate and watch each one come in. The maidan however had no gate. It just stood there open, far and beyond. It will be difficult now. I will just have to move and keep moving, look and keep looking, for an eye that I will recognise because I have avoided it always.
VII
There the gypsies shorn of sleep, there the clerk with eyes always in shade, there the women of paint, there they who live with the ghosts of the dead (whom they refuse to leave and who therefore do not leave them), there the swamis of power, the seducers, the survivors, there the poets-who-do-not war, the heroes who do not dare, there the judges who pass the limited judgments, there the eunuchs of fractured dreams, there the shaking bottlemen, there beauty hidden behind seven veils, spotless white and fresh as cold water, there the women, the lamenters, the managers…so many, so many people.
There a murmur, murmurs, murmursssss. The announcement?
There the Vazir. No, not the Vazir.
VIII
No, not the Vazir. I should not look at the Vazir. Or should I? (What is after all the value of an eye?) No one knows what will be said. Oblivion heralded; castes reworked; return to the penury principle; termination by random numbers: what is definite is that there will be change. Does his very arrival in person not signal that. Change will follow no curve. Change has already swept me in its wake; I chose it when I decided to find her and having found her to look her in the eye. I must choose again. Shall I abandon my search and look at the Vazir and hear what he has to say? Or shall I continue it knowing well that I shall fail? It is getting late. The night is getting darker still.
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