Words - III

The ineluctable immediacy of the transient on the one hand and the inveterate ineffability of the eternal on the other - these are our essential concerns. Do we feed the starving child with the bread that our wallet buys out of the cornershop or do we teach him to fish and fend for himself? Do we succumb to the moment? Does it matter?

A woman was carrying her infant and a jungle of beads and trinkets, trying to interest a hundred tired, devout pilgrims to buy her child his breakfast milk. Car after car, person after person, could but ignore the steady stream of jabbering piteousness she could manage. The object was clear, and the price, but there is a hauteur in man that allows for kindness only in a known tongue. Besides the beads and trinkets were just as unpalatable as the woman and her child. But she wouldn't take charity - she was not begging. Would it hurt to take something from her and throw it away later? Lower the windows and ignore her!

Things can be kept simple - we all want everything simple; we do not like the effort that is demanded of us. Maybe it is a sign of the times when we hold the world in a grain of sand and spend an eternity in an hour that we cannot see heaven in a wild flower; maybe it is all the inherited fatigue of a thousand years of drudgery; maybe it is just wisdom. Forgive me, O lord, I know not what I do.

Under the Bridge

Gently resplendent she floats upstream
Dreaming so sweetly her enchanted dream.
And we on the banks of the magical stream
In awe worship her.

Sweetly reclining on silken smooth waves
She conjures up visions that every man craves.
And we simple souls forever her slaves
In awe worship her.

Smiling most heavenly she glides softly through
Leaving in her wake a faint ripple or two.
And we holding to our eternal faith true
With love worship her.

On a Bridge, In Thought

Three simple things:
A pound of unadulterated flesh - or two -
Pounding; A pensive mass of swirling green and maroon and blue,
Leaning; A distance, unyielding, gray, dark and red
Extending. Then there is the water
Foaming, Frothing, Rushing and Swirling,
Leaping over stones and bubbles and untouched sweet places,
Flowing. The green trees hiss gentle into the wind,
Swaying, softly, white in the midday sun
Streaming, Singing, Shading the enchanted eyes,
Soothing. The bridge leads itself over the river,
Longing; Looking towards the untouched shore,
Sighing; Finding in its own uninterrupted Silence its
Meaning.

Words - II

I think I try to worry myself to sadness all the time. I worry about spilt milk and the cat that snuck in through the window I forgot to latch; I castigate myself for forgetting the keys in the car and for my burnt toast. I even worry that I might be worrying myself to high blood pressure and a cardiac arrest. And the result of all this worrying is that I feel sad and depressed instead of being jolly and carefree. Most days dawn quite okay for me but the moment the first thought enters my brain, any thought at all, whether momentous and dealing with the direction my life is heading in or trivial and concerning merely the movie I saw the day before, immediately I sense a tightening in the stomach as I find something to worry about; to feel sad about. The poor girl whose flowers no one buys in the movie or the general mess that is any prospect, any outlook into the future in a murky world, both bother me and sadden me. Pathetic some might say and pitiful others may opine but I have to live with it, this morbid, depressing natural character of mine. Today, though, I am happy - I saw her face even if she does not know I exist; today I cannot feel sad however hard I try. Funny the way we float sometimes on thin air, funny the feeling that is atleast in part frivolous and mad. But that is man, I guess, flawed, funny and merely a visitor in transit determined to enjoy his visit to a beautiful place sometimes or worrying over his lost luggage in other cases.

Words

What does a good day feel like? A little warm feeling gushing up from the inside, choking up the late lunch in the intestinal tract maybe? Or maybe a funny fever that eats up the bad blood that muddies the clear tracks that we carefully laid through the mazes in our addled brain? Eleemosynary instincts need to be obeyed but more so the essential urge to the stupefaction of the senses and if that should hurt another, the prerogative is merely misplaced. Not our fault entirely; not our mistake one whit. Let the dead bury the dead, I say. We go to bury the living.

There is a providence that guides us, they say, and fold their arms across their chest, watching the sparrow fall and the child starve. There is a fate that is decreed to all and there is the mead that only the victors will partake of. There is a lot that our sciences don't understand but we all know the winner takes all. Is it possible to give to the many while denying the few indeed?

Africa is not just a far-off land, marked in black in the atlas of our childhoods. The neighbourhood slum did not always overflow with the refuse of our middle-class mentalities. There is hope even when there is nothing to hope for sometimes and then life is created. It is not easy to give but atleast it is easy to rant about it.

