Elephant Jokes, Tequila Shots.

To M and to S, who left. I miss you already.

And if there really is
A heart of the matter,
Then it is broken along the same lines
That all hearts break.
Along your loss,
Along the vital absences
Of your warming laughs,
Along the quickening pulses
Of our shared jokes,
Along the stimulating togetherness
Of alchohol.

And if there really is
A point to this poem,
Then it is lost along the same way
That all points are lost.
Along my daily latte,
Along the friendly frenzy
Of our nightly dances,
Along the orange restaurants
Of our favourite custom,
Along the way of your days here
That seemed so short.

***

And a piece of this poem by Alexander McCall Smith, which seems to have been written for this moment.

But what breaks the heart the most, I think,
Is the knowledge that what we have
We all must lose; I don't much care for denial,
But if pressed to say goodbye, that final word
On which even the strongest can stumble,
I am not above pretending
That the party continues elsewhere,
With a guest list that's mostly the same,
And every bit as satisfactory;
That what we think are ends are really adjournments,
An entr'acte, an interval, not real goodbyes;
And perhaps they are, dear friends, perhaps they are.

-Alexander McCall Smith
"The World According to Bertie"

***

In Forums Like These

To Cheriyan Alexander

You probably don't remember me, and I have no claim to your memory except one that I am ashamed of, and I still wonder how it was that you kept so calm that day in class, when I called Emily Dickinson's poem trite; I still remember the poem. It was 'A Narrow Fellow in the Grass'. You probably thought that I knew no better. But I did. That is the worst of it. I knew that I had no business saying what I did, using the word 'trite' for Emily Dickinson, for Emily Dickinson's poem, no less.

I still wonder what made me do it, what rebel-without-a-cause feeling made me want to seek that horrible sort of attention. Not that I had any sort of feeling about the poem, really, not then. Just that I wanted to have an opinion, preferably a controversial one, to air.

But I will take this opportunity to apologise, even if you will never see this, and if you do, you will neither remember nor care. Because you, and Arul and Etienne, in those 200 hours of poetry and popular music, opened up a world that may be routine for some folks, but to me, was magic; to me, was all the peaceful dissent of the world, was all its angry protest, was all its arts and faiths and voices, was all the dread of a world gone wrong, was all the hope of a world that could be, was in short, the place from which all my sense of the world derived.

One of my cherished few minutes of the twentieth century fiction course was a class where we were discussing 'No Longer at Ease', and talking about Nigeria's vicious circle of oppressed becoming oppressor. And a sort of terror took hold of me, and I asked Etienne, "But if that is true, then there is no hope for Nigeria, and other countries like Nigeria?" And Etienne said, "Of course there is. In forums like these."

Terry Pratchett

I cannot figure out if I like Terry Pratchett or not. Maybe he is an acquired taste, but until I acquire that taste, well. I know he has some sort of a cult following, so I may be an outcast among those who affect his brand of fantasy and humour, but I'll just have to live with that, won't I?

I don't really like Discworld, period.

Where else could you belong, except in the place you refused to leave?

With recourse only to CNN, it is inevitable, especially over the weekend, that some current affairs permeate through to my consciousness, woefully ignorant as I am of world news/history. These two features that I saw today, touched me deeply.

One was the story of the surviving Jews in Yemen. Articles on the net put the number of Jews left in Yemen today anywhere between 200 and 500; about 45000 were flown to Israel in the 1950s Operation Magic Carpet.

The second was the story of the incredible odds facing Buddhist monks in China and in Burma.

Both the Jews and the Buddhist monks want little- a place to call home and in which to practise their faith. A a place that they will never leave, or be asked to leave.

Where else could you belong, except in the place you refused to leave?
-The Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh