Smitten II

We wake each morning. I see a dreamy twinkle in your eye reflect soft rays of the sun and burst in the tempest of a joyous smile to see me stare at you listlessly.

We sit by the window, hearing the clatter of raindrops speak the silent language of our tender touches.

We walk by the sea whilst a thousand waves crash and cause a tumult of union, surrendering to the timelessness of rocks.

We hold hands in a crowd and feel affection bathe multitudes in the warmth of quaint understanding, alacrity and peace.

We come home at dusk and sit by a lone candlelight which drowns the noises of the day in silent silhouettes of each other’s shadows, only to realise the true beauty of darkness.

The sun, the rain, the sea, humanity and even darkness are but a fragment of your self that lives within the infinite of my imagination and breaks forth in a thousand flowers that I offer to the Lord and pray everyday, that you be real.

___________

Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat, only I and you, and never a soul in the world would know of this; our pilgrimage to no country and to no end.
In that shore-less ocean, at thy silent listening smile, my songs would swell into melodies, free as waves, free from all bondage of words.
Is the time not yet come? Are there works still to do? Lo, the evening has come down upon the shore and in the fading light the sea birds come flying to their nests.
Who knows when the chains would be off and the boat, like the last glimmer of sunset, will vanish into the night.

__________

Amen…

Smitten

Contrary to everyday existence, the evening was one of those when I again got smitten thru my bones by a seraphic apparition resembling a woman’s whose booming laughter sent eclectic tremors through the foundations of my imagination…beautiful, wheatish, simple…the fact that our roving eyes met not once, not a meagre twice but three whole times only lent a luminous hue to an otherwise cloudy evening…but alas! I couldn’t go up to her or even smile back and that is the reason I sit here and record another small, sweet and unsuccessful glimpse into a magical world of smiles, bob-cuts and an eloquent nose…ah! The nose…the olfactory organ that stood out like a beacon of subliminal poise whilst eyes roved about and around to meet and lock and kiss…but the kiss that strangers share can be and often is what transcends into the musty ruins of memory or the freshly printed pages of books written for an audience who have had no first hand knowledge of the experience itself…Coming back, standing by the counter with a head dying to jut slightly around the pillar that blocked my view, I realised that I was already being looked-back at, for the pillar was no pillar because the waiter who was standing there had ceased to stand. And how do I know this? Because I looked straight at her. Her face was impassive. If her lip quivered under the weight of my gaze, my eyes were too fondly locked into hers to have noticed.
I withdrew. Broke the lock and turned my face away. Her expressionless face looking me straight into the eye still floated in my head. To make sure that the image that had frozen in my mind was accurate enough for long term perspective, I turned and looked back.
O! Hungry flames that battle to burn each other to smithereens…
O! Nature’s immovable objects that are struck by nature’s irresistible forces to bring about ultimate cataclysms…
O! Avalanches of a thousand peaks that tumble down in eternal fury into the lap of their own tumultuous fall…
It was the second time. Impassive face meets exploring eyes. Bob-cut hair stood still whilst tall, lanky guy looked on. A pendent, the shape of a solitary, white sea shell hung about her throat. And it shuddered as she swallowed. The eloquent nose still held its poise whilst the eyes played a deadly duel. Had there been a smile, or a semblance of positive societal gesture, the moment would have faded into the crass banality of the Age; into the second-handed wallpapers and coffee mugs of the place. But it didn’t.
Walking now, across her table to the exit, I decided to, or rather impulsively looked back. All I could catch was the sight of her head turning towards me. Our eyes met once again but that was in the midst of our heads turning towards and away from each other. I looked away and walked out the gates…

