Judgement Day

Let your guilt be your redemption

For all the judgementalism

For all the hate without a reason

For presuming without knowing

Using your insecurity to bracket

Slotting, categorizing and not giving a chance

Lest all assumptions fall apart

Do not psychoanalyse last words

It’s demeaning to the means and the end

Were it that simple to decrypt -

That straightforward and in your face

It would not be ever written

If nothing else, grant the last respect

Of continuing enigma -

Unsullied by mundane interpretations

Martyrs of Suffering

How proud are we of our Suffering?

Do we wear it with a flourish?

Hoist high the crown of thorns

And place it venerably on our heads.

Does our chest swell with pride?

As we neither flinch nor wince

And hear the sighs of wonder

At our valour and stoic ness

Do we compare the thorns?

And see if mine prick harder

And compete in a pageant of pain

To see who emerges stronger?

Do we silently mock?

As we wipe others’ tears

Scoffing at their softness

While whispering soothing ayes?

Ek Haazari

Ek haazari ki mohtaaj hai jannat,

Jannat ka bhi kya kasoor?

Mizaaz hi hon jahaan par rookhe,

Hawa ke rukh ka kya kasoor?

Khud ki chod aaye dehleez par jaan,

To kaatil ka bhi kya kasoor?

Fitrat hi ho jab mezbaan,

Raat ka bhi kya kassor?

Betakkaluf hain sannata jahaan,

Wahaan lafzon ka bhi kya kasoor?

De chaahein daleelein bekasoori,

Behaazari ki hai sazaa!

Ilzaam ka jab ho muqaddar,

Wakeel ka bhi kya kasoor?

Partition

Scrambled to finish the term end paper for 'Imagining India' and managed just in the nick of time as the clock struck 9am. Here's a peek into what burning the midnight oil till dawn produced - an excerpt from my paper titled "A History of Bloodshed, A Future Without? :Partition and Riots in Free India"....

"The Partition lives on

“Vomited out of their native soil years ago in carnage, and dumped hundreds of miles away, they had no anger left. Their only passion was memory… damned to a hell of longing.”

-Amitav Ghosh, ‘The Circle of Reason’

And this memory was a legacy passed from generation to generation, like a sacred family heirloom - not actively or vociferously, but silently, till the pain and longing was almost something congenital that one felt deep inside ones flesh and blood.

Thus, I found myself – fascinated and enchanted by the Partition even as a child; surrounded by my Great grandparents and grandparents who had lived through history; understanding childishly, its import, but not its impact. As a ten year old, Partition was a bedtime story I tried to extract from my Great grandmother at all times of the day - “Tell me the story of Partition”, I begged and pleaded till my persistence bulldozed over her reticence. With a child’s innocent, yet myopic insensitivity, I resurrected a myriad demons for her everyday – ghosts of the past that she had painstakingly laid to rest. The tales of gory escape, mere adventure for me, were a throbbing part of her daily existence; more unnatural, more alive for the silence it was wrapped in, lived and relived through the images of a homeland lost.

Stories of leaving a child behind as two parents could not carry five children in their arms to safety, and then retracing their path back through the depraved, deathly streets to find the child again, as a mother’s conscience and heart would not let her leave her child behind. Stories of overnight penury, being stripped and deprived of all possessions that you’d taken a lifetime to gain – of life as refugees, of honour and pride. Stories of hope and resilience and starting anew. Movingly romantic narratives of budding love in Chandni Chowk, hurried, sidelong, forbidden glances in that crowded, bustling market and then my grandparents’ wedding.

“There are no full stops in India”, says a character in Mark Tully’s 1991 collection of contemporary Indian parables. In a land better known for continuities and commas, partition and secession were not simply laid to rest in 1947. They continue in the bloodline, a trauma waiting to find utterance, bewildering the subsequent generations who have never been through it, but feel an unease, and an inability to react passively to even the word ‘Partition”. Growing up with it as a part of one’s consciousness, not simply saying that we “know people” who have been through it, but that these very people happen to be ones closest friends and relatives who had to leave everything behind, struggle, undergo unimaginable hardships, witness bestial, inhuman brutality and bloodshed, and still find temperance to build anew, leaves an indelible mark on the new generations.

