(AA) Canto 78: Mopping Ups
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After the one thousand celestial years of Kali-yuga, the Satya-yuga will manifest again. At that time the minds of all men will become self-effulgent
Bhāgavata Purāṇa
Callousosities
Through the view of the city
In flames, we rewound times
Of executions at beaches
Ben Okri
With policemen reeling like headless chickens
Ismail & Ajmal leave the groaning hall,
Such sad sight of sticky bodies sickens,
This was no movie-shooting, not at all;
A baby wail’d
Beside its dying kin,
As when the Ak-Ak fail’d to save wargrave Berlin.
By GPS these gunmen roam,
To perpetrate further crimes
Moving thro’ lamplit monochrome
As if marching under limes,
Loosing three potshots at the home
Of India’s own Times,
Then passing Hazad Madan Police Force hide
Gates lock’d & lights switch’d off, all terrified.
Another target search’d they then
Off in the distance saw
The temple where a citizen
If injur’d, sick & sore,
Can enter into altruism’s blood-flow guarantor.
Cama
November 26th
2008
Desperate Scuffles
Clamour raised upon clamour
Rattle of armour, death squeals,
A mind, erratic within
Burns Singer
As surrealities blew absurder,
Watching the news on silent sets they know
Mumbai was war zone, whirlwind of murder,
All doors locking, shutters closed, curtains drew,
The hospital
Grew nervous, fearful, tense
Strong as Sevastopol, seditious with suspense.
Rang gunshots, them the very first,
That turn’d real life to battle,
As Harishandra heard the burst
His very bones did rattle,
Then Abu Ismail turn’d & curs’d,
Waving shiny metal,
At Harishandra’s throat, he dash’d & slash’d,
Held back by briefcase, tho’ his neck was gash’d
He kneed this groping terrorist,
A whopper for the groin
Who groan’d & hiss’d, then shot, then miss’d,
Then trotted off to join
His fellow chattel battle-boy to life’s breathing to purloin.
Cama Hospital
November 26th
2008
Labour Pains
In the distance a star was absorbing
my tiredness, and itself heading like a pilgrim
towards you, leaving blank its place in the heavens
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi
Praying to Vishnu, Allah & the Lord
Of Love, rough hatred stalks the corridors,
Ishmail waving his rifle like a sword,
Qasab shooting at shadows every pause;
Within one room
A woman writhes in pain,
To scream would mean their doom, white sheets began to stain…
“You must, my child, this pain endure…”
Nurse fixes deep each eye,
A flash of pupils rippling pure,
“Else all of us here will die
Your bonnie infant please immure
& little longer, try
Delay her first fresh gulp of precious breath,
For yards away rampage the guards of death!”
She squinted eyes, she bit her lips,
She clutch’d the sweating sheet,
Twyx flesh & hips her baby rips,
As labor pains repeat,
Wrack’d with a primal hunger young life craved for momma’s teet.
Cama Hospital
November 26th
2008
Death of Heman Kukari
Anguish, anguish is my heritage
my throat’s wound
my heart’s cry in the world
Par Lagerkvist
Ajmal felt Ismail was a Hashemite
& Mumbai a modern Acaladama,
Sad trails of bumbledom bled thro’ the night
& now, as they exited the Cama,
Some car appears,
Four policemen spot within,
As fast the chassis nears its shot into a spin.
Mumbai’s first counter-terrorist
Flung unbreathing from his seat,
A second dragg’d out by his wrist
For to bleed out in the street,
Another quickly got the gist
& barely breath’d a beat –
Awkward, wounded, pretending to be dead,
As on him two dead bodies bled & bled.
As Ismail sped a getaway
Qasab got out his gun,
A silver spray, a ricochet
Cuts down a Cath’lic nun
These might well be their ending-hours, but damn it, they’d have fun!
Cama
November 26th
2008
Closest Calls
My thoughts are as a garden plot, that knows
No rain but of thy giving, & no rose
Except thy name. I dedicate it thine
Mu’Tamid
As Arun Jadav under colleagues lay,
As breathing’s imperceptible shallows,
As firm an ‘I don’t want to die today,’
Inside his mind demolish’d unkind gallows;
A phone vibrates,
Yogesh Patil’s pocket,
Explodes, the jangling grates, ‘please, sweet Siva, stop it!’