A Commentary

"To be, or not to be..."

Choice makes man imperfect, my friends say. Give a donkey two piles of hay and he'll die starving before he can decide which he should eat first, Buridan says. Funny how this is reflected in so many of our everyday activities. A restaurant menu and a shopping mall's collection and a presidential election, for example. But we don't like not having choice either for all the obloquy we heap on choice. It is a complicated thing, this life of ours. And I don't pretend to understand. It is just that it would be easier if someone told us exactly what we had to do but they sat only on the advisory committee and not on a decision-making board. If the choice were offered to us, we can always choose not to be at all on the committee. But that is illegal if you don't succeed in getting out quick enough.

"...ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come"

My friends sometimes snore in their sleep. I think this indicates they are having a good, dreamless sleep. I wish I snored too. I don't. And I dream the most painful dreams sometimes. They are not nightmares but they are frightening. And then they wake me up at all odd hours of the night. If only I knew I wouldn't be rudely jolted awake by some painful nightmare, I wouldn't mind sleeping. As it is, I need to coax myself into sleep every night. It is a bitter, ironic, painful thing. But what can I do? I still am hoping to get the 'X marks the spot' dream so I can get rich.

"The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office..."

I am not a big fan of the institution of marriage. The social strictures are too much a strain. It is even more complicated when the Immigration Office is involved. A friend had to go to great lengths to prove his love for a woman to the Officer, who wouldn't accept they were married. Then the whole thing got delayed on some technicalities even though he had a plane to catch. Finally, when the visa did come it was pretty peremptory in tone. It is a commentary on the human social culture, I think. Human association below the seriously physical layer is bound to be a problem. In fact the list of wrongs owing to all the elaborate setup perpetrated ostensibly for man's good can be extended indefinitely and I sometimes just want to shoot myself rather than go through with the whole mess.

"...conscience does make cowards of us all"

I think I am too squeamish when it comes to doing what I want. It just does not do in this world and time. Only children and cowards can afford to stand by and watch with mouths agape while men, real men would toil. There is always something or the other that tries to hold us back, the truth even sometimes; but progress is not something we can compromise. There is only one way - ahead, and if we become all too worried about mythical creatures like the Winged Mortal Destructor, we will just stay put in our suburbian homes watching nonsense TV and reading maudlin poetry. What is needed now is action and not conscientious objectors who would ruin the whole show. All this he explained to me. But I ran away when he brought out his fiery red book with the obscene pictures in it.

"...Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd"

Madness has a natural claim over me, I think. I am not sure but it has been a while now since last I looked in the mirror. I fear what I will see. A shaggy beard and a head of unkempt, unruly, disheveled hair maybe. Sunken eyes and a shallow countenance. But that does not matter. What matters more is that I have forgotten to beg. That is more important. Everybody begs or needs to beg once in a while to remain sane. It requires courage to beg of other beggars and yet we find lots of people who do it. They beg and grovel and sometimes we don't even know they were begging and groveling. It has all been refined over time. Then there are those who, cowardly, beg in their private chambers, of imaginary beings. They cannot beg with a straight face or stand manly in the face of their weakness but have to go down on their knees and beg with averted face. There are other beggars even more deluded who use the wrong formulas, who beg the way they command, hoping nobody recognized them for what they were. They often beg of people who would not give, who would not condescend even to acknowledge their pitiable submission and they break themselves. But all these beggars remain sane. Begging keeps them sane. And I have forgotten how to beg and so I cannot beg. But I have always been forgetful and unassuming and so I think I was made for madness. I can only hope someone else goes down on their knees and begs for me to restore my sanity. But that of course is selfish of me.

An unknown place

The railway line snakes along slowly, sneaking through the wild undergrowth typical of the area, dry, dull and dying. In a pleasanter clime, the rails would seem cold and lifeless, but here, they glimmer an almost hellish brown under the fierce everyday sun. The sleepers, sturdy, creosoted, rest complacent, waking every few days to a thunder that rumbles along impatient, subsiding into a distant silence, deep, dreary and deathly. Every year teams of engineers arrive to look at the bolts and the nuts that hold together this fragile, this sturdy mass of metal and wood. Then they too leave as they arrived, silent, brooding, happy, passing along the tracks, testing it mile by mile.

