Awoken From a Dream

Awoken from a dream,

Does he find himself,

Marooned on the very land,

Which in his reverie,

Was so rich, So plentiful,

So abounding, And so utopian

The numbness , followed by distress , set in
with nowhere to seek shelter,
and no one to ask the
several enigmatic queries:

‘Where to , did those green pastures
upon which the cattle grazed at dawn, wane?

Where was the gentle chatter
of the stream gushing by
to which he had woken every morrow?

How long has the bastion,

Which for so long

Vaunt the flag of the invincible been derelict?
What mighty power doused
the fire that he had kindled in his hearth.?

Was it the Lord who took away what He bestowed?

Or was it he himself who let go of what he had?
had he not justified the flair, gifted?

Did he lose faith in Himself?

Or did He lose faith in him,
Was He really there,

Was the dream indeed his reality,

That he could no longer swagger.

Or the reality his dream,

That he wants to wake from’.

Disillusioned and desperate does he writhe ,

Under the very tree which had shaded him thus far,

far too engrossed in his own thought

even to apprehend the law of mother nature ,
that what bloomed once must wither now,
that the pastures will grow back in time ,
that he had been inside the bastion for far too long ,
to have been seeing what was happening to the facade,
that the fire was no longer pertinent
 as he had thrived through the harsher days.
that the chatter of the stream was always there
and he just had to heed to it.
That it was not a dream,
it was nature taking its course.

The Traveller

Out of eternal darkness did he rise,

From the threshold of which did  he gaze,

Much like a naïve lamb beholding the knacker’s yard.

With no one to steer him through the nefarious blackness of the malicious night,

Did he stroll through evil paths,

in pursuit of an alien quest ,

a one which would remove the pall ,

and reveal to him, the meaning of `Destiny’.

The path he did deem to be a less trodden one,

For the grass at it edges,

revealed its pristineness,

and the grit on the trail,

 reinforced his reckoning.

 For once did he not think the journey to be failing him,

for it was not in the fortune of any layman,

to learn the gist of life,

shrouded in darkness for good,

which , but our , traveler did.

Thus read his communiqué,

found by another youth in pursuit,

of his yet to be discerned providence.

“What lies within locked vaults,

is what we desire the most

What is within plain sight,

is what we close our eyes to.

To that house of the vice

is where to we are led,

lulled by the lone spectral chorus

 in the crowded path of malice.

That forbidden fruit

is at what we are enticed  ,

daring us to leap, over the, evermore, forbidden hedge

And to the arcane tree of knowledge,

wooed by the sly serpent.

The eternal mysteries of such kept secrets

will forver drive us to the edge,

but never will it have the might,

to hurl us over ,

to lend a hand to the remnants ,

For the invisible hand of His,

will lead, kindly light”

and  with that did his message come to an abrupt end.

Leavin many a questions unanswered ,

did our traveler reach,

 the final abode of all humans,

Beholding from heaven ,

with a profound smirk ,

the sight of a zillion erstwhile comrades ,

striding through the labyrinth of life,

hoping to unravel its perpetually veiled mysteries.

……..And after myriad of eons,

And countless tales of disillusionment,

Our traveler continues to keep watch,

for that one victor, who would,

bawl to the world, its untold legends.

and drape it in immortal bliss .

Epilogue

Hours  churned into days ,

days into months,

 months to years .

and the epilogue to this momentous manuscript begins thence,

when a capstone set in place

to adorn the crest of an eternally ephemeral boyhood,

spells it doom and has it foundered.

leaving behind the shattered remains,

of a tempest that razed a fine Sunday morrow

Time and transience the accomplices,

both of whom afford a wry aura,

on this crossroad of my terribly evanescent being.

The benign gloom of dusk,

and the garish glory of dawn.

The joy of foot set on a path afresh,

and the sorrow of another novel chapter ,

engraved in the tome of memories,

deserts a soul riven in half.

yowling like a ravenous wolf ,

and wailing like a forsaken child,

all but for none to hear,

chronicled, by the mighty keeper of time.

Years have been fleeting and never so quickly,

however many there seems to be,

all but stashed in the infinite vault of time,

to breathe life to which,

would be to flounce out of one’s grave.

for thus reads the edict

`As one flower blossoms ,

another must whither'.

our hour is now at hand,

to drink the grief of our parting souls,

with a toast to Him to earn a reunion,

years hence, when the tears of jubilant adulthood.

replace the tears of our extant grief.

