Dibyendu's WallScript

We lose — and we grow angry. We win — and we rejoice, breaking into laughter. Whether in war, in sport, or in love, no one ever wishes to embrace defeat. To win — by any means, at any cost — that alone seems to be salvation. Is there not a saying, There is nothing unfair in war and love ? The greater part of humanity across the globe has accepted that competition is the highest form of democracy. Whatever be the culture of the world, whatever be its history, it is ultimately Western man’s cult of hero-worship that reigns supreme. We, the darker and dusky people of the East, have humbly inherited their philosophy. Veni, vidi, vici — come, see, conquer. We have adorned our honeycombs for the victor to plunder. Survival of the fittest. In society, the defeated has no worth. Only the worthy competitor deserves the license to live. Thankfully! For had Alexander, Tamerlane, or Hitler not fallen at last, this world would have been a nightmare unfit to imagine. The conqueror has glory. The va...

"To bear all naked truths, and to envisage circumstance, all calm— That is the top of sovereignty." — John Keats, Hyperion   In the year of our Lord, sixteen hundred and forty-three, on the fourteenth day of June, the Lords of Parliament in England did place the realm of printing under Crown regulation. In righteous defiance of such tyrannical injunction, the poet and polemicist John Milton composed his immortal tract Areopagitica , a thunderous defence of liberty in expression. So potent were its words, they reverberated across the continent of Europe.   From the days of Socrates in the third century before Christ, to Galileo in the Middle Ages, to Sister Joan, to Émile Zola, to Voltaire, and onward into the modern century with Upton Sinclair, Solzhenitsyn, and Márquez—voices of truth have dared speak, and dared suffer. Some were exiled, others scourged, but all stood upright, champions of that unfashionable virtue called truth.   And now, standing upon the threshold o...

The moment Jayanta awoke, he felt there was no longer any need to go to the office. Last night had been restless. Two reasons for that: first, the oppressive summer heat at the very mouth of the season; second, a nightmare. The heat was a daily affair in this city, not something that troubled him much anymore. But the dream—that haunted him.   He could not recall whether he had dreamt it while asleep or half-awake. Perhaps, in the midst of it, he had opened his eyes once. He remembered clutching the bolster in both arms, even kissing it. That was his nightly habit.   Now, rising from bed, he began to brood over those broken fragments of dream. Grinding his teeth, twisting his face in an expression of torment, he tried to recall every detail.   The first act of the dream unfolded thus: Jayanta, chasing after a girl, managed to catch a bus. But as soon as he boarded, a crowd of men surrounded him. They demanded his identity card. Panic-stricken, Jayanta searched his whol...

You will never know why your crimson lips drive me mad! How strange the curve of your slender hips, the sharp ridge of your nose, the dark kohl-drowned eyes. On your body a thousand stars seem to scatter, and why I loved you in the unconscious depths will remain forever unknown.   I do not seek truth; the mind is hesitant. In the premature blossoming of love, I am like Mahishasura, ready to fall prey to your trident— my wounded heart cast at your feet, my unconditional surrender.   Let the address of your body remain unknown. I have spent long years loving the shadow alone, rushing across the earth with ruthless force, consumed by unnameable fury, gazing with cunning eyes, murdering morality in the courts of men.   Adrija, if I could love the world as I loved you, would I not receive, in return, a crust of bread, a morsel of butter? Could not a single kiss of yours have turned me back toward the path of truth? But in place of a kiss you gave the trident, in place of love ...

Afternoon sun, and suddenly the returning prisoner scratching at the old lover’s door, the one he left behind in the half-shadow, half-light, dragging his years of sin and memory up the veranda steps like a sack of bricks, asking in a low voice—are the children sleeping, or still marching into the schoolyard dream? The air thick with gossip already, the servants leaning in from the kitchen, the neighbors crouched at their windows, the film-people with their cameras and hungry tongues— scandal always splattered across page one, charity and blood hidden in the classifieds, as though the truth itself were embarrassed to breathe. This is the time for stories, not the tidy ones, but the clumsy, the overheated, the interrupted, the kind that break open when someone whispers come closer and the characters refuse to speak unless you touch their skin. What is love in middle age but money, property, children’s faces flickering between appointments, health insurance files stacked like ...

Afternoon light entered the room, for a moment — that was enough. The day, unknown, drenched in sin. An open book sprawled across the table, certain, careless, with its witness of time. History widened itself, page after page scarred with red lines, a strange inventory of life— secrets hidden in black ink, sliding under the weight of pride. The south window lost its way, the room collapsing into darkness. And then, I turned the page again. In that darkness, alone, I searched for light. I leaned inward, peered into the heart, and saw the window— the sorrowful day pausing, as if it stopped, just once, before dissolving. Light called: Come, come. Beneath the sky, what remains of knowledge is here. Then suddenly— darkness fell, the body trapped in the lust of four walls.

Your tears bleeding inside the heart, your sandalwood drop of ritual, your fog, your shame-stained body, your tenderness, your pleasure of possession, your hips sculpted in desire, your careful silence, your mouth brimming with seed, your kiss collapsing the world, your love—safe as a locked door, your rape, your trembling fear, your excuse for being lost.   Your house, your outside, your self I take, your bed I throw you on, your separation signed in paper, your advertisement spread across the paper’s gray columns, your beauty demanded like a commodity.   Your dream I will inhabit, your naked night I will lie beside, your pain I will carry like an inheritance, your silence sealed at the mouth, your breasts pouring milk, your child of love, your treasure hoarded like myth, your rain-soaked skin, your scent of earth and hunger, your heart unlocked at last.   Your love, your hand in mine, your search for the one who lives inside your mind. ...