{"id":101,"date":"2012-03-12T18:38:26","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T18:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=101"},"modified":"2012-03-26T16:24:12","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T16:24:12","slug":"shafeeq-valanchery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/shafeeq-valanchery\/","title":{"rendered":"Shafeeq Valanchery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>An office by the by lane<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Once upon a time<br \/>\nIn once upon a path<br \/>\nThere was an old house.<\/p>\n<p>An old house<br \/>\nDouble-storied<br \/>\nWith wooden windows,<br \/>\nA few rooms below,<br \/>\nJust two above.<\/p>\n<p>In the courtyard were rusting metres, faulty metres, unused wires<br \/>\nA few smashed tubelights, inexplicable graves of unexpected goods<br \/>\nA few bricks here and there<br \/>\nAnd you always wondered the whereabouts<br \/>\nOf the brat of this house;<br \/>\nOn the walls were charcoal writings,<br \/>\nA few thick lines of oil<br \/>\nSuch a brat he should be \u2013<br \/>\nAll I saw was \u201cDown Down\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>In the drawing room where horlicks was served<br \/>\nWhen marriages were fixed<br \/>\nAnd black tea, when death was mourned,<br \/>\nA spectacled man sat<br \/>\nMatching digits, tallying lifestyles<br \/>\nAnd manning connection cuts;<br \/>\nFurther in, in the grandmother room*,<br \/>\nDesks after desks were busy<br \/>\nJoining the arcs, spanning the geographies, drawing the territories<br \/>\nOf the intricacies of her bosom;<br \/>\nYou often wondered why she was so quiet,<br \/>\nWhy she never interrupted<br \/>\nIn those bad translations in foreign tongues.<\/p>\n<p>We had often gone that way<br \/>\nIn summers when the evening birds were the loudest<br \/>\nAs they mosaic-ed the gravel path from their trees<br \/>\nOr in monsoons<br \/>\nWhen the asbestos shed for those in waiting,<br \/>\nAmplified the drenched complaints.<\/p>\n<p>Once upon a time<br \/>\nIn once upon a path<br \/>\nThere was a KSEB\u00a0 office;<br \/>\nAnd you wondered where the kids in their angst left<br \/>\nAnd the grandmother dried withered and powdered away<br \/>\nAnd all you had were piles of brick<br \/>\nThat would be sold<br \/>\nTo another house in the making.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>*Shafeeq Valanchery<\/strong> is currently pursuing PhD in Cultural Studies in the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. \u00a0He is a blogger at\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deadletterhouse.blogspot.com\/\">http:\/\/www.deadletterhouse.blogspot.com<\/a>, where he tries his hand in poetry, short stories, book reviews and movie reviews. \u00a0He has previously published in the <em>Reading Hour<\/em> and <em>The Viewspaper<\/em>.\u00a0He is a Fellow at the Centre for Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, India.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Note: KSEB: Kerala State Electricity Board, is the state board for electricity in the south Indian state of Kerala. The KSEB office sites are a usual targets for various protests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An office by the by lane Once upon a time In once upon a path There was an old house. An old house Double-storied With wooden windows, A few rooms below, Just two above. In the courtyard were rusting metres, faulty metres, unused wires A few smashed tubelights, inexplicable graves of unexpected goods A few [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1775,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/1775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}