Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Eastern betrayals

Oh Calcutta! Were you but the repudiatory strain of an overactive imagination that reworks history, culture, time and passion in a world greatly removed from your present reality - a reality marked by depravity and defeat, debaucherously married off one to the other by the oppressive monsoon humidity to spawn the wreck that you now appear.
Oh Calcutta! Where I encountered you so shamefully bared to the shrill wolf-whistles of those who would, at any other time in history, ne'er be welcome even in the servants' quarters of your palaces, once erected in honour of the absurd.
Oh Calcutta! Of whom I thought my gateway to the promises of the walled-off delights of the Great East and the Near East and everything harking of the Splendid East... yea, the splendid east.
Oh Calcutta! The city of poets and muses and litterateurs and dervishes - the devilish instinct in a derelict light.
Oh Calcutta! That you are now reduced to slums upon slums... to the desperate poverty of souls and hearts and minds and candour.
Oh Calcutta! The horror! The horror!