Tell me about your period?

It has long been in my mind to write a brief guide to etiquette for Oriental sojourners in London, the Capital City of the British Empire.

Perhaps, the social custom which occasions the visitor most discomfort is that whereby, at dinner, a gentleman is seated between two ladies with whom, strictly in turn, it is obligatory to converse.

Bear in mind, it is considered unseemly to turn the conversation to abstruse metaphysical or nakedly erotic themes. Nor does it do to be very pertinacious in inquiry, or overly solicitous, with reference to such matters as fall within the ken of the female mind. A happy medium is struck by asking, in a tone of well bred indifference, the question- 'tell me about your period?'- especially given that Oriental guests are invariably seated between ladies of great antiquity who may well be flattered by the suggestion that they remain subject to that form of abject uncleanness.

My illustrious student, the late Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, improved upon my suggested opening by deploying a whole repertoire of conversational gambits such as- "Cor! that must make your eyes water!", or 'Nice weather for ducks!" and of course "Shame about that hat!" which tended to keep things humming along nicely and gained him an enviable reputation as a modern Rouchefoucauld.

In less able hands, however,- here, I am regretfully obliged to speak of a scion of the cadet branch of the distinguished Bengali family which glories in the hereditary right to hold the 'Chattri' over, H.E, the Governor General at the Calcutta Durbar- even the most rigorous repetition of the question "tell me about your period?" does not always prevent the conversation from flagging and, in consequence, young Rabindranath was obliged to cover his head in ashes and consent to rustication on his family's country estates.

In my next post I will write about the disastrous impact, on the conduct of the second Round Table Conference, of Barrister Mohandas's (not, it must be said, unprecedented) gaffe in addressing the question 'tell me about your period?' to, not the Dowager Queen Alexandra, as he supposed, but His Serene Highness, the Aga Khan.

Since Structure not Language can

Since Structure not Language can, nor its Stems to rose suppose
For paws muddy & couch, Lacan, smacked's a doggy nose
Or nuzzles forth my muzzle to but puzzle at her ear
She'd shoo me away, being drear & near to tear

E'er to growling and prowling & bitter yelping too prone
Silent I now sit as she texts him on her phone
Summer's scents still invite to its dappled delights explore
Till, diffident, a new knock on her old Daddy's door.

To hymn her whom to husband Love

To hymn her whom, to husband Love, I mend my lyric lame

Fret metal yet, Hephaestus, thy helpmeet, to but tame!

Cage none can Beauty, no, nor, high wrought, Art exult

With Ares, nay, say Eris! Aphrodite's caught in rut!

Night taught her Civic daughter, Hesiods strive for a hand

Cold to hold the krater or whose wooes to understand

Empedoclean traitor! to wive words what you paid
Derides Confucian brides- a blemish on white jade!

Envoi-

Kumara- Ki koun hai Raam aur koun hai bandha
Who torture will the Uttara kanda?
Can Canetti's ant-hill, Valmik erupt?
Or Words' General Will, Love abrupt?

Listening to a Hindi film song (from Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 'Devdas') with the refrain - 'Maar dala' - I was suddenly reminded that The simple Hindustani word maarna (to kill) is cognate with the Latin Mars and the Greek Ares- Aryan War Gods how different- or the same?- as my Kuladevam- Ku-maara...

Question- which poem about the poet's wife (I think it was by Tao Chien) was called ' a blemish on white jade' - a phrase otherwise associated with the guy who kept on repeating these lines from the Odes

A blemish on white jade

Can perfect be made

But Words twistable at all

Cause Heaven to fall.

Confucius immediately married his elder brother's daughter to the gentleman in question.

BTW- does anyone have a link to a video of Aziz Mian Qawwal's 'Main kya jaanoon Ram tera gorakh dhanda?'

Tat tvam asi

Gods are in the moment and must madden

As doth Sodomy, shit tipped, but sadden

Immortality musing on Morality's twat

Philosophy so fucked, that it shat.

