Sir Hyenatius' Fall From Grace
Hark, oh ye, philanderer;
Riding on a 'steely steed',
Thy ineptitude tearing the twain asunder
'Tis time ye concede,
And submit to charges of slander
For the sun has dawned, pay heed
The point will smite, the wounded will bleed
Here, larks sing, paeans ring,
Finery, viand, victual, spread,
Raiment that befit a King
While Fires of hell, the Beast (raise its head)
To ye, they shall, visions of the 'Nemesis' bring
What verse, shall we use in prose's stead,
To poison the lesions that've long bled?
Sir Hyenatius X, of noble ranks, ye say,
Of flighty rapidity and rapid flight?
Watchful sentinels of the Earth, nay
Of the nether kingdoms, pardon the slight
What care have ye wrought, answer this, I pray
Ne'er has thy palm touched whetstone, or mite
Nor in the commons' heart, did passion ignite
Spoken, have ye, of the Clan's treachery
Spiteful venom from thy forked tongue, oh heretic
So I shall, dispel, amend, fight Fate's vagary
And dip my quill, cast words, further this polemic
Allow the audience to mull upon the current quandary
While I attack thy jugular, here is my rhetoric
Ye shall writhe in pain, drown it, go **hic hic**
Did ye not cower, find solace in cocktail
Mix rum, vodka, gin, wine and beer?
Whilst the Queen burn'd at the stake, and terror entail
I mixed the Molotov, ye cringed in fear,
Found solace in spirits, forgot to protect the frail
Alas! Now, with thy falsity, ye sear
Accuse a heart, which is to the Kingdom, dear!
Awkwardsinusoidalfunctions, jewels of God's Eye,
Of brilliance in quality, and rarity of deed
Retribution's the middle name, thy end is nigh
Sir Pretty-V too has conspired to kill the weed
Ye show us blood on the earth, we point to the sky
The azure has deepened, the clouds decree'd,
Stay to spar, or fly on the damnable steed
In cruelty, ye revel, in love, find repair,
Did ye not, misuse, in fallacy, the same Love's name,
With 'wile and trickery', a noble's virtue compare?
I shall confer with Justice; Fie Fie, 'tis a shame
Ye shall be indicted, suffer comeuppance, fair
Mister-s and Miss-es, witness this game,
Arbitrate, punish the wrongdoer, set Evil aflame.
Gah-wind's Story (A Sequel)
Prologue:Revenge, they say, is a double-edged sword. But strangely
enough, mine only has a carved, blunted edge of the hilt strongly fitted at one end and a poisoned, piercing point at the other. The hilt is safely still in my hand, while the blade is ready to impale the
adversary. THIS however, is NOT what I need to give a curious bystander for an introduction. This post stands as a testament to the glory of LOVE (especially, to that witnessed in this author's previous work: "Love Story"), and hence, to honour the convention that Erich Segal fulfilled after his schmaltzy novel, with an even greater tear-jerker.. titled 'Oliver's Story'.. and in memory of Oliver Barrett, I have been commissioned with this mammoth task of recording the fate that awaited our noble man, Gah-wind. (However much I hate reading Prologues and more often, Forewords, I've HAD to write one this time. Forewords are baneful, because:
- They take the joy out of reading by narrating circumstances in the story BEFORE you can even tread on it
- Sometimes, they make you realise that the person who wrote the Foreword might have been a better writer than the one who's reeled out the muck that you got into later; AFTER you buy the book -- Believe me, I felt that way about five years ago after reading Jane Austen's "Sanditon"
I wouldn't want to do the first, and the second is an impossibility, cuz,
I will finish this story, unless my thoughts freeze by some macabre freak of fortune [or rather, misfortune]. And hence, without much ado, I shall begin on this fascinating story.)
