COME SOUTH YOUNG MEN, BUT HERE BE DRAGONS
***My crust is white. There are dark fools outside my house. The sun is hot and sultry. My brain is sweltering red in the heat. The fools are chipping away at mute, angry stones. The nerves breaking out of the spinal chord are tingling and crackling across the back of my head. My body is a river of salt water, dripping, chafing, burning. The massive hammer cuts an arc, swings, falls on the stone. Thud! The black face of the fool is scowling, locked into itself, faraway, with muscular concentration. The salt leaves him in showers of sweat. He drips. He is a fool. I drink thirstily, angrily the sight of his rhythmic, wrenching, blistering labor, pull at the black, heavy iron gate of my house and walk in. Life feels sweaty and irritating. ***
***There are unfrenzied, colorless beings howling at the very light of the sun. They bombard my phone with flash messages. They flash and I click, the blinds pulled over my eyes. "Thanks for downloading COUPONS. You have been charged Rs 10.0 from your mobile account. Get 50% off on 2nd Pizza. The offer cannot be redeemed with cash. Enjoy the deal!" Their heads are always spinning but they are tranquil. The deals are subtle, silent and stealthy. Flash! The black fool's black hammer keeps chipping away. The messages keep flashing. I keep clicking. The rhythm of life goes on, angrily, desultorily, intensely focused.***
***The fools are making rotis tonight. They are black and eaters of rice. Rice soaks water. But water has dried up. The hearts of their contractors are dried up too and all the sea, sweat and blood in the city could not quench their thirst. The contractors are unfrenzied, colorless beings too. Their compunctions like the city's soil are parched and sandy. There's no water to cook rice. Only sweat. To chip tomorrow's angry stones away. Dry rotis must stuff the belly tonight. The black fools are making rotis. A colorless contract. There's 50% off on 2nd pizzas. Enjoy the deal!***
***Like the garlanded portraits of my dead ancestors I wear my corporate I-card. 10'o clock at night. 2'o clock in the afternoon. All the time. My albatross. My own - security-jacket, straitjacket, noose. My own, the exile's very own, I-Card! Around your neck. Identity! Blood group. Permanent address. Home! Come south, come north, westward ho! eastward ho!, young man, but, here be dragons!***
***The lines around his eternally regurgitating mouth are hard and evil. His motives reek of the vile stuff he keeps chewing even in his sleep. He is the white fool. He comes in his hordes and dares walk barefoot the scorching earth the black ones fear to tread. For the price of his gutkha and a few burnt rotis he will crawl down into the underbellies of earth. The black fools have only dry rotis for their children's bellies and the white ones are burning those. Citizens of the hunger of the same nation, they stand glaring at each other across the colorless wall of man's divided self. The rotis are burning in the heat of hatred. Their I-cardless grey nation is pitted with burning coals of Jharia.***
***But it still beats me why I keep wearing the I- Card outside the edgy, luminous IT park. Subalterns, subjugateds, appropriateds; underaverages, unequals, menials, minorities. I was their speech, they the content of my speech. But since when did my speech begin to be born out of my own gagged narratives?***
*** "By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat down,
Ye-eah we wept,
when we remembered Zion."
They sat by the salty sea on the day they let them out of the furnaces; the day they drank all the water their colorless masters had been pilfering from their blistered bodies to quench the sweat-seas. That day they drank from the sea and peed into it. Drank and peed. Over and over again. The day when the sun broke into a 24-hour bathroom break; the day they produced nothing for us. The day they could drink water and pee. The hot sultry sea was cooler than their ovens and they breathed deeply, obscenely the cool gusts from the sea.***
***These are days and states of rapes and encounters. I wear my I-Card. Indulge in subaltern silences. Nine out of ten of them are rotten and the lone lamb of the lot is under whales-load of beautiful strain to embrace his brethren's evil ways. The pardesis are here. I wear my I-card because I cannot speak, here, anymore.***
Come south, young man, but here be dragons.
