When I was eight
My grandma told me something about hell
The colossal tub of sugar syrup
For sinners
Its hot fangs take fancy to your skin
And semen swamps for the sexually free
She also said
Vishnu’s Avatar would come
The Hindu version of Judgment day
Riding a donkey of all things
A man on a donkey
Is this what salvation had come to?
7 comments
Well, It was/is an experiment but not with obscurity
It wasn't intended to, you mean?
Yup not intended. Yaar, its so weird, the response I get for a particular poem by an Indian audience is at times so different from what I get from an American audience.
Yep. Biblical expression of heaven hell/heaven and salvation is hard to connect with.
To disagree with you, I think "hell" isn't completely a biblical expression. Dadi often use to use "narak" and she was convinced Vishu's Avatar, Kalki, would purge the earth of evil. True story. I wrote the poem because I found it fascinating how Christianity and Hinduism connected in a way.
Abey saale. That's exactly what I am saying. 'Narak' is a Hindu expression, while 'Hell' is a biblical expression. Heaven/hell (English terms) bring about different connotations to Indian readers than the Hindi terms we subconsciously associate with religious/scriptural afterlife.
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About us
We find ourselves today, at three vastly different cities and institutions of higher learning. What still sustains our friendship though; beyond and despite the lack of geographical proximity, is what I shall simplistically attempt to explain with the aid of a statistical math tool (refer:common ground).
With these pleasantries out of the way; let me further convolute this introduction.
There are nerds, and there are jocks. There are the deeply pious, and the self-righteous atheists. The lost poets in apathetic tees and the narcissistic yuppies in classy 3-piece GQs. The thums up lovers and the connoisseurs of fine wine.
Or as I would like to think of us; both and neither.
There is an oxymoron in there somewhere
For at some point in our lives; we've each played a video game for 9 hours straight, spent a session from midnight to dawn of uninterrupted street football, quoted Nietzshe and then laughed on last nights How I Met ..
you get the idea.