Categories
Essay

Hesse’s Siddhartha: Towards a Shadowless Present

Dan Meloche revisits a hundred-year-old classic by Herman Hesse that is based on Buddhist lore

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962). Courtesy: Creative Commons
He who binds to himself a joy 
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies 
Lives in eternity's sunrise. 
– Eternity, William Blake(1757-1827)

Blake challenges his readers to move beyond everyday existence and delve “out of time” into the eternal presence of a moment. In Hermann Hesse’s novel published a hundred years ago, Siddhartha (1922), the titular character embarks on a similar quest to break the bonds of temporality and move towards eternity and spiritual awakening. The bonds that tie him to the temporal include relations with family, friends, a lover, a business associate, and holy men. The latter include Brahmins, Samanas, and the Buddha: all of whom provide unsatisfactory direction with knowledge that, ultimately, becomes useless and distorted by time’s passage. For Siddhartha, relying on temporally bound advice, from temporally bound humans serves no advantage when aspiring to the eternal.

Early in the novel, a dream suggests Siddhartha’s aspiration. Whereas Blake symbolises the eternal with a sunrise, Hesse uses the vast, ever-flowing permanency of a river: “Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to him from the river.” Called by the river to the eternal, Siddhartha begins to detach from all relationships that bind him to history and time. To experience the eternal present, Siddhartha must unbind from both his father and son, suggestive, respectively, of past and future.  With these, and other detachments, Siddhartha untethers from the temporal attachments to produce the “readiness of soul” necessary to experience the eternal present.

In the opening chapter, Siddhartha’s spiritual restlessness evokes its most profound exhortation in his defiance of his father, a holy Brahmin. By leaving home, Siddhartha separates himself from his past and rejects a life pledged to holy books and learning. More than youthful rebellion, Siddhartha’s defiance represents a repudiation of book learning and the Brahmins as “they did not know the one important thing.”  As they anchor knowledge in the past, books and learning have no use to Siddhartha, who seeks to transcend the time continuum.  Unbound from the twin anchors of his past, his father and the Brahmins, Siddhartha joins a group of ascetics, the Samanas, with his friend Govinda.

Continuing his journey to the eternal, Siddhartha pores himself into the experiential exercises associated with asceticism: thinking, waiting, and fasting. With seeming ease, Siddhartha perfects his practice. Yet, he rejects practices that serve only as a “temporary palliative” that could be learned “more quickly and easily in every inn in a prostitute’s quarter, amongst the carriers and dice players.”

Produced and subsequently distorted in the temporal realm, the Samanas knowledge is insufficient to produce the awakening Siddhartha craves. Further, were he to heed the wisdom of holy men and ascetics, he would only further bind himself to the temporal realm from which he seeks escape.

Leaving the Samanas, Siddhartha fortifies his belief in the uselessness of knowledge. Not even Govinda’s enthusiasm to see a charismatic spiritual leader can dissuade Siddhartha from his well-formed belief. When the Buddha’s popularity grows, Govinda’s interest to hear the Illustrious One is met with Siddhartha’s resignation. Uninterested in learning from holy men, Siddhartha confronts the Buddha by stating that “nobody finds salvation through teachings.”  That is, the Buddha’s awakening is an incommunicable event experienced outside of time which cannot be taught or duplicated. Therefore, trying to explain “in time” that which occurred “out of time” is futile. In addition to rejecting the Buddha’s teachings, Siddhartha further unbinds himself from his past by leaving his friend, Govinda, as he bids him well: “May you travel this path to the end.”

Limited by temporal bonds, Govinda’s path to wisdom and knowledge has a reachable end. However, for Siddhartha, such confinements represent obstacles to moving outside of time. Parting from Govinda, Siddhartha further detaches from his personal history and associations to time. Only by releasing himself from the temporal can he prepare himself for communion with the eternal. Continuing alone, Siddhartha avails himself of a spiritual moment and is transfixed by the permanency of nature. This meditative glimpse of the eternal anticipates his goal: communion with the unity of all things.

However, the path to enlightenment is rarely straight as sexual desire stalls Siddhartha’s journey towards timelessness.  Powerless to the charms of the beautiful courtesan Kamala, Siddhartha loses all yearnings for spiritual ascendancy and returns to temporality and the material world. To pay for his tutelage in the sexual arts, Siddhartha masters commercial trade to generate income. Disdainful of the mastery and accrual of money, Siddhartha attaches no value to his gains as he squanders his wealth gambling. Burdened by temporality, Siddhartha wears a discontent wrought by unhealthy attachments: “the soul sickness of the rich crept over him.”

Mastery of the sexual arts leads to a comparable weariness as the limitation of his passion with Kamala is mutually understood: “People like us cannot love.” In their loveless union, Siddhartha and Kamala desperately try “to extract the last sweet drop of fleeting pleasure.” As pleasure evaporates, so does Siddhartha’s desire to remain committed to the temporally bound pursuit of love. Feeling spiritually deprived by the pursuits of sex, money, and possessions, Siddhartha clearly sees the absurdity of time-bound relationships. Just as his loveless romance withers, his possessions of a mango tree and a garden are also deflating. To Siddhartha, how can nature, the image of eternity, be possessed?

