Poetic Sensibility

26- Rejection And Refusal

Thank you for the one thousand reads! It makes me feel super special and I decided to celebrate it with a new cover which I hope you will like! Also, this brings in a new POV. Kabir has been the hardest character for me to figure out because I am *nothing* like him. But I do hope he turns out well! As usual, the poem itself has been typed out in bold for an easy read. For an update on how to become a part of Romi's sessions *for real*, check Poetic Sensibility's facebook page. Happy reading!

        Everyone felt that the last session had ended on a very 'the-world-is-despairing' note; and Kabir, being a logic lover, should have immediately begun to remedy the situation. Fixing things was what he was best at. But there was something about the way Rishi had said, "And what good will cleaning that mess achieve?" which did not want Kabir to fix it. And it bugged him.

        The week had been surreal in a very, very good way for him. First, Sarah and he had had a date. A proper date. He had considered turning up with flowers or something but he was pretty sure that Sarah would laugh at the idea. Oh she would accept them but she'd call the gesture "cute". He did not want to be 'cute'. He didn't want to be 'me Tarzan, you Jane' either but he just wanted Sarah to know that if he and a grizzly bear got into a fight, he'd emerge victorious. Oh he'd have bloodied and tattered his clothes, but he'd be victorious. Sometimes he was really ashamed of his thought process. Not for the first time, he wondered whether he was sane.

        The next session was again to be conducted at Romi's house which relieved him to no end because now that there had been a tectonic shift in his relationship with Sarah, he didn't know how much her folks knew. He was 5 minutes late and the last one to arrive. From the rather amused look on Sarah's face, he was positive she was going to dish out some punishment to him. And he was right.

"I think Kabir should read his poem first," Sarah winked at him. And he tried really, really hard to not blush. God, please no reddening of the face.

        He was hesitant about reading his poem because he believed that somewhere it did reflect the after effects of the poem they had read last time. But he was not going to back down now that Sarah had thrown the gauntlet. Oh heavens, he really was like Tarzan some times.

"So the poem I have written is completely unlike my normal stuff. I suppose I was still hungover about the modernists while I was writing it so... you know." Now he was definitely blushing. Bless Romi for trying to put him at ease immediately.

"No one is going to give you marks for trying to write something different. I will, however, interrupt you if I find something interesting or worth pondering upon and question you about it. Is that okay?" Romi asked.

Kabir nodded and replied, "Maybe I should read it as couplets then? Allowing for interruptions?" The Logic Lover in him was at work again.

Romi nodded and said, "Sure. Go on." He could see everyone's eyes fixed on him.

"A clear sky it takes
For the blue of the water to pale,
And the rays to dance
For the ship to set sail.
A clear mind it takes;
The clouds hazard a chance
As the fury sets in
And the stormy beast begins to prance."

        Kabir waited patiently for his lines to sink in. He could see confusion clouding every face except Kiara's and Romi's. He smiled knowingly as Sarah was the first to question him. He knew her all too well.

"I'm sorry but did I hear you say 'A clear *mind*?'" She inquired.

Kabir nodded, "The first time around it was 'a clear sky'. The second time it was 'a clear mind'."

It was Samay who spoke next, "Why a stormy beast?"

Kabir simply shrugged and spoke what was running through his head when he was penning the poem. "Well, you could say that when a mind is blank, it is at a crossroads. It can go into a very productive thought process that yields results or it can become cloudy and stormy and simply cause destruction."

"Hmm. An extended metaphor with an 'idle mind' at the core," Romi murmured appreciatively. He took this as a sign to read on.

"When the overcast sky He sees
The Captain takes His wheel,
In vain He endeavours to steer away
As the devil lands to make a deal.
'At arms!' He commands,
For he refuses to kneel
And fight he must;
To defend and not keel!"

        Kabir paused again for the wave of questions. He realized that he was quite enjoying these pauses because it allowed the words to wash over him. When he was reading his own poem aloud, he rarely felt as if he was the one who had penned it. They sounded like the words of a stranger. He wasn't surprised at this. A poet was gripped by mysteries and unsolvable problems. Both these aspects were completely uncharacteristic of him and yet he was impossibly drawn to stringing up words and casting them into a verse.

This time, it was Romi who questioned it first "Why 'keel'? Why did you use that word?"

Kabir did not understand the question. And from the looks of it, Romi was confused too. "I don't know," he finally replied. "It just sounded fitting. 'Keel' means to bend and therefore to give up, doesn't it?"

Romi looked at him and replied, "Yes, but it also means 'capsize.' And it's the kind of word that a Victorian poet would use. I do love it's usage here because the pun fits perfectly with the captain and boat imagery. Continue, please."

"The Captain turned to the crew
As they beat a hasty retreat,
For life's sake they let the spirit break
Refusing to suffer the devil's heat.
He rejected the paralysis accompanied by fear,
Knowing that it was no easy feat;
He looked at His throne at the heart of the ship
Rebuffing the terror, he took his seat."

For a moment, there was complete silence. Kiara was the first one to break it, which was a surprise. "Does the 'crew' stand for other human faculties? I mean apart from the mind?"

"It stands for common sense. Common sense fails you when fear takes over, doesn't it?" Kabir replied in a flash. He had seen it all too many times. In desperate times, people had allowed to act on their darkest side. It was his duty, he knew, to make sure that they knew what they were doing before they acted on it.

"'Refusing, rejecting, rebuffing.' You have a lot of 'R's in there." Sarah commented. He grinned at her. Typical Sarah.

"What's the 'throne'?" Samay asked. "What is the throne of the Captain, that is, the mind?"

Kabir held a firm belief that the mind and the soul were strung together at the very core. However, he felt that the others wouldn't understand this. So he opted for an easier reply, "Consciousness. Being knowing."

I wonder," Romi began. "Do you think you could also write an alternate last stanza to this?"

Kabir was confused. "What do you mean?"

"Instead of the Captain resisting the storm, could you show him succumbing to it?" Romi asked.

        The question sparked something inside Kabir. At first, he vehemently rejected the idea. It was just wrong. Succumbing was wrong. He had seen what it did to people and families. Hell, he had seen it's terrible effects on animals. It was a concept so dark that he didn't want to explore it. Then he looked at Sarah, who was smiling encouragingly at him. Nor for the first time, he realized that no matter how deep he went, Sarah would always bring him back to the surface. That's the person she was. It was probably why he really wanted her to accompany him on his charity drives. He could always count on her. So did that mean he was ready to succumb?