Sympathy Game

 

Disability, permanent or short-lived,

Is a cause of distress extreme,

For, sulks one in the ripped self,

A mere breaking star among shiny thousands.

 

Satisfaction of the competition

being the fuel of life,

As nothing else is society

but relentless rivalry among the capable.

 

Abhorred is robust and fit here,

Know they, fitness is nothing

but a hindrance in their path,

And cursing goes everyone.

 

No time for the interests common,

As heart has shrunk much,

Bellicose is man, bellows only;

Bereaved human is rival such.

 

Ah! The redeeming glimmer exists,

Thank God! Thrown is someone

out of the race mad; abed is faculty,

Sprouts then the sympathy fountain.

 

Emotions, adages pour out

for the poor player out of the race,

Admire they the infirmity in him,

Already dead he is without playmanship.

 

It’s the disease and disability,

Making you suffer lot,

Yet smile at it,

For it has aroused an emotion precious.

The Old Man and the Hut

 

The old man and the hut,

Reed and grass sheltered

like the old bones in his body frail,

And both of them hold

on the brink of life and death,

being and non-being,

Wispy fleecy in a hush,

Penned down by the destiny when

she was on flying clouds

and wanderlust.

 

The old man, nobody knows

from where he came,

Stranger even than a foreigner;

Wind-fallen in his own land,

A pedigree, on the verge of

ending on his side;

Nobody to inherit the wishy-washy shelter.

 

Nature habituated to them,

The old man and the hut,

A small brook, a forest averagely thick,

And a loneliness persisting,

Save a sortie or two

by an occasional adventurer,

Who may come to spread the self.

 

Nothing changes here,

Except time through his wrinkles

and some sinew blown from the hut,

A marvellous, fluid constancy of nature:

Same chirps of the birds,

Same bubbling in the brook;

Also the same generality,

Except one particularity,

The old man and the hut.

 

Wintery shivers in his humble bed,

With eyes staring at the roof,

Giving strength to it

against the raindrops naughty,

Longing to play with him.

 

In summers, he sleeps outside,

In the open, under the starlight,

Too much light above!

But alas, too far!

Spread out thus in the open,

A look into the stars above

with the eager eyes of a child,

Then close with a peep

into the depths of age,

Thus sleep layers over him,

He knows not when,

And where, nobody cares.

Our Existence Torched: The Life

 

Life is like a shooting meteor;

Just a whizzing-past star,

Whose starting point nobody sees,

But of course, visibility of the end,

Wow! Abruptness with a vengeance,

And wormy annihilation in

capacious, unbound space.

 

We are the shots from the unknown;

Intentional or accidental?

Predetermined or chancy?

Willy-nilly, we just roll over

the calamitous mud of the slippery path.

 

Life sparkling with a fizz,

Pain, joy, smiles, weepings and ecstasies

swoop like a meteoric trail in the sky;

Born to soil the earth,

Like the broken star’s residue,

We add to the primal matter.

 

From unknown to the unknown,

We are known as a ‘life’,

Just as the luminosity of

a shooting, breaking star.

Reaching Heavens with Wings

 

There I zoom like a bird,

Imagination matching its flight,

Aerial view of the panorama below,

With earth laughing, cajoling,

But, I sense the futility of its smile,

Which myriads personify by

living, sweating in the furrows.

 

Bird’s eye! Yes, I just see

the scenery general most,

Without ‘particularity’ any,

Strikes which at the chance first,

No, I don’t create particularity,

Not of woman and things tempting,

My ‘bird’s eye’ slipping over the edges,

Making curves of generality,

So universal is my love,

Not to be caught by a single heart.

 

O man, fly like a bird,

With wings carrying across

the infinity of the universe;

Never become stones of personality,

Bound by specialities many,

Whom many things strike

like bugs eating the dead;

When every incident and trend

lynch the prisoner chained.

 

So fluff away like a bird,

At the trivial most instance to save life;

I do the same like a bird,

Shy away from everything,

And fly away, tail twitching,

To the horizons where nothing pinches;

No love, hate or nymph-like thing

cling to the mind to create trauma,

Yes, I wish to be only such!

Believer, Atheist or Agnostic! Which Path?

 

Religion is made a spade

in the hands which hypnotize

the masses blindfolded, hoping for cures;

Remedies for why, what, when…

The religionist!

The crowd before the sermonizing hands,

The lucky ones looking for

good fate’s another instalment,

And the majority begging their first,

Denied to them till now.

 

Awe-struck!

Stupefied thus, they squat,

The mighty grip around the tool’s handle

meanwhile rakes up further ritualistic earth,--

The great spadework!

By the hands preaching, hypnotizing the audience,

who cannot see beyond the fence,

Get up when they after the show,

See apostles build up,

answering meaninglessly

the great queries of what, when, why, how…

And more lines get written to theology,

The magic book of all panaceas.

 

The Pandora box!

Opens with uncountable spectacles,

And the tears of agony, joy, everything,

The chorus now grows further,

Politicians, bureaucrats, corporate…

The expertise! The hypnotizers join

with their ever-elusive tete-a-tete;

Spreads His gospel theatrically,

And the mass stupefaction multiplies.

 

The great religious band!

A pair of hands symbolizing God’s,

Music in the background by the experts,

And the hypnotized cloud enlarges

from the religious opera house,

Reaches the lone hut, villages,

states, countries and continents,

And finally the farthest universe,

Enlarges it too much,

To infinity!

The hypnotized universe!

Ever multiplying talks about why, what, when…

 

Stamps from the Pandora box:

Devotional, devout, pious, religious,

After the show, they all come out,

Stamped foreheads, the believers!

