Form and content. Content and form. At times they converge. At times they diverge. At some other times they may converge and diverge, all at once, creating an ambience that reflects life and all its accompanying attributes – joy, laughter, sorrow, tears, pain, pleasure... etc. etc.!
A dream visited me last night, as I was preparing to sleep, putting behind all my formless agony that brought neither tears nor sighs anymore, but threw me into a frame, which had always waited to hold a picture postcard depicting perhaps a cosy drawing room... or an apple orchard where I and you had always wanted to go, but... or a moonlit night lying prostrate by an ocean, taking a star bath, perhaps...
Or...
Or...
Or...
Breaking into bits
My dream opened the door
Dissolved in air!
However, I somehow have managed to retain my ‘form’ – the looks of a human being... with all accompanying emotions kept secure in the deepest secret chamber of my mind and is determined not to allow those, either to ‘freeze’ to death or ‘disappear’ or to take the shape of, say, a pig, or a goat, or a lizard or a field rat that devours a farmer’s dream!
Dream?
Your work, your sweat, your...
Your labor, your product, and...
Does toil fetch you death?
What went wrong? Was it the form or the content? Or was it a conflict between the form and the content? Or was it the ‘horrific’ case where the ‘form’ simply was inadequate to hold the ‘content’ and everything broke into bits, destroying ‘civilization’ and ‘civilizational values’?
Values?
Why harp on ethics?
Coffers will have to be filled
Just rape your conscience!
“Okay. Raped! Raped! Raped! Destroyed to the last bit. Killed! Murdered! As you commanded.”
“Good; job’s done now
You fear not about the Lord
We will romp home too!”
But did you? Could you? Did you manage to wipe off both the ‘form’ and the ‘content’ of ‘life’ and fill your master’s coffers, walking down the path that Death’s disciples lay in front of you and go scot free?
Did you manage?
What about you, oh! The master commander, who wields the stick and conjure death that runs over life? What about you?
“Form? Content?...Bullshit!
I take no shit from no one
Life’s been dead for long!”
Well, as my dream lie somewhere, naked, raped and then murdered too, I vow to keep my ‘values’ intact and fight for her!
For her! For her!
For my dream. As she also had a ‘dream’! No dream should ever get raped or murdered or both raped and murdered before its fructification, provided it had been a dream worth living for.
And she was worth living for.
Believe me she was!
But?
But?
But?
Look! Look! Look...!
Do not lose heart.
Fight
To
Keep
The
Flag
Flying!
Do JUSTICE man!
We are past deadline!!!
‘Civilization’ needs to be ushered in.
Author’s note: Kolkata, the city I live in, has hit national and international headlines once again, but for wrong reasons!
On August 9 a young lady doctor was assaulted and killed well past midnight at her workplace [#RGKarMedical college] in the city. Citizens have taken to the streets, throughout the state and the nation demanding justice for the ‘victim’. People have joined the protest from different countries.
More than a month has passed. In the meanwhile the case has been handed over to a national investigating agency. However, justice for the ‘victim’ is a must! This poem/haibun too demands justice and is written to show solidarity with the protesting junior doctors, who have struck work. The poem also protests the growing ‘sexual assaults’ of patients, nurses and attendants within hospital premises, especially in Kolkata/West Bengal.
India doctors defy court order to continue strike over Kolkata rape
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