What was that line
I wrote,
Of pebbles and insomnia?
What was that dream
I scribbled,
Of the sun and his bride?
The words in my dog-eared diaries
And the underlined paragraphs
Are fading once more,
The sound of my old voice and
The sight of my imaginary home
Is sinking and diminishing, once more.
Even as Heart, the blind chaperon
Keeps the feel of it so pristine,
But Mind, the unfaithful servant
Refuses to retrieve,
What has been parted by
Time and distance
They say, such is the fate
Of the Exiles and the birds
When driven
Out of their homes,
They have no luxury of carrying
Belongings and the loyal memories.
What was the giggly proverb
She said,
Of daughters and mothers?
What was the drunken smile
He toasted,
To our success and happiness?
The giggles and smiles have gone
My existence is disappearing fast
Now an ailing mother watches me
Quietly on the monitor for finite moments
A sad father continues to speak
Cathartic silences over the long distance calls
I doubt, O sweetheart, I doubt
Exile is your reality.
This is self inflicted, says the blind escort,
It is not you who has been thrown out
It is you who has been running away
From home, once more.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Suicidal Notes
I could not laugh. The slide show kept running- the images entering through the corner of my eye, his satirical and sarcastic eloquence generating louder laughter - I looked straight into his eyes. I could not laugh.
I kept assimilating his rage that seeped through his hands when they raised in the air and thumped at the desk, through his fingers when they pointed at the existent and the non-existent audience, through his eyes when they widened and narrowed, through his voice when it ascended in passion and faded in sorrow, and through his lips when they curled downwards in disappointment and upwards in smugness. I could not laugh even as everybody else in the room chortled at his sardonic attack on a system that had failed its people. From the corner of my eye, I was revisiting my country buried under the weight of the corpses of the farmers.
The messiah of the rural, the poor and the underprivileged Indians spoke of the agony of the suicidal farmers, the greed of the rich immoral corporations, the pompousness of the free-trade economists, and the superciliousness of the elites in India. The anger that he had passed on to me gazed at the blankness of my head and re-emerged as shame and despair.
Three days have elapsed since then. My anguish stays, my remorse has spared me. Provoked by anger, my disgust for the rich has disappeared, my hope for a better world has revived. It has revived because I am reminded of a little story:
Long ago, a poor farmer in a village of Kashmir, standing near his farm, looked far beyond the edges of his small piece of land. He wondered if he were to live just for two meals a day and die as an illiterate man. He wondered if his children were to perpetuate his penury and ignorance.
The next morning, he packed his rags and started his journey on foot towards the small town which was 40 miles away from the village.
Like Antonio Ricci in Ladri di biciclette, the villager's new life began on a bicycle and it paddled through several ups and downs. He was the newspaper man riding a bicycle and distributing a local handwritten newspaper from door to door in the town. He taught himself how to read and write under the lamppost at the Red Crossroad. He put his nose to the grindstone for decades and like all real stories, the poor villager stayed poor. None of his children rolled in money either. Yet they were relatively better off than the villager. They were moderately educated. They became teachers, artists and small businessmen. Their grandchildren struggled even harder and they are now a part of India's growing educated middle class.
I had dwelt on what had been shown to me for three days. My instant response was to go back home and follow the angry man's crusade. But then, the Kashmiri farmer's memory floated as a small speck in the shame and despair that had clouded my eyes. He stood there and began expanding like an ink drop on a blotting paper.
I kept assimilating his rage that seeped through his hands when they raised in the air and thumped at the desk, through his fingers when they pointed at the existent and the non-existent audience, through his eyes when they widened and narrowed, through his voice when it ascended in passion and faded in sorrow, and through his lips when they curled downwards in disappointment and upwards in smugness. I could not laugh even as everybody else in the room chortled at his sardonic attack on a system that had failed its people. From the corner of my eye, I was revisiting my country buried under the weight of the corpses of the farmers.
The messiah of the rural, the poor and the underprivileged Indians spoke of the agony of the suicidal farmers, the greed of the rich immoral corporations, the pompousness of the free-trade economists, and the superciliousness of the elites in India. The anger that he had passed on to me gazed at the blankness of my head and re-emerged as shame and despair.
Three days have elapsed since then. My anguish stays, my remorse has spared me. Provoked by anger, my disgust for the rich has disappeared, my hope for a better world has revived. It has revived because I am reminded of a little story:
Long ago, a poor farmer in a village of Kashmir, standing near his farm, looked far beyond the edges of his small piece of land. He wondered if he were to live just for two meals a day and die as an illiterate man. He wondered if his children were to perpetuate his penury and ignorance.
The next morning, he packed his rags and started his journey on foot towards the small town which was 40 miles away from the village.
Like Antonio Ricci in Ladri di biciclette, the villager's new life began on a bicycle and it paddled through several ups and downs. He was the newspaper man riding a bicycle and distributing a local handwritten newspaper from door to door in the town. He taught himself how to read and write under the lamppost at the Red Crossroad. He put his nose to the grindstone for decades and like all real stories, the poor villager stayed poor. None of his children rolled in money either. Yet they were relatively better off than the villager. They were moderately educated. They became teachers, artists and small businessmen. Their grandchildren struggled even harder and they are now a part of India's growing educated middle class.
I had dwelt on what had been shown to me for three days. My instant response was to go back home and follow the angry man's crusade. But then, the Kashmiri farmer's memory floated as a small speck in the shame and despair that had clouded my eyes. He stood there and began expanding like an ink drop on a blotting paper.
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