Iyer Ground

Pico Iyer on the slow demise of Implication:

As he grew up, Implication found himself running with a not very fast crowd — Irony, Irreverence, Adoration, Poetry. They all got together, though they came from different worlds, in unlit places away from the main streets. Passersby would hear a snatch of music, and then there’d be a silence. It was like a different universe from the marching bands that liked to parade down the avenues; a universe that said that what we couldn’t see, or say, had as much a part in life as what we could.
And then one day Implication heard he was on a blacklist. The word came from Rumor, and it said there was no room for either of them in the new dispensation. Question marks were now banned; Cacophony, Simplicity and Outright Confrontation had taken over. Implication had always been the warrior’s enemy and the lover’s friend. But now mano a mano was more in favor than tête-à-tête.