Vanity, Thy name is...

He is so simple.
His world is so different from mine.
So separate are his dreams and his preferences.
He says very little.
He writes
this morning I saw some lovely flowers
in the lawn and thought of you.
I know I am at that dishevelled stage of life
when my face is not much like any flower.
But I wish
—whatever he says—
I could believe it a while.

Suggested read : Parveen Shakir

Hot Line

How he used to complain to me!
So many people come between us we cannot talk.
In the season’s first rain, first snow,
full-moon nights, evening’s mild fragrance,
morning’s blue cool, how helpless!
How the heart aches!
Today between him and me there is no third.
There can be contact with a slight movement of the hand.
But how many seasons have passed since hearing that voice.
It is not hard for me to call upon him,
but the truth is the voices and the accents do not have the same tones.
The tune is the same but the hearts are not close enough.

Suggested read : Parveen Shakir Translated from the Urdu by Alamgir Hashmi

the face of God

JENSEN suddenly wheels to his audience of one and roars
out:


JENSEN :
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale,
and I won't have it, is that clear?!

You think you have merely stopped a
business deal—that is not the case!
The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and
now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is
ecological balance!

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations
and peoples. There are no nations!There are no peoples!
There are no Russians. There are no Arabs!
There are no third worlds! There is no West!
There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and
immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national
dominion of dollars! petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars!,
Reichmarks, rubles, rin, pounds and shekels!

It is the international system of currency that determines
the totality of life on this planet!
That is the natural order of things today! That is the atomic,
subatomic and galactic structure of things today!
And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature,
and you will atone!
Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?
(pause)
You get up on your little twenty-
one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy.
There is no America. There is no democracy.
There is only IBM and ITT and A T and T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide
and Exxon.
Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think
the Russians talk about in their councils of state—Karl Marx?
They pull out their linear programming charts, statistical
decision theories and minimax solutions and compute the price-cost
probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do. We
no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale.
The world is a college of corporations, inexorably deter- mined by the
immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It
has been since man crawled out of the slime, and our children, Mr.
Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and
famine, oppression and brutality—
one vast and ecumenical holding
company, for whom all men will work
to serve a common profit, in which
all men will hold a share of stock,
all necessities provided, all
anxieties tranquilized, all boredom
amused. And I have chosen you to
preach this evangel, Mr. Beale.


HOWARD :
(humble whisper)
Why me?


JENSEN :
Because you're on television, dummy.
Sixty million people watch you
every night of the week, Monday
through Friday.


HOWARD slowly rises from the blackness of his seat so
that he is lit only by the ethereal diffusion of light
shooting out from the rear of the room. He stares at
JENSEN spotted on the podium, transfixed.


HOWARD :
I have seen the face of God!

Suggested DVD : NETWORK