Qassab whipp’d round & fired & burst,
Like Klansmen at the lynching,
His body trembling with blood-thirst,
Every fiber flinching,
The bullets Yogesh murders first,
Then, steadily inching
To Arjun’s head, them by a thumb’s width stopp’d,
The ammo spent, the cartridge Qassab dropp’d,
Reloading, then, he did not blaze
Another burst behind,
With pure amaze still lives his days,
The gods, for now, were kind,
But this night of the crazy dog, by which mad god design’d?
Cama
November 26th
2008
Modern Battles
For it’s order & trumpet & anger & drum,
And power & glory command you to come
The graves shall fly open & suck you all in
W.H. Auden
The terrorists secured room 632,
A perfect stronghold for the coming fray,
For India’s fury at them, they knew,
Would soon be flung as Cossacks heckl’d Ney;
Steroids, cocaine,
Syringes, LSD,
All weariness will wane aface the enemy.
They gather’d silken mattresses
& set the Taj aflame,
Giving the world such images
As to match Bin Laden’s fame,
The sixth floor burning glorious,
Alight in Allah’s name,
A vision strewn from London to Lahore
An instant twitter’d shore to distant shore.
I stagger’d in a bloody daze
Up to the rooftop high,
Watching the blazing fingers raise
Their angers to the sky,
& waiting for my rescuers sat down & wondered why?
Taj Mahal Hotel
November 27th
2008
Fading Strength
No gravestone stands at Babi Yar
Only coarse earth heaped roughly on the gash
Such dread comes over me. Today I am a Jew
Marie Syrkin
A new day dawns at Nariman – a day
Lacking water, food morsels, most distress’d
Mentalities, hostages frighted to say
A single word, when the world’s interest
Did rivet glare,
On them all, all agape,
& certainly aware, there will be no escape!
The mobile phone tinkl’d again,
All night long it had pester’d,
“My brothers, you shall soon obtain
Thy martyrdom, sequester’d
In paradise, but don’t be vain,
Do not be arrested,
God promises, with immortality
Comes honor, brother, listen, carefully,
Go shoot each hostage in the head,
& I’ll stay on the line,
& when them dead full shall be spread
The wings of the divine…”
Above the rooves rose helicopter rotors with a whine.
Nariman House
November 27th
2008
Relief
Let sanity have strength & men unite
Who in their individual lives are glad
That what remains of peace may yet prove strong
H.B. Mallailieu
I heard the sounds drift louder, shift elsewhere,
& reckon’d I’d survived, a fearsome fight
To fuel my pen, to make the world aware,
We are all children of the purest light;
When worst of wrongs
We druids educate,
Bring change thro’ famous songs to tame & elevate.
Ensophic as the dragonflies
That in times web will tarry,
The drum of humming multiplies
Upon the wings that carry
Onwards all, exhales like sighs
From some hari kari,
Unchains the soul that answers goes to seek,
Like standing on Parnassus’ sacred peak.
The sounds of loud explosions stopp’d,
& I felt safe at last
The fever flopp’d, the temper dropp’d
But still I flourish’d fast,
& so to rooftop ventur’d out, sprawl-corpses stepping past.
Taj Mahal Hotel
November 27th
2008
Captured
I ask’d a dying sinner, ere the tide
Of life had left his veins, – “Time!” he replied;
“I’ve lost ot! ah, the treasure!” & he died
Joshua Marsden
Finding a bullet had a back tyre blown,
Ismail & Ajmal fresher car hijack,
Behind, a bleeding cop took drags out his phone
A witness to their terrible attack,
“But that was then!”
He cried, “& this is now!
Warn all the men, yes warn them all, they’re headed for Gilgao!”
His comrades built a strong blockade,
As Skoda toward it sped,
Spinning before the barricade,
Like a weaver works a thread,
As Ismail finger’d his grenade
A volley blasts him dead,
Ajmal stumbles out feigning surrender
Gun hidden for final, senseless murder.
Noble Ombli leapt on Ajmal,
& took shot-after-shot
& as he fell his comrades yell,
Ascrum the gunman got,
A vital living clue for to unravel this foul plot.
Girgaun
November 27th
2008
Mumble Words 