आग

आग गहरी तो है,
है बहरी लेकिन। 

जलती है एक आदत की तरह
सोती नहीं , सुनती नहीं
उठा कर फिरते है
इसे सामान की तरह
संभलती नहीं, सुलझती नहीं
खतरनाक तो है
है सुनहरी लेकिन। 

My daily ordeal!

I hop a cab, a metro and an auto,

On my lucky days, I take the non-AC bus.

With music piercing through my player’s soul,

I manage to fight the daily Delhi-Gurgaon rush.

I somehow reach the deaf school,

Hoping I’m late, skipping the dull assembly.

I peep into classes, there is an endless yawn,

And the mannequins on the chair are rather unfriendly.

Teach us, teach us, every single face screams,

But, you see! Nobody gives a damn!

I quickly find a class with no teacher, and hungry brains,

And pour it all out, all that I possibly can.

But it’s not enough, and it’s not fair,

I can’t watch this horror in silence.

Why is incompetence paid so well?

Why has there been no defiance?

And then they explain - We can’t even write a sentence,

How would we ever complain?

Plus we need to cheat and pass in exams,

Without these mannequins, we can’t really sustain!

The damage is massive,

I am insane to think, I can heal,

These curious minds lying dormant for years,

Tormented by copying without comprehending - their daily ordeal.

‘Behind the scenes’

Filled with the looming gloom over several severed ties,

The protagonist, now panicked, tries to improvise.

Moments before the curtains rise and spectators rush to criticize,

She sees that it’s over but wishfully believes otherwise.

From the swollen sheets, covering the scars and the terrible lies,

To the scribbled sheets, announcing her grandiose good-byes.

An assortment of options, what if one may not suffice,

Pills and Poison, Blades and Rope, Kerosene and other supplies.

A list of pros and cons, one last attempt to self-actualize.

Memories bottled up, spray painted ‘momentarily’ over the skies.

She stands immobilized, “I want to be rescued” – she cries,

But she’s already in flames, and to her own surprise,

She is now witnessing her own demise,

Meanwhile, the audience enters and is mesmerized.

Ethical Loneliness

I recently saw a post by Reshma Valliappan, an inspiring 'Schizophrenist' whom I met just once but I feel an intense connection with till date. She wrote about ethical loneliness. And I finally found the word for 'it', something I had been misconstruing as a deep and disturbing uneasiness.

I should just quote Jill Stauffer here - "Ethical loneliness is the experience of being abandoned by humanity, compounded by the cruelty of wrongs not being heard. It is the result of multiple lapses on the part of human beings.... "

The definition goes on but I think for me it suffices. From the indifference to outright brutality, I witness what happens in the world and the meaningless drudgery of it all. We breed in large numbers and feed on other lives, we destroy everything beautiful to build an insanely insecure and insensitive world - plastic in its glory and gory in its plan. We mock those who are true and cheer for idiots and fanatics. I often feel like it's not worth watching till the end, but I stay on as I'm still a hopeless romantic who is okay being crushed and resurrected each day. I debate within my head, I reassure myself and then plunge into a black hole for hours, naively affected by it all. I come out of it holding the bars - my family, my work, my love and my very few friends. I wish I could live a plastic life too and die a plastic death - it's just too exhausting to feel such dramatic upheavals and yet feign it all.

Tinge of sadness!

It's like dust on the leaves,

and it never leaves..

an uninvited tenant - this tinge of sadness,

is here to stay!

This is an outburst!

My dear 'incompetent' teachers of the deaf!

(This letter is NOT addressed to the 'rare' competent ones)

You are part of a big majority. That must be really comforting! It must feel nice to see how incompetence actually binds people together and exclude the 'competent' ones. You must be thanking your stars for landing up with the best job on the planet, where there is absolutely no accountability. You can huddle and talk about your mundane, meaningless shit in the morning assembly - during the prayer, even during National Anthem and no body would complain. You can sit inside the class or out in the sun (depending upon the weather) and indulge in gossip, or just sleep and no body would complain. In case, there is someone around, you can just pretend to write on the board and that's all there is to teaching! On Saturdays, which are declared bag-free days, you have the added privilege of being glued to your chair entire day as a group and just kill time (in your own words) while the students do yoga, dance, act, run etc. - all by themselves. You don't have to get up when somebody gets hurt. You don't have to get up while the kids think of you as highly disappointing and useless. You don't have to get up even when their bright minds die each day of ignorance, lethargy and negativity you radiate!