Are we more fanatical, more vitriolic for all this? Is it simply a part of the charmed past, that we can detach from our persona and existence at our will or is it so intrinsic that we still go through with a sense of loss that finds expression sometimes in extreme animosity and anti-Pakistan sentiment, and then sometimes gets tinged with curiosity and a longing to discover ones roots."

A Royal Buddae!

To understand just how much I have brow beaten everyone into accepting my surreptitious (read as: questionable, untraceable) royal lineage and bull dozed my way to mock-monarchy, you need to rewind to October 24th, 2009, which was an immensely satisfying culmination of my blue-blooded-descent propaganda (Sir Mathew should be pleased - Lady P.D. has dexterously picked up the ropes of media manipulation under his able tutelage).

I would like to thank everyone who made this day so very memorable and 'princessy' -

Right from Their Highnesses- the King, Queen and the Royal Brat's generous and bountiful wishes;

the exotic, 'rose'y flora and calorific choco-bombs sent from the kingdom afar;

the joyous shower of icy water, fragrant eggs and appetising ketchup at the stroke of midnight ensuring Her Highness begins this auspicious day on a clean note with considerable time spent soaking in the 'Hamam';

the Santa Claus delivery of the 'Ten' treasures heralding X'mas two months early in October ;

the fairyland setting, sumptuous cake, magical candles and all the love and care from my cohabiting consort;

hidden gifts on the table and periodically in the drawer and all the ferrying and foraying for decorations;

the 'pity', marble art works and 'accidental silences' in wordy deluges;

the scroll from my eternal better half - a painstaking piece of ever-improving, breathtaking workmanship;

and the parro(kee)t from the Royal Ortist! (see below :D )

http://urstrulyarun.blogspot.com/2009/10/ur-court-ortists-magnum-opus-your.html

And all my dear subjects who indulge me and go along with my noble(ahem!) pretences - thank you! You made my birthday a day I'll never forget.

The Mansion

If you’d walk by the road you’d see,

The broken-glassed, barred windows,

The irons on a padlocked door

Once sentinels of proud, shining metal

-now a crumbling, flaky rust.

If you look ‘neath the mien

Of sorry dilapidation

As you walk upon my dusty paths

Flanked by clods of earth

You might raise the dust

And see the specks swirl into shape

And form a dancing mirage

Of my erstwhile magnificence

Those lumps of parched earth

Might sprout rows of flowers

The blind windows that lie in wait

Might just again see

A push on the padlocked door

Might break the rusting hinges

Protesting, squeaking it might open

To welcome you within

Long has been the wait

Since they left us here

And wait we did – for year upon unending year

Till the weeds now seem like friends

And we see them grow in a pattern

In the rose bush flower bed

The parched earth of my compounds

Waited long for the gardener

It smiled temptingly at nebulous clouds

Too far away to perceive its glance

And then it forgot what it felt

To be soft, nurtured and fertile

It took its arid state as a given

And basked in its long wide cracks

And you now wander into my grounds

You see me lie wasted

Would you strike away the cobwebs

And dust the decay away?

Would you tend to my lawns

And see me thrive under your care

Or would you leave like the others

Daunted by my countenance?

(This one was inspired by a painting I had a glimpse of - don't remember the finer details, but just filling in the gaps of what I saw there, was so despondent, so touching, that it had to be put down in words)..

Stifling Sensualism

Every mouthful of sweetness

Leaves a bitter after taste

Every Eden has a Serpent

Every ocean a Siren

Temptations that waylay you

To ease the path of life

And then weigh your feet with chains

Of moral righteousness

They term every pleasure illicit

And darken each moment exquisite

With heavy clouds of guilt.

Every sensual indulgence

Has a shameful afterglow

We shackle with sanctimony

The very gifts of life

Till it’s a mortal sin

To even feel alive