Spurred by a dream of a dead bird, Siddhartha leaves everything to sit by a river and evaluate his life’s worth and considers a permanent unbinding from the suffering associated with temporal existence: “He looked down and was completely filled with a desire to let himself go and be submerged in the water.” Unfulfilled by all temporal desires, Siddhartha gambles with higher stakes: the desire for death. Having tried, and even mastered, engagement in the temporal domain, Siddhartha found it to be “a troubled spring of deep water”. In his moment of crisis, Siddhartha finds no solace in holy words, but is restored by the wordless, echoed distillation of the eternal, the universe’s vibration, the Om. The troubled waters of temporality then become the life-giving force of an eternally flowing river. Siddhartha recognises the river as his portal to the eternal: a place he “would not leave it again so quickly”.

On his way to the permanent harbour by the river, Siddhartha finds the ferryman, Vasudeva. The humble, taciturn ferryman becomes Siddhartha’s spiritual guide. Although Siddhartha claimed after meeting the Buddha, “no other teachings will attract me,” he finds in Vasudeva a teacher who directs rather than preaches. Vasudeva’s singular precept: “Love this river, stay by it, learn from it.” Sharing ferrying duties, Siddhartha permanently settles at the river’s edge to receive Vasudeva’s help with unbinding from one final temporal link.

After the Kamala’s death, Vasudeva returns to the ferrymen’s hut with Siddhartha’s son, who reacts with tantrums and runs away. Unnaturally loquacious, Vasudeva recounts Siddhartha’s life and experience and points out that to find home, one must leave home. Unpursued, the boy leaves Siddhartha with a “burning wound”. To extinguish this fiery pain, Siddhartha needs direction from Vasudeva, who becomes less man and more deity: “that this motionless man was the river itself, that he was God himself, that he was the eternal itself.” Carrying on with his ferrying duties, Siddhartha witnesses the love between others and feels jealous. This vanity compels him “one day, when the wound burned violently”, to follow his desire to find and make up with his son. Before binding himself again to temporality, Vasudeva instructs Siddhartha to seek counsel with the river. Standing before the river, ready to be relieved of his suffering, Siddhartha receives the river’s unequivocal response: “It laughed! It laughed clearly.” From the river’s eternal perspective, individual desire and suffering have little consequence to the limitless expanse of experience that comprises the unity of all things.

Further instructed to look into the river, Siddhartha not only sees images of his father, his lover, and his friend, but hears the multitude of sorrows, yearning, and suffering of humankind that coalesce into the “song of a thousand voices.” This song, representing “all things” beyond the temporal blends into the eternal perfection that is Om. With the extinguishing of Siddhartha’s “burning wound,” his final bind to the temporal is broken. Emptying all his pain and history into the river, Siddhartha is fully unbound from temporal existence thereby liberating his soul to the eternal.

In the novel’s final chapter, Siddhartha reunites with his friend, the still questing Govinda, who has sought out the mysterious wise man by the river. Siddhartha convinces his old friend that time is not real. Inspired by Siddhartha’s peacefulness, Govinda solicits inspirational advice. Unwilling to limit explanation with mere words, Siddhartha offers to share with Govinda a glimpse into the eternal. As Govinda bows to kiss Siddhartha’s forehead, he witnesses the parade of humankind (babies, murderers, and lovers) in the thousand-fold permutations of love, hate, birth, and death.

Authenticated by the experience of sharing the eternal present with Govinda, Siddhartha represents a fully awakened being. Whereas Govinda had been confounded by seeking a specific end goal, Siddhartha focused on the readiness of soul that comes with unbinding from temporal relationships, riches, and knowledge. Released from the time-bound continuum, Siddhartha releases his suffering into the channel of eternity that the river represents. Only by experiencing the suffering associated with temporal existence can Siddhartha then unbind to move outside the shadows of both the past and future into the eternal shadowless present.

Dan Meloche is a full-time professor at Algonquin College in Ottawa. When he isn’t teaching English, social psychology, and economics, he reads widely and writes reviews and personal account essays

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Categories
Poetry

Seasons in the Sun

Poetry by Michael R Burch

Courtesy: Creative Commons
SUN POEM

I have suffused myself in poetry
as a lizard basks, soaking up sun,
scales nakedly glinting; its glorious light
he understands—when it comes, it comes.

A flood of light leaches down to his bones,
his feral eye blinks—bold, curious, bright.

Now night and soon winter lie brooding, damp, chilling;
here shadows foretell the great darkness ahead.
Yet he stretches in rapture, his hot blood thrilling,
simple yet fierce on his hard stone bed,

his tongue flicking rhythms,
the sun—throbbing, spilling.


POPPY
(“It is lonely to be born.” – Dannie Abse (1923-2014)“The Second Coming”)

It is lonely to be born
between the intimate ears of corn . . .
the sunlit, flooded, shellshocked rows.

The scarecrow flutters, listens, knows . . .

Pale butterflies in staggering flight
ascend the gauntlet winds and light
before the scything harvester.

The winsome buds of cornflowers
prepare themselves to be airborne,
and it is lonely to be shorn,
decapitate, of eager life
so early in love’s blinding maze
of silks and tassels, goldened days
when life’s renewed, gone underground.

Sad confidante of worm and mound,
how little stands to be regained
of what is left.
                        A tiny cleft
now marks your birth, your reddening
among the amber waves. O, sing!

Another waits to be reborn
among bent thistle, down and thorn.
A hoofprint’s cleft, a ram’s curved horn
curled inward, turned against the heart,
a spoor like infamy. Depart.
You came too late, the signs are clear:
whose world this is, now watches, near.
There is no opiate for the heart.
Claude Monet’s The Poppy Field near Argenteuil (1873). Courtesy: Creative Commons

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into fourteen languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, and set to music by seventeen composers.

