On Expatriation

EXPATRIATION

Inspired and influenced by the writing of Salman Rushdie.

You stepped out of one frame, into another.
The frame in which the fates had conspired,
Your roots to set; roots stretching deep into the moist earth
Of ideas, imaginations, and history; you stepped beyond,
Into another! To a frame you dreamed and ardently desired.

Was this a conscious uprooting of ties?
Or was this, yet again, what the fates had conspired?
How much is free will and how much destiny?
Can you sift through the concatenations of life's events?
Assign portions to this and that, yet leave intact, your sanity!

Evolving in the frame of initial roots, forever the arguer,
The non-conformist, the iconoclast, the rebel, the `other',
Dreaming of that gleaming untravelled world of margins distant,
The ideas of the other frame in your curious head, all the while,
Speaking in a thousand voices, they challenge, inspire, and sometimes rant.

Giant birds bear you across the seven seas, to new struggles in a new frame.
The cries of longing -- painfully snapping ties of attachment -- quickly subdued,
By the oncoming rush, huge swirling waves set in motion!
The vortex of action sucking a willing martyr in, sweet its calling!
A siren song? Or a sweet poison, by many venomous tongues, spewed?

Speak not in such metaphors! What of Ulysses, your guru, then,
The wanderer; what of the dictum `To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield!'?
You've always loved sailing stormy seas; your creative energies,
Now whetted, provoked, burst brilliantly into the sky; fireworks for a king,
Glorious brush-strokes to the new canvas, bold artist, you bring!

Yet unwanted creatures have crept into this frame! Like the imperfections of the old,
That welled up in monstrous forms once you stepped beyond that frame,
So too, the gaps in the other artist's vision have, in time, come to light,
And there are other voices, voices beyond the ones that you heard,
In the morning of your life. Disillusionment? Anyone to blame?

Amid the myriad demands on your time, amid the cacophony of your existence,
Distant voices from the abandoned frame, silently sing, question in plaintive numbers.
But you are tied to new roots, and there are no clear answers,
Your ambition is fired, but what of the wounded spirit seeking balm?
And how will it be smeared on your wounds? Where is that gentle palm?

A part of self for the old picture longs! And another part,
Envisions new possibilities in a brave new world!
Both are very you, and neither can be denied,
Can one sunder the left and the right halves of the soul,
Without vegetating the self, leaving some gaping existential hole?

Would you have it otherwise? With every choice you made at every turn,
A potential you died unknown, unmourned; a new self was forged.
If you could turn back time on its head, would you reclaim your lost selves?
Would you shut your ears to the wooing of another frame?
If you had not stepped beyond, would you still not burn?

Cruel irony! Corporeal rebel and spectral conformer, both doomed,
In their own different ways! Conformer doomed to prowling,
In the mire of petrified ideas, the perceived security of the immediate frame!
The rebel, the wanderer, doomed for he can never again wholly belong,
To either frame! Strange creature, singing an alien song!

Oh, but if you could simply merge the frames! Strike the paneling down,
Let the colors on the different images, into one another, flow
Obliterate the boundaries of these self-delineating proud creatures,
If you could fuse the warring voices into one single harmony,
Would that slake your thirst? Perhaps you know, or do not know!

Audacious human, you strove like Vishnu to straddle both worlds,
And failed! No surprises there! And now, neither here, not there,
Midway angel-like, mediating between god and man,
But which is god and which is man? Differentiate, if you can!
As Trishanku-like, suspended in mid-air, your haven (or is it heaven?),
Between the higher Heaven and the mundane earth (but perhaps not upside-down)
You shift from horn to horn of your dilemma, you unrepentant clown!

Or maybe not a clown!
Maybe Ulysses' disciple who could never make it back to his Ithaca!