Category: satire

A Closure

I am not sure

What is A Closure?

Which everyone looks for?

Is it a signalling to end a phase of life?

Does life have such demarcations?

Before and after phases

Before school, after school,

Before marriage, after divorce?

After birth and before death

That’s the lifetime we get

We keep dividing into moments

Phases of growing up, coming of age

Falling in and out of love

Getting married, becoming a parent

Then the lonesome empty-nester

We keep drawing lines

Or adding chapters to our lives

While erasing the past which keeps

Receding faster, Doppler shifting away

Memories fade but hurt remains

We can’t get over traumas

Yet we call it PTSD

From the moment of birth to death

It’s just a few odd years

When we scale it

To the age of the Earth or the universe

We can’t even predict 

Where the grim reaper awaits us

When we will close our eyes

The curtains will fall

And the drama will end

The drama of our life

That will be the true closure

Two dates in the bracket

Will define our lifetime

And of course

The perspectives of people

Who loved to love us

And who loved to hate us

While we were caught up

In their ideas of love and hate

The drama was never ours

We were mere characters in

Lives and dramas of others

Time does strange funny things

Somewhere in the future

One might get resurrected

In some random conversations

In another drama of not our making

A dead bright leaf also gets

A chance at immortality

When someone clicks a photo

Or paints it or turns it ornamental

In the Camus Universe

Existence has no purpose or meaning

And here we are purposefully

Decimenting and reducing each other

To almost nothing

Or whatever suits us

Then we seek a closure

Closure from hurt

Only to begin again

Another drama

Hoping for forevers

Which doesn’t exist

Soon I will be gone

And so will you be

We will be either villains or heroes

In shape, perspectives and

Narrative shifting world

How about seeking a fresh start

Maybe begin again

So where were we?

Yes…A closure…

Kafkaesque II

Kafka wrote about it

Long before

World turned into

This dystopia that

Pre-dates Orwellian one

Was human condition

Predisposed to be

Such a nightmare?

Making up rules

In the favour of power

At the cost of powerless

Cohen famously sang too

“Everyone knows dice is loaded

And the fight is fixed

The good guys lose

Poor stay poor, and the rich get rich

That’s how it goes”

What kind of a matrix is this?

How do we escape

This labyrinth of our own making ?

We are the predators

We are the preys 

Perhaps, human condition

Cannot be redeemed

Even though

Christ has been crucified

Wars have been lost

Upon which religions were built

We are spiralling

Nobody knows

But yet everyone knows

Trials are punishment

You never get a sentence

For what you didn’t do.

But you were charged guilty

And given a Sisyphean task

Of proving your innocence

A lifetime is spent in seeking

Justice and freedom 

Validation and acceptance!!

Brain Fog

Best words and lines

And the flow of thoughts, ideas

Come to me while

I am walking or teaching

Or while doing some unrelated chores

And then they disappear

Brain fog I guess

Should I guilt trip myself

For not writing them down?

Or maybe a pardon is in order?

After all brain fog isn’t my fault

And it isn’t the brain’s fault either

We keep constantly overloading it

With information, emotions and sentiments

Evoked by hundreds of visuals

And narratives unfolding

Everywhere all at once

One moment we are infuriated

And next moment we laugh

We cry for a bit too

And then we are confused

Most of the time

I guess the brain too gives up on us

Thinking fast, thinking slow

Long term or short term

Cognition and metacognition

How much can it label and segregate?

Neurons too must be overworked

With all the firing and messaging

I try to remember that string of thoughts

Something that got completely lost

While I went on a scavenger hunt

Looking for war, elections and other news

Doomscrolling

I don’t remember knowing these words

During my growing up years

Brainfog, doomscrolling…

Oh wait…what was I planning

To write about?

Ufff I lost the string of thoughts again

Wonder how James Joyce and other

Stream of consciousness writers

Would have fared in this era?

Will there be a new genre?

A genre of brain fogged writings?

For writers who lose their

Stream of consciousness?

Modern Day Macbeth

We are still under the hangover of Macbeth – the play by Rajat Kapoor which was staged yesterday at Kalamandir, Kolkata. It really give hope that there are people who are voicing their dissent loud and clear!

The satire was not lost…starting with three witches being compared to Kardashians, fascism being called Karaoke Fascism, how it needs one small ‘push’ to make any person violent, how violence is the potent force that binds the society and ending with the satirical disclaimer by two jokers played brilliant by Jim Sarabh and Vinay Pathak.

Ranvir Shorey portrayed the dilemma of modern day Macbeth (who kills to become a CEO)

with troubled conscience superbly. Each dialogue was important but unfortunately much was difficult to decipher due to poor sound and our back alley seats. They made it very clear that given current state of affairs, the joke was entirely on the elitist audience!
Bravo is all I can say!!

I hope it will make people introspect what they are endorsing so easily is dangerous and the blood stain on our conscience will only grow bigger and bigger even if we try to wipe or justify it!

#macbeth #shakeaspeare #rajatkapoor #jimsarabh #vinaypathak #ranvirshorey