The Sense of Dissecting the Non-sense

Intimacy is a closed contract wherein we like to preserve and conserve the thousands of infinities our body and mind consumes conditionally or unconditionally (the latter is done by choice). The fertile moments of our life get served in different ways – sometimes through our physical presence, or just by witnessing the happenings of every day – in other times, we feel them as the incoming reality with or without a driving assistance. ‘Rhyming Verses: Sense and Non-Sense’ by Akil Abbas Contractor, weaves the subtle references of the encounters most of us choose to not address. The poet keeps the larger, benign truth to undress the smaller chunks of our everyday life. These arbitrary fragments might appear as the skin of modernity yet the evidence under it swells – and waits for someone to figure out whatever is going on. The time being the constant phenomenon.

Nirmal Verma, in his book ‘Antim Aranya’ speaks about the clarity of the pleasure of the future and how it appears clearer and brighter than those of the past. The former never gets dirty since we keep on working on them whereas the latter one loses its very soul for our deliberate amnesia. Akil’s poem on how the often quoted, ‘The Grass is always Greener on the other side’ (it being the title too) carves our longing for validation as well as the sense of us being lesser than someone else. In the age of technology, the necessity of the philosophy should not be quiet yet it is.

The poet writes:

‘The grass is always greener on the other side,

we tend to look at others and their claimed upside,

better that we look towards our own terrain,

your distant view may take you for delusive rides.’

When we speak about good and bad employees (in case of government or private jobs), by correlating the subject with being good and bad students, respectively – the usual, well-marketed society forgets about mentioning the idea of developing skills. Most of the universities of India have got a syllabus which does not give much importance to skill. The main reason being its age-old atmosphere – a syllabus, if it is ten years old, can never nurture a student to become an employee who is well-equipped with new age software or technology. It is not surprising that India, for the second time, became a country with the highest number of unemployed young individuals. It should not be surprising that a poet is addressing social issues. Yet if the poet is giving us a glimpse of the same from the perspective of an economist, it makes us give it a weird look especially when most of the poets have the notion to hide behind metaphors and absurdity.

In the poem, ‘A Bad Workman Blamed his Tools’, writes:

‘…but tools will be inspected,

the outcome fully respected,

the good and bad of any work,

the workman will be tested!’

The taste of inspection is not good for those who yawn by resting in the AC chambers. Yet keeping it is a necessity, but how useful it is if the certainty is that we are looking towards an era where skill is not economical. It has nothing to do with the human emotion. Rather the human mind growls for some rest to sustain the collapse of any kind of condition. We also live in the age of fake news and doctored videos – nonconsensual sex tapes and louder lies are nothing, but determinants of our dinner table conference. It is not our curiosity that’s making us crave to have a doctored video or some screaming reporter to blabber lies to push us towards believing it. Rather they have conquered our very conscience to cripple us to behave like unsound human beings. Damaging the bigger world for the smaller belief is a uniform social understanding of this age.

Therefore, when Akil Abbas writes about his unsure truth, the door opens towards the figurative demonstration of the linear retrograde. He writes:

‘A leopard cannot change its spots,

I am not so sure that’s true,

there’s photograph to ease the doubt,

of shifting spots and new’.

The rule of the jungle is not at all romantic, if the society is constantly shifting towards becoming more humane than ever. The leopard of the poem peeks through the species which is capable of reading poetry. Keeping the deadlier reality before the merrier is a clever way to keep the absence alive. The poet cannot fill it up – so why to try! Wisdom is to make the messy people sniff the mess no matter how horrific they feel (although they are devoid of feeling even the thought of absolute feeling). The poet’s wilderness mocks the civilized gathering, like always.

Do we really mind to understand the root of the problems we come across? We do not. But we surely do not have the time to give it a little bit of our time. Jorge Luis Borges’s urge to stay imperfect if he gets to live his life for the second time is the permanent thought of anyone who’s out there earning money and claiming to have a good life. It is not at all true that the value of money should be the tiniest thing of concern, but it should not be the biggest charm too. The poet addresses the topic by taking the candle as his muse. To be in a state of rest is not pessimism. But it surely is an understanding of those who have reached the limit. We usually believe in setting no limit so that our optimism stays alive. But when we cook it, using all the ingredients, the body surely reaches the saturation point. The poet urges us to not blanket it – under any condition.

The poet writes:

‘I have never watched a candle burn,

until the very end.

It maybe I am impatient,

or never did intend.’

‘Rhyming Verses’ is a book through which the poet, Akil Abbas Contractor, gets to come out of everything that has been holding him. The coinage of ‘Sense and Non-Sense’, is a simple yet important way to magnify the million lives we live weaving the emotions of varied nature. A book with droplets of sheer honesty, and a poet of immense importance takes a leap towards becoming a bridge that connects the dots which demand and deserve our utmost attention.

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