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Categories
Poetry

 Poetry by Allison Grayhurst

Allison Grayhurst
NOW

When will it be?
The white bird says now,
the backyard sleepers, eaters,
say now
and the souls that left
and the souls that arrived
are deep in the immediacy
of an overpowering change
that will guide the current into the sea,
a coral reef barrier prosperity
a summer like a summer never
before -- blessed, pulsing with an infant
eternal song, glorifying the dissolving shapes,
the empty spaces now made complimentary,
now made into a rippling harmony singing.
When will it be?
It is, says the voice. 
Close your eyes. Open them
and see.

INHERITANCE

The end is almost here,
rises like a blessing 
like a storm, demanding
my commitment,
to go inside, hide and pray.

The end overthrows
the engrained pattern, arrests
the spread of illness and holds
the future like a tiny turtle in an egg,
struggling out of its shell.

The end is an escape route, a mind
losing consciousness, asking to be caught
before the body lands on unpolished
concrete floors, deprived of a buffer, asking
for a soft act of grace, holding, a reminder
that love exists even under the executioner’s hood.

The end is happening like forgiveness happens,
a miracle stronger than duty and grief, 
strongest of all efforts -- 
a clean slate, consolidating 
each action, blanketing over 
every direction 
to and away from home.

REFORMATION

I am tackling my circumstances
void of myth or the fallacy
of wishes.
I am trying to see straight even
if I must murder my own liberty,
harpoon my freedom and go under.

I am not sure what capacity I am asked
to carry. I see the escape road but I cannot
take the road if it leaves my loved ones
in jeopardy -- parachute strings cut, plane
door open at high altitude.
So I must go back, bend over, pick up sticks, stones,
ache all over, unable to sleep or find a resting position
without pain. Unless

the gift of mercy comes, soon, today,
supplies unload, compassion arrives and strips me
of this brutal incremental starvation and I can
stand as I stand today,
unencumbered by the load, unashamed
of my joy -- no void of debt and doom 
slicing through my budding strength. 
If the gift comes it will come as grace,
undeserved but a fact of God’s great glory,
my house will be furnished and the way forward
will be cleared, blessed, at last and finally
certain.

Allison Grayhurst has more than 1300 poems published in over 500 journals, and 25 poetry books. She lives in Toronto.

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Categories
Review

Re-deciphering the Human

Book Review By Basudhara Roy

Title: Burn the Library and Other Fictions

Author: Sunil Sharma

To embark on a relationship with a meaningful collection of short fiction is to hone one’s awareness of the world that shapes us and is, in its turn, shaped by us. A well-conceived short story is a sharp ray of light that undertakes to illuminate a particular plane of the compound and poly-faceted experience that reality will always be. Urging us to concentrate on that angle alone,  the short story crucially assists in peeling off our familiarity with life at that point of being and invites us to locate new meaning in what we might have long known.

In the company of Sunil Sharma’s Burn the Library and Other Fictions, a collection of twenty dense pieces of short fiction, one is on a riveting journey into the physical and psychological entrails of a society that is blissfully absorbed in plotting the architecture of its own doom. Sunil Sharma is an academic from Mumbai who has relocated to Toronto post-retirement. Acutely conscious of the subtle but definite ways in which social life, interaction and communication are being endangered by stereotypes, prejudices, capitalist strategies, ICT, artificial intelligence, eroding faith, self-doubt and the surrender to myopia, Sunil Sharma attempts, in these tales, to not merely draw our attention to what ails us as a society but also offers valuable possibilities of grace and redemption.

Ranging in form from flash fiction to full-length short stories, the themes in this collection are eclectic. Dreams, conjugal relationships, diasporic intimacy, the plight of migrants, women and elderly people, the breakdown of the family, the disruption of social cohesiveness and harmony, the threat of being transformed from consumers to victims of hyper-functional gadgets, and the consistent search for meaning amidst life’s ruins contour this collection through angst, satire, tenderness and hope. 

What immediately draws one towards Sharma’s style is his capacity for intricate observation and his incisive, almost brutal honesty in his descriptions. Here is a writer who does not hesitate to call a spade a spade without resort to satire, irony or humour to dilute the effect of his statements. In fiction where it is easy to camouflage and refract ideas, Sharma impresses and inspires by keeping critique frank and unencumbered by location, ideology or craft.

In ‘Love: Beyond Words’, the reflective narrator-husband observes:

“Our worlds, exclusive, were held together by an arranged marriage and later on, by the kids only…like rest of the middleclass Indians. Two perfect strangers brought together by common practices who discovered each other in initial years of marriage and then lost by the pressures of work and antiromance conditions of our living in an Indian metro…like others of our ilk.”

In the poignant flash fiction ‘Skeleton in the Attic’, once the skeleton has been identified as that of the paternal grandmother whom the family forgot to unlock from the attic when it left for its vacation in a hurry, the omniscient narrator quietly points out, “Once the shock was over, food was ordered and video of the visit played out and they forgot the skeleton.” In ‘Beware! Migrants are Coming!’, the interrogator minces no words in establishing the migrant’s statistical invisibility and thereby his ontological dispensability:

“You are a scum. A bloody scum. You come first to our holy land. Then you bring your entire hungry village that sucks us dry. We will no longer tolerate this N-O-W. The thieves are disposable. None cries for a thief. You are not human. You are not us, your death will not affect us, or anybody here, or anywhere.”