Aziz Nazan Qawwal

 






That Purity is a flower, the thought makes me hard.

A Tavern grue.

Life is a Tavern, grue, in whose toilet, new,  no poet, true, defecates

(Like the bloating Boer at the banquet who, gloating, waits

Till, at leisure, his own fields, he might entreasure with a dump)

Tho' Art's light freehold lunch, its own Agents gazump

Sodomising pygmies- Obama's Afpak strategy

    Last year, soldiers off the 85th brigade of the Congolese Army ( that is the Democratic Republic of Congo's Army rather than any other sort of Congolese Republic's Army) were accused by Human Rights Organization of sodomizing pygmies to gain supernatural powers & ward off evil spirits.
   As usual, the Liberal Indglish Media, in its coverage of the atrocity, focused entirely on the culpability of Narendra Modi for what might turn out to be a major cause célèbre for 20/20 Cricket or some Bollywood shite or whatever the fuck it is Indglish speakers actually give a damn about.
   By contrast, the Neo-Con blogosphere-  or, at least, its bilious underbelly- has  incessantly sodomized the pygmy of the trope of Obama's Health Care Plan being a similar quest for super-powers.

    IMHO neither approach to the sodomizing pygmies portent is half as productive as the application of this trope to Obama's Afpak strategy. For, as in the story of Mahmud and Ayaz, which inspired much Sufi poetry, the question immediately arises- yes, Ayaz is a pygmy compared to the great Sultan, but who gains the supernatural power? Is it the bugger or the buggered or the poet who buggers up this pygmy theme?

   Is not all Literature but sodomizing pygmies? Is not the Truth of Art but the Super Power thereby gained?
As Emerson said- 'WTF dude? I never once mentioned sodomizing pygmies. You must be thinking of Thoreau. That boy aint right.'

Tagore in China-

Did lyric's latifundia lords hunt Tagore's heart

Who'd clamor to cut off their heads?

Were word weaving their whole Art

Read, his Poems now were Reds

Urdu and 'Islam in danger!"

  The notion that  'Islam is in danger!' is the foundation of Mujadidi ideology. The theological question it must answer is why, every century, the Muslims backslide or lose the favour of God- thus requiring a Mujaddid to turn up and found a dynasty. The answer really has to do with the manner in which what is spoken and believed ceases to be connected to God's  'kun' ('Be!)- it becomes empty, it loses its vital force. 

In a sense, this was good news for Urdu, as a literary language,  but a huge loss was being simultaneously incurred viz. the notion that literature opened the gate to a truly languageless noesis outside of Time. The result is a hypertrophy of literary activity without a corresponding widening of its range of signification. Ghalib's solution was to permit the pullulation of incompossible ontologies on the same literary topos, but his- like Solomon's- was a treasure that could never befall another. Why? Well, something happened to Time in the Nineteenth Century. For Ibn Arabi and Nund Reshi and Sachal and so on there was no problem with embracing a type of 'kshanika vada' (doctrine of momentariness) but for the post Mutiny Mujadidi milieu, Time had acquired a special ontological value it had not had since the Zurvan heresy. There is a story about Iqbal quoting the hadith 'do not vilify Time' to the great delight of Bergson. But Iqbal was spatializing Time- turning it into a battleground where a resurgent Islam would reassert itself- with results tragic and hilarious in equal measure.

It is no wonder that the Iranian Supreme Guide loves Iqbal. I wonder if he is aware that Iqbal grants the Babi heoine Qurratul Ayn (Tahira)  a place with Ghalib and Mansoor al Hallj at the station of Jupiter?

It is curious company for Ghalib. Okay, maybe Hallaj displayed what he should have veiled and Tahira's unveiling at  Badasht caused one of those present to cut his own throat and run gibbering from the garden- but, for Ghalib, I think the real pay-off would have been the fact that Tahira was strangled with her own veil and dropped down a well- a circumstance that would have provided many conversational openings and prompted much warm reflection.