Spare but a minute thence,

to think of our once common past

to send if not a wish to the then dear comrade,

Foreordained is the gist of this being,

that these days of bliss are never hence to be lived.

Blessed is he, who's etched in the memories of his brethren,

leaving behind in the tide of time,

imprints of a once humane life.

Do We Actually Care?

En route Chennai to Trivandrum sitting beside the grilled window and beholding the beauty and splendor of vast tracts of lush green fields, swaying coconut palms, set in the backdrop of the fading golden embers of the tranquil sun dipping in the horizon; it ought not to be a surprise that I slipped into a reverie. But I was not to enjoy the leisure of it for long as my thoughts were brought back to the present by that familiar jingling of coins, that loud cacophonic drum beat and that familiar strained voice of a busker, without all of which it would be an oddity to claim a travel in a coach of the Indian railways. Of course there was nothing seemingly unusual or striking or to say the least saddening ,about an emaciated boy of hardly 14 in tattered and torn rags performing stunts, none of which could be branded as brilliant but all of which were definitely being sympathized upon by the commuters,which they were appreciably showing by generousily tossing coins into the tin that the girl held. The girl accompanying the lad’s feats with her music , seems to have perfected it through years of experience,by singing the same strain over the years to meet the bare minimum requirement of coin collection to be given to their masters. 

But what caught my sight was the choker which the boy had on for the choker had a one rupee coin affixed in place of the locket (as economic as they come isn’t it?) ,and that seemed like nothing but a badge of office that asserted his allegiance to the elite, endangered group to which he belonged-the mendicants, the alms-seekers or more commonly the beggars.

Not that this was an one-off account of a typical Indian lad , who hardly knew of, what his rights were, what his liberties were, the injustice he was being subjected to, the things that he was entitled to, the spate of bills and proposals that were being  debated and laid on the table of the parliament in his name, which 572 representatives oblivious of what and whom they were representing, vainly debated, demanded amendments , and at best passed a trivial fraction of those which they claimed to be for the well being of the 400 million similar , poor of our country, who cared for anything but one square meal a day, but this made me rekindle my thinking.

What was the result of 64 years of right to life to every Indian in this country? What was the result of the ambitious dreams of a free India that our leaders and so called visionaries saw then? Had the freedom fighters sacrificed their lives just to see the Britishers out of India, only to have another analogous regime which barely brought about the slightest change in the wretched lives of the downtrodden, impoverished and the famished? Has India in fact shaped out as our leaders and visionaries dreamt of a free India?

 All of us undoubtedly do ostensibly sympathize for the poor and impoverished. But how many of us actually take a step, the most important first step towards finding out the root cause and trying to rout out our common enemy that seems to be eating into the vitals of our society - poverty? What we do at best is to lob a coin at the spread towel or the battered utensil which the alms-seeker keeps by his side in the street. But what we all fail to realize is that in effect what we are actually doing is making sure that he remains in a perpetual state of poverty ensnared in that vicious cycle out of which there seems to be no escape for him. The generosity of a few people ensures him a good square meal which makes him more than complacent with his humble means of living - beggary. But is this petty means of beggary indeed enough to fill the stomachs of his entire family? To send his children to an elementary school? To ensure at least a leak proof roof overhead at best?

The answer is a plain flat no, but the questions to this seems to be far out of perspective for a man who barely knows to write his own name, and who has no time to cogitate about anything but his struggle for survival.

 Our amazing intelligence seems to have outstripped our instinct for survival and interred our love for our fellow beings. We are so obsessed, fanning our own nests and delimiting our thoughts to that of good fortune of kith and kin that we never ever do find the little time required to think of the needy and try if not help reduce their travails. Even if the citizenry of the country feigns ignorance and tries to justify their inability by whatsoever ridiculous means, what answer do the politicians, bureaucrats and the learned statesmen of our country have? Where on earth do we have a government spend $3 billion to build a new terminal for an airport the roof of which leaks while they are unable to ensure a leak proof house for their citizens?