Concern for the margins remains central to Sharma’s intellectual, emotional and moral vision of a sane and progressive society. In story after story, it is these interstices that he examines, emphasizing their structural importance to the well-being of the centre. The malady, as the writer establishes, is rampant and global. Whether it is women, the poor, the elderly, the disabled or the migrant, the health of the margins directly determines the health of the centre. In ‘Two Black Stones and an Old God’, for instance, faith in divine reward and punishment becomes a device of empowerment for the grandmother and granddaughter both of whom are victims of the family’s neglect. In ‘The Street’, the narrator maps the entire cultural change that has taken place in his native town of Ghaziabad by observing the difference in the metrics of spatial arrangement and communication. The transformation of the public space that once symbolised community, shared concern and active empathy into a space of inequality, indifference and social apathy marks, for the narrator, the apotheosis of postmodernist social fragmentation and alienation.

However, the most stringent and memorable critique of postmodern and posthuman culture is perhaps put forward through the eponymous story ‘Burn the Library’. Though the setting of the story is 2071, around fifty years into the future, the conflict that it explores between information and knowledge, between programmed intelligence and creative thinking and between human growth and entropy is vital to the fabric of contemporary intellectual debate. What is the future that we are enthusiastically chasing, the writer seems to ask. Does it promise an unfolding of our rational and emotive powers or does it seek to arrest and freeze them unconditionally? For Sharma, the possibility of resistance to the omnivorous challenges of technology usurping humanity lies only in and through the circulation of ideas via writing. Ideas alone, for Sharma, are indestructible and even if all libraries were to be burnt and all sources of information were to be destroyed or corrupted, new knowledge could be founded and resurrected in the world through the strength of individual creative thinking alone. The Advanced Homer (AH) virus that seeks to alter “consciousness about culture” says, “Wake up! Find out authenticity. Life. Real life beyond the wired universe. Think – alternatively. Subdue the dominant of technology. It is not our master anyway. Go human. Re-think culture.”

‘Go Human’ is a powerful slogan, lethal in its simplicity as it indicates how far we have strayed from what we were meant to be. For me, it richly encapsulates the vision of the entire collection since it is only by the reclamation of our own humanity and that of others around us that we can battle the evils of discrimination, prejudice, violence and self-destruction.

Basudhara Roy teaches English at Karim City College affiliated to Kolhan University, Chaibasa. Author of three collections of poems, her latest work has been featured in EPW, The Pine Cone Review, Live Wire, Lucy Writers Platform, Setu and The Aleph Review among others.

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Categories
Essay

Sea Days, Sea Flowers

Mike Smith uncovers the wonders of the world of H.E Bates

H.E. Bates (1905-1974), photo taken by his wife, Majorie Bates. Courtesy: Creative Commons

Waiting for the computer to load I turned to the bookshelf and noticed my set of The Saturday Book. Thirty-five of the eclectic annual volumes were published between 1941 and 1975, with a ‘Best of’ following in the early 80s.

I needed a reading project and decided to start at the beginning of volume one. I accumulated the set over many years having been given two as birthday or perhaps Christmas presents in 1959 and 1960, but I’d never read them all from cover to cover. Long after discovering one of my favourite short stories (H.E.Bates’ The Little Farm), I found I’d had for years it in Volume One of The Saturday Book. What I hadn’t found was a second piece by Bates in the same volume, or rather, a first piece by him, for it opens the book and the whole series.

‘Sea Days, Sea Flowers’ begins with recollections of summer trips to the Sussex and Kentish coast ‘as far as the white dunes of Sandwich bay’, and to ‘the flat wide shores beyond the Dymchurch sea-wall’ or to ‘Hastings and Rye’. I assumed at first that I was reading the opening to another short story, though it did cross my mind as odd that he should get two in the same volume. There are many short stories that start with such descriptions of rural England. Du Maurier’s ‘The Old Man’, Coppard’s ‘Weep Not My Wanton’, and Gallico’s ‘The Snow Goose’, all play heavily on the landscape in which their tales are played out.

But here Bates’ description seemed to go on for so long and was in such detail. It was a journey such as that Kipling took in his opening to ‘They’: a drive through England, to England rather than a mere setting for a tale. As that journey entered its second page the penny began to drop that I was reading what we would now call, I suppose, a piece of creative non-fiction.

The detail is astonishing: about the landscape, the topography, the architecture of the towns and villages, the working lives of the fish-hawkers and the fishermen, and the tourists who drive down for the summer to buy their fish; of the “smoke-stacks of ships steaming up the Channel as they come in close at Dungeness”; of the “coast that is full of Napoleonic memories”; of “the toy passenger train that peeps and shrieks across the flat marsh”. And, throughout it all, those flowers: “the tall mauve-pink marshmallows, like delicate wild hollyhocks…the clusters of reed and willow-herb and purple loosestrife…”

It’s a luscious, artist’s eyeful of this southern corner of England, and it goes on for pages. How can you make such a tour, packed as it is with such detailed description, and no narrative, and the only real character a fish-seller with whom Bates’ reminiscing narrator banters, how can you make it work, and over some thirteen pages of text? For it does work.

Scotland has always been a foreign country to me, but I know most of it far better than I know any of the so-called Home Counties, and the country that Bates describes in this piece is totally alien to me. Yet it made me want to visit, to see it, to see how much of that 1941 landscape still lives and shines under his summer sky. Of course, Bates is a superlative writer, but there’s more to it than that. And he knows a lot: about the flowers, about those childhood holidays, about the lives of working people. The piece is jam-packed with detail and keen observation. But there’s more to it than that as well.

