wagging tails…
window shopping
for a new balm

Written on September 30, 2026

Notes

I’ve always known that consumers of art need context and knowledge about the conditions of the place, time, person who created a piece of art to truly understand it. Haikai poetry like haiku and senryū are so short that there is only so much one can incorporate into the poem. Just by the nature of the art form itself the readers are invited to make an effort to understand the poem that obviously left out many details and perhaps the two images in the poem might not make sense together on the first read. I know I find many a haiku and senryū confusing and baffling on first reads from major journals. If the poem is too puzzle-like, I personally would lose interest in interpreting it beyond a point. My personal preference though, not objective. But there lies the paradox. The confounding nature of some haiku is very likely because the reader, like myself, is not fully informed about all the things one needs to be informed about and aware of to truly understand what the images represent, how they work together and why the haiku actually works and is a good haiku.

Case in point, I’ll explain this haiku with above aspects in mind. This might or might not be a good haiku, but that’s another matter.

Interpretation #1

There are multiple stray dogs (or cats) that have approached me, or want to approach me. I want to spend time with them, I love them! So, I’ll have to delay my visit to the pharmacy to buy a balm for my headaches.

Why use such a big term window shopping for such a thing as a headache balm? Even if the term makes sense by taking some liberty, why window shop for a balm instead of buying one? Can one window shop headache balms? Are there so many options?

For each of these questions, one’s answer will be in the negative unless

• They know that in countries like India, there are numerous headache balm products from different manufacturers. Often, there are regional manufacturers i.e., apart from the few country-wide famous balms like Zandu Balm & Amruthanjan, there will be some state-level brands that sell their own balms in their states. So, yeah, there a are ton of options.
• So, yes, you can window shop balms.
• And you will window shop for some miracle balm that might somehow give you enough relief from your almost-paralyzing migraines for you to function properly on that day.

Unless a reader knows about some of these things, or the possibility of things existing this way for someone else elsewhere in the world, it is not easy to look at the haiku and see beyond just the words.

And I’ve not even mentioned how the wagging tails plays into this. Unless the reader interacted with animals, has some basic understanding of the spectrum of coexistence of animals and humans, has seen the beautiful and the ugly side of stray animals, unless they’ve had the opportunity in life to think and feel stuff about some of these things, there might not be much beyond the words in the haiku for them to interpret.

Now, let’s flip things over with another interpretation of the haiku.

Interpretation #2

Continuing from the coexistence of animals and humans bit from the previous interpretation, switch it up and read the haiku thinking maybe I’ve written it channeling the perspective of stray animals with waggable-tails.

There are a few stray cats (or dogs) that are wagging their tails. So tender and meak in how they show signs that they want to show me love or want me to show them some love. They are strays, they have good days and bad. Maybe they had a bad day. A little kindness and love by the way of petting by a stranger is what they might be looking for to compensate for the bad stuff that happened that day. Maybe that’s the balm they are looking for in humans on streets.

Now, this interpretation is an afterthought and not what I intended, but this is definitely something I’d want to be seen in the haiku. I’m critical of those critical of anthropomorphising other living things in haikai poetry, that’s a matter for another day perhaps. But in order for a reader to even think of this haiku from the perspective of some unnamed animals with waggable-tails, one would need to have had some experience with animals in one form or another. And likely a compassionate one at that.

But it is not realistic to assume that our life experiences, our personal emotional landscape/journey/history, our personal morality/beliefs/opinions, our personal preferences/partialities would overlap to any great extent. If we loosely speak of these things, yes, there’s a lot of common ground that many would find each other on. But once we get to the specifics of it, the nature of our existence i.e., billions of people each living a life of their own where not a single moment is truly predictable if we zoom back out far enough, then it seems obvious that there will be gaps in getting things across, especially when we leave it for the other person to imagine the gaps we’ve left, willingly or unwillingly, in the information that we have given them.

All this to say, you get the haiku or you don’t. Both the poet and the reader should be fine with it. I tell myself this, to the reader and the poet in me. Because the other option is to try to bend your originality into a form and shape that others get and appreciate and you realise, half a decade later, there’s a chasm inside your mind and heart that feels like your voice isn’t heard or will not be heard or will not be appreciate by this world. That’s a pretty grueling feeling to have as a creative person. So, yeah. I will conveniently end this thought-rant piece by conveniently losing my train of thoug…