By Awrup Sanyal for AlalODulal.org
So, what do we do now?
Should we reach out,
with sleepy eyes,
groping hands,
in the nascent darkness of the morning,
and stop the alarm that heckles our peaceful sleeps? Should we
cut the cacophony? Should we, in the ensuing abrupt silence of a still sleeping world,
drag ourselves out of our refuge and carry our mortal weight to stand under the pale fluorescence of the mirror light
and look at the face looking back at us? Should we
then just stare at the misshapen cartography of our faces and pretend all’s well?
Should we not peel away the scales from our eyes and see
the throbbing trauma of our collective histories?
Talking about history: why do we read them
without looking underneath the words
where other words lie
upon other words, upon other words? Or, is it just too much work?
Or, have we agreed
on the reading of it? Have we decided
on which sides of the histories we are on?
Perhaps.
That makes sense. That makes absolute sense. It makes it easy
to not see what we don’t want to see.
Convenience, huh!
I get it. You get it. We all get it. Should we just
go about our ablutions and go back
to living the rigmarole that our lives are? The ignorance
that are lives are? The petty pursuits that our lives are? The entrenched
divisions that we are all hunkered in, should we go back to that?
Us and them. In and out. Whiteys and darkies, and brownies.
Muslims and Mormons, Hasidics and Hindus, Christians and not-so-Christians, is that
how it is? Binaries? Fragments? Fragmented, fragmented, fragmenting?
Are we just supposed to, in utter seriousness, go back to writing our papers,
go back to preparing the rhetoric,
go back to switching on the machines in our factories,
go back to ensuring that our production lines are running,
go back to ensuring that our brands are being distributed
into the homes, of the people, of this earth, and go back to
eating our eggs boiled, fried, or, poached,
go back to planting kisses on proffered cheeks
of upturned faces
of our daughters and sons
who believe we are there for them no matter what
to protect them,
go back to driving our cars, riding our buses, commuting, walk, running,
go back to drinking our chais, our lattes, our whisky sours, go back to
dusting the dusts of the dusty roads of our booming, shopping-malled
megapolises, go back to
looking at passersby with no particular intensity other than a little loathe
sometimes or some envy now and then or
simple grudges that we grumble away silently in our heads without them ever knowing,
go back to not seeing battered bodies of the not-so-lucky who sleep under the line,
elegantly called, the poverty line, go back to
pandering to our bosses to finagle that special recommendation, that extra leave, that much-needed raise
so that, we can, on our way back stop at the mall, buy something
delicious, something special
for celebrations back home? Is that what
we should go back to doing?
Just pretend that nothing has happened, or nothing out of the ordinary at least? Or
is it that we are ordinary and ordinary things are meant to happen
to us. Please. Pray. Tell.
Tell me, tell her, tell him, tell us.
Tell us what we should do? And what should we do? Yes,
you make sense. You make absolute sense. Perfect sense.
Nonsense. These questions, these ruminations, these doubts, these whatevers.
Such waste of time.
Our short lived lives,
our linear lives can’t stop, ponder, pontificate, and peruse
the depths of uncharted waters of muddled and meddled histories of
who did what, when, why, and where.
I get that.
We have to keep walking,
reach the end before the end reaches us. Oh,
it is already gotten so late, it always does when we give space
to ennui. Such waste of time.
So much of nothing has been achieved
by nobodies, in this nowhere places we call
our homes, heritages, cultures, nations, governments. We
will, I swear, kill for such nothingnesses
that we have achieved over so many centuries of war and plunder, and,
and, slavery, yeah slavery, and plunder, and companies, and corporations, and oil, and land, and spices, and, and greed.
I am losing it, or have we already lost it?
Yeah! Greed. Oh God, greed, beautiful golden greed!
We must admit it feels nice
to respond
to that greed.
It fills us with satisfaction. Makes meaning for our lulled, dulled, fuddled minds. Yes, yes, and yes. We will
outrun, outshout, outnumber, outwit, outsmart, everyone
and gratify that beautiful golden greed
that nestles
precious
like an egg
inside us.
–
SUNDAY, 3 JULY 2016
আলাল ও দুলাল | ALAL O DULAL 