It’s 3:50 am, a cold November morning. Yet the well lit large room is already packed. On the colourful stage sits a Mr Greyhaired with checkered shirt and jaw-cart resembling early Neanderthals. The other old man sitting nearest to the stage must be in his late 70s. He is wearing a black fake fur ear cap above his fragile shoulders where a marigold garland hangs. The third contemporary, sandwiched between the stage and the side wall is older and thinner with a visible jaw-less jawline. He is wearing a Nehru cap above a white kurta. The remaining three comrades complete the bandwagon of enchanters. Around them is a room full of people: old, young, men, women, kids, eloquent, sluggish, mirthless and chirpy.
Notice the fake fur among marigold garland and moving chimtaa
As Chagrin paves way & fancies don’t weigh your wings of ice melt when burning sun is felt when surreal succumbs and real triumphs the wound deepens, the belief steepens
Visions are miraculous, reality ferocious your world is a mime, a dozen a dime absent is withal and obligations fatal the energy subsides, the fate decides
As betrothal shapes & melancholy craves your persona begets as anima regrets When wings are severed, limbs butchered the interior drools, the exterior rules
Then epilogue nears, an ode to fears Your carnal erodes and platonic reloads the frame collapses, the gravestone relaxes you visit often, but see yourself forgotten ...
What do you want to be? What do you want to see? How do you want to be heard? A confusing mix of prejudice, olfactory, aural and visual parodies and social kinaesthetic are the (seemingly) end products of our sensory and social protocols. The masses- despised and prioritised alike in the books of history- always lost their voice for the wake of a revolution. The elite- feigning and heathened by the masses got their larynx and word heard across ages, catalysing revolutions and catastrophes equally. Then there is a third voice, unheard and unseen, the voice of ventriloquists. In the want of maintaining the fulcrum of real balance, these voices left unnamed, mute. Paradoxically, it is these aural altars of sacrifices, commitments that deserve –from neo-natal to posthumous-ovations of human and inhuman. Fortunately for them and unfortunately for us, they could never get their undemanded, unasked and unexpected share of tribute. It is these voices that I vow and bow to. It is these voices that I want to get noticed. The silence that you live in, is the most intense and deafening enlightenment, in chasing which, you make most of the most atrophic resonances from your vocal chords. For the uncomprehending nobodies, it is the silence of an umbilical cord that balances the fulcrum of most divine creation. It is the serene silence of night, that holds the fulcrum between nocturnal sagas and sunlight humdrums. It is the silence of God, that balances the fulcrum of religion and survival. The silence of creation, used as ventriloquist’s tool, balances the quintessential apparatus till destruction.
What began with big bang, came to us with a protozoon and is taking us to apocalypse is but a mere puppetry of ventriloquists, sound and un-succumbing to their share-takers. The point at the core-heating and waiting to unleash- is the irony of these voices. Playing the roles that nobody told them to play, these voices have been pried upon since they began to speak. But as the world is approaching its cataclysm, its intelligence is burgeoning and its emotiveness is ballparking. So while we await our individual, societal, civilisation and conscientious end, it will be conducive to identify what kept us going so far: the ventriloquists. Heeding us, feeding us, nurturing us, creating us and destroying us; these voices have become strained. Therefore the usual silence they created with their sounds is getting eerier. Balancing the fulcrum, their throats- the working mnemonics for origin of universe, mankind, society, communication and culture- are getting drenched and parched. They are getting HOLLOWER. But poor forms of life that we are, instead of feeding and heeding them, we stuffed them with our inefficacies and lethargy. Instead of the healers that they wanted us to be, we became their fatal taxidermists. But as these throats are getting more and more stuffing, the silent eloquent balance they maintained is fading. The fulcrum is penchanting towards destruction: from morals to man to masses to mankind. While nothing can be done, (or worst: undone) it is agreeable to rationally and shamefully acknowledge the deceptive imagery-cum-motion-picture ... the ‘Maaya and Mithya’ that we created to masquerade us to doom. Let us analyse our individual apparatus and the balances and accept the brutal assaults that we made to sodomise the ventriloquist throats. Let us- till we are pulled from predicament of penultimate to the wholesomeness of the ultimate- be thankful, obliged and equally remorseful to the balancing chords of unspoken throats. Let us be remembered –with our genocides and thoughtlessness- for our boldness and confessions.
I ask again: What do you want to be? What do you want to see? How do you want to be heard?
