Sunday, July 3, 2011

Word Satori: The Dream of India

In India a year has two summers and two winters.

There are no adulterers there.

There is a race of people whose ears hang down to their knees.

In India there are roses everywhere- growing everywhere, for sale in the market, in wreathes around the necks of men and braided in the hair of the women. It seems they could hardly live without roses.

In India they have a class of philosophers devoted to astronomy and the prediction of future events. And I saw one among them who was three hundred years old, longevity so miraculous that wherever he went he was followed by children.

In India the wise men can produce and quell great winds. For this reason they eat in secret.

There are headless men with eyes in their stomachs.

There is a race of feathered people who can leap into trees.

There are warrior women with silver weapons for they have no iron.

And I saw far off the coast of that land a thing in the sky, huge as a cloud, but black and moving faster than the clouds. I asked what that thing could be, and they said it is the great bird Rokh. But the wind was blowing off the coast, and the Rokh went with it, and I never got a closer look.

                                                     
All of the imagery and some of the language are derived from works written in the five hundred years prior to 1492. India, of course, is where Columbus thought he was going. 

I excerpted these stanzas, and arranged them slightly differently, from the essay, The Dream of India.  By Eliot Weinberger.


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