That Great Flight

 

Merrily gushed the air,

Happily gyrated the tree compassionate,

Shook the nest; the nestlings became aware

of both good and bad comingled in nature.

 

Far away were the parents,

Laboriously engaged in ripe corn,

The farmer’s little son watched

the birds old, yet littlest to him!

 

Flew he them away unwillingly,

Due to father’s past rebukes,

Subdued which his innocence to give up

fancy and realize the ways of the old.

 

Flew then the group,

to that dense wood far,

Attracted which always

the little boy’s dreamy self.

 

Flew he also, one day,

On foot to catch his fancy,

Lagged behind but the poor,

for we humans trudge the earth only.

 

Realized the bird couple,

the plight innocent of the child,

Melt heart theirs for the child,

The same were in the nest.

 

Flew they slow and halted on the way,

To allow the man’s child to catch up,

Joined bird-human to fly,

Delighted which the mother earth.

 

The boy found himself in a dream;

Stood under the tree,

The birdie kids flapped their wings,

And parentally sang the bird couple.

Tolerance Divine

 

Bears society the onslaught,

Abound ‘isms’ around,

Suppress they the kind, loving natural self,

Dead sea are they,

Drowned is man in,

Modernity aids the evils old,

Making them almost immortal.

 

Shrinks the world today

with a deadly spasm,

Its small size

not a sign of humanity broad,

But a stone like

exploding dead apathy,

Useless is the human real

for the ultramodern heart,

Centuries tread away,

Tangled is man more;

Inhuman and intolerant manifold.

 

Yes! The only hope being

the tolerance divine;

The thing humane most,

Able to do good to all.

 

The chances to survive lie

not so in modernity,

As in being a human real,

Intolerant who is not

like a hardy machine soulless.

Rain, or Not?

 

Poor farmers provoked the monsoon,

For it’s their last savoir

despite the modernity all,

Farms, cattle, land lifeless feared the burning sand,

Looked meekly for the hope last.

 

Then came the respite thundering,

Healing them like mother’s kiss;

Hayricks, animals, mud-houses,

All made merry with jumpy Utopia,

But to a point only,

Because beyond that misery stares starkly.

 

Starts the spiritual plight again,

But for the opposite now,

Fee-fawing scarecrow turns the blessing,

As the little life of before,

Gets stalled by the gushing torrents,

Heresy turns all for the low-borns,

It’s a world swinging to the extremes,

Never allowing them the stable life of balmy

balance in the middle.

 

Viciously hammered all with the season—

Paddy appearing just grass over the water sheet,

The cattle gone ownerless,

And the farmers working tirelessly to

drain the great solvent away,

Now they pine for the dry earth;

Dreams of dry, buffeting, blinding sands,

Because water is the foe now.

 

Zoomed then the drama official,

In all its hypocritical sheen,

Came the dirty hand gloved nicely,

The chameleon offered the rites soft;

Joined mankind nature to plunder emotions.

 

But the poor people new,

The curse was no irresolvable puzzle,

Hide which can in the nature’s maze,

It was simply a man-made flood;

a common way of

saving a great city from getting flooded

by diverting the rich waters

to the poorer fates.

The Shepherd Boy

 

Lying was he in nature’s lap,

While his sheep grazed in

warmth early of a November sun,

Femininely undulating hillside it was,

Rolling pastures,

Overlooking thick-wooded shadowy vales.

 

The rock beneath gave all he needed:

Felt its hugging warmth and support hard,

Swirling came the breeze by the valley,

Intoxicating it was, as the bright sunrays

stole the bitter pinch.

 

Shared he the perfect calm,

His herd bleating in harmony,

Rubbing against each other and gambolling,

Running came a little lamb,

Licked his hands,

The master surrendering to the

titillating tinker of love and peace.

 

Gazed he skywards lazily,

His eyes saturated with nature,

Very thin foamy clouds trailed

across the vast blue unknown,

Same was his existence here.

 

Faced as he the serenity above,

Forgot the self, shone as his face

under the great fire’s light above,

Flew kites tirelessly there,

He too, with imagination unchained.

 

The wood below across the valley,

Sang with the season;

Some sound broke the silence now and then,

But sweet it was,

As nature was playing with itself.

The Little Sparrow

 

Passed the long stormy night,

The tiny sparrow saw a world,

Strange and scary enough to turn him

worried for the first time in life.

 

The sunrays ended the gloom,

Darker was the clouded night,

Light brought but misery more,

Far away was he from his little nest,

‘The night storm took away everything,’

Sighed he,

His little body aching due to the strikes

by the unseen drops in the dark,

Aching were the delicate feathers,

due to the buffeting wind,

Shivered the little one,

under the impacts huge.

 

Remembered he,

how a watery gust

blew away their nest in the dark,

In just one pitiless moment,

lost was the warmth of his siblings,

And gone was parental protection,

Thrown away they were into the night,

as the tree lost its footing.

 

Played he always there,

Never thought or worried,

Realized he now the opposite,

Piteously ruffled was the fur,

Distorted were feathers,

Desperately he looked for his family

in a nest still intact nearby,

It was a replica of their own world,

Wept the little one with its poor whole,

Thought, he will die.

Humane is My Village

 

The air is laden with cooperation,

No thorny apathy;

No mob to throng the cornered self,

And murderous individualism axing hearts,

Here, we have a mixed self: the kind behemoth.

 

Neither bucolic love and unity whole,

Nor nucleated as in concrete jungles;

Limited is the spectrum; holds which

tender human bond still strong, and

live we all in slow majesty of decent unconcern.

 

The hunger and thirst for electricity and water,

Though dents the moral fabric a bit,

But in patience and forbearance the real self prides—

To bear all hardships and deprivations;

And adapt to disadvantages all.

 

The people still carry habits, conventions old,

Burdened further by the stuff new,

Still, carry they the rusted self with rural pomp,

Habituated to ignore and move on,

Veneers which as rough pride of the ruralites.

 

The commuters to the city carry old bags,

Hoping to fetch something new,

The very same villagers still they are

whose rough-hewn character

breathes with unease in the city big.

 

Still able to smile and laugh,

Holding a big open heart

in its tanned, work-beaten, hairy chest,

Priceless it is for the modern world,

Very few as there are places such.

Friendship Unsocial

 

A lot of relations throng,

God creates some,

Draw we some in the social garb,

But nothing relates humans,

as does friendship divine.

 

Lynched by formality is this world,

For nothing is society but rules of convenience;

The individuals form society by

becoming ceremonious, social to all,

Doctrined are thus the relations here.

 

But, friendship evades laws,

Most informal as it is,

Sheds away all cautioned, decorated self;

Enlarges the individual’s scope with soul freed,

Suffocated who earlier with the chained self.

 

All behave stilted, skewed here,

Some for their own greed,

Also, some for others’ harm,

Thus framed in cunningness becomes each,

As nothing else is society.

 

But friends share all,

Break they walls of social norms and etiquette,

Multiplies individuality to

become a spacious whole,

Ethereal is this ‘unsocial’ supplement.

 

Many envy the enhanced persona;

Individuality lost among the friends,

But, the enlarged self never

goes astray; such is

friendship, fracturing formal rules.