THE ART OF BEING A PSEUDO - By ‘rishi’ (Latha Ramakrishnan)

 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