The Genesis of Civilization (And Related Maladies)

In the days of yore now lost in the mists of time
A horde of brooding males wrote in poetry sublime
Noble words pregnant with a silence eternal
The fruit of centuries of penance transcendental.

Breathing the Himalayas's idyllic peace
Those frigid men in efforts without cease
Mapped the structure of the great universe
By smoothing out every trace of a crease.

Then they taught that the immortal Ariadne's thread
For all those who through this ailing world tread
Is by withdrawing from Woman's seductive charm
The source of all ignorance, of every conceivable harm.

Those who meditate on the rhythmic sacred Utterance
And real-ise the world brimming over with Its resonance
Are liberated at once from the sinister power of Her wiles
No longer are they in the twilight zone of such guiles.

This unfailing talisman to traverse the world of plurality
And ascend unto the ineffable peace of the now lost unity
This inexplicable hold of the allure of such abstract beauty
Surely must be the very El Dorado of universal masculinity.

But alas! in the course of time's destructive sway
And much to their descendants' utter dismay
This message dissolved into the vortices of memory
Like Woman herself, ever so fragile, ever so finicky.

And then there arose from the indomitable East
Like the morning sun's awakening for his feast
On the night's feminine forces of abject darkness
Which he gobbles at a trice with his brightness.

There emerged this fellow in passionate search for divinity
Having indwelt the grieving earth's forsaken misery
Resolved to go straight to the heart of the ponderous matter
And arise from the masses' feminine and inane chatter.

For years he searched but recovered not the light he sought
Found no solace in the arts and sciences he had been taught
With the great eclipse of the human heart he valiantly fought
And yet his Herculean labours all sadly came to nought.

Until one day straying off from the path beaten
He stumbled over a hermitage ancient and earthen
Where an emaciated figure in contemplation reposed
With a saintly face in utter peace blissfully composed.

'Teach me, Light of the World, in Thou I seek refuge!
Of fashionable knowledge I have by now a pastiche
My mind is overcrowded with billion a billboard
But give Thou unto me true knowledge's sword!'

'With that I shall forthwith cut through this hoard!
That groans in my mind, this despicable smorgasbord
And freed from all nagging doubt and devillish delusion
I shall penetrate through this veil of feminine illusion!'

The old man opened an eye and looked upon him
August saints are, after all, allowed such a whim
With a faint smile on his lips broken and chapped
With his arms outstretched towards him beckoned.

And the two became from that auspicious moment
The pair of the obedient child and the benevolent parent
'I have taken you under my wing', he lovingly proclaimed
'Listening to anyone else is hereby strongly condemned!'

Thus the Master started the long surgical process
Of trimming off his disciple's mind the earthly excess
That he had imbibed from the world's pretentious schools
Full of students pragmatically wise, but spiritually fools.

After twelve's arduous years of rigorous instruction
Almost an eternity's duration of spiritual deconstruction
The Master declared in a voice that for a matter so grave
Was not only palpably placid but also strikingly suave.

'Our forefathers established over the inscrutable Chaos
With solemn invocations to the heaven of Deos
In a Language they had received as a divine gift
Laced with metaphors melodious and similies swift.

'The blessed tranquility of the reign of cosmic Order
Though the beneficence of Speech, the divine M/other
Victorious over worldly transgressions which it does smother
Against the looming spectre of Woman, the perennial Other.

'On this great day, my long-suffering and patient disciple
I teach you this : Language is truly a feminine principle
So if it is Her frivolous touch that you seek to conquer
It is this Language that you must definitely master.

'Not knowing this Language, the words of the heavenly gods
Men become Woman-and-Gold seeking servile sods
Drinking life to the lees they lie prostrate on the road-side
Pretending to be cool, they indeed become hollow in-side.

'But you know now my loyal and worthy disciple
Like the ephemeral nature of everything edible
Woman's outer material shell too is frangible
Such is the impermanence of everything tangible.

'But Woman rises above such carnal triviality
To the rarified heights of unsullied spirituality
When she attains the beatific state of Maternity
The nearest she will ever get to touching Divinity.

'Our eminent Indian women in the days before the British
Did not bother whether their complexion was wheatish
To those ephemeral Westerners I hasten to add perforce
Our celestial Language has no synonym for their 'divorce'.

'If as the Mother incarnate you look upon every woman
There shall soon be none left for her plight to bemoan
Though I confess that pushing this argument to its extremity
Will also imply the ultimate disappearance of humanity.

'A veritable model of concord, amity and harmony
That is indeed the bliss of the classical Indian family
With the father the over-fed King, the mother the Queen
And the demure wife as the what-could-have-been'.

That evening the disciple was immersed in reflection
And just as he reached the end of his intense cogitation
He slowly fell into the serene lull of a dreamful sleep
As the frosty stars their warm tears began to weep.

Then through the hazy clouds of the sky aquamarine
He thought he saw the lineaments of a figure feminine
Who from afar mocked him with a smile shimmering
And then launched into a speech bold and blistering.

'Oh, dear deluded disciple, what can I say unto thee?
I know not where to begin and even if I did know not
How to talk to you, you poor little parrot-like swot
How can I liberate you from your self-inflicted misery?

'I am Language, indeed the very one you garrulous men
In a grandiose moment of world-renouncing megalomania
Have appropriated from me through your juvenile dementia
Speak, write, read, or hear my own words now I cannot even.

'When I begin to speak my Language is already stolen
And washed with the blood of your everpresent violence
How can I excavate my forgotten words that express no vehemence?
How can I recover from you my wealth, now so ill-gotten?

'So I cry out to you in these laments that are contrapuntal
That mimic the facile cadences of your elegiac songs
But I subvert them using the very intrument of your wrongs
This Language you have utterly defaced to a state dismal.

'Even when I am nostalgic I have nothing to go back to
There are no pristine origins uncorrupted by your touch
It is your own words that I must use, though they ouch
And subtly dissolve them through my ironic play too.

'It is indeed Language, O' misled disciple, you have been taught
That is the alpha and the omega of every perishing thing
No matter which way the fates of men may swing
It is for the right to speak that revolutions are fought.

'Countless is the number of men who repeat glibly
To their wives and daughters in a solemn beatitude
'You know, I really am doing this for your own good!'
These masters of using Language so patronisingly.

'What an irony, these self-apppointed Lord Protectors
Are viewed by women as veritable Grand Inquisitors
When they indulge in such rhetoric that borders on falsehood
What becomes of this question, 'Whose Language? Which Good?'

'What a tragedy, these self-styled Moral Guardians
Who for 'women's sake' pitifully endure great burdens
Do they know that their task which they take to be cosmic
Appears in fact so plainly risible and absurdly comic?

'Little do they pause to reflect when they declare
"Women need to be saved from their own devices
And cannot walk without men as their crutches"
Who it was who invented this grand imposture!'

When the disciple woke up it was early morning
And all the chirpy yellow birds were just stirring
He saw his ancient master at a distance reading
And breathlessly under his tired breath mumbling.

'You from this day I do earnestly renounce
And all your teachings too do I utterly denounce
Today I set forth into the world I once left
In whose intricate ways I was then so deft.

'But in repudiating you I must by necessity
Abjure much that constitutes my own identity
I cannot henceforth write any longer with a valiant 'I'
And when I speak I must do with a smile wry.'

Thus the disciple came into the world's sight
Rejecting much of his past as a beastly blight
He now emerged as an unmitigated anarchist
To undermine Language, as the transparent ironist.