birthday '18

Act I – Canine

Who doesn’t love dogs? I know I do. And why do humans love dogs so much? Because dogs, in a weirdly anthropomorphic way, suffer from a feeble sense of the self.  Nothing is more gratifying to the human ego than having something or someone worship you unquestioningly, love you unconditionally and grovel constantly at your feet. And a dog’s entire existence revolves around catering to this most vulgar aspect of human nature. A dog’s love is seldom for its own kind. It reserves its love almost entirely for the humans in its life. Unless, it is kept by a particularly jealous sort of a human who teaches it to love just one and be mean to all others. Feed it, don’t feed it, beat it, lock it up, you will always find a dog begging for your affections first, and its own sustenance second. Sure, if you starve it too much, you might find it eating out of the trash one day. And while you may tut-tut at the damn thing for not having better manners, or punish it even, the dog only did what it is genetically wired to do: feed. Even in doing so, your place at the center of its universe is by no means compromised because a dog does not understand blame, or cause-and-effect.

But a dog, like all things living, has its limitations. For instance, you can’t hogtie one and throw it down a well, or abandon an inconvenient one by the wayside as you speed away chasing mirages, and then expect the mutt to come back to you by itself, as and when you want. It is not that that dog does not want to return to you; it would probably sign away its soul to perdition for a chance at coming back to you. The only problem, the manner of its repudiation at your hand dictates that the dog absolutely has no means of making the return journey. It is literally impossible as per the laws of the universe. And so, you become solely responsible, not just for the slow, miserable, often lifelong death you have condemned the animal to, but also for your own pangs of conscience and your yearnings for uncomplicated love especially when the transient possibilities you were pursuing have come to nothing.

And this applies to all dogs, mongrels or pedigreed, high-born or strays, royal or proletarian. When you steal yourself away from the center of a dog’s universe, all you leave behind is the pretense of life, wretched, loveless, brutish. And in that, at least, I am a kindred spirit to the unwanted dogs of the earth.

Act II – Duty

I am not looking for a mid-life crisis,
or expensive roller coaster rides
that will only end badly for me.

I want no part
of your cold-blooded cirque des émotions,
where you are in perpetual need
of a short-lived reprieve.

Nor do I fancy myself
the safety valve
to your pressure-cooker life.
I know full well who the first casualty will be
when that thing begins to scream.

I am fully absorbed,
curating the cemetery of my mind,
where I stumble about,
gravestone to gravestone,
mourning bits of me
that lie rotting underneath.

Act III – Requiem

While on the subject of decay, you know what continues to fester? This feeling that while you were a monster, a bastard, for having been angry when anger was all that was left to you, for all the hurt that your rage caused them, they were absolutely justified in turning a deaf ear to your helpless howls of pain, in totally disregarding the ferment inside of you that was wrecking your emotional constitution, because greener pastures beckoned to them with promising options and more attractive possibilities. For one, there are no other options in love; and if there are, it was never love to begin with but a self-indulgent market decision. And second, ever since the dawn of time, the jury has been out on what could be more offensive to a person: the faraway, spasmodic yelps of a wounded animal, or the whimsically cold, dismissive manner in which they wounded it, with the cheerful gravy of ‘I always was heartless this way’ on top. You can’t murder somebody and then go, ‘hey, I did you the favor of killing you silently, softly; did you have to make so much noise during your protracted demise?’ History is replete with examples of how people bring themselves to detest those they have wronged, dehumanizing themselves along the way; of how even the tortured breathing of the oppressed feels like lèse-majesté to the oppressor.

So, whatever you have confessed yourself to be over time, cold, selfish, narcissistic, always on the lookout for a better deal, a ‘chutiya’, in so many words, please know that it is you who has to live with yourself primarily, not even the option that is your current ego trip. It is you who has to look yourself in the mirror every day. And for someone with a different face for each and everything in their life, expediently changing with needs, desires and ambitions, one wonders whether you even recognize yourself when you do.

As for the wounded, with time, wounds become scars, and scars become friends that tell the most exciting stories. Anger, when gets too toxic for the soul, abates, leaving behind enlightenment and peace. But the facts, the facts remain as beacons to guide you for next when the fundamentally dishonest chutiya surfaces to make you doubt the foundations of your existence.

Act IV – Salud

*clink*

Act V – Curtains

Why do you stand there,
over my corpse,
looking outraged,
half a teardrop
in your eye?

Didn’t you know
when you stab someone
in the heart
they fucking die!?