THE ART OF BEING A PSEUDO
By
‘rishi’
(Latha Ramakrishnan)
*[Translation of my Tamil poem captioned அம்பலம்)
When Her[His] Excellency, wielder of pen most powerful,
pushing aside the person who was to talk before,
so elegantly[ being the euphemism for arrogance] rose ,
with ever-swelling great expectations of hearing
the lilting symphony of the waves,
the soft fluttering of the wings,
the roar of thunder,
shower of flowers
deadly noise of earthquake,
the sound of boulders and rocks rolling down,
deluge and
the birth of a new world
many would have sharpened their ears
and listened intently
and some would have believed
that they did hear them all
and some others would have looked down
wondering whether Her[His] feet were touching
the ground
or that He[She] was in fact an angel,
astonished and spell-bound_
the person went on harping on the point
that She[He] as a rule never attend any meeting
and yet He[She] had chosen to come,
that She[He] as a rule couldn't find time for such meeting
and yet He[She] had chosen to attend
and on and on
with the explicit implication being
'taking pity on
He[She] went on and on
in this vain the pain of it
proving indescribable
leaving me wondering
whether it could have been taken as a great boon
given all too mercifully
or that it could indeed have pricked and stung
or that it too could have been [mis]construed as poetic lines
between lines
of course yesterday today and tomorrow
there are those
ready to interpret them as highly poetic
utter nonsense
the way some or many of those wondered
whether that which oozed out of the mouth
that kept on blabbering
was honey or ghee or sacred water,
oh, branding your ancestors my parents
your taste my intelligence
his choice her concern
and so on and so forth
not leaving anything unscathed
attacking them all as with a calculative precision
set out to slice the heads seen all around
such as the one with curly hair and the one
with no hair
the head seen and unseen
lovely head ugly head tonsured head,
that which had undergone surgery
the head born, unborn still-born
head neatly combed and head with hair entangled
so heads infinite were squeezed and smashed
demolished destroyed
all their distinct identities erased and wiped out
and all squeezed into one big ball of mass
and the bodies felled and made into
invisible corpse
and then
with the joy and satisfaction of having
Her[His] place safe and secure
as a palanquin floating on earth did He[She]
sway and move ahead
leaving the hall
heading towards the
massive auditorium well air-conditioned
where the preview of a movie
funded or produced or sponsored
by a multi-national corporate sector
was to be held,
where ascending the dais
She[He] went to the seat assigned at the corner
sure to remain there till the very end
with no intention of leaving in the middle
.jpg)
.png)
