Sattire Attire part XII - Lionhearted, Birdbrained

"We all owe death a life" Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children

A seed is a remarkable... existance; microscopic in size, weightless in weight, a withered past and a future unknown. Every birth can trace itself to its seed. Seeds bloom into flowers, they are fed to birds, reach the heights of great tall oaks, they transform into lions and men - lionhearted and otherwise.

But we humans are sometimes so clever that we manage to defeat imagination and arbitrariness. We have classified seeds so as to predict their pattern; an apple-tree seed will grow into an apple tree, a rose-seed will blossom into a rose and a human seed will take the form of either man or woman - in most cases. But we humans, like apple trees and roses, are not perfect; we did not manage to completely annihilate all arbitrariness and imagination.

Can we fathom whether the apple-tree from the apple-tree seed will bear sweet fruit - or will the apple from the tree descend upon the head of an unsuspecting imaginist, changing the course of human history and thought, and leading to the very murder of arbitrariness and imaginiation that we so adore?

Can we, then, fathom whether the rose from the rose-seed will smell as sweet as its parent -or will it find itself strangled between the clasping hands of two lovers under the shadow of a winged midget fidgeting with its bow and missing arrow?

Or can we even fathom whether the man - assuming that the imagination of the arbitrariness of gender has been murdered - from the human seed be a poet? A warrior? A tyrant? A beggar?

At last we have salvaged some arbitrariness and some imagination, but also something else... some doubt, perhaps? Doubt. yes, some doubt. There always has to be some doubt to strike balance in these matters, as in all matters equilibrium is what settles things.

But the seed of doubt? Oh what a monsterous abomination! A curse of the worst kind; a small doubt that grows day by day, feeding itself on anything that comes in its course. A small growing doubt that spreads into branches, many twigs and branches, and it spreads and grows - and grows and spreads; assidious in its growing and spreading, till in the end it bears fruit; an accusation!

Fed and brought up on truths, half-truths, hearsay, lies and doubt, the accusation is a poisonous fruit that when ripe can kill any relationship the moment it is emitted from the serpent's glands; it kills right before the moment it finds itself on its prey.

It is a poison that eats away the insides of the tree that nourishes it until it is spat out onto its victim; expunging either the bearer or the victim from the relationship, depending on whether it manages to eat away the bearer before it is served to the victim. And sadly there is no antidote for it.

Seated there on table 8 Sylvester had finally gained some composure after the day's extraordinary happenings. He was trying to make sense of it all. But something bothered him, as he revised the course of the day in his head. Something had happened near the end of the day that left him a little unsettled and gloomy; doubt had impregnated him. That mysterious man, who only talked in question-marks, had planted the seed of doubt in his mind.

And I am sure that by now we all know that the narrative from here can only take an ugly course. But it is a beautiful cloudless night and I do not have the heart to pursue such a noctural endeavour on such a starlit night. Call it a travesty of justice and abuse of patience if you must but bear with my absence for a little while longer.