Sigh

All the Right Reasons

Oh my God! Look how they protest! Look how they come on the streets with their placards painted in middle-class anger to shout out the second-handed slogans against a ‘callow, careless’ State. How they stop trains, disrupt buses and show their impotent angst by howling at the ‘solitary soul’ doing an ounce of honest work on the day of National Bandh. At one level, I feel sad; almost sympathetic towards the stupid, stupid common man and his eternal conquests with the daily-dom of routine existence-struggling to pay the electricity bill in long lines bathed in sweat, struggling to get a gas connection, struggling to save and save and save for the next generation, struggling to hold on to their gloriously banal 9 to 5s, and struggling more so to have a decent orgasm at the end of tired, harrowing day! Sad…

But place this against his complacency at seeing 82 CRPF jawans man slaughtered, or the daily rape occurring in the capital, or the sloth of the modern day Judiciary pronouncing sentences for murderers and rapists after decades of debating; and you’d see the how pathetic, myopic and narrow the stupid, stupid common man and his sphere of concerns really are! That social, ethical or moral obligations do not even figure in the A-list of the collective’s concerns is not only noteworthy, but beckons a sarcastic sneer as well! But then Black Gold is a tricky bitch. Somewhat like the modern day incarnation of Cleopatra! If she could hypnotize Uncle Sam to kill a few million Iraqis in its megalomaniacal whim to conquer her, guess a hundred thousand Indians going berserk over her is understandable!





Maybe at the heyday of philosophizing, Marx would be the only one, whose ghost would be roaming about our protest-impregnated streets and laugh the mocking laughter of a true fortune teller at what is happening! The dynamics of economics, of demand and supply and resource and limitedness is what drives Man then…the tri-murti of roti, kapda, makan or jar, joru and jameen …no glory there!

But after all, Marx was whom the Existentialist Sartre had turned to when the meaninglessness of existence had given way to ‘finding meaning’ in the paying of electricity bills, taking the yearly vacation to Manali, Shimla or Goa, watching the evening news and probably breaking windows and burning BEST buses to register hollow protest too.

But maybe there is a catch to this situation: the same age old scenario wherein the faceless, direction-less collective and the power of its numbers has been tapped in by the purveyors of impious ideologies; the ones who realise the awesome strength of number and the flavour of their ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ and use it to implicate their own private agendas, the background of which are very much banally political in nature. So when I realised that most of the states wherein a thorough breakdown of state machinery did take place, where there were bandhs and demonstrations and slogan shouting and tear gas and lathi charges and political shenanigans courting arrest and bus burning and train stopping it reminded me of the ‘Lotus-followers’; the saffron-clad youth belonging to a sect whose growling reminds us of the loud sound of a chocked lavatory just when it is in the process of being flushed! Awe-inspiring it is to realise of how much their growling can really absorb! Almost sixteen states lie marred in the predicament of inconvenience; probably this one single day of (supposed) protest (instigated by a saffron-clad, top-heavy organization constituting the drinkers of their own hypocrisy-flavoured urine,) is a good enough reason for another ten million ‘normal’ people to protest! To come out on the streets and protest against the inconvenience caused, buses burnt, trains halted, flights delayed, shops closed, businesses suffered, hospitals rendered dysfunctional etc etc etc.






But unfortunately they never learn! They are like cattle, like clouds, like hollow pebbles waiting for the tumult of saffron-coloured vomit to come and carry them away into the horizon of irrational protest! After all that has happened too many times to refer to it as a mistake.




True, there has been a price-hike; true the stupid common man’s struggles will only get steeper from here on, true! Inflation has sky rocketed to Andromeda! But to vindicate one’s own lack of direction by being allowed to be lead into a protest whose agendas from with out seem noble, but whose implications from with in stink of the age-old, Great Indian Political manoeuvrings practiced since the days of Nehru and Patel is a sorry, sorry picture!



Point here is not that the “masses” on the streets are protesting. That’s a good thing, right? Else the Government is likely to shit in our backyards, grow poppy out of it, and tax us for smoking weed! Point is, protest is a good thing. But the idea that it is not really protest but cheap political manoeuvrings; which is not only adding to the woes of the fabled and celebrated Common Man, but also exploiting him, in an age old way to score over the exiting set up, is what adds shades of ‘ugly’ to the picture of a burnt bus or an unattended patient!