***My crust is white. There are dark fools outside my house. The sun is hot and sultry. My brain is sweltering red in the heat. The fools are chipping away at mute, angry stones. The nerves breaking out of the spinal chord are tingling and crackling across the back of my head. My body is a river of salt water, dripping, chafing, burning. The massive hammer cuts an arc, swings, falls on the stone. Thud! The black face of the fool is scowling, locked into itself, faraway, with muscular concentration. The salt leaves him in showers of sweat. He drips. He is a fool. I drink thirstily, angrily the sight of his rhythmic, wrenching, blistering labor, pull at the black, heavy iron gate of my house and walk in. Life feels sweaty and irritating. ***
***There are unfrenzied, colorless beings howling at the very light of the sun. They bombard my phone with flash messages. They flash and I click, the blinds pulled over my eyes. "Thanks for downloading COUPONS. You have been charged Rs 10.0 from your mobile account. Get 50% off on 2nd Pizza. The offer cannot be redeemed with cash. Enjoy the deal!" Their heads are always spinning but they are tranquil. The deals are subtle, silent and stealthy. Flash! The black fool's black hammer keeps chipping away. The messages keep flashing. I keep clicking. The rhythm of life goes on, angrily, desultorily, intensely focused.***
***The fools are making rotis tonight. They are black and eaters of rice. Rice soaks water. But water has dried up. The hearts of their contractors are dried up too and all the sea, sweat and blood in the city could not quench their thirst. The contractors are unfrenzied, colorless beings too. Their compunctions like the city's soil are parched and sandy. There's no water to cook rice. Only sweat. To chip tomorrow's angry stones away. Dry rotis must stuff the belly tonight. The black fools are making rotis. A colorless contract. There's 50% off on 2nd pizzas. Enjoy the deal!***
***Like the garlanded portraits of my dead ancestors I wear my corporate I-card. 10'o clock at night. 2'o clock in the afternoon. All the time. My albatross. My own - security-jacket, straitjacket, noose. My own, the exile's very own, I-Card! Around your neck. Identity! Blood group. Permanent address. Home! Come south, come north, westward ho! eastward ho!, young man, but, here be dragons!***
***The lines around his eternally regurgitating mouth are hard and evil. His motives reek of the vile stuff he keeps chewing even in his sleep. He is the white fool. He comes in his hordes and dares walk barefoot the scorching earth the black ones fear to tread. For the price of his gutkha and a few burnt rotis he will crawl down into the underbellies of earth. The black fools have only dry rotis for their children's bellies and the white ones are burning those. Citizens of the hunger of the same nation, they stand glaring at each other across the colorless wall of man's divided self. The rotis are burning in the heat of hatred. Their I-cardless grey nation is pitted with burning coals of Jharia.***
***But it still beats me why I keep wearing the I- Card outside the edgy, luminous IT park. Subalterns, subjugateds, appropriateds; underaverages, unequals, menials, minorities. I was their speech, they the content of my speech. But since when did my speech begin to be born out of my own gagged narratives?***
*** "By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat down,
Ye-eah we wept,
when we remembered Zion."
They sat by the salty sea on the day they let them out of the furnaces; the day they drank all the water their colorless masters had been pilfering from their blistered bodies to quench the sweat-seas. That day they drank from the sea and peed into it. Drank and peed. Over and over again. The day when the sun broke into a 24-hour bathroom break; the day they produced nothing for us. The day they could drink water and pee. The hot sultry sea was cooler than their ovens and they breathed deeply, obscenely the cool gusts from the sea.***
***These are days and states of rapes and encounters. I wear my I-Card. Indulge in subaltern silences. Nine out of ten of them are rotten and the lone lamb of the lot is under whales-load of beautiful strain to embrace his brethren's evil ways. The pardesis are here. I wear my I-card because I cannot speak, here, anymore.***
Come south, young man, but here be dragons.
No comments:
Post a Comment