[Reader-list] I READ MY 3 PHOTO IMAGES, WILL YOU ?

[inder salim]

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 1.   O, Lord Rama , if you are still around, in whatever form, then
be so,  for I see some  Ravana still around , to tease you, in
whatever form. If so, then this donkey near the bridge is one fragment
which is alive, breathing within me.  I believe, this particular one
out of those infamous ten, was not instrumental in the abduction of
Mother Sita, as it appears on the surface, so no question of war. But
if you wish, please go ahead and kill this hapless donkey too
alongwith his poor master. But I believe, you rescued this donkey from
the clutches of a perverted King, So he deserves a union with his own
beloved.  More so, because, you have been incompetent to give
happiness to Sita afterwards, but this poor liberated donkey is truly
waiting for a she-donkey. For this reason alone, he will not ask her
to pass the fire-test, and all that which is unpleasant and
insignificant for a true lover.  I hope you understand…
 I don't know if I was around during those mythical ( SatyaYug) days,
but if I was, I must have been a war reporter, sketching, documenting
the war that liberated Sita from Ravana's captivity.  I am quite
interested in people who like to see a Hero who subdues the monster,
not once but many times.  But you know, my dear Lord, how bad a
draughtsman I am, so I must have distorted a lot. So whatever in the
present is worshipped as Rama or disgraced in the name of Ravana is
mostly distorted. I feel solely responsible for the mess. So, please
rethink about this donkey near the bridge.
2.    O, my mother, now I have the courage to come in front of you.
Please open your eyes, now, since Krishna is dead, I am still your own
gown-up-baby. There is just thin air between your eyes and my skin.
Please throw away this veil from your eyes. I see this small piece of
cloth upon your eyes nothing but my Father Debt(Rashtra), a  huge
obstruction between you and me.  I want to be strong.  O, G(andhari),
come out of this darkness, and let me know if this veil between you
and me was worth all this sacrifice you made.
Out of our thousand headed Mother Earth, one face which I don't see is
yours. You willingly participated in the power struggle of your
husband. We all paid the price, but now let us face the truth. Would
it tantamount to incest if you will come out openly and bless me.?
Mountains are behind me, a lake is in front of me. The water not only
reflects but has capacity to reappear to surprise us, even in the
meaning of a photograph.  So there is water inside the water and
inside the stone, and in the thin air which I breathe. And if this
water is still the umbilical cord between you and me then reveal your
true self to me.
I provoke Bhima again to hit me below the belt, if my Mother has
forsaken me absolutely for my being so slow that time. Lord Krishna,
the master Psychologist justified the wrong guidance, and also
justified Bhima hitting me below the belt. But now I give another
chance to himself and myself.  The war has ended but this thing
between us is still unresolved. The man who died in battle field was
Prince D(aryo)dhana, I am simply Inder-Salim, may be you too have a
new name, tell me ,O my mother.
3.  O, you man on the road, you how  properly your genitals are
covered.  So, there is a link  between you and me, but it is limited
to that only. Now I have the image which contains you, but only I know
the process which trapped you in this image.  In this sense it must be
all about myself. So, I ask myself, the meaning of the signs upon
which I am relaxed, fallen but confident. The zig- zag lines of the
pavement read like some text which I know what it is all about. The
illusion is the fallen man who looks at the page which contains him,
even. The lines composed by the Municipality cement tiles are all that
I want to decipher for my inward eye.  Forget about the temperature;
the blanket next to the figure has always a role to play. The man on
the road, in reality, can cover himself with the blanket even when it
is 45 degree Celsius, and I am also balancing the graphics and colour
of it with the rest of the details in the image, though I know if the
blanket was not there, I need to balance it with something else… in
place of blanket, may be tree, a stone, a dog, or a my own shadow.
I don't know anything about madness. There is no window that can show
us what a mad person is seeing. In that sense, I am here face to face
with an  impossibility to tell myself what this image is all about. I
hope it is the earlier stage of my madness, and I know what it means
to fall in the last stage of it. I am talking to myself, I am
reminding myself.
Few years back my mother died. She was a woman, I know who suffered
silently but kept on pushing the home and hearth like bollywood's
Mother India.  I cannot even think about writing the details of her
life in Kashmir, even when it was Heaven for any number of poets
there.
I usually quote the following whenever I try to explain the definition
and significance of  poetry. It was perhaps her beginning of Alzheimer
disease which I could not guess. She was diabetic, and we knew she is
beginning to forget words. It was one of those days, when she had to
express that her left foot is itching. In Kashmiri it has particular
expression: Kashun ( sweet itch ), which she forgot. She said Asun
instead of Kashun. What she actually said is that some one is laughing
inside her foot. We all laughed  on hearing this, but she was
seriously saying something, because she had found an alternative word
to express, which was poetic in other sense too.   The disease
developed slowly and she lost the difference between this and that,
shit and food, virtual of TV and real outside, and so on.
3(a) .    Sarandan hinz ladai, Zrandan ayai shahmat. A Kashmiri
proverb translates: when two ( saand )BULLS fight, BUSHES are likely
to suffer. This B, as a trace, is omnipresent like that over
worshipped God in all of us. It is this little alphabet B which at the
moment is giving my 'B' a theatrical confrontation with B of
Bourgeoisie out there. The outcome is almost known, but for the heck
of it.
 Who are 'Bulls' and who are 'bushes': Well, every two human beings
