Even communists have their Achille’s heels

Communists die unsung ,they say. Not entirely. Communists have comrades who sing for them when they die.Slow mournful dirges with a sprinkling of inspirational slogans.They carry red flags in white kurta pyjamas.They don’t cry but only sing rousing songs.A week ago when our communist relative died ,none of this happened because he was a decent and friendly communist .He had carried on his relentless struggle against the bourgeoisie over a series of hot cups of coffee and cigarettes.In his personal life his son was his Achille’s heel and even communists have their Achille’s heels .

Just then a certain communist saw red
And vanished from the scene promptly.
His ashes will now be spread in rivers
Just like India’s first Prime Minister’s
In whirring defense helicopters for fame.
The fame was of course the doting son’s-
It was his purple need from a hot brain
Fevered and full of fertile stories, stories
That made heroes in history-addled brains,
Stories that had sultry spies from enemies
Who indulged in highest skullduggery
And made hapless victims of patriotic Indians
Working closely with defense ministers.
When our father dies our country is with us
We go out briefly to receive condolences
On our cell phones in somber mood.

Who will live due to the dead and who will die for the living?

We have heard of communists dying unsung.Of course ,there is the infamous Pol Pot whose life had meant death to so many in order to make life for so many .There is confusion in Pol Pot’s existence and death .Who is supposed to live and who will die ? May be , it is in the numbers.Some sons of guns will die so that other sons of guns will live.The smaller number will die so that the bigger number will live. Confusing . When Pol Pot finally called it a life,he must have thought of this .We have no news of those who were supposed to live happily ever after ,now that all those people obstructing their happiness have died :

The skull pot

I sit here on the precipice
With my feet dangling
In the abyss of time
On the far-line I espy
A pile of stacked skulls
Of large circular eyes
With the mountain air
Hissing through them.
These skulls had thoughts,
When their holes were eyes,
That wished no brains in them.
What did the old man think,
When , lying on a string cot,
He saw the smile of death
Where the banyan met the sky.

The absence that we are

I have been trying to hit the nail on the head -to arrive at a precise assessment of what life is like.This doesn’t seem to work somehow. Has Rilke done it -the mischievous grin I see in his literary face,so to speak,seems to suggest it. It looks like he has upstaged it somehow. He cannot have been far wrong.Of course ,would it really matter to him in his present state of unbeing ? Why would he want to be one up on life?

“The Future” by Rilke

The future: time’s excuse
to frighten us; too vast
a project, too large a morsel
for the heart’s mouth.

Future, who won’t wait for you?
Everyone is going there.
It suffices you to deepen
the absence that we are.

Translated by A. Poulin

“Time’s excuse to frighten us ” – an image reminiscent of John Donne or Andrew Marvell. But the next image“Too vast a project” sounds more ‘modern’ ,conveying a conscious plan to mould future activities to the achievement of a pre-decided objective.The next image draws from the sensory experience of taste-”too large a morsel for the heart’s mouth”-a very graphic image.

But the most fascinating image is “it suffices you to deepen the absence that we are” .Just think about it : as future grows ,the past deepens and with it our absence.