Saturday Afternoon Rant
“Let’s go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;”
These were the lines through which I was first introduced to T.S. Eliot. First day in Presidency, first day in college, these lines written in red upon white paper outside the college cafeteria. Our Pramod-da’s canteen. Where he sold crow-meat cutlets and used to pass them off as chicken. At least, that’s what the college legend said. So, like Camus, Kafka, Jibanananda, Moloy Roy Choudhuri’s rantish broken-form poetry, I was introducd to Eliot through his posthumous re-incarnations in many forms. Most notably, the Bengali male college kids’ attempt to sound lover-like. Which, by default, sometimes also meant poet-like. I liked those lines, and in those pre-Google days, research was slightly harder. But I figured out where they come from. Got hold of a copy of the book and read it. I still do. Often. Whenever I feel lonely or need solace. I mean, the greatest thing about Eliot is that, he gets it right, ain’t it? I mean, almost! And what kind of cries out to me in his poems is that, I know I know I get it all all all. This sucks, but I am not going to be a Commie. No no no, it ain’t me, babe.
Of course, being a Commie meant a different thing altogether in his times than it does now. Being from a state in India, where the official Commies are leading a little economic genocide along with all the neo-libs, you have to re-think the term, but you know, it was a little bit different in the Anglophone world in those days.
Anyway, so today, I open my anthology, and the first lines on which my eyes fall are these:
“Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.”
Uncle Ted, why will they? I mean, throwing angry words at you I can understand. Sarcasm towards you, makes sense too. But singing? That’s a little too much! Come on! Maybe, you should bring together your palms, let their silence freeze in their and carry them back home as music.
Sometimes, music resides in silence. In angry words. In sarcasm.
And embracing them makes us better poets, writers, artists. Or just better human beings.
