To write in these times is to re-commission the last crimson, to re-reveal a part of the folded flower – a reserve of inexhaustible tenderness. To write in these times, is to rehabilitate the enduring into lands of the rational, where the sun shines tenderly in a sky of clarified thoughts.
Rallying bitterness across temporal blind spots
In an attempt to grapple with the psychological blows inflicted by Modi’s surreal win back in 2014, I wrote this:
Few weeks back, I visited a bookshop, one of my favourite daytime haunts in the town. I hastened to a rack that held all the yellow, dewy-eyed and age-struck narratives – a spectral wasteland of books. I randomly pulled out a hard bound book of poetry – after Gujarat and other poems by Seeme Qasim. This collection had poems that survived the Gujarat riots.
This was the call that I needed amidst the hysteria that had blatantly cast a scotoma – a veritable blind spot – on India’s mind. As I read the book, I realised that Indians had indeed forgotten the ‘what’ and ‘how’abouts of the riots. For an event that prematurely expired within the nation’s mind, this book is as fitting a tribute as it is a call to people like me who wonder at the efficiency with which human minds undermine a humanity-numbing ghoul of an event into yet another thing of the past.
Did this ‘thing of the past’ hit a temporal blind spot? Or is it still levitating around, between ghosts, and basic amenities, as a curvy legged, pot-bellied child? This systematic forgetfulness is not a random prodigy from the heavens; it is merely an outcome of a process that started churning from the bottom of the layers.
-30-
Copyright©Madras Courier, All Rights Reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from madrascourier.com and redistribute by email, post to the web, mobile phone or social media.Please send in your feed back and comments to [email protected]