Of life, there is not much around: this was never a cradle that lulled an ancient child in its bosom to look up to the stars. Not enough water, the experts would say. And yet there is a village a little distance from the railway line. A village of little men, toiling at a tenuous life, trying to make something out of all the wild brush and sleepy nothingness that abounds. A little village unknown to the modern cartographers, that turns up a blot on Google Earth and Yahoo Maps: nothing here signifies. And yet there is life here.

Twenty little shacks, or maybe twenty-three, these are the scattered homesteads of the people here. Men, women and children, I mean, of all ages, the young have started leaving though, for the town some miles distant, where there is more life and more shacks on a grander scale. Each day, the people who remain find food in the scorching sun. Each day they save the water that they carry from the town each week. Each day they live as their fathers did, and before them their fathers: barely. But of course there were more people then and there will be fewer soon. Is it easier with fewer people or more, the thin, reedy man struggling to get his wild rabbit skinned, wonders when he has the time to. Is it better to bother cooking the rabbit to just eating it raw, he wonders when he is still skinning the rabbit.

There is life here still and there will still be life. There are the kids who will learn to live. There are the elders who will teach them. There is the town just beyond where things may be got and things given. There is a whole world conspiring to keep them alive. There is above all, a special Providence at work in all this, defying augury and protecting the meek. Let us visit a happier place in the meantime.

a dialogue

Radio Talk Show Host(R): Hello, everybody! Welcome to our show. We'll be taking calls and.. what do you know we already have a caller.. Hello, Sir! How are you doing?
General Dude(D): Hello! This is J here from M. I am doing good. How about you?
R: Great! I am doing great! So J, tell me, how do you like our show?
D: I love it. I listen to it everyday on my way back home.
R: Wonderful! But mind the traffic, huh! We don't want you causing accidents while you are learning about life, hahaha.
D: Hahahaha.
R: So tell me how is life? I hope it is smooth.
D: Its pretty good. But I have this problem with my wife. I know its not a big deal but it worries me sometimes.
R: I must think it is not a big deal, J. Tell me about it. Let us see if we can solve it together.
D: I am not complaining about her. I mean she has always been a great wife. But she has, you know, she thinks she is really smart and sometimes she acts like, you know, one of them geniuses or something, totally wacky and weird.
R: And what makes you think that?
D: I am not bitching man, but, and I know its all a woman's thing, you know them hormones and all and they act up every now and then you know, but she just flips out sometimes.
R: You mean she goes into a rage or something. How old is she, by the way, if you don't mind me asking?
D: Not at all man. She's 24. And its not rage man. Its just acting strange. Saying strange things.
R: Tell me more about it, J. What does she say? And how often does she get this way?
D: Once every few days, man. I dont know I havent kept track. Maybe I'll keep a diary from now on.
R: That might be a good idea, J. But what does she say?
D: Its like, when I enter the door, one moment she says the nicest darned things like "Hey, you Einstein, thanks for leaving me at the mall" and I'm like God I escaped the treatment after forgetting to pick her up. And then she flips out suddenly and calls me all kind of names. I mean I can understand she must be angry but why does she have to seem all sweet one moment and flip out the next. I mean, is it some kind of madness or something?
R: Oh my God!(laughing)Oh my!
D: Is it serious, man? Do you think its really bad? I don't want to say it, but is she mad or something? 'Coz I love her and all, man.
R: No, J. Its called sarcasm. She's being sarcastic, thats all. Nothing wrong with her.(laughing).
D: Whatever it is man, is this thing serious? I suppose its one of them women things so do I take her to the doc or what?
R: No, J. You don't take her to the doctor. And its not a woman thing. Tell me, how educated are you?
D: I only went to Junior High, man. Dropped out after that. So I dont know what this sarcasm thing is. But if its not a woman thing, does it spread or something like the flu? I sure dont want to catch it.
R: No, J. Sarcasm isn't a disease. It is just a way of expressing anger or annoyance by pretending to say a nice thing when you actually mean to hurt.
D: Yea, I get it man. But then why does it come only sudden sudden you know. She's all quite normal most of the time and then suddenly she wants to say this sarcasm thing. Is it like the periods or something, a woman thing?
R: No, J. It is used when people are really mad at you and don't want to yell or use bad words. It is just a way of showing you up, embarrassing you by pretending to be nice. And both men and women use it. It is not a woman's thing. Dude, you seriously need to learn a lot.
D: Whatever, man. I don't use it ever. I mean I say what I have to say and I don't do all this you know. She just is spoiled and keeps pointing out that she dropped out of college and not out of junior high you know.
R: Maybe she just wants you to sit down and have a talk with her, J. Tell her to speak straight. Tell her you don't get all her sarcasm. Tell her you love her and want her to be honest with you.
D: I tried that man. And she said thats my problem. I just dont get it. What the it is I have no idea man.
R: Well, J, I suppose you can work it out over time. Just remember that when a person is being sarcastic, they use signs like lifting their eyebrows or modifying their tone or small things like that to say they do not mean what they say. Often you have to do the opposite of what you think the words mean when such things happen.
D: Right man. I seen that. I guess you being the guru and all you can say easily when someone's lying or passing you shit. Anyways thanks man. I'll remember what you said.
R: No problem, J. And do try and sit down with your wife and tell her to be honest and direct with you. And take some classes in your community college if you can, man. It helps really, you know, education does.
D: Thanks, man. I'll remember what you said. Goodbye.
R: Goodbye, J. And have a pleasant life... And so we move on to our next caller.. Its from P... Hello sir! How have you been today?

