“PHONETICALLY SPEAKING” To reflect the fast pace of world news, my blog is probably best served as a stream-of-consciousness text. Fast and unadulterated. With this approach, and on first encounter, text might not seem to scan. This is because I am dyslexic. Instead of keeping the proof-readers busy, I would rather let my blog updates of my visual work stand as a record of my experience of dyslexia, which I am keen that you now get to enjoy too. Unlike some news outlets, I hereby excuse myself the need for a ‘corrections’ section! The excitement of a new language is something I’m quite familiar with, and it is with this ‘joie de vivre’ that I am delighted to guide you through my thought and work processes, more phonetically (than fanatically) speaking.
TO AFZAL GURU
He climbed the steps briskly,
head held high,
greeted the hangman
with a gentle nod.
His beard grew defiant
as the hood plunged his face
in visible darkness
he remembered the judge
asking to repeat
alphabets of servitude.
Ignoring the judge,
he roared names
of forefathers who too had died
standing tall like the Himalayas.
He remembered his
mother’s tender touch,
his playful son named
after the poet, Ghalib;
his young, exuberant wife
whose mercy pleas went unheeded
in an unforgiving democracy;
faces of friends flashed by
as did houseboats on Dal Lake
the Shalimar
apple orchards in his hometown
his silly dreams
of heaven above
this playground below
where unruly children
refuse to learn
the etiquette of captivity
in rooms with no windows
only high grey walls
where they pumped petrol
into his anus to break him
as they had countless others
of same skin and soul.
His face was the color
of parched earth,
lips never ceased
reciting one last poem,
the hangman swore,
for God’s unruly children
to live forever Free.
