Watch Me Dare and Declare!

Watch me dare and declare !

There’s no stopping me . Yes, I have to make this confession, and dare to share it with the reader naturally. Face to face, I meet you here and fully realize that my life may not mean much to you, but with great intentness, I hope ( sincerely praying 🤲) that the trivialness of my making doesn’t disturb you immensely. Instead,🙏 bury this writing quickly if you get tensely tired reading it word to word , thoroughly 😅!

Warning ⚠️: No explicit expectations please!

To begin with, let me inform you that I am strangely weird and my predecessors were drastically savage beings as well. Most things that went with the making of me might not resonate with you. So bear me in peace or just leave !

Oddly enough, destiny has played an adroit farce with me, and it has played it out ingeniously in every aspect of my existence. Extreme opposites rampantly intermingled to surprise me, a fact that I live with every hour, and each minute of all days. By and by, one ☝️ day, I shall be a spiritual vagabond. I promise ! So, believe me as I share this sneaky-snarky predicament.

Here, in a neat note let me tell you an incident from my past when I was at a spitting distance from fame and ridicule; both equally charging at me synchronously. Remember, I mentioned about my fate working upon unexpected moments, and stringing in both delight as well as melancholy. Forth with, they were playing together in a consorted symphony. And with a timing of it’s own, this was happening, many times, automatically!

I was up and about to make something out of my living. Several of us satisfactorily identified as “ bandits,” ( not pundits) were boarding a flight ✈️ to’ a faraway land. Unknowingly, I was looking sadly at the tarmac thinking —“that’s it, there ends pressure and here comes a time of “ precious leaving,” as I am finally escaping this fertile territory by making this choice to pilot a new journey. I was to soon form a new identity. I was headed towards a promising land where dreams c’d come true!

Unexpectedly, at that moment a recursive echo from my past started showing up in the present. Instantly, I indulged in —that —“divine itch,” uncontrollably. It was more clearly, wading thro’ the croquette lawns of my charming sacral glories. However, it’s another story that I pretend it to be my sole proprietary and go extempore with it ; raking it, in full and final fury.

And urgently as much as I know, it’s an absurd conduct, yet, it provides me with a greatest relief dorsally. Throughput and through those vagaries flunked at me, quite peculiarly, I court soulfulness beyond belief.

Born and brought up as a victim of irony, I learnt to embrace it all as a customary. More so, constitutionally, as if, I was naturally borne to be casted in —such a —strange kind of “head turning,” citizenry. No better than my own, I was acting up to those absurdities. However, this time, the plunging was going straight down or better still, running thro’ in parallels, right there, more vividly, to form a concert 🎵, colossally. In common parlance —I was rocking in a condemnatory astonishment like “best never stops!”

Little did I know nor believe that I was headed towards getting petrified royally!

Again, giving this kind of sustained attention to self is killing me. Preoccupation with these details is like a chant of me, with me; with the added truth of knowing almost nothing about the “real me.” Frankly, in defining me, the influence of my surroundings cannot be negated. Yet, in all this exclusive focus, the “real me” has been utterly missing amidst the social fabric of living and giving.

Mind it !

Now, up until now , I was mildly eccentric, comfortable in assuming that I was “all that,” among my family and friends, who h’d cultivated in me —no doubts— about my “martyr confidence, “ to deal with anything in the world. All the while, I h’d lived in a little ancestral house that h’d made me feel like a grand estate owner. Amusing recollections of life were engraved in every brick and mortar of that place. Here, I had spent a quarter of my life, listening to stories of uncle Om and aunt Savitri while paying long comfortable visits to the bogs —out there—in the open. Yes, that’s where I had caught up the craze to be a debutant singer. The lean time gained in the “open sundas lavatories” was the reason for it …. The commodes were nothing like the old detached privies. Phenomenally, they were just little holes dug deep into the earth, but lain simple to catch my spirited spree in the abysses, so remarkably. Those urinals were completely out in the open fields.

