WORDS

                                                                     WORDS

 

In college, we used to spend the lunch recess playing Lexicon cards. An uncle of mine thoughtfully introduced me to the game, and I guess that was the wisest thing he could do. The curiosity for words birthed. Later one day I took the Lexicon cards to college and introduced them to some friends in class, and lo and behold they were snared.

We dived deep into the game. At the outset, for an onlooker, we looked like we were indulging in a game of rummy cards. Something identified with bootlegging gangs selling moonshine! Something unacceptable inside college, sacrilegious and cheeky. The professor took it, and it was a convenient whip for him since he had a few axes to grind with us. The faculty was offended, and the audacity with which a few boys and girls indulged in a game of cards inside the classroom was something punishable by burning at the stake.

The matter was taken up with the principal, and we were reportedly branded an incorrigible lot. I don't remember what ensued thereafter, but yes, our indulgence continued. More so because the principal understood what the game was about and that understandably alienated the faculty more, so much so that compounding all our infractions into a book of crime all that they could do was to boycott us en masse.

These words of Pabulo Neruda now reminded me of the "La affaire Lexicon" 40 odd years ago.

"You can say anything you want, yes, sir, but it's the words that sing; they soar and descend. . . I bow to them... I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down... I love words so much. . . The unexpected ones . . . The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop. . . Vowels I love... They glitter like coloured stones; they leap like silver fish; they are foam, thread, metal, dew... I run after certain words... They are so beautiful that I want to fit them all into my poem. . . I catch them in midflight, and as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, and set myself in front of the dish. They have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives. . . And I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, and I let them go . . . I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves... . . . everything exists in the word ."