Some of you escape the guilt by blaming RCI and AYJNIHH for not having 'Sign Language' during your training time. Others just deny the importance of 'Sign Language' in the first place. Of course, it makes far more sense to just speak (or shout) to the deaf child, whether he understands anything or not - is his problem. The decades you spent in the school were not enough for you to learn the sign language flowing all around you, but the deaf child is automatically supposed to comprehend your spoken language despite the hearing loss, late intervention, improper hearing aids and non-existent speech therapy. Bravo!

If you were in any other school, teaching any other kind of students - you would have to eventually 'teach' or confront the authorities, the students themselves and the parents. But you see - deaf students can't talk. And thanks to your brilliant teaching practices, they can't even write a decent complaint letter. Even if, they somehow managed to complain, parents and authorities don't know sign language - they will always go by the teacher's version of the story. Plus, there's all this bullshit about - 'Teachers are always right' and 'We must always respect our teachers'. So unfortunately, you're safe.

Apart from the fat salary you draw every month for doing nothing, you also get praise and appreciation from your relatives and random visitors who think you're doing 'God's work' - especially when you proudly boast of 25 years spent in this field, share some of your false ideologies about deaf people & culture. You go home each day thinking good about yourself. But guess what - the damage you've done to countless young deaf minds is irreparable and inexcusable. And you will be rewarded for it one day!

She sang too much!

There are some people whom you meet and assume their lives to be simple, their stories to be transparent - only to be flabbergasted later! So, this is about one such person, whom I met while visiting a school in Shillong. It was December which meant all the students were gone from the hostel and I arrived on a Sunday evening which meant all the markets were already shut. To save me from starving she invited me to eat with her. And though I had met her at least 10 times before as well, I noticed her for the first time! She had a perfectly round face with two Aloo Bukharas as her cheeks. Cheeks that never stopped smiling. Smile that radiated into those tiny pahadi eyes. She would have been in her 50s but her skin was literally blooming in the moon-light under the chulha-fire. The food was obviously irresistible – a rare treat for a vegetarian like me in North East. By now, I had framed a story for her complete with a family picture - a ruddy and robust Khasi husband and two lovely kids with marble eyes and cherry cheeks. But I did ask this time- more out of politeness rather than the curiosity – "Why didn’t you go home?" As soon as I asked, I expected her to say that she’ll go when the other care-taker lady comes back. But instead of that she told me she doesn't like going home! She smiled again, finished her food and started washing the dishes. I kept thinking why would someone like her not like going home. We kept talking of inconsequential things like militants and bandhs in Meghalaya while in my head I was trying to figure out if her husband was abusive or dead. Towards the very end, she sensed my inquisitiveness and stated – ‘I don’t like going home. I haven’t been there in years.’ I tried to read her face, but there were no cues there. She continued – ‘ I was just 11 year old when I left my village’. ‘Why? What happened?’ - I didn't disguise my questions this time. ‘I sang too much’ - she laughed. She was from a remote village in Assam. There was a married man in her village who started a rumour that she had slept with him. To her disbelief, her father and the entire village including this man’s wife believed it because her blatant singing and brazen laughter were solid evidence of her loose character. Her mother, though on her side was far too fragile to speak anything. So, all of them decided to deliver justice by the game of throwing stones, based on the principle - 'If the stone hits her, she must be guilty.' At a nearby temple, during the early hours of dawn, her father was the first one to throw the stone at her. The stone missed the target, but that small girl's mind was scarred forever! She ran away from there at the first opportunity. She looked at me and whispered - ‘It would’ve made more sense if that man would’ve actually done something to me. Then, at least I could have understood why! In that brief moment of eye contact that we had, I tried to comprehend all the pain she must have endured. Then she declared – ‘I developed a distaste for all men after that. I could never tolerate them, or talk to them – forget about liking, loving or marrying one.’ She told me - she had never shared this with anyone before. She didn't cry or anything, she just went back to wash the rest of the utensils - leaving me in a speechless, shattered state of mind.