The clue is in the date, and in the three words that open the piece, which, at eighty years’ distance you might have missed: ‘IN PEACE TIME’, and yes, they are in capitals too. For this lush description, redolent with nostalgia, elegiac for a lost world, was published in 1941, when World War Two, for England, was already two years old, and the beaches were sealed off to casual visitors, barbed wired and mined for defence, prepared for an invasion that never came. A couple of pages in, Bates gives us a reminding nudge, repeating the phrase, this time in lower case: “it was always so easy, in peace time, to find a light excuse [to make the coast journeys]”.

By 1941 Bates was already at the top of his game. Stories like ‘The Mill, The Kimono, and The Boxer’, had been written, stories that by his own account were more fully developed than those prompted by what he called ‘the facile devil inside’. And he was a master of the descriptive. The sense of heat that pervades the deserted farmyard and surrounding farmland in the story ‘A Great Day for Bonzo’is palpable, and that same intensity is present in many others of his rural tales, not least the often dubbed ‘bucolic’ Kent of The Darling Buds of May (1958). He was already putting those talents to the National Service, most famously in the stories of Flying Officer X. And this piece too, no doubt, had its propaganda purpose, for Britain, like other nations, was fighting for the survival not only of its lives and infra-structures nor merely for its political systems, but for the narratives of its physical homelands. This was one of the notional as well as real England that the majority of the British were fighting for, and here Bates is summoning a sense of loss that could already be felt as war took that landscape, albeit temporarily, away from the people.

You can sense a similar message in wartime films like Tawny Pipit (1944) and Went the Day Well (1942), and some of the Powell Pressburger films, notably, A Canterbury Tale (1944).

Towards the end of his piece Bates makes this context more explicit. “It is a year since I was down on the coast.” And he lets the war intrude more specifically: “A mine was tossing a little out to seaward…”, where the fish-hawkers “would talk to you of the dead Nazi airmen that were washed up every day…”. Not for nothing did the Kent coast, in the days of the Battle of Britain, become known as ‘Hell’s Corner’.

Bates does not end on the war though, but returns us to nostalgia, to the seashore, “the scream of gulls”, and the “toy train, penny plaices, sea-flowers, peace-time world”. He ends on a reflective note, and one, I think, that carries a whiff of English comic irony: “But it’s no use getting sentimental now.” There was, after all, still a war to fight.

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Mike Smith lives on the edge of England where he writes occasional plays, poetry, and essays, usually on the short story form in which he writes as Brindley Hallam Dennis. His writing has been published and performed. He blogs at www.Bhdandme.wordpress.com 

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry by George Freek

IN DECEMBER 
(Inspired by Du Fu, Tang Dynasty Poet)

The trees and the clouds
sway easily in the wind.
But beyond my vision,
stars are dying.
The sky is a lonely grave.
In the mirror, my face
looks rough. I need a shave.
With the winter snow,
the birds have vanished to
wherever they go.
Will I be here when
they come again?
Such thoughts go better
with wine, if at all.
I look out my window,
watching snow as it falls.
settling quietly like a pall.
Courtesy: Creative Commons

George Freek’s poetry has recently appeared in The Ottawa Arts Review, Acumen, The Lake, The Whimsical Poet, Triggerfish and Torrid Literature.

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Categories
Stories

Viral Wisdom

By Rhys Hughes

Courtesy: Creative Commons

The Optimistic Hypochondriac

“I caught covid last week but I already had typhoid, rabies and malaria, and they all cancelled each other out.” — The Optimistic Hypochondriac

I like the Optimistic Hypochondriac. I regard him as my friend, but not a close friend, oh no! I don’t want to get too close to him in case he gives me his germs. I am sure he has plenty of germs, more than he needs for himself. And he has always been a generous chap, the sort of man who would be very happy indeed to share his illnesses with anyone else.

I remember in the old days how hypochondria wasn’t an infectious disease. But there is now growing evidence that the virus that causes hypochondria has undergone a mutation and is starting to spread among people who never believe they are ill. This means that hypochondria will probably become rampant in the next few years. What a dreadful notion!

I keep myself fit by going for regular runs on the beach. This morning I ran five miles on the beach. I am pleased with my performance, but my fear is that after finishing I will be stopped by the police. “Why are you out of breath? Why are you sweating? Why do you have a high temperature? You must have the virus. It’s off to quarantine with you — on Devils’ Island!”

Devils’ Island is an extremely unpleasant place. It was where all the devils in the world lived before they emigrated. The devils’ diaspora is one that hasn’t been studied in great depth yet by academics. Some of the devils went North, East and South, but most of them went West.

To “go west” can also mean to perish or disappear. The devils who went North went west, if you see what I mean, but the devils who went East didn’t, nor did the devils who went South. It gets rather confusing. But if you meet a devil, no matter where you happen to be, you can be sure that originally he was an inhabitant of Devils’ Island, which is still covered with cooling lava. People who are imprisoned there have to keep hopping.

I keep hopping too, or rather I keep hoping — hoping that I will never be sent to Devil’s Island just because I have broken the quarantine rules imposed by my government at short notice. I ought to pack a swimsuit in a suitcase just to be prepared for that horrible eventuality.

Some women pack swimsuits that are radioactive in their luggage if they think there’s a chance they might be sent to Devils’ Island. Radioactivity keeps any remaining devils away. Are there any remaining devils? Difficult to say, but not as difficult to say as “imagine an imaginary menagerie” which is a sequence of words I often have trouble with.