The story so far:The rakish Gah-wind and the 'pretty' Pretty-V spent several months
together, simpering at each other by day, and sighing in solitude by the moonlight. There were those, to whom this powerful union deified THAT abstract emotion that very few have had oppurtunity to experience; and there were those, to whom the sight of unlikely duo inspired.. errr...transpired, or maybe: induced a terrible nausea that heightened every time their clammy palms met. Alas!! A transgression such as this - an attempted defiance of the laws of Nature, a curse to the self-righteous
Conservatives was not to be. Strange are the quirks of Fate, she joins two souls in what may seem to be the perfect communion and then tears them apart with the savagery that even a hungry beast cannot match. And what should now happen to those two wretched hearts? Do they quietly die in grief? Do they drown in lachrymose lament? Do they silently suffer for eternity? Those are questions that WE-who have not seen ALL cannot answer. However, that line of digression should not distress us now. What really happened with our friends here is: NOTHING! Yes, NOTHING!! One fine day, their love for each other seemed to have deserted them. Gone, POOF!! Just like that -- AWOL. And life still moved on, slow as ever.
Gah-wind haunted the NITW campus on his newly acquired moped (which, as I have often confirmed, looks very much like a moulting moth). Frowning in the harsh sunlight, he personified all bestial adjectives. His face reflected dark wrath (directed towards whom? - nobody dared to guess), his mouth was always twisted in fury and his eyes shone with shocking malice. In the dark, even lost spirits cringed at the very sound of his sputtering, somewhat
blue-d vehicle. The wind stopped whistling, squirrels hurriedly scampered away, trees stopped swaying and then... with tyres squealing, smoke billowing behind him, appeared our hero. He was just exhibiting that dangerous stunt, banking dangerously around the corner; and.... he flew off the bike! For a moment, it seemed like he was rising to the heavens. Arms flailing, metal shining and limbs crunching. And then life came back to normal - the wind whistled, squirrels hopped back to get their forgotten nuts, the trees shook free the inertia and Gah-wind cried out:
"MUMMY!!!"And he spent the next few weeks in the placidity of a hospital ward - listening to the rustle of the nurses' starched uniforms and lost in the encompassing whiteness-of the walls, the shining floor, the bed-covers and his restricting casts. Then he emerged - a healed man; a little warped in the limbs, but lubricated in the heart. Now, the roads had a different story to tell. The wind whispered, squirrels wrestled and trees blossomed. And Gah-wind smiled!
Enter: The delightful new protagonist of our story -
Jay-Lee.
SHE, let me make it clear:
SHE was the quintessential, matchless, Oriental beauty. The kind of beauty that can put a thousand candles to shame; make a fresh rose appear like a lily; freeze fish in the aquarium, leaving them staring with their pouting mouths; turn Narcissus suicidal; flutter the hearts of all; and leave Gah-wind bedazzled. So taken in with her was he, that the famous
"Twenty thousand brothers couldn't match my love for Ophelia" seems like an amateurish estimation. Language does not allow the superlatives that I am burdened with, to be able to express the potency of the affection that our hero shared for her. She was Scarlett O'Hara in her wiles, and Melanie Wilkes in her kindness; Portia in her brilliance, and Miranda in her sweetness. A cut above the rest, a diamond better than the best. So.. it is time hat our hero moved on from rhinestones(sorry, Pretty-V, if you're reading this) to diamonds.
If ever there was a
"rose" that had smelt "sweeter", it would have grown only in Eden (and long sacrificed to the whims of Eve). It was the sweetest of roses indeed, that had perfumed the love that permeated the beings of Gah-wind and Jay-lee. It did everything to their fist-sized hearts - capture, rapture and enrapture. I am, almost paralysed with emotion, to talk about their mutual admiration. I choke on my own words (or is it that fish-bone?), so I shall take leave. The love of Gah-wind and Jay-lee shall not be forgotten. It will be found like the most sacred of scriptures, the most voluminous of sagas - locked into a secret chest, buried at the bottom of the sea. And then, there will be fearless explorers, who shall retrieve the wealth that captures the golden immortality of that wonderous emotion, from the treacherous depths of the waters. They shall heave it into sight, carefully open it, read in delight and draw comparisons. Yes - like Romeo and Juliet!!
One mile closer, and looking back...
