A Feast Of Friends

Did you know freedom exists in school books?
Did you know madmen are running our prisons?

Amir looked out of his window. On a tree branch, the tallest among all the ones around it, there sat a crow. Black.

We're perched headlong
On the edge of boredom
We're reaching for death
On the end of a candle
We're trying for something
That's already found us

The bird sat still, almost looking dead, as if she was bored. Amir looked at her, almost waiting for it to fly away any moment. But the bird wouldn’t budge from its position, it just stayed there, with eyes transfixed on a spot on the ground below, almost looking philosophical.

Wow, I'm sick of doubt
I’m sick of dour faces staring at me from the TV
Tower, I want roses in my garden bower; dig?
Royal babies, rubies
Must now replace aborted strangers in the mud
These mutants, blood-meal for the plant that’s plowed.

He had thought that he won’t move from the window until the bird did. But she didn’t. Maybe, she was dead. Amir finally gave up, and took his eyes away.

P & P

We’ll talk about lovers tonight.

We’ll talk about a couple, but not about Laila-Majnu, not Soni-Mahiwal, not Heer-Ranjha, not Chirkut Lady-Kekda Man, but about a pair whose relationship has transcended the concept of time, a love that can actually boast of being truly, singularly eternal.

We’ll talk about Poetry & Prose.

Yes, we’ll talk about P & P, two entities who differ as matter of principle, by the way of definition, who are said to be two opposite sides of the coin, but who, as a matter of truth, are linked to each other as two inseparable souls, their destinies so intricately intertwined, that, at times, it takes an effort to recognise who’s who, both working for the same purpose, the same end, but through varied means.

Maybe as they are, after all, when one thinks about it, two opposite sides of the same coin.

And why should we talk about them tonight?

Because reality, as they say, is stranger than fiction. Reality, as the name itself declares, is real, and when the real gets into its own, the two lovers cease to exist as two different entities, they cease to exist as two opposites, they combine and mix into each other to an extent that its impossible to determine what is Poetry and what is Prose, everything taking the shape of Poetic Prose or, alternatively, Prosaic Poetry. Call it PP, the order of occurrence of the lovers’ names depending on the observer’s choice.

Because when reality hits you, it hits you in the form of PP, not as the demarcations of Poetry & Prose, which are just, when one thinks about it, products of man’s passion of convenience.

Hmmm. Done. We’ll talk about Poetry & Prose tonight.

Unclaimed

To make love to a stranger is the best.

There is no riddle and there is no test -

To lie and love, not aching to make sense

Of this night in the mesh of reference.

To touch, unclaimed by fear of imminent day,

And understand, as only strangers may.

To feel the beat of foreign heart to heart

Preferring neither to prolong nor part.

To rest within the unknown arms and know

That this is all there is; that this is so.

Not mine. Vikram Seth's. Exquisite.