Narration & Borrowed mythology
by Vivek Narayanan
[ poetry - december 02 ]
Narration
All day he chased the producer
who was a busy man -
he cornered him at the studio
but barely shook his hand;
he stalked the lazy shoot outdoors
sautéed like a crab in the sun,
but when there was a chance for words
the big man had to run;
at last at a certain concubine's
posh residence -
hanging by the gate, 11 p.m. -
he got his audience.
The producer hawked loudly and
spat on the sidewalk;
then with a flick of his hand, he said,
"No script, o.k.? Just talk."
"The father's wife is brutally raped
and set on fire by
a politician, a banker and a gangster-rake;
the father takes his life -"
our man began at a rapid clip -
"The wife's twins are orphaned
then taken by two families
(one Hindu, the other Christian);
one grows up to be a policeman,
the other a roadside thug.
At first their lives are humdrum,
comical or snug -
they dance and sing in the gardens with their girlfriends,
get drenched in summer rain;
then they find each other and the fate of their mother
and unlock the door to pain.
"They team up to take revenge,
they learn the art of disguise;
practice their aim at the firing range
and perhaps polemicise."
"They take the villains one by one:
the banker is boiled alive,
the rake is hung by a hook in his foreskin
and, while taking a bribe
in the rather satisfying finale,
the politician is caught,
stripped naked and flayed before
he is blandly shot."
This took five minutes to narrate
and, chewing thoughtfully,
the producer took ten more
before eventually
he said, "It's been done before and I'll
tell you straight - not
the gangster who lends me on call,
nor the banker that
launders my money clean nor
(dare I say it?)
the man that I put in power
would really like the plot;
but still - it's got hit potential
and if we find an actress
with boobs big enough to steal
the rape scene and dress
there in a scanty transparent
blue, well, my friend
then and perhaps only then,
your film might pay the rent."
Borrowed mythology
A train station in the ancient city,
scene of a hundred suicides.
The shunted iron tracks stop just
a little beyond the set
in green surroundings.
Easy contest: the train
in and out of the station,
heaving pistons, undressing
in smoke, blunt dance
of dirt-nosed kids, high avuncular
clock, a conductor in shiny uniform
to pretend all of this works. And frequently,
the universal moment of the engine
in its godlike whistle, the lunge back
before forward, cut to the face
on the platform, cut to the face
in the window. The sum of the scene,
a twinning with the opposite carriage
that everyone knows. And then no more
but the sound of a sudden shower
on the roof and on the parapet, carried
to the platform part tin part
thunder, played out as a flood
on the tracks with dissolving paper
or watery plastic. The heat-stench
as a solid column of air. Waiting for the square
of the train in the distance, there's
nothing else, when you're sealed like this
in rainlight. And the parting shot
not to the passenger comfortably
heading away to end
of tracks unseen
but something done
in the outdoor location of a pasture
or gentle hills: an overhead, why not,
with the smoke billowing like a dark grey
inkstain on the landscape. Or the wheels
dragged past agriculture, camera
doglike among the crops
and the last not human
but scarecrow fallen,
a pitchfork stuck in its face.
