Of a ripple that would travel eighty years
Outward from there, to be the same ripple
Inside him at his last circumference.
--Hardy/Heaney
We opened the front gate gingerly. There was no car, but a black satchel on a charpai next to the fan and the main door. No answer and the bells all mute. The back door held slightly ajar with some purple rope attached to the door handle. Still no answer. And the house became stranger with each passing moment...
We asked the next door neighbour where the doctor was, the swami's childhood friend from over 75 years ago was? Had anyone seen her? It was strange since she'd been largely immobile for the last two or three years. The plump woman looked at us. But didn't we know? In February, when that terrible dust storm descended and the sky was red...
The swami repeated some words three or four times to the woman but was really speaking to herself.
The old world etiquette, some remnant of former times: "But won't you at least come in for some tea?". Some formula read off: the ways of the world which translated into the local idiom reads: the way of God, the utterly unquestionable way.
Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows.
Her father, the editor of a newspaper in pre-partition days (the paper would later be banned because the religious denomination to which he belonged was declared to be a heretical sect). And some would say that it followed from that, in the inexorable logic of the fanatic's hateful mind, that it was legally permissible-nay, perhaps even a duty-to slay them.
Uncle M, in fact, told me of one person who was killed in his locality (back in 1953 when the troubles started). He was riding his bicycle when a crazed fanatic stepped out from beyond the corner and chopped the cyclists head off with a sword. There is something ghoulish and almost comical in what happened next. Uncle M says that the decapitated body and cycle continued to move for some while because the body was used to the pedaling actions and the blood was still flowing through the veins. That shadow existence carrying on...
...
There are many things I've heard this week that have made me wonder, again, what it is to be a human. In other words, what's so special about being human? About a girl beaten by her own kith and kin until she's driven mad, roaming the streets with a stick in her hand and a key in her pocket. Her mother, once fairly well-off, now sits at a window with an outstretched hand so that whoever is passing by might place some food in it. If that was just a story or a faint rumour...but you know it is true.
And you still want to talk with me about the mysteries of the East?
Outward from there, to be the same ripple
Inside him at his last circumference.
--Hardy/Heaney
We opened the front gate gingerly. There was no car, but a black satchel on a charpai next to the fan and the main door. No answer and the bells all mute. The back door held slightly ajar with some purple rope attached to the door handle. Still no answer. And the house became stranger with each passing moment...
We asked the next door neighbour where the doctor was, the swami's childhood friend from over 75 years ago was? Had anyone seen her? It was strange since she'd been largely immobile for the last two or three years. The plump woman looked at us. But didn't we know? In February, when that terrible dust storm descended and the sky was red...
The swami repeated some words three or four times to the woman but was really speaking to herself.
The old world etiquette, some remnant of former times: "But won't you at least come in for some tea?". Some formula read off: the ways of the world which translated into the local idiom reads: the way of God, the utterly unquestionable way.
Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows.
Her father, the editor of a newspaper in pre-partition days (the paper would later be banned because the religious denomination to which he belonged was declared to be a heretical sect). And some would say that it followed from that, in the inexorable logic of the fanatic's hateful mind, that it was legally permissible-nay, perhaps even a duty-to slay them.
Uncle M, in fact, told me of one person who was killed in his locality (back in 1953 when the troubles started). He was riding his bicycle when a crazed fanatic stepped out from beyond the corner and chopped the cyclists head off with a sword. There is something ghoulish and almost comical in what happened next. Uncle M says that the decapitated body and cycle continued to move for some while because the body was used to the pedaling actions and the blood was still flowing through the veins. That shadow existence carrying on...
...
There are many things I've heard this week that have made me wonder, again, what it is to be a human. In other words, what's so special about being human? About a girl beaten by her own kith and kin until she's driven mad, roaming the streets with a stick in her hand and a key in her pocket. Her mother, once fairly well-off, now sits at a window with an outstretched hand so that whoever is passing by might place some food in it. If that was just a story or a faint rumour...but you know it is true.
And you still want to talk with me about the mysteries of the East?
1 comment:
a shadow-filled post - but then, the world is indeed full of shadows.
What it is to be human? At times one would almost forget we are also capable of pity & tenderness, that we are also capable of harmony & beauty.
ah well.
all the best
fff
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