Anyways, hope O! kind reader that you enjoyed your one extra holiday; and if you were on the streets pelting stones at policemen, you were doing it for all the right reasons…

Peace

Riding Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino

It would be misunderstood if I were to say that I was left with a lump in my throat and a heavy heart after watching Clint Eastwood's masterpiece, Gran Torino. Yes! the movie, akin to the Marlowesque school of drama, centers around one man; so much so that almost 90 of the 116 minutes seem to have been devoted to Walt Kowalski(Clint Eastwood); his disdain, his cynicism, his morbid self-deprecation, his compassion and even his brand of love. But then one thinks, of how inept an endeavour it would be, had the director or the script tried to encompass the totality of events, and the multitude of effects they have on human nature. But these 116 minutes stand testimony to the fact that at times, Man, and by that I mean a single, solitary Man, can become an anthem of reflections that represent not only the tragedy of living-dead, but even the beauty of a dying-life. Rushdie, in the voice of Salim Sinai had once remarked, 'all of us owe a death to life'; Walt's life and thereafter his death had a deeper connection than this. For though, his life and thereafter his Death, wasn't the psycho-philosophical bliss akin to Kate Winslet's as Iris, nor was it a metaphor of cruelly twisted irony that was to become of Kate at the hands of her Reader. Rather, Walt Kowalski lived a life carrying a burden that quite literally weighed him to the annals of self-deprecatory scorn and hellish cynicism. 'I want to be left alone', were what we started with; that the end would be of a man paving the way for his own salvation, albeit absolutely unknowingly, is what overwhelms us with sense of profound realization. And which is this: Death is what brings a limiting factor to the infinity of life. And yet, Life is what gets us there. In effect, Life and Death aren't 'Cause' and 'Effect', but it is the other way round; 'Death' is the 'Cause', and 'Life' is the 'Effect'. Do think about it, O! kind reader.
I would not refrain from acceding that our protagonist hadn't been the morbid, edgy, grumpy Old man through out! Through his own ministrations we get to know how much he loved his wife; through his confessions we realise how much the human in him repents at not being able to foster a 'normal father-son relationship'! But 'Korea', or precisely, the Korean War is what left its indelible mark in him. After all, what are Wars for?! Let Homer's Chariots and Valmiki's Bed-of-Arrows rest in peace in the musty pages where they sleep immortalized! The fact remains that there is absolutely no glory in killing another man for State, Borders or Constitution! It is redundant, it is supercilious and most of all, it just reflects as to how insecure Humanity really is! Not one man, but the whole breathing, living, thriving multitude of uniqueness-in-sameness humanity! Even the 'Rhetorical Justice' of the 'Blind Statue' standing with her scales is symbolic of how restrictive and 'blind' we really have to turn ourselves to bring ourselves to co-exist! And this is another one of the schisms that the protagonist addresses! Giving the impression of finally being 'the avenger', he avenges the follies of lesser beings by sacrificing himself. And yet, even though, the trickle of a tear from the audience's eye is testimony of how much glory we seek in his martyrdom, the fact remains that for this man, his death was simply a way of giving back to Life.
It wouldn't be inappropriate to accede that the film was in some way, an excoriation and an antithesis of Modern Christian dogma. On one hand, we see how much Walt's 'troubled soul' initially shrugs at the notion of 'Confession'. The fact that his 'confessions' are totally devoid of the flavours of 'juicy sin' carries a quasi-ironic, quasi-dark humoured flavour. For we know, as he remarks, 'I am at peace, now!', that for a Man such as him, Peace certainly means a sort of End while still being alive. Thus we arrive at the antecedent that to attain Salvation whilst we live shall only drive us to death, or better still, 'Suicide', for there isn't a higher state of existence that one may achieve! It’s the Idealistic! And yet, as happens with Walt, he some how does achieve it. But since, to attain the 'Perfect Calm' of elemental proportions would transcend Man to a height wherein there is no more room to evolve, to change, to twist and turn, and thus he has no other option but to kill himself! And probably, that’s what he does in the end. The Glory, as Aristotle would have remarked, is a cause of Accidence. Death, however, I daresay, is Incidence.

