pan-opt-icon

I went to see an art exhibition with two high flyers, a poet by the name of ‘Tanha’, and a historian-in-the-making who the poet called ‘Kanha’ for his way with words and girls, and to rhyme with the way he pronounced ‘Tanha’ in his American accent. The exhibition had 19th century paintings of Victorian women. “They are still celebrating the lores and mores of socio somatic snobbery,” said Tanha, almost disgusted.
“I don’t know what that means but your language sounds snobbish to me,” I chuckled.
“Well, he is right,” Kanha came on his side, “these Victorian women were trained to have hourglass figures, to wear tight robes that would stifle them, to sing, to dance to please the men. And the man would then make paintings of them. And the dainty women would faint on the slightest sign of bad air or bad news. They had to faint, otherwise they were not ‘ladies’.”
“In other words, the fainty snobbery of the dainty women was a social phemomenon,” Tanha recited.
“And they would have to be brought back to their senses by smelling salts, also called salts of hartshorn,” Kanha said.
“Heart’s horn sounds interesting to me. The men’s heart in depression over their beloved’s fall would make them blow a horn. What a metaphor,” I said, hoping to get a compliment from the poet.
“Nincompoop,” said the poet, “hart is a male deer from whose antlers ammonia is produced, from which smelling salts are made.”
“I am sorry, but I thought you’d like my little lovelorn ghazal,” I said apologetically.
“Did you know that ghazal comes from gazelle, or kasturi mrig. It is once in many years that a deer gets kasturi in its belly. And it knows it is doomed, going to be hunted down. It’s cry is the spirit a ghazal tries to capture,” Tanha said, almost in tears.
“Tanha, my friend, don’t weep here,” I said, “they have CCTVs here.”
“Oh the panopitcon,” said Kanha, “Jeremy Bentham dead is more powerful than Jeremy Bentham alive.”
“I had heard that about Julius Caesar, but what about Bentham?” I asked
“Well he designed a prison in which the jailer could watch everyone from a tower, but the prisoners could not either see each other or if anyone was sitting in the tower.”As we walked out, Tanha chewed on a pan, and spat it on the wall near the gate, and said, “No panopticon can stop me from spitting the pan.”