Gabo And Madiba Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

Familiarity breeds contempt, the less the more,
Third World –ism, Gabo’s town was less than ten thousand souls.
Madiba, -for my lack of more knowledge, lived in isolation, imprisoned.
The clash of various civilizations, in various stages of ‘development’,
Gabo, after one hundred years of solitude,
Tearing apart, dragging corpses in the street, unpaved.
Madiba, fought it headway, headstrong, on own soil.
Meeting them, in a crowd, in soul-
Similarities, might emerge, conundrums of individuism.
-isms are certain other absolutes, people die and commit
Collective suicides, lead by a cult leader, telling the way to their,
Insidious desires is away, by the weakest link to life, and breaking
It. Knock, knock, knock, I am already inside, there is no outside
No inside. Inside and outside, -some understanding, and the funerals
Go global. Their rights to tube, already sold,
Gabo, now feasting himself to a fifty thousand dollars, interview,
Selling half an hour. The great Mughal, in his new religion,
Had decreed, to feed, the ‘would be dead’, before and not
After his demise. Magic Realism, the Indian chapter.
Madiba freed his people, or at least pretended. It will
Trickle down -John Locke’s capitalism. A rise to the first world.
Gabo, invented fetish.
It is better that we are waiting for Messiah,
To descend on stairs from heaven, he may at least sell his rights,
To be distributed amongst the poor, with little knowledge
Of the division of world into first, and third.
A child was selling roses, shivering in the cold outside, in garbage
Can. Another man with a white beard was holding a spade,
Asking a meal, well built, not having found the day’s work.
I am overlooking the city, a view I am always afraid to loose,
Or miss. The roads converge on Constitution Avenue,
Where a Chair, made of metal is hanging from earth towards the sky.

-Gabo: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
-Madiba: Nelson Mandela

Sadiqullah Khan
Islamabad
December 19,2013.