Talents

Talents

Talents like talons-

Some grip success

Some don't,

But-

The ones that propel us to achievement

Are not necessarily superior to the ones

That don't-

A lot depends on fate-

You win only at what is meant to be

And for the rest

You're barking up the wrong tree

Beauty and the Beast may seem interchangeable

If you look at the outside of one

And the inside of the other

But this is facile-

They are what they are-

A lot of fairytales

Are just wish fulfillment

And romance.

It takes quite some time to accept this secret

Hiding there in plain sight

What is your fate?

Don't worry it will come and find you

Even if you're anonymous-

So

One Bin Laden becomes a top contractor in Saudi Arabia

Another the King of Terrorists-

Don't think Osama

Could have done anything else

Even

If he tried.

No Gandhian conversion was possible here

Not even at the doors of Hell rewritten in his own write as Heaven.

But with all that innocent blood on his hands-

Or what he would justify as historical consequence

The blood and the innocence

Merely incidental

To his big picture jihad

He was

Strong in the stomach

Weak in the morals-

With

Crusading medieval ethics

And a twisted version of

Reality.

He

Was

Consumed by hatred

Of symbols

Of people

Very much like himself

Reflected in a mirror

Reflecting

Someone he used to know

Only too well

In his affluent Bin Laden contractor's son days-

But the fugitive of Abbotabad

Neighbours of Pakistan's Army Staff College

With some fanciful name-

He

Was a ghost already

plotting inside his shroud

With shadows

That never left him

He

Was a chess piece

In a game too big for his sandals-

A golden goose for Pakistan

Worth keeping safe just sixty

Km from the Kapital-

And

Much

Too hot to handle alive

for the

Americans-

Old DNA verified dead man Osama

Can now compare

Notes

With that fat squat Tamil Tiger

Peera what's his name-

That never did get Eelam-

And Peera can recount some of his own social engineering efforts

And

How long they held out

Those years and years

When they couldn't be found

Both

Can talk about the perfection of human bombs

And Osama

can best Peera with references

To plane bombs that take out entire skyscrapers

and symbols they symbolise

And then

They can both compare wounds

Chest shots

Head shots

All the overkill

That befits their status

That lead and more lead

That killed them and their stature

Very very thoroughly-

So completely

That

They could stop being whatever

They were fated to be

At least for this life-

Without any more say so

Than death itself

Without any talk of martyrs

Or the bigtime such as-

Hitler for that matter.

Sometimes

One's talent

And fated affinity

For slaughter

Not only lie in the wrong place

But ignore time altogether.

Gautam Mukherjee

6th May 2011