Skip to main content

The Love Song of Masks

Source: Here


Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening threatens with phantoms
of nightmares rising amid
the gongs and chants in the Baba’s kingdom.
Let us go, through certain half-deserted corridors,
The muttering retreats
of restless souls in search of what they know not.

Netajis and Lalajis meet to conspire,
Having donned the mask to suit the affair,
Baba ensconced himself on god’s throne,
His women standing around
with smiles on ready-to-serve masks.

The chanting rose in the huge pavilion
Like ghosts in search of their places of rest
While the gongs resounded in the vacuum 
of yearning chanting hearts

Baba stood up having signed the latest deal
With Netajis and Lalajis
And the women’s masks smiled

The eyes met furtively.

And I have known the eyes already, known them all –
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase.

Baba dictates formulas to chanters and gongers
Netaji to chelas
Lalaji to bankers
Women to Baba’s staff

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase
Are staring from behind a mask
That’s hungry for what it knows not.

PS. This is written for Indispire Edition 133 #masks

Note: The lines in italics are borrowed from T. S. Eliot’s poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.


Comments

  1. Of course sometimes the masks of babajis, lalajis and netajis fall off. Still, the game goes on. It was great reading your post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They think we don't see through their masks.

      We are helpless, that's the simple fact. And so we too put on masks in order to survive in the hell created by Babas and their people.

      Delete
  2. The Babajis, Netajis and the convenient world of masks..it never stops, does it ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It won't stop ever because nobody dares to disturb the universe created by the nexus. There's no survival if they dare.

      Delete
  3. Stupendous indeed!
    (It doesn't matter what your political inklings are)facts are facts..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Such openness to facts is rare too. Thanks for that openness.

      Delete
  4. And yet again.. It's so good to read your post.. Liked it :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad to know you liked it. Some themes refuse to leave me. They have become part of my being because of what they did to me.

      Delete
  5. You chose my favorite poet.....And I smiled at the very first line...and frowned while reading the rest of it.....No babas with Eliot.....intolerable.....:)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Eliot had flirted with Indian spirituality too. Probably he understood it better than our Babas.

      Delete
  6. That's a different take on masks. The ugly but truthful nature of masks worn out of desire for power and praise and politics. Loved it. And as I always say, I ought to be reading more of such poems.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had firsthand experience of one Baba's fiefdom and his close associates. I have never seen more crooked and villainous people than them.

      Delete
  7. Effectively written.

    You chose Netaji, Lalaji, and Babajis to tell about masks. Agree that these are the ones who are proven mask wearers.

    But this makes me think that there is a little of Netaism, Lalism, and Babaism in all of us :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Survival requires that we adopt the strategies of our enemies.

      Delete
  8. Nice one sir. Its true we can't change this.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We can't. The world has always been run by that nexus.

      Delete
  9. Compelling work Mr. Tomichan. This needs to be shared widely.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser