Call me Andruni.

ابوحیران الاندرونی۔

I am not an outsider
by the admission of history
and my enemies,
but an insider
this does not make,
even for those that call me a friend.

"...they cannot be Indians
as long as they are Muslims
and they can never not be Muslims."^[1]

Of this coalition of willing and told,
where the price of admission
is one's sanity and soul,
all I ask is that they continue
to include me out.

I rely on this in-betweenness
this exemption
to sponsor my freedom of thought
the freedom that allows
to alienate the familiar
to make contingent of certain
and to recover lost perspectives
beyond the impasse
of nationalist particularism.

Otherwise
what the hell is water^[2]
a fish is not wet
like the diver is
stepping into
the same river twice.

In Kitab Al-Hind 2.0, I resume the work of Al-Biruni and excavate the genealogy of the contemporary Indian (and by extension Modern) Metaphysics, tracing the evolution of Al-Biruni's object of study since.