Dangling conversations...

I haven't written a prose piece in a very long time. It seems strange to be writing in full sentences instead of the truncated verse line that I prefer. But there's a completeness to the form that poetry cannot have. To live and breathe and be re-born again, poetry must be open, flowing like the desert winds that unexpectedly bring the ocean to your lips. A touch of salt moisture and its gone- dust in your eyes and flies in your mouth. Prose is simple, straight. Some would say blunt but I'm not quite sure.

For the past month I have been working with poetry in endless iterations.First it was incomprehensible Sindhi, then slightly (a word or two) more comprehensible, intelligible Hindi, followed by (to me) completely unintelligible English and it just goes on. I thought the English would be easy. Its the language I think,write and speak in. Hell i even dream in it. But that turned out to be the most difficult language of all. The translations were messy, incomplete, lacking any semblance of rhythm and read like a 2 year old putting together a sentence for the first time.

I was appalled. I thought I had completely lost touch with my writing but then I discovered something fascinating.I discovered that, I was thinking and writing far more comfortably in Hindi than in English. Which is nothing short of a miracle considering the fact that my grammar was equivalent to a firang's interpretation of Hindi all through school to 2 years of Hindi during my BA, and that all I was taught during said 2 years was how to write "tippaniyan" or notes. Not just any notes mind you, but notes in strict adherence to governmental standards of Hindi note making. I have nightmares still about that book and those lists of Hindi words for banking terms, aforementioned, above, aforesaid and nautical terms. (Nautical terms!!! Why on earth... ?) That aside, it got me thinking as to how much we take our language skills for granted. Leaving them rusting in some forgotten doorways of our mind, not even bothering to check for rats, mice and other sundry forms of life that tend to chew great big holes in our memories. And I also realised that if not for this particular assignment, I would never have bothered to check these alleyways out and never to discover how much one had actually learnt all those seemingly futile lessons ago.

That being said, the conversation with Bhitai is still happening. It doesn't seem like it's going to end anytime soon.. So thanks Latif for our very own dangling conversation...