{"id":12205,"date":"2018-06-15T20:54:16","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T18:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=12205"},"modified":"2018-06-15T20:54:16","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T18:54:16","slug":"poems-by-aditya-shankar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=12205","title":{"rendered":"poems by Aditya Shankar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Stray Dog\u2019s Tail<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For a stray dog,<br \/>\nthe curvy tail<br \/>\nis a dangling noose.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nA tail that assumes shapes:<\/p>\n<p>A sickle,<br \/>\nfor the one on the run,<br \/>\nweeding a flourishing debt.<\/p>\n<p>A flag,<br \/>\nfor the one<br \/>\nhaunted by a political hitman.<\/p>\n<p>A vine,<br \/>\nfor the hungry tribal<br \/>\nout of the parched wild.<\/p>\n<p>The duration of a dog\u2019s liberty<br \/>\nis set to the count of his wags.<\/p>\n<p>An equivalent to a human nod perhaps,<br \/>\nor a feeble yes sir or will do,<br \/>\nperfected over centuries of subordination.<\/p>\n<p>And if forever, he grins through<br \/>\na kettle of boiled water<br \/>\nscorching his back,<\/p>\n<p>or a frustrated walking stick<br \/>\nskinning his thighs,<\/p>\n<p>or if he just belongs,<br \/>\nanother urban survivor motoring<br \/>\nalong the streets in agreement to<br \/>\nthe collapsing human scape,<\/p>\n<p>then his tail entitles itself<br \/>\n(may be just as much as a green card or PR)<br \/>\nto remain a proud tail.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peeling Onions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Five minutes* of peeling onions<br \/>\nis what it took<\/p>\n<p>to feel I was peeling my own MCP** skin,<br \/>\nnot the onion.<\/p>\n<p>That I am part of a shameful lineage<br \/>\nof forefathers and their emptied teacups,<br \/>\nwaiting for hands that know chores.<\/p>\n<p>The two and half onions I managed<br \/>\nto skin, stared at me with<br \/>\nthe wounded eyes of girls<br \/>\nforced to strip by their lovers.<\/p>\n<p>All the onion that I consumed till date<br \/>\nand pooped into the septic tank, or<br \/>\nadded to the silence of deep soil, or<br \/>\nto the manure that we again turned into onions:<\/p>\n<p>It felt as if an army of dormant voice<br \/>\nwas revived, to spiral up my throat.<\/p>\n<p>A fiery shot of acidic reflux,<br \/>\na reminder from hell,<br \/>\na bout of obscenity from past.<\/p>\n<p>Together, they reduce me to<br \/>\na mere pipe of transmissions \u2013<br \/>\na stinky drainage that flows beneath<br \/>\nall my glorious steps.<\/p>\n<p>My onion tears masquerade as grief<br \/>\nfor media and courtroom trials of victims,<br \/>\nwe wish to excrete from our happy lives.<\/p>\n<p>Note: * &#8211; The average duration of an Indian film song with happy family cooking sequences.<br \/>\n** &#8211; Male Chauvinist Pig.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Stray Dog\u2019s Tail For a stray dog, the curvy tail is a dangling noose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1322,77],"tags":[1331,1324,1123],"class_list":["post-12205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-54","category-english","tag-aditya-shankar","tag-egophobia-54","tag-english"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-3aR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12206,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12205\/revisions\/12206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}