Dilip Simeon
This is my Rifle and that is my Gun,
This is for shooting and that is for fun.
This is my Discourse, and that is my Text,
Discourse for this life, and Text for the next.
Ethnicity, Felicity, Moment of Poesis,
Deploying Derrida, contrive halitosis.
Deconstruct Narratives, re-inventing the Nation,
Imagining India, maximise obfuscation.
This is my Discourse, and that is my Text..etc
Field Marshal editor, Subaltern mate,
Retrieving the Body, what fun to relate.
Self from the Occident, Other from East,
Apply your Mind to know Beauty from Beast.
This is my Rifle and that is my Gun..etc
This is my Thesis and that my curricula,
Voyaging westwards, remain perpendicular.
Narrativize textuality of sexuality,
Canonize Prurience of Orientality.
This is my Discourse, and that is my Text..etc
Archaeological Silences, scatalogical noise,
Knowledge is Power, wear it with poise.
Positing Subject, we wish to sublate,
Delivering seminar, we sit and rotate.
This is my Rifle and that is my Gun…etc
Eros, Telos, Nemesis, Mimesis,
Mug up my jargon for passing your thesis.
Alas ! Alack ! the subversifying Mind,
Earning hard currency, so hard to find.
This is my Discourse, and that is my Text…etc
Mentalitie and Problematique,
Academic fashions need a boutique
Matriarch, Patriarch, theme for research,
Mantra and Tantra from ivory perch.
This is my Rifle and that is my Gun..etc
Subliminalities of subtextualities,
Ponder pomposities of prolix verbosities.
Problematising the hidden thematic,
Metatextualising intellectuals Asiatic.
This is my Discourse, and that is my Text…etc
Locating, Migrating, mastering Said,
Oriental professor wants to get —–.
Multicultural interpenetration,
Metropolitan colonial wants integration.
This is my Rifle and that is my Gun…etc
Ethnographics of phantasmagoria,
Induce seances of mental euphoria.
While translating the palimpsest tender,
Oh how I long for the opposite gender.
This is my Discourse, and that is my Text…etc
Overinterpreting marxist constipation,
Wallow in post-modern self flagellation.
Transposing observer to popular stance,
Overdetermining professorial romance.
This is my Rifle and that is my Gun..etc
Agenda of subtext needs corrigendum,
Traversing terrain of ethnic pudendum.
Verbs become nouns, with lightening velocity,
Opaqueness of meaning, euphonic ferocity.
This is my Discourse, and that is my Text…etc
Excavating silences, admiring the skirt,
Unearthing allegories of lexico-inert.
Pluralisms of syncretistic exterior,
Massaging advisors’ psychic interior.
This is my Rifle and that is my Gun…etc
Dissecting semiotics of peasant Tebhaga,
Fieldworking students need munim dhaga.
But how to explain to examiners’ team,
The subtler uses of dhaga munim.
This is my Discourse, and that is my Text…etc
Teasing long hidden truths if I may,
Bribing chaprasis how can I say.
Slog long enough, material will out,
By which time victory will turn into rout.
This is my Rifle and that is my Gun…etc
Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency
Turmoil underneath causing slight divergency.
Inverting reality only goes to show,
Faculty wanting History from below.
This is my Discourse, and that is my Text…etc.
Dilip Simeon is a labour historian, political activist and chairperson of the Aman Trust. He is the author of Revolution Highway (Penguin India, 2010).
