Wonderful nazm

“Main khwab khwab jisse dhoondta phira barson… woh ashq ashq meri aah mein samaya tha”

The one I searched for in all my dreams, never did I realize she was part of my every passionate exhalation.

- Farhat Shahzad

THE MOOR’S LAST SIGH - SALMAN RUSHDIE

MY INTERPRETATION OF THE TALE

CAST

1. Aurora De Gama- Mother India (Or the Congress)
2. Moor- Bombay (the early moor), Mumbai (the later moor)
3. Abraham - The Govt. of India
4. Raman Fielding- Bal Thakray
5. Mumbai Axis- Shiv Sena
6. Uma Saraswati- The multi- faceted problems facing and killing Moor (Bombay)
7. Scarface - Haji Mastan ( Bombay Underworld's first don)
8. Nadia Wadia- Maureen Wadia (the Beauty Queen)

STORY

This is the story of the love- hate relationship between Mother India (Aurora) and the city of Bombay (Moor). Mother India, which paints Bombay in different hues and colours; as a little child in its mother's arms or as a king in his castle or as a murderous man when abandoned by its mother (India). The early refrence to the Nargis- starrer Mother India is a clever hint that the Mother doesn't always protect and care for its child. When the child turns bad, the mother shoots it dead to rid it of its evil. The protagonist, Moor is born in a cosmopolitan city (the Bombay of yore) and country - where Cochin is more British than India, where Catholics marry Jews, where wives embrace their husbands' masculine lovers with open arms and become best friends with them; in a house where art is respected more than the artists' religion or place of birth, where anyone and everyone is welcome as long as they are good at what they do, and where Hindus guard the house (Lambajan) and manage its day- to- day affairs (Jaya He). In such a house is born our Moor, but he is not the usual child, at 6 ft. 5 inches he is as huge and towering over all other people as Bombay is richer than and supreme to all other cities. Because of his size and its prosperity, both Moor and Bombay are unliked, envied, giggled at and treated as outcasts by society. In the early Moor paintings, Moor is loved and cared for by Aurora as Bombay was by India in its early history. He has a damaged and powerful right hand, the Hindu right wing of Maharashtra, which is kept hidden in his clothes, but only till the Paradise of Bombay exists. Abraham, Aurora's husband and partner in crime is India's government, the one who does its dirty business.

The twist in the tale is the entry of Uma, the schizophrenic lover who attracts, bewitches and ultimately destroys our Moor. This character is the metaphor for the hydra- headed monster of corruption, politics, the Underworld, slums and all the ills plaguing the city. Aurora tries to prevent the Moor from falling into Uma's trap, but to no avail. India tried to cleanse Bombay of its evils, but failed, gave up and ultimately turned its scorn on the city. This is what led to the total destruction of the city, the abandonment by it own mother. That is why the late moor paintings depict the fall of the empire, the betrayal of Boabdil by mother Ayxa, the breaking of the black and white diamonds while the Mother watches in the mirror. The city and the Moor, both abandoned by their mothers fall under the aegis of the Dark side, the Evil right hand comes out of the pocket and in revenge for its loss, punches and kills everything in sight.
Darkness pervades where once there was light. Hindu fanatics (the Shiv Sena) take over the once secular, democratic city. The final blow comes when Aurora dies dancing her own dance of death (the dance of Shiva, the destroyer) atop her Kailash Parbat (Malabar Hill). This is synonymous to the fall of the Congress (in the late 1980's). Now the whole country is taken over by the right wing Hindu fundamentalists, the BJP.

Sometimes

Sometimes I wish to let go
Of the strands of sanity
Keeping my feet on the ground
To run off the illuminated roads of reason
Into the infinite clamor of chaos

Maybe I’ll find it there
Hanging from a tree
Lost in the shadows of dry leaves
Hanging upside down
Dancing to the sound of blood
Blood rushing to the top of its head

To the very center
Where madness multiplies
Cancerous in its capacity
To annihilate the thin shards of wisdom
Slowly stumbling out of the cerebella

It used to be a perfect place once
Full of farcical finalities
And sweet submissions
The ground beneath my feet moist enough
To bury my cultured corpse
Mummified by that murderous mind

Now the underworld explodes
With violent struggle for escape
Arms flailing, legs lambasting
Kicking at the frail foundations
Aching for a fresh snort
Of fantasy
A dance to the unending trance
The Tingling jingle of bells
Nagging away at the neurotic walls
Of tyranny’s temple

Blood will be lost
And blood will freeze
Only to condense
In a cacophony of clarity
To set the silent night on fire
To drown the din of desire
In a stringy symphony
Of shadows surreal
Your eyes would be dazed
By the might of light
Emerging from the retinas of
My rectitude
And your ears will burst
From the sound of my solitary recital

Don’t say I didn’t warn you
Don’t plead forgiveness
On the tarmac of my take off
For trespassers will be crushed
With the demonic glee of insanity
Burning in the enigmatic engines of escape
And your screams will drown
In the fluid frenzy
Of my freedom flight!

