on reading premchand in the time of elections

& elections being the zamindar's daughter's shaadi where the landless for a few weeks feel invited, fed, participative, give their blessings & good will & marvel at the spectacle from their haunches-

& so a bad cross-colonial pun- & so the devil take the Hind(most) Hindu(')s swa-raj

to be immortal, yes-

but, as, imprinted on shadow
on wave

lovers' graffiti on temple rock-

awe-some mirroring

suicide bombers in baghdad; mad kids who shoot 10 people & kill themselves in the developed world

in cyberia

more than ever?, to be be deleted is forever
trolling the servers of past millenia
what nostalgia for palm-leaf-

amrika is

the first place whose appeal is its own self transcendence of place- not the lunar flights, but the kabuki, the ghana drumming-it is the place at its most existent when it is hospitable, opened-

where would one be

without the mutual imagination & mutual flight of america/ (south?)india -

terrorists by any other name-

in the 19c they had the luxury of calling themselves- anarchists, socialists etc-broadly, the "working classes", affiliated to it. if you were frustrated in the bureaucrazy stircrazy, pre eminently the military, you became "right" wing. the 3rd world contribution was "nationalism"; but nationalism by any other name... every cause, barring a gandhiism (an exceptional case/country) spills much blood & ink. now too, stir the pot, terrorists are, arguably, morally uncomfortably, repudiably, forces for 'anarchy" (confused, though it sometimes coincides with "social justice" rhetoric) sometimes preferable (i.e, historically more plausible) than tyranny/feeling of extreme poverty of power, which anger, stirring the pot, makes it part coincide with the social justice- any cause large enough, & perhaps violent enough, has both social justice & its opposite, this capitalist need to keep the wheels of history racing-