Posted on 10/06/2023 (GMT 10:30 hrs)
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DATE: xx/xx/2023
AUTHOR: A moribund intellectual of a decadent society
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As I flipped through the worn-out pages of Ghalib’s shayaris, I stumbled upon this particular piece:
Alternative Translation of the Shayari: In the cage, telling me the events of the garden, don’t be afraid, friend– the one on which lightning has fallen yesterday– why would that be my nest?
I pondered sometime about the implications that this shayari has to my own condition. Everybody around me is aware what I have been going through since the past decade–everybody shunned me of as I am bankrupt . I have no one to support me. I cannot support myself since there is no job in the market-place– market of hyperinflation…a market of disappointment. My family was brutally slaughtered in the last horrific pogrom that took place in our locality. They keep on happening still.
Alas! Why did the excruciating lightning only fall upon my hitherto secured and secluded cage? Why is it me, leaving all others? Did I notice when my cage got all burnt up from the inside? Or was I pretending to be alright till now in order to preserve my comfort-zone? Yet, the burning smell contaminated my dead pulmonic function, seeping through the malleable walls of my strained cells.
I can no more see myself living in the prosperous Garden of Eden, but in an abode of forgetfulness and misery (The Hindutvavadins’ Ram Rajya?!). Satan the Bajrang has arrived not in the form of a serpent but as the lightning that befell upon the paradise of ecstasy that I once knew and admired.
Our king cannot really be seen. But yet, he can be seen through imageries, flexes, advertisements and posters. He has forgotten to achieve rajadharma santisthapanam. He, a Narcissistic megalomaniac has indulged himself in all kinds of ostentatious show of his authoritarian personality in front of our hungry population. He, suffering from intellectual anorexia, is now busy in performing cat walk on the sick ramp of an imagined nation state, i.e., India.
The king is swiftly moving on the ramp of a destroyed Indian democracy, with intellectual anorexia all around. There is no one to question the king. All are suffering from the lack of intellectuality and lack of an attitude of critical dubiety. The king lives behind a veil, being quite unconcerned with the multiple sufferings of the larger population! A Nero, down with him!
Thinking about all these, I start reading out this poem by Nirendranath Chakravarty:
Everybody can see that the king is naked but everybody keeps clapping away. Everybody shouts: bravo, bravo. some are trapped in misbeliefs, some in fear yet others have mortgaged their brains some are parasites, some deceitful yet others are hoping to benefit from nepotism some even think that the regal gown is so ethereal that it escapes our eyes, but it’s there alright why, that’s certainly possible, isn’t it?
The story is quite familiar but that story didn’t only feature sycophants and bootlickers ignoramus and cowards swindlers and con-men there was a child there too yes a child – authentic, honest and daring.
The king is out on the streets again and people burst into applause lackeys and toadies flock around him. But in this crowd of grovellers the child is nowhere to be found.
Where is the child? Is he being held hostage in a secret mountain cave? Or is it that while playing with soil and grass and stones he has fallen asleep at a river-bank – distant and silent or perhaps under the shadow of a tree?
Go find him any which way you can! Let him confront the king let him stand fearlessly in front of him let his voice drown the din of the crowd and ring out Hey king, Where are Your Clothes?
(Copyright: Ananda Publishers, Kolkata, 1971) English translation by Bedabrata Pain
We need that child. We need the voice of dissent at this hour of all-around apathy and indifference.
O King, can’t you hear my avaaz, my discordant scream, cry for help?
My not-so-loud voice seems to lose itself in the cacophonous, high-decibel sounds from the speakers emitting Mann ki Baat and the spine-chilling “Jai Shri Ram” shouts in between….
Oh no….I wished to become a financial bourgeois as a parasite, depending upon the labour of other humans, by investing in the so-called “safe” FDs since I am financially illiterate– I do not know anything about the Indian stock market, which was once controlled by a highly suspicious Himalayan Guru!
Tragically, I am nothing more than a victim of financial abuse now. Yes, I am talking about the DHFL scam⤡. A financial abuse caused by the king’s whims; a manufactured, predetermined infringement of my business-related human rights⤡.
I recall the narrative of the DHFL scam⤡ as it was put under IBC…all payments to FD holders were stopped…we couldn’t fathom what would happen of us! It was all happening so fast! Then the simulated bidding process started, with Piramal arising as the final “successful bidder”! The CoC consisting of public acted with a bias as well as prejudiced in favour of Piramal, the secondary kin of Mukesh Ambani, our king’s favourite dost! Well, even though the NCLT and NCLAT tried to change the course of events in favour of the DHFL victims, but the Piramal and CoC did not heed their calls on several occassions.
Huh…now Piramal is asserting his so-called “ownership” of the company, while I have underwent a huge haircut due to his sinful act of adverse and hostile possession by skipping legal gatekeepers. I have no words! He is a politically loved and favoured tycoon, after all! (He has an easy passage to the President’s residence, but not the dissenting ex-Governor of J&K!) Who am I? An insignificant drain-rat, living a dreadful existence! The Piramals and Ambanis have bought or will buy estates in England and the likes. They will fly off once someone tries to attack them in any manner, just like the superrich wilful defaulters whose loans were simply written off in the name of waiving off! But I will be left unnoticed, unheard, unacknowledged.
What has become of me? Where did I descend? Into unsurpassable grief and melancholy? Will I be spending the rest of my days as a pauper?
Actually, this is probably for the best. If I became a parasitic financial bourgeois, I would have accumulated Riba (haraam), thus committing a grievous sin against Allah’s merciful providence. I would be answerable to him once I reach jahannam. Although day by day, I am also losing my faith in the almighty power of the one God. I am returning to my human origins as an Earthian and member of the no-nation, no political regimented party. I have no shelter, no belongings–I am encountering nothingness. Perhaps people don’t know that the ardent followers of Islam do not take interests on their bank savings.
I cannot be selfish like this. I must also address my communal responsibilities and state my concern for others. From the egoistic I, I must move to the collective “we”-sense in this sick society that is the wounded India⤡. Yes, I am also aware that the lightning did not only strike my decorated cage but also equally took down so many countless others in the process. It has split up the earth, it has robbed our sons and daughters of all happiness and peace. The other 99% are also undergoing massive travails, are hungry, are poor, are unhappy, are committing suicide….they are looking towards the king, who seems only to be enjoying himself with his crony corporate friends.
On the other hand, I can hear the distant cries of “Bharat Jodo!”, the screams of our sports-persons, the aggressive shouts of our farmers: the sound of thunder as a blessing from the heavens. It is not a lightning that destructs, but the distant incoming thunder that will break down the king’s endearing peacock throne! I have read the Hindenburg Report, stealthily have seen BBC’s documentary on our questionable king holding his assertive scepter (sengol).
But they are being bulldozed, they are being put inside the train of death or the train of the bad omen that will topple down by leaving its tracks far behind, claiming thousands of lives as a result. [Just like the peculiar invention (they deserve the Ig Nobel Prize⤡) of the Einsteinian Pain Waves by some so-called scientists….!! They said, the pain of cows will tremble the world! Our cries also will shake the sceptre of our king!]
So what? The king remains unaffected, unperturbed.
I am writing this entry at the time of my archive-fever on my mystic pad, lest someone from the future might as well go through it in order to know what we have been through. Though it is highly doubtable whether our future generations would at all be able to survive in a space that is conducive to their growth. They can read this out only when they can survive properly- with proper resources and facilities that have not been yet sold off to Adani, Ambani or Piramal!
I have not committed even a single punishable sin throughout my life…then why am I being tortured like this? This is not my karma. This is sheer unaccountability of our ruler, total callousness on His part. He is deaf. He is mute. He is physically handicapped. Well, no. The last qualification doesn’t apply to him. He is physically fine, only that he employs his hands to take political donations or perform terror-funding and make companies go bankrupt for the benefit of his own party-funds.
The most appropriate thing that I want to appeal in this situation to the ruler is to legalize active euthanasia⤡ without further ado. Please, let us BUY and use the mechanism of death as a commodity to get away from our terrible state. All the citizens of this nation badly require it. Go ahead and your one final job is done. Do this, at least… for the sake of us. Do this as your rajadharma.
I can write no more, my brain hurts…my ears are ringing constantly…. I must take my leave now.
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