Better to be safe than sorry! If you are a woman in danger of being sent to Devils’ Island, be sure to pack a radioactive swimsuit. Is it bad advice to suggest the wearing of a radioactive swimsuit? No, because there’s nothing wrong with bikinis atoll. Now let’s move on —

Well, I moved on, and here I am. The Optimistic Hypochondriac has called me on the telephone to tell me that a new pandemic has started.  The singer Buster Octavius is going to give a concert to raise money, but no one knows what the money is being raised for. Buster Octavius says it is being raised because that’s better than letting it fall onto the ground.

It will be a socially distanced concert, which means that members of the audience will have to stand six feet apart. Most audience members don’t have six feet. They are human beings and only have two legs, like you and I. The six feet rule might be good for insects but for mammals it’s a disaster waiting to happen. And have you ever seen a disaster waiting to happen? They get nervous and pace up and down and growl in the wings.

The reason they wait in the wings has nothing to do with the fact that such shows as Buster Octavius is planning usually take place in a theatre. No, they wait in the wings because birds have wings and bird flu is a disease that is always a strong pandemic candidate.

Buster Octavius is a pseudonym. His real name is a closely guarded secret and the guards who guard it cannot be bribed. I have already tried. And so has the Optimistic Hypochondriac. He says, “He broke twelve semitones and that’s why he calls himself Buster Octavius.”

Quarantine regulations are coming into force and it has only been a couple of hours before the new pandemic was officially announced. My movements will be restricted once again to my home and a small area around it. I might begin to dig a tunnel in my cellar, both to pass the time and to enable me to travel further than I am allowed. The tunnel will point in the opposite direction to my office. Just to give me some illusion of freedom!

I can’t honestly say I dislike my job. When I started there last year, I was warned by my new colleagues that my new boss was a “micromanager” but when I started work at the laboratory the conditions were relaxed and no one criticised the details of anything I did.

In fact, there didn’t seem to be a manager of any sort present in the work space. Then one morning I happened to glance through a microscope and saw him jumping about on the slide and tearing his hair out. He was very angry but his voice was far too quiet to be heard.

I had never expected him to be a virus instead of a man!

The Optimistic Hypochondriac advises me to wear a mask. In fact, he tells me to wear two masks — over my ears. If the singing of Buster Octavius doesn’t kill the virus in a fifty-mile radius and help to end this new pandemic, then nothing will. It is good advice and I take it. But then, having taken it, I change my mind and put it back. But he doesn’t want it back. We argue and tussle for almost half an hour before we both admit defeat.

If the pandemic is already here, then why not just quarantine the whole world in one go, instead of sections of it? That way, we will technically be in quarantine, as all the health authorities recommend, but able to travel around freely just like we used to, and everything will continue on the surface of the planet as before. I think this is an excellent solution. A win-win!

We would only have to deal with that tiny minority who call themselves “astronauts” by refusing to let them back into the atmosphere and presto! This approach would save a lot of money and time and effort. Lots of my friends at school were interested in outer space and wanted to be astronauts but I don’t think many of them managed it. When I was little and was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I replied, “An adult.”

An impractical choice, I feel.

Buster Octavius is allowed to sing his doleful dirges, highly amplified, out at the captive inhabitants of the innocent city, but all the theatres have been closed and actors are out of work. This seems unfair.

To put it another way: thanks to this new pandemic, all theatre has become Japanese in style because ‘Noh Plays’ are being performed on every stage. Even Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is about to close. But I bet they will stage one last play there… “Two Gentleman of Corona”.

The rules are being tightened. Now we aren’t allowed out of the house at all. I doubt if the Optimistic Hypochondriac will conform to this restriction. He will be arrested for breaking the law and sent to Devil’s Island instead of me. One thing I still find baffling. If people aren’t allowed out at all because of the risk of spreading the virus, why are the police allowed to approach and arrest those who do venture out? Surely the police spread the virus just the same as any other human? Oughtn’t there to be a second set of police to approach and arrest the first set, and a third set to approach and arrest the second set, and a fourth to approach and arrest the third.

And so on, forever? If not, the process isn’t logical.

As part of the fight against the virus I note that Washington DC has changed its name to Washinghands DC.  This news doesn’t concern me very much at the moment, but when I have finished tunnelling under the Atlantic Ocean I surely will sit up and take notice

It will take me at least nine months to tunnel as far as the comfortable home of the Optimistic Hypochondriac. In the meantime, Devils’ Island is rapidly filling up with arrested police officers. It will take me centuries to tunnel as far as the city of Washinghands DC. Even nine months is too long to dig tunnels. But that is how I intend to keep myself busy.

How will other people occupy their enforced leisure time? I am supposing that there will be a baby boom in nine months. And thirteen years after that, we will witness the rise of the “quaranteens”.

It turns out that the Optimistic Hypochondriac is also digging a tunnel of his own — in the direction of my house.

Therefore, we meet each other after only four and a half months of toil. He has some strange news for me. The virus responsible for this pandemic is one that hypochondriacs are immune to. But everyone else can catch it. He knows that I have never been a hypochondriac.

“I think you should change your name,” he tells me.

“To what?” I ask him.

“Virusman,” he says, and he grins.

Virusman. Unlike other superheroes he never catches criminals, they catch him instead! There is a little song that will be associated with him and it goes like this: “Virusman, Virusman / does whatever a virus can. / Can he replicate inside the cells / of all the jails in Tunbridge Wells? / You bet! / Atchoo! / Here comes the Virusman…” But I have my doubts. I have never been to Tunbridge Wells. What if it is worse than Devils’ Island?

I knew it was rash to sign the new contract sent to me by my virus provider, but I never imagined how itchy the rash would be. Fortunately, I was able to use the get-out claws to scratch myself.

