The empire of love.
A sadhu - a fakir - was found dead under an old banyan tree. I found this note neatly rolled up under his armpits. Here, I publish it for common good.
This is not a story of empires that eat up continents; but of two simple people brought together by nothing but love.
Two people in tight embrace. Hands brushing the cheeks of a buttock that blush at touch; legs that are hopelessly tangled. Loins longing for each other; sternums on a collision course - elastomers squeezed flat on an innocent chest.
In these realm of two people, in that tiny space between them that enclose an air thickened by love, there’s an empire.
A space not interesting to sultanas, generals or bureaucrats who dream up empires backed by mighty armies and hard currency. Value of your currency is the ability of your army to enforce the rule of law. What’s the value of your love?
Trust that float between you effortlessly.
Trust that needs effort is the coup de grâce of love. Better to bow out with grace!
These two people in embrace; one hand searching the wilderness of her back. Brass tipped fingers finding a way right under the lumbar vertebrae. From here, heart isn’t far away.
Affairs ruined for long; empires long lost to conquerors. Sweet nothingness that floated between these two people; this feeling of patriotism that bound diverse people together. Puff! Gone into thin air as the infallible empire come crashing down.
Stumbling upon that letter from the beloved sent ages ago! Histories of an empire found in dusty archives centuries later!
Complex dialects that we built between each other. What was the meaning of a kiss under the belly button? Why could I read her mind, thousands of miles away? A phone line was enough - or sometimes a mere look into those placid eyes. Now that link is broken - ‘where has it gone?’ - asks my mind. I can’t read her anymore.
Those ornate scripts that adorned the minds of an enlightened elite - now obscure symbols that needed a rosetta stone to decipher.
Layers of complex bureaucracy and intricate taxation writs buried deep under court languages carefully cultivated. Cryptic gesticulations thrown into the abyss, along with the lover’s lexicon.
Affairs of an empire sometimes needed large scale relocation of people. Dialects that organically flowed into these artificial divides - plugging discontinuities in an otherwise differentiable society. Art was the blood that sealed communities together here. Language flowed into the borders that we had to draw up for ease of governance. Through songs and dramas and films that rolled - it tightly sewed up these people together.
Those thought out boundaries between two people - touch has to grow into it, neatly filling the gaps that these two people deemed necessary - quite unnecessary in reality.
Genocides are actually a technique to be used with precision. Insecurities of your lover is to be carefully embalmed inside compartments readily accessible - her weak, trembling knees are your ultimate defence.
To think like a tactician is a shame! Your artful self is to be concealed under a veneer of respectability. In love, your are gullible; scheming charlatans and contriving bigots - all are thrown out of the horizon of your beloved!
That ultimate desire is to see what goes inside that sweet heart you love so dearly!
That lust to peep into the closets of your own people. Surveillance is not an option but a necessity for the paranoid. Would be really hard to be in love again, if you really understood the perils of power that flows out of paranoia!
Without paranoia, there’s no incentive to invest in yourself so much. Narcissism helps much - but progress is fuelled by paranoia. Try building a nation state without an enemy to point fingers to. It’s a challenge!
Your ally in this pursuit is the insecurities that harbour the strange shores of a man/woman you desire. To charm is to touch the unseen corners of the other. To sway them hard with an electric shock that drowns them - before they could put up the defence in time.
War is quite misconstrued in these times of the peace. Under a tyrannical king, the conquerors are warmly welcomed. The tax slabs and local governance system stays the same. The god at the top of the pyramid might be switched through a temple destruction - or merged with that of conquerors via marriage or rape - remember what Alexander did when he got Egypt under his belt?[1]
A mind so terrorised by being alone for long, automatically drops the curtain when the mast of a sick jerk shows up at the horizon. Impatient to storm out of singledom, institutions of self defence built across epochs are shattered by plain sunlight. Unfortunately, this is exactly how innocent empires are conquered too.
What torments the artist in me is the loss of byzantine modes of communication built between us. What is the meaning of a kiss under belly button? Tap on the cheek? Those admonishing eyelids when I flirt with your best friend? Fingers crawling down to the loins, cold fingers in a spotless night?
From a different vantage point, ottoman speak is lost as gibberish. Their elites are savages to us. The celebrated British high culture is nothing but a rubble of refuse to our modern minds.
The smug splendour of Mughal court an anachronism - the Capitalism of post war America nothing but a relic of a giant bogged down by weights that double every passing decade.
How do empires decline? How do love meet its certain death?
In the peripheries - those neglected provinces - the banners of rebellion are drawn first. An ageing monarch would choose the potent weapon of ignorance. A bliss that could considerably improve the quality of his/her remaining life.
Or could choose to fight.
The cuts go deeper, the more you resist. An empire that has seen splendour, which gave tranquility so that its people could develop in peace. Now it shall meet the end. These irrelevant battles, squabbles over a dead teapot, inane cuts on eyelids - we all are marching towards the inevitable.
All love will come to an end; lucky are the ones who end before it.
This is the learning of a lifetime; take it and run. Or bury it with me.
I buried the note with the fakir. Needless to say, Hashin Jithu is not shameless enough to follow this ghastly piece advice.