I am of the tribe of a different Kshatriya.
One who widens the sweetest part of his chest
to embrace the incoming meteorite.
But these days, I have begun to listen
to the sound that warm rotis make when I tear them.
They sound more cartilaginous than herbivorous.
More incisive, than molaric. Indeed, I, a devout Hindu,
desire the solace of an abrahamic God, of
the Negative Commandments. The clean, unimpeachable
demarcations of what is, and what is not.
But this, of course, is contrary to the axioms of art.
Hence at least let me help you tear everything down,
and begin anew, and tear that down too. Pentimento
of the human condition. A layer added, obliterated,
added, obliterated, added, obliterated, ad infinitum, ad infinitum,
ad infinitum. Desensitised, resensitised,
desensitised, resensitised, oscillating madly
between the deciduous bounds
of the Representative and the Post-modern,
till one is desensitised to all such reversals. Then what?
Then, one shall neither be intrigued
by the foreword nor by the afterwards, neither
by the new nor the old, but only by that sharp,
precise point of nuclear inflexion
when the new becomes the old and the old becomes the new.
Not by the hunger nor the digestion, but by that asymptotic
moment when firm berries quiver and just tend to burst between teeth.
Hence, even these new children
continue to ever-sculpt finer details into their sand castles:
Battlements, keeps, corner towers, drawbridges,
baileys, palisades, causeways, a chapel,
bastions, arrow-slits: low entropy, low entropy,
and lower still. The greater the magnitude of order and symmetry,
the more potent the bliss so elicited
from bringing your knee to its cool, firm sand.
I too, therefore, shall wait for Byzantine to embroider
and ripen sweet. Eternal mastication, abject peace.
Pray, continue to build and craft. Barbarīka1! Barbarīka! Barbarīka!
Barbarīka1: As described in the Mahābhārata, an ancient Sanskrit epic, Barbarīka was the bravest of all Kshatriyas. He, however, did not swear allegiance to either of the two warring factions involved in the Righteous War of Kurukshetra. This is because Barbarīka understood the inherent vacuity of righteousness and the vanity, so associated, of the human species. He, therefore, requested to watch the proceedings of war as a mere spectator, who—with a ‘laughter louder than thunder’—reveled in the destruction that unfolded all around him.