A Word About the Technique:

The dialogues, for their part, and the heavy silences punctuated by Walt’s silent shrieks and grumps play as much an instrument to understand the character as does the screenplay and camera. The strength of this film lies primarily in its script, which stands on the strength of its central character. All that happens in the story, even a ghastly Rape, only enrich and bring out the different shades and manifold depths of Walt’s character. There has been an intertwining of different cultural milieu wherein the Orient has again been represented though its traditions, customs and ‘witch-doctors’, whilst, the West has found face as fractured Father-Son relationships, a conscience wounded by the Korean war, and the final attainment of Meaning through a meaningful death, that makes a fruitless life worthwhile. Ironically, it’s the Orient Witch-doctor who tells Walt the truth about himself! The plot in itself follows the unities of Space, Time and Place; although all of this is relegated to the background as most of the story is told through Walt by his self-impressions, silences and overpoweringly expressive eyes.

Anyways, I shall stop here. For I have a habit to wander off to unknown territories; though most of them are the mothballed, shadowy precincts of my own wandering Mind…

PS. Ironically, if you’d notice, there has been absolutely no mention of a 1952 Green Gran Torino…As they say, Presence maybe Incidence. Absence is always Accidence.

Cheers...

Waking Sickness

This Age that differs amidst
Old and New,
Whispers the self-same words;
That fate was as inconsistent then
As Life anew yearns!
Time speaks another language now, that
Doesn’t seem of Old;
You and I fall out of Love
Our hearts are used being cold.
Kasab kills, and yet lives
To tell his story stylized;
To the Gospels who
Write of future ills,
Amongst nations too soft to decide!
Courtrooms exist, and
Lawyers do bicker, a
Man’s fate, as ‘FOR’ or ‘AGAINST’;
Alas! His conscience lies
Maimed and dead,
Satiated by inhumane,
un-Godly tastes!

The Confessional booths in
Churches lie empty,
For Sins seems to have vanished;
Whilst the order of the day
Marred by bustling activity
Are corruption, fun and frolic.
Sad it feels, yet you and I
Comprise the stupid
Common Man!
A Man who has voices in plenty
But not the courage to stand.
Tomorrow, we may
Look evil in the eye,
Our voices shrill and hoarse;
Yet the Martyr’s blood still upon our skins
Feels dry, cold and coarse!

This Age that differs amidst
Old and New,
Whispers the self-same words;
That fate was as inconsistent then
As Life anew yearns!

Sartre once spoke, but
Silently rests
And so do Byron and Shelley
Laden too has done his bit
And sleeps the sleep of yore!

Waiting for sleep, has made
One commit, the
Gravest folly in bed, but
Realize they not in this waking state,
Life itself
Is many a morning rough;
When karma, bomb blasts
And infidelities
Making waking unworthy, unfruitful,
Tough.

Amen

To a Fairy Godess

No ruffled flowers,no selfmade memory
Brings me close to a sweet friend'o mine,
The whiff of your hair,the smell of your neck,
Please care to be my Valentine...

The day dies,yet to your voice in dusk
Seeks my heart a solitary sign
Your touch is fresh,your smile the air
Please care to be my Valentine...

Seen have I other fairies; flirting laughing-
Rising as my thoughts entwine
To your aspect, a shape of eternal sunsets
Please care to be my Valentine...

Worship, I will and care I shall
To keep you away from mortal strife
If only a Godess as such as you,
Be willing to be my Valentine...

Promise I not,yon heavenly pleasures
For mortal he made me,who made u too
In his image,I shall give you my counted moments
Please care to be my Valentine...

Litany of a Lonely God