A Capital Thing

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster" - Nietzsche.

Executions come but rarely in our civilized world and not often does it involve a Saddam Hussein hanging by his neck. So it is but fair that we excuse all the hoopla that surrounded the day. CNN went to such lengths to cover the event and I am sure almost every network worth its salt anywhere in the world would have done its bit, that it all seemed for sometime a bit like the Letourneau marriage or something. I was not too interested; but the post-execution revelations that have surfaced all over the place have me really, really disturbed. Of course you can get the lowdown on all the uproar at bbc.co.uk or cnn.com.

I have never been one for capital punishment. It just doesn't make sense to me to arrogate to oneself the right to take life when we do not have the ability to create one. The debate is not so simply dismissed though, and I understand certain positions that the pro-capital punishment people take but I just prefer to lean to my own corner. Even if it is Saddam with his malice toward Kurds and kindness to none and all the Weapons of Mass Destruction he bought to fight the Iranians. But, even if this most reviled man of our times(of those caught) needs to be put away, it surely can be done without evoking the spirit of a medieval stoning or the stake or scenes from Braveheart and The Passion. Surely, a man, however evil and against the grain of popular and reasonable morality he has been, just because he is a man, deserves some dignity when the noose is being put around his neck. Shame on you, CNN and official witnesses, I want to say, but it is shame on us too. After all, CNN shows us what we want to see: the modern broadcast medium is just a mirror held up to the world. I am sure there is still the primitive urge for revenge in all of us and an offensive bloodthirstiness and Saddam's execution was just the right purge in quaint 18th century fashion. He is not the hungry Somali kid fooling around with a gun, whom we have to gun down with a tear in our eyes; he is not the Prince of darkness, a gentleman; he is not even the Marquis of A, we have to kill for our passion d'amour. Cheers to the guy! Down to hell! And save your prayers for when you are down there! And what now of the re-engineered Sunni-Shia split? What of the new breed of self-righteous, self-justifying mullas this whole episode has created? Outraged sentiments apart, did we really need to end the guy's pathetic life so pathetically? Mercy is over-rated but often so is revenge!

But, wait, there is this other guy in the funny turban now, let us get him.

An incident

They stood there by the lamp-post, two faces, young, eager and full of light. The darkness seemed to bother her but he said, "Do you think you can manage?" and she bravely nodded slowly. He took something out from the pocket of his coat and told her, "Keep this with you. It will remind you of me." She again nodded. "I guess it is goodbye then," he leant in slowly. She was not sure if she wanted to do it but she couldn't help herself. The slap did not sting too much: her hennaed hands were so tender. "Selfish bastard," he heard the darkness wail.

Limericks - Old Style, New Style

There was this guy
Who wanted to buy
A bottle of good whiskey on Xmas Eve.
But they wouldn't sell to those who believe
That happiness comes from on high.

I don't know why a ball
Is dropped from a tall
Building to mark New Year's dawn.
I guess it's easy to see its great fall
And then not worry about it at all.

There was a man
Who had a good plan
To become a millionaire in no time.
But it is not something that he or I can
So we content ourselves with just rhyme.