 The government and the `con-men’ wealth games organizers are sloshing away money in the name of organizing the `best games the world has ever seen’. Will it be as good as they claim it to be or will it be a disheartening but hardly surprising failure remains to be seen. However the fact remains that while treadmills are being hired @ Rs 9 lakh, air Conditioners @ Rs 4 lakh, toilet papers @ Rs 3,757 per roll and umbrellas @ Rs 6,000 per piece, survival looms as a large question mark for the poor who are left to deal with it on their own. Imagine the number of hungry stomachs that could be fed, the number of lives that could be saved which otherwise would have gone down in the records as yet another death due to malnutrition, the number of students whose education could have been secured and much more with a quarter of the money that is being squandered in the name buying toilet papers and other such frivolity.

Promise is a word which has long lost its meaning but something that retains all its significance in Indian politics for even now the politicians bilk the poor, instilling in them a false sense of hope that all their travails will meet an end overnight when the new government comes to power,with nothing else but victory in the next by-elections in mind. The politicians here seem to be amazing con artists, dressed in splendid white, feigning false austerity, trying or in effect successfully masquerading all the devilish intentions. The most perfect one seems to be the victor.

It won’t be out of place to cite the spending spree upon which BSP supremo Mayawati has so effortlessly embarked. At a public function in Lucknow, she was garlanded with a special garland crafted and brought all the way from Bengaluru made of currency notes worth Rs. 5 crore! Take that for austerity! The source of the money – unknown. What happens next? The judiciary orders a probe which eventually gets absorbed in the labyrinth of the hoary Indian judicial system where it is left to bubble and ferment for eons to come, while Mayawati merrily goes around unveiling her colossal statues, notwithstanding the innumerable stay orders issued by the courts.

While the government continues to debate, on bogus million dollar questions as to whether to export iron ore to china or to protect the rights of the people living on it and while huge quantities of rice and wheat continue to rot in vast FCI godowns across the country, what we seem to be failing to realize is that we are running out of time.Even as we speak the loop of poverty and hunger seems to be closing in on us. The rest of the world is outstripping us slowly but steadily and it won’t be long before we realize that our country, once foreseen as the world super power of 2050 is being regrettably led astray, and like the ordinary citizens that of Hitler’s Germany, we will soon begin to realize the smarting, patronizing gaze of our fellow beings. We too will find ourselves unable to look our own children in the eye for the shame of what we allowed to happen, and what we did not prevent from happening. Change must happen, after facing the direst of consequences or realizing long before a terrible downward spiral of things. It is upon us to decide. So choose and choose wisely, to lead our country into a new era , an era - sans poverty, sans corruption and sans all those things that we are deplorably infamous for, to ultimately make india the haven that our great leaders and visionaries once dreamt it would be.

 May He help us, transcend this hour of darkness. Jai hind!

Bitches for Eternity

Once upon a time, there lived a lass,
I knew not who she was,
And where from she hailed,
Though I did wonder if once she weren’t jailed
For her behavior was such,
That she never thought much.
She was close on my trail
As if she never met a male,
From the corner of her eyes did she ogle,
And enthralled did she goggle,
With this food for thought did I ponder,
If it was not to establish an amour,
Next they began to tweak ,
all seven days of a week
Then I did gaze,
To see her turn her face,
I confirmed beyond doubt,
That she had a coquettish thought.
And now they have said,
It was but her head,
That vilified me,
Which they accepted with no less glee.
With not long for the end of schooling,
I have but a dictum to send them brooding
Just fish off all you witches,
You will but remain forever nothing but bitches

In the quiet of the night

In the quiet of the night,

under the light of a lamp ,

 devouring did he sit, the odes of bards to mirth and blue,

the ghastly hush of the unearthly hour

or, thou specter that he deemed  ensnaring him,

did he not know the rationale behind the spurting ardor,

but the fire, he did fathom was to be kindled and not to be intered.

Hence he doth which many dread to,

took the first stride in a journey of a zillion miles,

but alas, he writhes to forge ahead,

he knows not the path ahead,

but still did he persevere for the fire in him shown like a million suns trussed in concert.

He moves onward undaunted ,

but before long does he pause, over again,

only to find that the path ahead was not a bed of roses but a one of bristly bushes,

be that as it may, as nothing could impede his travel,

 for the ardor in him was no less profound,

above all the fire in him was to be kindled and not to be intered,

and he doth which many dread to,

thenceforth the bedazzling light that emanated from his shade,

slowly petered out as he marched on and on and on……………