insults (microfiction)

07.12.2025

S: Shylock can’t take their insults. For the violence of their words, he wants the violence of the law. Because the insults are words which are a law and they are violence. The language of this society is violence. It is the law of this society. There is no concealment of it. He wants to answer them in their own tongue. With the law of revenge. The violence of justice.

A: That was then.

S: I don’t write about then. I write about now. But the worst of it? They steal Shylock’s own daughter away from him. She who he loves the most in the world. They take his love away from him. They turn his love against him. That is the ending of the play. It is the unjust that win, not the just. It is the destroyers of love that win, not the lovers. It is what the poet knows. Shylock suffers the same fate as Romeo. They separate him from his love.

A: That happened in the past to you. Will it happen now?

S: In a relationship, there are not just two people. There are others. And others intrude. That is the downfall of every relationship. Here, those that intrude are the haters. They are filled with hatred and cannot bear that anyone can be filled with love. They want to kill love and the lover. That is their stupidity. You cannot kill love. There has been love in every era in human history.

A: You are saying that love is always destroyed. And then you are saying that love cannot be destroyed. Which is it?

S: That is the question, isn’t it? Which is it? Does hate win every time? Or does love win once in a blue moon? Is it true as the literary critics say, that Romeo and Juliet are joined in death? And what about Shylock? Is his love only going to be heartbreak?

A: You don’t have the answers?

S: The answers are in my heart. Because in my heart is love. Real love. There is a Hindi song. They say do not break my heart because the heart is the house of god. She broke my heart anyway. But you cannot break the house of a god. This heart, this body, this mind. It is formed after the god of love, my namesake. I am god.