Welcome to the Preview

How does this stream of thought flow?

Words like Italian Stallion or Jockey may appeal youthful festivity- loving coy moments but at a ripe age experiential Tiresias prompts one from the wings, as the Sane jester decides to gyrate away from the script, baffling the writer, spectators, and at times even the performer- connotatively unraveling the immense possibilities that surface in the penumbral interface that prompted the Canadian Poet Novelist Margaret Atwood to write ‘Negotiating With The Dead’- two years after she bagged the 2000 Booker Prize; wherein she analyses various facets of writer – both in the conceptual stage and through birth- throes, and the creative process as well as the metaphors poets and fiction writers have used .
  

Writer as performer of roles, a person seen as gifted who is at the same time giving the gift to readers in a just shaped packaging. Once the text is set, writer goes on vacation but traditional tale teller lives the situation: improvises, revises though he too can’t turn back
  

Words of Ghalib, Gaib say aatay hain mazameen or even the four-letter Word Muse tell the complete story only when brought under microscopic examination of the wide range of knowledge man of today is equipped with. Words of our poet laureate Rehman Rahi ‘Shaar vanun chho dil pannun taavi tallun te baegeroen’ convey a sensitive aspect of writing and the writer, as do the ecstatically apt lines ‘laiye chaane be loole zaboor gewaan, hai kaashri zevi! Me chhay chhaani derie’ of jalwe te zaboor' about language.
  

Alphabets, ever since day one emerged as codes in the evolutionary process of Homo sapiens and reading the written words a decoding activity. Pen and book; qalum and saheefa of God and paradoxically Devil too has a big black book of contract for penning in blood names of the enlisted Faustian. Prophets told tales and parables.
  

Twilight time stories or that of bards, singing minstrels, professional story tellers in the era of oral tradition have receded past and newer experiments undertaken from the times of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales to that of SR’s Haroons Sea of Stories are unfolding the inexhaustible potential of playing with words and technique. Alice is no more in the wonderland, Hatim no more confined to Tai now, not all 1001 stories begin with Alif. Tess doesn’t live in a named village as world has emerged to be a global village and Genomic Sci-fiction beyond Mars wades through layers of psyche where myth of yesteryears is becoming the reality of tomorrow, erasing impermeable boundaries we had set in past. Graying of the Golden boy Dorian- when the conscience pictured on canvas is knifed tells of newer dimensions now.
 

Stream of thoughts flowed thus yesterday when I returned back home to find a mail from a reader "…tell me  something about yourself …", though apparently a simple demand, wasn’t easy for me first, till at the end the following poem took shape- that I present today’s write up:

The doorbell is not working
And a call will sound rustic
So a gentle tap will do
But watch out

If the lights are on
The lost man might be rummaging
Albums, anthologies or even his very skull
..... Images are his pursuit, you know
Or may be
In some corner
Torn asunder
He might be
Stitching his shirt or wounds
So wait for a moment and let him finish.

If the lights are out
And the night lamp winks
He might be dragging on a cigarette
While his bored wife sleeps
With her face towards the wall
  (. . .  there is another possibility if
    The other woman kindles the fire. . . .)
So wait for a moment and. . . . .

An impatient tap will annoy him
If the sound slashes his dream
And brings back
The same old office
Where he works to keep himself alive
A little longer
So wait for a . . .

If you hear voices
Then he might be
Exchanging sizzling words with anybody
. . .. Senile parents, volatile wife, growing kids
Or even with him self.
Beware.
If silence greets know that
He doesn’t want to talk
Even to the ones invited
. . . not that he is meditating
Or hearing voices from above
For he grudges even words
Those speak in silence
So make no sound then.

If a whistle is heard
Don’t think he struts in the mirror
After combing the henna-dyed hair
May be he just sits and shits?
As the newspaper and the whistle
Both together
Help him clear the bowels in time.
So . . . . .  . . .

This is the daily job- chart
This is how the days and nights pass
This is how every visitor is briefed
Who shows the inclination to
SEE ME.
The door bell is not working
And a call will sound rustic
So a gentle tap will do
But watch out . . . . . .