who fight are Bulls. Every two politicians, every to two Acharyas,
every two poets, every two teachers,  every two artists, every two
traders, and even every two fighting women are Bulls. Every time when
people suffer for no fault of theirs is 'bushes'. There are numerous
categories of Bulls, but for the 'bushes' category there is just  a
few.
Why Bulls fight ? The reason are  myriad, but sometimes it can be just
because of a mood swing. Bulls usually look calm outwardly, but when
they fight everything else looks meaningless. The bushes become the
most meaningless things around because they get easily trampled under
the feet of these fighting Bulls. The 'bushes' exist because of some
strange madness which grows on its own like Gypsies who settle down
somewhere and then move on  like bushes moving, on earth moving. But
with Bulls it is the House of Mr. B which every Bull wants to enter
and own in the end.  This House of Mr. B is full of latest electronic
gadgetry, carpets, paintings, antiques, beautiful women and servants.
The servants, oppressed women, even those who are under artificial
gloss come under this category: bushes ( with small 'b')
There is nothing new in this description between Bulls and 'bushes'.
They have been living together since thousands of years and will
perhaps continue to live like this in future as well, provided the
fight continues to knock down the Bulls themselves, and not the earth
and the bushes in the end. We all fear that these fighting Bull might
knock down the earth itself in the near future. Possibilities of a
change in their nature of are remote, because every small Bull wants
to grow to become a bigger Bull in order to outwit the more bigger
Bull and so on and so forth.  The 'bushes' on the other hand have no
idea or need to become a Bull. What strangely resembles them is the
smaller form of Bulls who are at times caught by a surprise fight by a
bigger Bull. This insecurity makes them opportunistic and try to take
sides in order to save their skin. Sheer luck if they get a chance to
survive the intense heat of the moment, let alone the hope to restore
the actual shape before the fight.
These Bulls are all about us, and if we see bulls fighting 'matador'
in Spain, they must be bushes who were compelled to play Bulls. The
bulls who become bushes have little chance to prove that they are
bulls who don't fight for the sake for fighting, although
exceptionally a bull gets a chance to overturn the table and prove
that what bushes can do, if outwitted and disgraced every time for no
fault of theirs.
Since the times immemorial, this 'Bull' fighting has changed the ways
and means, and the bushes too have learned to hide their actual damage
they endure each time. In short, the earth is just an arena for a Bull
to fight. The 'bushes' have no choice but to metamorphose into some
form of Bulls in order to survive the idea of being 'bushes'. The
chances are they cross the identity mark and redefine themselves as
lost fragments of past of a 'bush' story.  The core definition of
bushes is some how purely scientific, but the complexity of bulls is
all about fighting, fighting this way or that way.  Not surprising
that Bulls have developed a skilled language over the years and own it
and ensure it that these tools are passed on to the next generation of
bulls in order to continue the fight. It often happens that  whenever
successor of a bull tries to resemble a bush,  the Bulls demand a fee.
Hey, you have used this sentence " how do you do? " please pay me,
don't you know, I will take care of that. But be sure that you pay;
this way or that way. Don't we pay taxes to the Govt., hafta to a
goon."
 I believe we pay every time we imitate, with this illusion that that
it is the original.  We pay for everything we do, wittingly or
unwittingly. The other in each one of us feels ignored, rejected and
therefore, a need to assert, in order to be one amongst the crowd of
tax payers. Who actually wants to stay as 'bushes', none. True, but
how, ironic that we pay simply to become a bull, a bull who has no
other destiny but to fight, fight with other bulls, fight for a clan
of bulls, a country of bulls, or fight for survival. But in end a bull
is a bull is a bull, unwittingly waiting to eat the dust.
The bushes on the other hand have no such bullish hangover. They grow
and perish closer to the earth's crest. The earth celebrates the
'bushes' closer to them.
Recently, I met a bull, he told me that there is no job for ' the
proletariat 'now'. I quickly saw him pointing towards a bush. They
have to stay idle, he said. And I quickly saw a man idle on the
pavement. Perhaps, he was incapable of following the instructions of
the Bourgeoisie, and therefore, idle, a proletariat. The archive is
multilayered image structure, and also a window to peep into the sea
of other signs which are waiting to float on the surface. The surface
is vast, so we are lost.
And yet, one can read this declaration on every pavement we walk, on
the every design of a building, on every railway track, on every
window, on every man moving on the street. No wonder that I see a
human being seriously reading the illegible script. He is not mad, but
an idle proletariat; from the archives. I see him and see him again,
and then I see him everywhere, in the heart of a human being.
3(b).   I see snakes. The fear, it has come true. I am not going to
die. I will go and come back again to drink milk that constitutes
shampoo and acid. I have to eat watermelons which are injected with
red dye, and drink tea which comes from old shoes torn to pieces and
mixed with tea leaves. I will not die, because I have to participate
in all the things which we produce. I am bushes.
3(c) .   I see schools in dreams, like Jung's 'water' during his
childhood. I have to read books, read newspapers. I have to open the
TV to see what is going on. The collective unconsciousness will look
like a teacher to me, I have no choice but to listen this all like a
student. Fortunately or unfortunately I have always been a bad
melancholic at the school. I am bulls, but soon I will be bushes, and
then again bulls, then again bushes, until…


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