Beguiled by the tricks of the gloved hands,

If hypnotized not still,

They bark at him ‘Atheist’,

The one who questions what, when, why…

 

This unstamped, unorthodox outcaste,

Counters the divine oratory

with sizzling counter-points,

Questions upon answers to what, when, why…

And they neigh in desperation.

 

Opens the atheist now

the Pandora box of his own,

The box with tricks to

to undo all the great work done,

Another magic book!

But for the negative infinity

by a ‘single god’ over all the godheads,

To dehypnotize the public,

Too great an effort!

But still a small whiff,

Unable to create a storm

of negative winds,

and negative why, what, when…

Devotional winds blow around, meanwhile,

 

So what do we have now?

The majority hypnotized, blindfolded,

And someone in tantrums,

Arguing testily and

striking as many heads as possible,

To awaken them from the slumber,

Alas! He but is negative more, restless more.

 

What do we have now?

A dish with spice:

Orthodoxy spiced with unorthodoxy,

Hence tasty, juicy more.

 

Someone is also sitting somewhere,

His existence too earthly,

The real dweller of the earth!

The agnostic!

Questions or their counters

don’t reach this self-religioner,

So, worry not about what, when, why…

Beyond the confines of luck and destiny,

This conscious, relinquishing soul

has outflown too much from inside,

Vacuum thus created, where

cravings die and magic tricks fail.

The Winter Sunset in our Fields

 

The night is taking birth,

Sunset is imminent thus,

Over the fields cropped,

And silvery mist upcoming,

With the silent majesty of

the sunbeams gently smiling still.

 

The day, like a minimalist,

Looks sunward to get

yellowish orange traces last,

The sundown moment!

Mingling day and night,

With the sunbeams garlanding,

Which one? Day or night?

Guava, blackberry, mango,

Wild not, but tamed in the orchards,

Stand silent and still,

Their natural character somewhat lost,

Which they laugh away

for some purpose human,

They with the brethren wild

along the canal embankments,

Stand as spectators for the great handover.

 

Wheat saplings turned plantlets now;

Few inches tall and strong,

To go into the dark

without crying; no fear.

 

The cawing of a raven,

And a parrot’s cherishing tone,

All speak of a day gone,

Distant howl of an owl

from a lone banyan big,

Sounds like a factory hooter,

To awaken the ploughman

from his submission to the work hard,

And realize the world beyond the field.

 

The long-shadowed sun picture:

A weaver bird’s nest

hanging still and safe,

Similarly, the mushroom huts

warm with the lights glowing now,

All seem ready to face

the upcoming dark for the day next.

 

A cuckoo sings

a little song of bravery

for the hut, the nest

and everything at the dark front.

 

A crow ogles at the subsiding

redness in the south-west,

Whose vanishing traces

leave its eyes parted wide

and smirking with amazement,

Suddenly, realizing the need of time,

Off it goes with a flutter.

 

This slow acceleration of

the day into the night;

The gentle fluidity of the light and the dark

embracing and melting into each other,

The gentlest of a brace,

The slow pace,

Unnoticeable bonhomie,

And biggest will be the change;

The change as snaily

as some minutest growth to the wheat saplings.

 

Thus the sunset is imminent,

Moments stand calm and meditative;

Like we at the birth time

know nothing of the life ahead.

 

The cool air and the mist

with their dense brush,

Paint a picture tranquil,

With the protagonists standing still,

Save some small movement

among the boyish wheatlings,

And the ‘painted lady’ butterflying.

 

The sun goes down further,

Its rays now dissolve

in a woodpecker’s eyes

perched atop a tall eucalyptus;

Undefined colour of the painter’s disk,

Thus, the sunset is imminent;

The scarecrow in a field,

The proxy owner in the farmer’s absence,

Begins now to enliven,

With each degree of the sundown,

It enlivens more and more

to protect the child crop;

The farmer’s self symbolized through

the effigy turned human,

Or ghostly, in the dark.

 

The rim goes below,

Thus it’s all over for the day!

The sadness of the moment,

Or the joy of the job done,

And they all stand sunless,

In a state of sweet sorrow

for the celestial minstrel gone,

But still the moment is

pleasing for the soul.

 

Although everything

may not glow like a diamond,

But like an ill-formed sapphire,

It has its maze,

Where everything has got

mixed feelings, mixed appearances.

At What Cost, O Thou City?

 

Lost world or call them worlds,

On the pavements, by flyovers,

In slums, by traffic lights,

On railway stations, and bus stands;

A trail ablaze,

Howling, hissing in its smouldering stupor.

 

Serpentine curves of life amidst

roads glutted with tired travellers

and buildings choked with bleak elegance;

Each bend thrusts a shock wave,

Badged with the numbers of struggle

people falter, bawl, hackle and sneer

with thick-veined throats and emptying souls.

 

The urban rosary and its beads:

The halt imposed by a red light,

A mother in torn, soiled clothes,

He/she held in arms and rags,

Pleading in front of the windscreens,

And the wealthy rag-picker

searching lust in the garbage;

Green light beckons the stampede once again,

And taking a carnal sip for free

the already privileged reveller jolts away.

 

Beggars feigning sleep among foot taps;

Humanity dancing to the tunes of hard heels,

Wheels rumble overhead,

As the trams screech and cringe over the bridge,

Killing by sparing them to live in a mass grave.

 

A big car chirrs and whirrs

and smiles glossily to defracture the void,

The puffiness hovering around the wheel,

Alas, spacious more for

accommodating the emptiness of the soul;

Rich eulogies for the poor graves around.

 

Lost worlds piled up in a bigger one,

Fed on something squeezed tight and narrow;

Ghostly and visible not,

Its spirits turned wooden,

And multiplying at mere pin-drops,

What to talk of human efforts, Metro?