Traditionally, we villagers were taught to live amidst nature and source through the manuring process as a whole congregational ca·ma·ra·de·rie, with some arresting dead feels in some parts of our bodies. So there we were ,all there, squatting together, to sing , sa re ga ma ( musical notes like do re me) publicly. Out there, it was nothing too much —out of the ordinary to fart away those notes in all time glory. Our soprano pitches w’d ,at times, uniquely synchronize with the intermingled gurgles of pyrrhic potpourris. And, by that I mean —dysentery. Also, our winning rituals were somewhere absent in those mechanistic scour rinses. And to that, I started believing in such fantasies like water drenching us —right there, on those exotic places 🏖️ casually. But in actuality, we were p!ssing ourselves out with the prospect of a serpent meandering up the hole as we envisioned it as a Taoist posing for a satori.

And so, breaking wind 💨in those sober paddy fields was, sort of, mandatory. In ways, by pushing harder and harder at it —somehow, our farts gave us the splendid “resurrecting ideas” of “make beliefs. These were those bogs , I would initiate a choir practice inadvertently. I would head straight up disconcerted towards those hedges and bushes as I called out these measures in urgent relief. Furthermore, to camouflage the sensitive sounds emerging out of the dumping process, sometimes I sang bold, very loudly! It was “that”easy and this all started gathering momentum. Excitedly, one on each side of the corner field, were these neighbors ,unknowingly peeing, and slowly gathering to take notice of me. Taking exception as a raging Bull , they started “fan girl-ling “ me with a great deal of interest. Tragically, the effect was composing itself in gains, and people started droning me like flies, every time I went to the dump grounds, heartily. There were no days where I didn’t give out oddest sounds like the trilling hoots of conch shells 🐚 blown as if, awaiting the arrival of some long lost dignitaries.

Soundly … a closer look at this irony revealed that all those actions didn’t actually correspond with the precise intention they carried. So, such was the paradox, I fell prey to, quite early in life.

And mistakenly so, it all had to happen so clandestinely. Fervently thereafter, my mouth dragged to open in an act to sing while the hind side of my body automatically quivered and wriggled air down the larynx to release itself thro’ the dorsal cracks in a musical jamboree. Crucially, I was orchestrating a notion of virtue as a village singer. And, perhaps there was a breezy liveliness in the manner of my singing which was not quite becoming.

Tragedy was certainly tuning me out and perceptibly all sounds were being directed dorsally. How wicked?! I know! Yes, that’s what was happening more ardently and evermore so surreptitiously. With experience being such, I was given rapt attention everywhere I w’d go insidiously.

And so, for my quiet devotion in the bogs, I constantly became the talk of the town. Of the things that plagued me the most was this good list , on the whole, of those notable recommendations that were begetting me in terms of the singing assignments. For a moment, I felt lighter with the recognition, but it was all savagely incongruous. Actually, I was distinctly being typecasted as a “never -ever -after “ this release, types!

Then that happened , and that can happen —only in those places of bourgeoisie suburbia. To the great amusement of the village elders , I was invited to sing 🎤 chiefly at dirge banquets ( we call it Rudali in folklorist’s lingo in India). In this way, my utmost “modest desire ,” to emote comprehensively, at some festive invocation ( like Ganesh Chaturthi/Diwali) became a distant dream.

Literally, it all went down the drain. And more supplementally, I started singing at the “ garbha-grahams,” family conclaves, as a festive rebel.

Subsequently, I became the ONE ( the chosen one,) so easily begotten, and so readily forgotten, instantly. Very likely, I was giving the appearance of someone who could be taken for granted and actively inducted as an assay-ist to assuage the “bitter-sweet morose-ness ,” of some purposeless deceit. Or maybe, maybe 🤔 they were all staged conceits. Who knows ?!

Chiefly, I was bartered off as a notable omission, quickly erased off of being born as somebody. Call it a tragedy or a comedy but it was all there to build my life story —a comical tragedy.