There's this often repeated saying that goes "A picture speaks a thousand words", it may be true. But I've always found that those thousand words carry more detail than an eye could discern from the picture. They burnish, they colour, they highlight the beauty that is more often overlooked, than not. Sadly, in my case, the mosaic of Literature seems to have been replaced by the parquet of quotidian pursuances, now. (Pardon the indiscretion in use of metaphor) I feel reduced to a philistine when I discover that I don't even remember the name of that Wordsworth poem that I knew by rote five years ago. Literature meant Wotton, Eliot, Tennyson, Pope, Tagore, Davies, Frost, Auden, Browning, Shakespeare, Sarojini Naidu, Keats, Premchand, R. K. Narayan, Tolstoy, Chesterton, et al back then. It bounded me in amazement at their skill to capture the pathos, the desire for action, the ecstasy and the general sentiment in their time. But, of all that prose, only two still cling on... One: Kamala's Das' 'Punishment in Kindergarten'. The only one I know of, which delicately condemns children's insensitivity. Therein lies its novelty - the denouncement of what is always glorified:
...
On the lawn, in clusters, sat my schoolmates sipping
Sugarcane, they turned and laughed;
Childen are funny things,they laugh
In mirth at other's tears, I buried
My face in the sun-warmed hedge
And smelt the flowers and the pain
...
The other one, that I still remember to date, and the one that left me with the strongest impression contains these lines by Robert Frost:
The woods are lonely,
Dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go,
Before I sleep
And miles to go,
Before I sleep
After I read that, I mulled over what time would bestow upon or take away from me. Now when I look back, I think I've walked a mile farther. But, there's a strange impulse to run all that way back, and walk that last mile again. And walk it with the same faltering gait, and stumble too. It's that liberty to make mistakes that attracts me. Now that you've walked that mile, you're expected to walk steadier, choose the right lanes and plod your way through the tortuous route. It's rewarding to feast your eyes on the clichéd 'light at the end of the tunnel', but I think I'm insane.... I'd rather wait and walk for another mile before entering that tunnel. I'd rather be laughed at, as a child. Children laugh at tears, but they also forgive.
If you've ever drawn a kid close, and taught her a new rhyme or told her a story; you'd know what I'm talking about. It draws the blinds over the 'big, bad world' around you, and makes you chuckle at how silly you might have been at that age. You're flooded with nostalgia and child-like pleasure at the same time. When my four-year old niece got back from school, she'd come up to me and teach ME the rhymes she'd learnt for the day:
Machli jal ki rani hain
Jeevan uska pani hain
Haath lagao tho dar jaayegi
Baahar nikalo tho mar jaayegi
And with all the expressions and actions too!
And then, there are times when they leave you stunned with their questions. When I told her the story of 'Little Red Riding Hood'.
I said: "And so there lived a little girl called Little Red Riding Hood. She always wore this tiny red cap, with a red frock. She lived in a neat little house... "
"But why RED! Doesn't she like pink better? Why did she have such a weird name anyway?"
"Well! SHE likes red, alright. And her parents probably liked to call her that. I mentioned it was her pet name, didn't I?"
"No, you didnt." (She's sulking now)
"It was. So LRRH..."
"What was her real name, then?"
"Never mind THAT... So, LRRH had a grandmother who lived deep in a forest. And LRRH was VERY fond of her..."
(Now, it so happens that 'grandmother' in Telugu is two different words, one for your paternal and one for your maternal grandma. I tried playing safe, and said 'grandmother' in English)
"Will that be ammamma (maternal), or naanamma (paternal)?"
"It was her ammamma."(I pat myself secretly)
"....So LRRH's mom sends her with a basket of red apples to her grandma, to the forest" (Now, I'm beginning to wonder myself: What mother would send her child to a FOREST, that too with a basket of apples!)
Fortunately, the little devil didn't have too many bright ideas this time.
I continued, "There lived a wicked wolf in the same forest, who'd spied on LRRH while she was singing to herself happily, making her way to grandma's cottage. And he thought to himself: What a fine meal she'll make!"
At this point, I don't recall what exactly prompts the wolf to go to LRRH's grandma's cottage, so I'm desperately clutching at straws and trying to make up some intelligible crap.