Buster Octavius has been sent to Devils’ Island. Those poor remaining devils, how I feel sorry for them!

Courtesy: Creative Commons

The Polite Antibody

An antibody met a germ and said, “How do you do? I am very happy to make your acquaintance. Would you like a cup of tea? May I fetch you a cake? If you require anything to improve your comfort, please let me know and I’ll do my best to provide it. I like your colour, shape and other physical characteristics. What a fine germ you are! I admire you so much.”

 “Well, that reaction wasn’t what I was expecting!” cried the germ. “I came here to infect this bloodstream, but I don’t think I’ll do that now. I am too charmed by your kind words.”

 “It’s a new style of resistance and I’m glad it seems to work. It’s called diplomatic immunity,” said the antibody.

Courtesy: Creative Commons

Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.

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Categories
pandies' corner

Children of Nithari: The story of Rajesh

Written in a mix of English and Hindi  by Yogesh Uniyal, translated fully to English by Nirbhay Bhogal

Yogesh Uniyal is now a banking professional, currently working with Kotak Mahindra Bank, and has a Masters in Finance. He joined workshops lead by pandies’ theatre in 2006 and has performed in all the shows put up by the youth associated with Saksham, Nithari, including at the American Center, Delhi in 2010. A consistent performer and singer, he performs with the pandies’ besides doing street plays with Nithari friends and like-minded people on women’s education, cancer, and many other themes.

The Story of Rajesh

Somewhere in this wide, wide world, lived an eighteen-year-old boy (quite sensible and honest) going by the name of Rajesh,  in a small village, where he had a family with his  parents. Since childhood, Rajesh had always liked watching movies. Despite not having a television at home, he would commute a kilometre within their village, to the home of his paternal uncle ( being a good friend of his father’s) to watch movies on that uncle-by-sentiment’s TV. While watching a film at his uncle’s, one day Rajesh made a plan to venture outside their village after finishing his intermediate education. Rajesh had no idea that there was a huge gap, between this real world and the fictional world of movies, almost as if one were Purgatory and the other Heaven.

Rajesh’s Decision to go to Delhi

This is the story of that boy from an underprivileged family who came with big dreams to Delhi – “The City of Hearts, Brimming with Living and Giving” – leaving behind his village, his home, his parents, his everything. Rajesh had come to this city after completing his schooling with a great hope kindled in his heart – a desire to earn buckets of cash. But little did he imagine what he would lose while trying to fulfil that dream.

Living in their village home were Rajesh’s elderly parents. Leaving them behind and coming here wasn’t easy for him. But he left them and moved  nevertheless, for his happiness and theirs, which revolved around his attaining a higher standard of living.

Rajesh’s life in Delhi

He started lodging in a room that he rented in “The City of Hearts, Brimming with Living and Giving, also The Capital of India”. He stumbled wandered around the city for two to three months, looking for a decent job. But he did not get any employment. Then he came across a person who promised to get him a job, in return for Rs 20,000[1].

Rajesh, gathered the money from multiple sources – including some remitted by his parents from the village on his request. He paid the agent an advance of Rs 15,000, and promised to pay the remainder after securing the job.

After waiting for many days, Rajesh secured this job in a company that would pay him Rs 9,000 a month, at a workplace that was 4 kms from his room in the city. This salary certainly sounded small as Rajesh had to pay for his lodgings, food, water…and also send some money home.

Every morning, he would walk to the company where he was employed. And, every evening, he would walk from there to his neighbourhood. He knew that every expense, such as commuting by vehicles in a city like Delhi, wasn’t possible on just Rs 9,000.

He threw himself with all his heart and mind into his nine-hour job. Many times, however, he was made to stay back and work for ten to twelve hours a day. That earned him Rs 70 for every extra hour. He continued to work with dedication. What he didn’t know was that you needed to be street smart to compound your dedication to get a raise in such a place. Even after working so hard, he wasn’t getting the increment or promotion that he was worthy of. He brought this up many times, in conversation with his manager, but the manager would keep evading him on this. After one year, Rajesh decided to leave the company. After quitting his job, he gave job interviews at many other companies, and eventually did get hired. He joined this other company on 1st January 2020.

In the new company, he was paid more than double his last salary, and he was happy that he could manage all his expenses. But his struggle had just started.

For two months, everything was fine. Then, suddenly, a disease called Corona started to fester and spread. Cases of its transmission were quickly increasing in India. Observing this COVID-outbreak, the Central Government declared a lockdown in all of India on 22nd March 2020. Rajesh and all other employees of his company were kicked out of their jobs.

When the fired employees protested, the company said, “Whoever have their own computers can work from home.” But employees who’d been hired only in the past two months, how were they supposed to afford a personal computer? Some of the employees still managed to arrange computers for themselves, and they were re-hired. But what about people like Rajesh?

Eventually, Rajesh too was fired, which was a huge blow for him. He had no means of livelihood. His monthly expenses were piling up, and the spectre of groceries loaned from his regular shops kept looming over him.

After losing his job, Rajesh sat in his room, spending time on the same old TV news channels. But none of these channels gave the truth: about how the pandemic was hurting families like his, how they were living, what was the solution, and what were the safeguards that were being put in place?

Who knows how many families had people like Rajesh, who lost their jobs? What on earth was Rajesh going to do now?

For ten days, Rajesh kept brooding over the job he’d lost. Rajesh asked a neighbouring Uncleji[2], “Would any of the nearby bungalows have need of car-cleaning personnel?” Uncleji was moved to tears by seeing him in such a state. He said to Rajesh, “Why would you…a computer-operating professional…be doing such work?” And he started providing Rajesh food from his own domestic kitchen.

