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. Durga Prasad DashSeptember 2, 2016 at 9:06 AM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 2, 2016 at 9:10 AM

      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. Anupriya KumariSeptember 2, 2016 at 9:53 AM

    Once again a great post!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Renu VyasSeptember 2, 2016 at 10:57 AM

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 2, 2016 at 11:03 AM

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

      Delete
  4. Amit AgarwalSeptember 2, 2016 at 11:52 AM

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 2, 2016 at 12:11 PM

      Such openness to facts is rare too. Thanks for that openness.

      Delete
  5. Utpal KhotSeptember 2, 2016 at 1:23 PM

    It never stops.. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. MansiSeptember 2, 2016 at 4:30 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 3, 2016 at 9:04 AM

      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
  7. sunaina sharmaSeptember 2, 2016 at 6:19 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 3, 2016 at 9:04 AM

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

      Delete
  8. Pranju chakrapaniSeptember 2, 2016 at 9:43 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 3, 2016 at 9:06 AM

      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
  9. SaketSeptember 3, 2016 at 12:57 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 3, 2016 at 1:46 PM

      Survival requires that we adopt the strategies of our enemies.

      Delete
  10. UnknownSeptember 3, 2016 at 7:25 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 3, 2016 at 7:57 PM

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

      Delete
  11. Anupam PatraSeptember 5, 2016 at 9:18 AM

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

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

You Don’t Know the Sky

I asked the bird to lend me wings. I longed to fly like her. Gracefully. She tilted her head and said, “Wings won’t be of any use to you because you don’t know the sky.” And she flew away. Into the sky. For a moment, I was offended. What arrogance! Does she think she owns the sky? As I watched the bird soar effortlessly into the blue vastness, I began to see what she meant. I wanted wings, not the flight. Like wanting freedom without the responsibility that comes with it. The bird had earned her wings. Through storms, through hunger, through braving the odds. She manoeuvred her way among the missiles that flew between invisible borders erected by us humans. She witnessed the macabre dance of death that brought down cities, laid waste a whole country. Wings are about more than flights. How often have you perched on the stump of a massive tree brought down by a falling warhead and wept looking at the debris of civilisations? The language of the sky is different from tha...
13 comments
Read more

Nazneen’s Fate

N azneen is the protagonist of Monica Ali’s debut novel Brick Lane (2003). Born in Bangla Desh, Nazneen is married at the age of 18 to 40-year-old Chanu Ahmed who lives in London. Fate plays a big role in Nazneen’s life. Rather, she allows fate to play a big role. What is the role of fate in our life? Let us examine the question with Nazneen as our example. Nazneen was born two months before time. Later on she will tell her daughters that she was “stillborn.” Her mother refused to seek medical help though the infant’s condition was critical. “We must not stand in the way of Fate,” the mother said. “Whatever happens, I accept it. And my child must not waste any energy fighting against Fate.” The child does survive as if Fate had a plan for her. And she becomes as much a fatalist as her mother. She too leaves everything to Fate which is not quite different from God if you’re a believer like Nazneen and her mother. When a man from another continent, who is more than double her age,...
6 comments
Read more

The Veiled Women

One of the controversies that has been raging in Kerala for quite some time now is about a girl student’s decision to wear the hijab to school. The school run by Christian nuns did not appreciate the girl’s choice of religious identity over the school uniform and punished her by making her stand outside the classroom. The matter was taken up immediately by a fundamentalist Muslim organisation (SDPI) which created the usual sound and fury on the campus as well as outside. Kerala is a liberal state in which Hindus (55%), Muslims (27%), and Christians (18%) have been living in fair though superficial harmony even after Modi’s BJP with its cantankerous exclusivism assumed power in Delhi. Maybe, Modi created much insecurity feeling among the Muslims in Kerala too resulting in some reactionary moves like the hijab mentioned above. The school could have handled it diplomatically given the general nature of Muslims which is not quite amenable to sense and sensibility. From the time I shi...
11 comments
Read more