"It so happens to be, that the wicked wolf knows that LRRH is visiting the old lady. So he laughs greedily and thinks of a plan and goes to grandma's place. He then gobbles her up, wears her gown, cap and spectacles; and tucks himself into her bed, lying in wait for LRRH."
She's looking at me with her eyes open wide, and moves closer to clutch my arm. I've got her riveted!
"So when LRRH arrives, and knocks at grandma's door; the wolf shouts, 'The door's open, come in child'."
"How come the wolf speaks English?"
"This one does. You know, there are some animals, like talking parrots that learn how to talk!"
"Uh, huh!"
"Yeah! So LRRH is frightened by the wolf's voice, because grandma's voice is softer. She asks: Grandma, what's wrong with your voice? The wolf says: It's my cold, child. Now come right in, will you? So, LRRH walks into grandma's bedroom and sees grandma with a long snout, looking VERY different."
"But, WHY would grandma have a long snout? Did the cold make her nose longer too?"
"I told you it was the wolf, didn't I? Grandma was inside the wolf's stomach. So the wolf now had a swollen tummy. And LRRH is shocked: What's wrong with your nose grandma? And why is your tummy huge? The wolf replies: I told you, child. It's the cold. I'm ill. Come closer and give me those apples...."
"I dont like this story, tell me another one."
"But, you haven't even listened to the whole thing!"
"I don't like it. Tell me another one."
"Okay", I say; and toss around all those silly fairy tales in my head. I don't recall most of them. Only Cinderella, Thumbelina, Rumpeltiltskin and Snow White - all vague recollections. But, I don't want to complicate the situation any more. So I make up my own Indian version from fragments of Champak and Tinkle stories, complete with graphical descriptions, that I was very proud of. But before I can finish even that, she's either fallen asleep, or isn't in the mood for stories any more.
"Let's play Teacher, Teacher", she says. And I sigh resignedly.
Untitled - F2 - A visit to Paradise (only, closer home)
I realise that I haven't blogged in ages.. well... two months IS a fairly long time. Long enough for me to do plenty of reading, get employed (yeah.. Finally!), write mid-semester exams that I've forgotten about already, chew on things that I ought to have done but have been procrastinating, idle around, watch movies that date to the latter half of the 20th century; and go on a HOLIDAY!! And all this time, I've had this obscure page called "The Waffle Iron" chiding me. No matter how few or how many hits I have, I wouldn't let this one identity of mine be swept into that forgotten corner of the ever-expanding cyberspace. Like all subversive Internet users, I've had several online accounts that I don't remember about, any more. I wonder if my username, password, date-of-birth, Secret question & answer are still stowed away in a database thousands of miles away; beaten into "bits", to live on for eternity, never once summoned to serve their purpose. I have a feeling that THAT train of thought won't get me anywhere, and I have been thinking like THAT in a long time now. That's why I decided to call this post "Untitled". For most of you (especially if you use MS Windows' Notepad like I do - I prefer plain text, no fancy word-processing for me, thank you), it's what your text-file would be called, if you're too lazy or are not in the mood to do some christening. Fortunately, Windows is more tolerant than UNIX's vi-editor is, in that respect. You can leave the file-naming until you have to save the file, and even let it be called Untitled, Untitled1, Untitled2, and so on. By the way, here's a disclaimer: If you're an Open Source freak, pardon this greenhorn's culpability in whatever crime I might have comitted by publishing the aforementioned sentence. I haven't tried ANYTHING but the vi thing so far.. sed &co. are but strangers to me.
Anyhow, THAT was only until I took a few days off to visit Andhra Pradesh's port city - Vishakhapatnam and the nearby Araku valley; accompanied by my motley group of friends. NOW, I think I'll rename (shortcut - <F2>) this one as: "A visit to Paradise (only, closer home)" - yeah, the Windows file system allows braces too.. :P I guess 'Paradise' means many things to many people. It used to point to 'Eden' in the daily-newspaper crosswords that I don't solve anymore, it means 'Mecca' to a pilgrim, it's what school text-books term Kashmir as, it's where a dope might find solace, it's what a Swiss bank account can buy you, it's where that extra zero appended to the number on the annual cheque you sign for charity, will take you. I don't think I can boast of any of these yet, so I'll bow humbly and call my abbreviated 'holiday', a "visit to Paradise".