But how long was he supposed to feed Rajesh? Uncleji’s wife would taunt every now and then. This eventually became too much for Rajesh to bear, and he decided once again to clean cars for a living.

Rajesh had been reduced to the condition of one who belonged neither here nor there. And he was worried about his parents. He was managing to arrange two meals’ worth on certain days, and not even one meal’s worth on other days. Some evenings he would line up, for a meal at food stalls, set up by anyone wishing to feed the poor. Other evenings, he would scrape together a meal in other ways. What else was he supposed to do? Borne to the City by Hopes, and Buoying Himself Against the Blows He Received, He Was Still Not Able to Get Enough Food.

A person contracted Corona in the neighbourhood. This cast a spell of fear over all the residents. Now all of them, including Rajesh, were taken to a hospital and tested in isolation. Rajesh tested negative, but he still had to suffer his neighbourhood being barricaded. Now nobody could either go out or come in. This meant Rajesh couldn’t go to clean cars in the morning. He had no means of arranging food for himself. For seven days, he subsisted on water and one meal a day.

He then somehow got permission for resuming cleaning cars for the rich. But back home in his village, his parents both contracted the virus, and they were soon in a critical condition.

Rajesh had no means of going back to his village, which was 700 kilometres away. He didn’t know what to do. He began to recall his old life in the village, when he lived without any tension, amidst the warmth and safety of his home. Whatever presumptions he’d had about Delhi, and big cities in general, were proving to be opposite of what he had hoped and dreamt. All he could think of was going back to living with his parents in the village. He wished to rid himself of his current situation come-what-may.

Initially, he couldn’t come up with a plan, since he didn’t know any route back to his village, even if he started back on foot. Finally, he decided that he would follow the rail track to reach his village. He started on this path, hungry and thirsty.

On the way, some people were handing out food to migrants like Rajesh, who were journeying back home. For two days, Rajesh kept walking like this, surviving on such charitable provisions somewhere or the other, and thus he would store food for breakfast as well at dinner.

One such night, after eating and storing the food for the next meal, he resumed walking along the railway line. That night, he felt very tired, so he lay down on the track. Exhausted, he drifted off to sleep.

That very night, a train passed by on those tracks. And, after that, his eyes never opened.

[1] Indian Currency rupees: $1= Rs76

[2] An elderly gentleman in often referred to as uncleji in North India, ji being an honorific title

Nirbhay Bhogal is a 32-year-old amateur actor, with pandies’ theatre since late 2014, when she first experienced with them an altogether improvisational mode of workshopping a script chosen by the group. She’s currently pursuing a Bachelors in English Literature and hopes to make a career out of translating literary and non-literary works from Hindi into English, and vice versa. She was involved with the tail end of pandies’ workshop theatre at pre-pandemic Saksham school in Nithari and has also co-facilitated Zoom-based workshop theatre with Shakti Shalini’s shelter for women survivors of gender-based violence.

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Categories
Poetry

‘Will Hudson have a chance to live in a Golden Age?’

Poetry by Ron Pickett

Courtesy: Creative Commons
THE GOLDEN AGE

Did I miss it?
No, I was there – I loved it!
Stuff was there when you wanted it.
Shelves were full and that was normal.
Workers were there when they promised.
Fuel was cheap – and available.
Solar was growing and getting cheaper.
I know it now I missed it then.

Stocks were up, dips were for buying.
401k and IRA were fat and getting fatter.
New stuff kept coming. I want some.
News was flat and boring and predictable.
And that was good.
Trump was starting to fade.
Was the election really rigged?
I never knew.

There were too many people.
The virus helped – but not enough.
Demands were blatant and excessive.
Work was optional. For idiots.
Stupidity became normal, praised even.
History is irrelevant – We will do it differently.
Free is a right
Free is a minimum.

Is it all downhill from here?
Will Hudson have a chance to live in a Golden Age?
Will shelves ever be filled?
Will energy ever be cheap?
Will the world become available to me again?
Will the idiots win? – They are now. 
Did the Golden Age just end?
Can it ever return?

The optimist becomes a pessimist 

AGAIN -- STILL -- NO -- IT’S NOT FUNNY 

6000 new cases in California yesterday,
Again.
The COVID curve is beautiful – now – now that it’s bent down, 
Again.
I forgot my mask yesterday,
Again.
I thought it was a fixed part of my leaving the house check-off list,
Again.
I must wear a mask – even exercising!
Again.
I have natural immunity – that’s what we call having had COVID19,
Still.
I resist,
Again
It doesn’t matter,
Still.
We hear orders and mandates - pontifications, because they can!
Still.
They aren’t wearing masks!
Again.
I check the statistics and the curve is down,
Still!
Have we learned anything?
No!

Ron Pickett is a retired naval aviator with over 250 combat missions and 500 carrier landings. His 90-plus articles have appeared in numerous publications. He enjoys writing fiction and has published five books: Perfect Crimes – I Got Away with It, Discovering Roots, Getting Published, EMPATHS, and Sixty Odd Short Stories.

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Categories
Poetry

Pandemic Panic

By Rhys Hughes

Courtesy: Creative Commons
PANDEMIC PANIC

Pandemic panic.
Influenza bonanza.
I make a mask from an old shoe
and wear it out.
Is this what I am
required to do? I suppose so.

The smell is worse
than the curse
of the virus. I feel like a badly
sung note in an old
song, but one irony
is certain and it cheers me up:

Zorro also
wore his mask wrong
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Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL