What would happen if
Two great poets went to open war?
The birds would flock astray
The night lose its stars
What then must I imagine
Of that wonderful most glorious night
When two of the best, intoxicated,
Went for the verses fight
Words as their swords
Couplets as their shields
The king as their judge
Poems each wields
Ghalib in all his arrogance
Gave himself all the glory
Zaug in all humility
Ignored the pompous story
But the king beckoned Zaug
That he should in couplets reply
Thence flew the birds astray
Thence hid the stars in the sky.
* On 2nd April 1852, Ghalib insulted the court of the last Mughal King by proclaiming himself the best poet in the empire, when in reality the king himself was an accomplished poet. Upon this the King asked Zaug to relpy and thus al night were thrown couplets on couplets at the wedding that were published in newspapers the next day.
There was once an empire
In history incorrectly shown
Its court a place of religion
Its people humans as their own
There was that old empire
Vultured by foreign religion
Eaten by ignorance
Brought down by its own
Ruled from the city of palaces
A city unrivaled in the world
Its end it met in mutiny
An emperor's ghazal's forgotten word
Ruins that were made with time
Ruins that should have been restored
But whatever that was left of it
We learnt with care to ignore.
It had its last Rajah
The last of the lost empire
Old with wisdom he was exiled
From his beloved land he loved
Zafar, what must you think?
Lying alone in a grave in Rangoon
How must you see the city now?
The city forgotten so soon.
You must wonder
What I made of it
As I often dream
Of your shining glory
Tears I must have given you
But tears also for me I made
What a wonder this city was
Look what of it I did create
Zafar, Oh! mighty Mughal
Resurrect that eluded greatness
If not in reality
Then in my dreams.
The background has a chroma screen hanging. There are two chairs at some distance from the screen. Comfortable chairs. A multitude of lights are burning from all directions keeping the two chairs as their point of focus. There is pin drop silence and a faint sound of a camera breathing and crew rolling.
On the right seat sits a well shaven man wearing a jet black suit. On the felt there is a hard faced, well poised man also wearing a beautiful carbon black suit. The two are sharing quite some amount of animation between themselves.
Right Seat: Are you trying to tell me that you actually believe everything that you are saying? And…No, hold on let me finish…and that you think that I should also be convinced?
Left Seat: All that I am saying is that you are young and naïve…And that I know this world far better then the innocent comprehensions of your mind. All that I am saying is that people like you are hired to ask questions in closed rooms like these and you attain celebrity status and start thinking that you know it all. Where let me remind you…
Right Seat: (Intrudes) I did not opt for politics, you did…and in that you and all the 499 with you have failed.
Left Seat: Failed? Are you blind! Do you think the economy was injected by a doctor?
Right seat: (Interrupts) Thanks to private ownership…You have not achieved anything except probably brutality, ignorance, sheer humbug arrogance and huge amount of individual money and power.
Left Seat: So you suggest that everyone should be given money and power?
Right Seat: Not money and power! Education! Opportunity! You should make efforts to eradicate poverty and illiteracy from the country.
Left Seat: (Outraged) Do hell with the country. Do you understand what we would make of this country if we give them all money and education?
Right Seat: Make the country more prosperous; leave its people better off. What?
Left Seat: You ignorant fuck! That would be the primary and the single most important brick in the wall of the eventuality of a bloodbath. By being deprived of some things this country is evading a civil war that now atleast to me looks eminent. All I hope to do is to prolong its beginning till whatever day I can.
We politicians are alright. But do you really think? Ask yourself this…that a mass of people who elect us year after year even though they know and see, will be able to handle confusing elements like money and education?
The whole people are damned. None deserves any better or worse then what already is. In a way they have earned their present exactly as they shall eventually earn their future.
Right Seat: (Stands up and starts to clap)
Left Seat: Don’t do that. I am alright. Those fools will elect me again. I am alright. This clapping…Save it for someone else. You are the misfit in this world not me.
He was sitting on one of the chairs. There were many. Obnoxiously lined and emitting an utterly disgusting odor of order. The room was waiting to be filled by other men as well. A flash flood of humanity in the ordained hour of this universe of a room: Thus it shall again be purged in the sweet smell of chaos.
Men
The right rib of the omnipresent
Are
The great architects of chaos
All order must thus divulge into chaos and chaos thus into order. This being the flux of all things moving imagined understood remembered escaped or merely silently forgotten. God being the mediocritic meter of animal to measure his own departure from nature.
His eyelid dropped and recovered. The blink of an eye. Water to the soil of our vision. Wiper of dreams. The future was filled in a blink. Roaring animals, laughing staring. Millions of dreams watching each other. All with their self desecrated religions, imposing their savage rudeness of misinterpreted, ever so misunderstood misunderstandings toward one another. All hail the lies of this theatre. What men shall believe!
In
The ladder of sequence of all things
Men
Were second last, just above their god
His mouth opened. Something to speak. Communication was the essence of our wars. That is our superiority. Communication and was. All animals mark their territories and trespass. It is the glad rule of nature. But no animal hails a god. None goes to war from behind masked purposes.
Thus
The man shall eventually speak
All
Else in his voice shall fall silent
And he spoke. All things quitened. His voice a music of nature. Harmony of octaves. His voice the trumpet of man. He must be heard.
They
Heard him in silence
Then
Turned white toward each other
Prisoner of surprise. He already knew. The predictability of men. They heard him and broke their silence with a vow. Threw him in the deepest dungeon of their land. Never again shall his breath meet the air that any shall breathe. Never again shall man be allowed to speak. Those animals. Men.