Well, anyway, this is where I went: the Kailashgiri Hill (which cost us an exhausting climb up the hill for Rs. 2; and a quite unimpressive rope-way downhill for Rs. 20: see the wonders an appended zero can do!), the R. K. Beach (which was FUN, and cost NOTHING - ZERO again) and the back-alleys of the port (which the Romantic in me would describe as 'redolent of the sea, the fish and the quayside home of the Catalane in The Count of Monte Cristo') in Vizag; the Eastern Ghats, on railway lines winding through long, dark tunnels, around BEAUTIFUL hill-tops blanketed in fog (or clouds - which I almost touched, or whatever); to a tribal museum AND a tribal dance, and the Borra caves (which are 150 million years old, and have the most curious carbonate formations housed within. Humic acid, they say, is what causes this - I never was one for Chemistry, so don't ask an Electronics Engineer! A stone-staircase takes you to a naturally formed shrine of Lord Shiva, if you will. However, you MUST brave the steep, wet stairway, try not to steal a glance down below (especially if you have vertigo), fight off claustrophobia, chant 'Om Namah Shiva-yah' and hold on to dear life.
I haven't been to a beach in years, so I rediscovered the joy that crashing waves afford. I thought of the guy who propounded that theory (I think we learnt it in high-school Physics) which explains how/why waves form while I stared at the walls of water gushing forth, building, breaking, crashing, receding... It really is tough to explain how the sand under your feet is swept when a wave hits you and then clumps on top of your feet as it recedes. If you stood still, you'd get buried right there! It's a wonder how, while you're disappointed by an approaching slow wave, it can surprise you by slapping you in the face, making you taste salt and throw sand in your eyes, as if it were challenging your perception of its strength. You could marvel at the stories that the ocean can tell you, dream about the intriguing whispers of the sea and; try to penetrate that never-ending expanse of water and steal a look into the depths, at the ocean floor; at the world that lies beyond the horizon that's bathed in blue; try to distinguish the line that seperates the water from the skies; risk fathoming the secrets of existence which it probably hides. You could gape at the far-away ships that sail towards the harbour (which by the way, is called 'Dolphin's Nose', here), and think of Sindbad, or Columbus, or Robinson Crusoe, or Arabia, or the Titanic, or spices, or silk, or oysters, or sea-horses, or mermaids, or squids, or octopuses, or nothing at all.
The Ghats however, have a different treat store in for you. If you looked up at them, from the valley below; they look like the paintings that we made as children. It always was the only landscape I could conjure up in MY mind. So, in almost every art-class; I would sketch conical mountains with the sun rising through their shoulders. (It's easier with the sun around, cuz otherwise, you'd have to paint fog, which I NEVER did manage to do) You can look down proudly at your work, with the palette stained with green, sepia, chrome, ochre, brick et al. What I saw, was a GREATER work: a masterpiece that covered all details exhaustively. Clusters of trees, acres of step-farmed land, silver ribbons of water, red earth. When you get to the very top, you can touch the clouds (well, almost) and feel the cool precipitation on your fingers. All you can see is swirling mist; so dense that if you looked fixedly, you could get persuaded that you were swimming in the miasma; that if you jumped off the edge, you'd float and maybe catch a glimpse of water-clogged fields and of the solitary cars making their way down the dangerous roads through that gossamer curtain. It's only when you look down at your feet or turn your head to look at the treacherous path you're driving on, that you can break the fantasy.
Such and such, have been the wonders of Nature that I've witnessed. There are structures that enrapture the human mind more than these locations. That's probably why the Universe lends to Imagination. Even the fleeting images that run by when you look through the train's window can enthrall you: the mud-houses, the greenery, the roads, the cities, the people, the kids waving at you, the scary but lovely ride on a long railway river-bridge...