WRITING

The seeds had been sown long ago. Hour spent alone in the school library – immersed in other lives, other thoughts, other worlds altogether. The quest for meaning in a sea of confusion. Living via those people was so much easier. Their actions could be justified, thoughts analysed, motivations understood so easily compared to my own complex mess. Moreover, it was a world I inhabited, where I could enter and exit anytime – uninhibited, unnoticed. A shadow roaming the city alone at night, watching the multitude of stories unfold. Interested by curiosity, yet insulated by my being. But the thought that I could stall the copious stream of thoughts and ideas in my mind and create an entire being – a living, breathing story or poem ; that thought I never paid heed to. It was there at the back of my mind, biding its time, maturing with every changing season. One day, I could not resist it anymore. The barrage broke and thoughts became words and words became poetry. All by itself, my mind gave structure to it. Lovingly, with great caution, like a potter making his first clay pot, I nurtured and embellished it. What pleasure I derived from looking at it, only I could experience, feel it throbbing in my pulse. It did not matter what others thought of it. The inkling that it might be influenced by others stopped bothering me. I revelled in the process and the outcome never failed to excite me. Slowly, at my own unhurried pace, I go about writing my thoughts, pouring drops of my life into the inanimate world of paper. Not too much, but enough to spew my venom, to spread my fragrance.

THE CITY

The city.....it shapes me...breaks me ...every morning I wake up to it...lying in my bed...like a reluctant lover....who has given me a glimpse of her mysterious beauty...a window to the many enigmas contained in her, then abruptly shut me off at the last moment...Sometimes, a seductress alluring the youthfulness in me with a whiff of her perfume....Sometimes, a masseur to my troubled mind....I revel in the coy joy of having lived inside her all these years...the familiarity with her anatomy lulls me into sweet sleep...Suddenly I wake up to a part of her I never knew existed...brutal, violent...yet being pumped by the same heart that so lovingly cradles my childlike existence....my city...”my muse, my whore, my beloved”....I won’t be the same man in another city....my city would be the same without me...I am just one of the many offshoots of her humungous body...my ephemeral being can’t stand up to her permanence....but it can learn from it...learn to live...live with multiple meanings inside it...carry a bouquet of multi-coloured flowers in her lap...love all conflicting, fighting parts of me as much as the whole of me...and be in complete harmony with my many restless inhabitants.

IT WASN’T A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT….

“It was not a dark and stormy night, but quite the opposite actually”. Now that was something different, something ‘hatke’- a word used so often by those fat slobs at the publishing houses, that it had inadvertently registered itself at the back of Ruhaan’s head. What did they know about literature- could they even tell apart their Tolstoys from their Bhagats? COMROMISE. That was their crack cocaine. Nothing like an eye- catching sentence to begin a novel. Follow it up with a few pages of Bollywood- style masala and the readers are hooked. Then put in whatever literary rubbish you wish to, who cares. The publisher gets his bestseller and you realize the long cherished dream of your first novel in print.
Oh ! To think of people like them; sitting in their plush, air conditioned offices, thinking of cheap little tricks to sell a few thousand more copies of a book at the expense of Literature; governing the fate of writers like him. It used to drive him mad. But now it only brought a smirk to his face. 7 long years of rejections had finally gotten to him.
With this- “the perfect first line”; he began to write (or rather rewrite) the story of his life, not exactly as he had dreamt.

THIS DAY

This day, this hour, this moment…..this moment of loss….of unrealized dreams….of an unclear future…..is the purest, the most natural of all moments…..where the clouds of fake dreams burn before my very eyes and rise up in smoke and burn….burn and scream and die- a slow, anti- pheonixian death. The poison which they were hitherto spreading within me, intoxicating my senses is now powerless in front of my soul…..My soul which, hidden from my own eyes….lay quietly, patiently…..waiting to be seen heard felt……. breathing life into my life…..This soul is now set free….it is flying…and I am flying with it…..flying in the cold mountain air…bathing in the icy blue waters of the ocean….breathing from the moist green grass…and LIVING…..Let the damn world be damned!!