Protesting the blemishes we were type-casted in,
I ‘ve gritted the bourgeoisie ‘virtues-
Honesty
Liberal,
Erudition,
Generosity,
Frugality
Loyalty
Modesty
(Ironic isn’t it?)
Between teeth, like life support.
I ‘ve also nurtured what they called ‘Intellect’;
If that is virtue at all
Last night I wonder,
How have my virtues served me?
My conscience, my worst adversary, decries,
“A persons virtue is to serve his fellow beings,
Don’t be ridiculous!
Your vices have served you well.”
Oh well, I can’t list my vices
Too big, too deep!!

Like a provocateur,
I have saved life, risked commitment
Instigating, applauding
From a safe distance ruffling feathers,
-Don’t Kill The Messenger-
One day, I wish
I ‘d be thrown out of the establishment,
That I have strapped to my chest,
As if it were breast-feeding,
Incarcerated, if not expended
And forced to lift the baton,
I ‘d then return to my people,
Ask my virtues and vices alike
“You have served the wrong people greatly,
Will you now deliver to the wronged people?”

and then one day-

the snow covered branches lose their own existence. even without the sun, they become the shadow of the snow, as if it were a portrait. it is, as lovely as that, but it is not, a portrait.

The movement of love have settled, and they sleep
but their most secret thoughts meet as when
two colors meet and flow into each other
on the wet paper in a schoolboy’s painting.

It is dark and silent. But the town has pulled closer
tonight. With quenched windows. The houses have
approached.
They stand close up in a throng, waiting,
a crowd whose faces have no expressions.

(Tomas Transtromer is the winner of 2011 nobel prize for literature. The above poem is from his book “The half-finished Haven” [1962]. I have picked it from “Penguine Modern European Poets: Pavvo Havvikko and Tomas Transtromer selected poems”)

How some people, in the sheer zeal of ‘living’ life only give it a distant and cursory look. “Everything is beautiful from a distance”. Life deserves a closer look, or may be you deserve a closer look of life. Of your own. If not under a reading glass, may be in a looking glass.

I thought so while I was working, my hands full and mind juggling thoughts. I forgot, tried and failed to remember. And it propitiously came back to me when I thought to write something. How often can you decide to write something without an idea to start with, and a thought that captivated you (and left) comes back?

An idea, an infatuation need an on-going engagement. From an observation a syllogism grows, but not without pruning and heading-back. Life needs such engagement, romantic, philoshopical and pragmatic. It should be lived, loved and looked thoroughly. Order isn’t important. Without these, life doesn’t change its course, it finds no reason to. Only the bed of flow changes.

How can you tell it to your younger without sounding condescending?

But when the water gushes down,
as it will,
flooding crop fields, cattle-sheds
and mud-huts, putting off
nuakhai, daughters’ wedding,
kitchen fire,

When the bereaved widows,
with or without children,
with or without in-laws
with or without compension
quench their wailing
in their tears,

Will you be the one to
tell them they are on
The wrong side of history-in-making?

The amber coloured medicine bottle from the backyard dump of village PHC, its label long gone, shows the loosely-twisted wick resting comfortably on the concave bottom at one end but hides the fact that it is all dried up. The fluid level has been unnoticeable since days, which everyone did and did not notice, until tonight when poking its head from the lid, the wick, which breathed fire a while ago, is now chocking, everybody thinks, as if for the first time there is no mati tel.

Nima always threw in some kerosene to light the kitchen fire. Mother could instead, reignite fire from the remains of last night, blowing into the iron pipe, clearing up the ashes and spotting any piece of charcoal warm enough. Nima hasn’t mastered that art. She can’t puff into the iron pipe too hard, she can’t pick the right coal. But often she tries, storming up a cloud of smoke and flying wisp of ashes. She imagines mother’s magic. Mother could just whisper through the pipe into the range and start cooking. If she picks up the pipe these days, all she does is cough into it. Lying closer to the kitchenette, buried in comforters made out of worn out saries, hoping to get some warmth, she called Nima’s siblings a while ago to come lie next to her, keeping her warm. Budha was overjoyed, jumping into mother’s bed, tucking his feet inside the comforters and asking her when would they eat, while Angie said she had to study.

But the flame that danced flamboyantly is being deposed by the darkness that cheered it a few minutes before. Few red globules glow bleakly; it is the past tense of fire. Probably the pitch black, thin line of smoke doesn’t blacken the roof the angular cleft anymore. The cleft was on the verge of disappearing from the wall and the walls into the night. The night, Nima knew, would persist.

(to be contd.)

if sheltered under the eaves,
i were, careless, unafraid,

had i not raised my fist,
semper paratus,
in-spite of these,

few drops,
of rain that opened the sky,
would glint in my palms.

Hans Christian Andersen

(Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature, Volume 48, Number
2, April 2010, p. 1)

to see how this font looks on my blog. beautiful writing needs beautiful print.

waiting for the night,
when he can be all over her
again.