So, in this way, my childhood dream of becoming a full fledged singer came to an end; sort of, it became extinct, there and then —totally.

To that , I would say , taint had composed me almost instantly !

Leapt at me were my mothers hands 🤲—raised on rosary chants, and unable to wash out my cursed sins. And so, thinking so, she always hovered over me. She believed a sorcery was casted over me unfairly. One time , I still remember, she complained to the almighty, and rigorously asked to pass on his remedies. Heaven knows to what extent my mother was inured to the horror of birthing me. But, her sharp agonal breaths which came in unexpectedly recently makes me wonder around the question—What happens next?!

I was special —as ever—to my mother and she gave me solace by saying this occasionally— “nobody will know, how will they know.” That was her way of providing structural support to many of my complexly layered tensions emerging in my life, quite automatically.

But sadly, I knew my mother must have prayed —subliminally— that —I either get lost ( at the village fair—mela) or together we disappear at lightening speeds, somehow- somewhere, magically. Almost like vanishing from earth 🌍 and saying goodbye, once and for all, to extricate the source of our anguish that was ingrained deep within the DNA 🧬 blueprints of our lives.

All this was probably happening because my mother knew the finer truths of life , and certainly she knew that there were things about me that could go beyond horizon —if only —destiny would let it be.

Conclusively, look 👀 here’s how my fate had acted up to its own sense and devalued me as an embodiment of neither heaven nor hell ,” and quite literally, it threw me out into that infernal musicality. That was then ! Years ago! And now, enchaining me to this ,now and forever, please don’t suggest that I keep a dog around me, if ever, I attempt to sing again 🎤 next to nobody!

With that said , hopefully I was transparent enough in these tremendous reveals from my memoir.

Back in here, I shall now run a road roller as a practicing art, to seek liberty 🗽from this: “can’t -keep-it -to-self ✍️ writing .

Throughput I have so far inadvertently gathered a strange kind of ogle observation as I have ventured about in scribing these subliminal outpourings in the bogs. My family thinks I am dead as there’s no sound around me.

And for this existence of mine— I shall now declare my life as a blatant blare …

I know, I am a victim of this Stoic Vice held over wisdom’s cry!

Very touchy ! I know! Hmm!

I am an impossible to many … So be it!

I fell into this cognitive paradox since birth and I had to make this great decision long ago that —Whatever other’s think of me it shall be a false reflection of their own identity. Why me? I never beat the devil out of that query because I know that this was destiny’s way of using me ,as an excuse, to teach others —through me!

Life’s inadvertent teachings thro’ this narrative:

“Nothing remains constant… everything changes rapidly!”

All diarists operate on word limits ,and so, I end this chapter with these verses that I had ,once scripted, to goad the “WILL,” which was overriding from one place (in time ) to another and moving towards a wayward hill supernally…

A strange type of combination, I know .. but surely peruse it, if you will !

Will is a Wind's Vaudeville, running so close, to a rapid drill ..

Yes, Will as in a Wind's mill, whirls upon, those yonder hills !

Often tossed so as in magical feels

Opening eye-lids in which so concealed

O! Will! ...

So resolute and so sincere,

When first thy sire is sent to rill

On whom shall shine thy divine spills?

And in sightings--Where will thee lean on spectral fields;

Borne over winds in full phantom shields, ...

For a world worth winning on this earthly spiels

Quickened in steed art thy glorious shields

When in equal thy ardor meets with in greater skill

Thy devotion gains that -very spot; far afar, in tributes to build,

Although ...

Yet so near,and such so far, thrives thy tenure, yet to yield

O! Will!

Forthwith, thro' those open doors of my dreamy fields won't yea please,

pass on by, in the dreams I steal !

Will , yes Will !

💫✨ 🧡🦢🦢🦢🧡 ✨💫

©✍️ Madhu Goteti, September 18th,2023