The spring’s traces last,
Hot summers approaching fast,
Languid notes in the air,
A solitary bird’s forlorn chirping
for its musical share,
Drowned in stillness
this late morning bright and fair,
The sky’s dull blue,
Spread with some mystical clue,
But a smaller world is there,
The overall unease cannot reach where,--
In its self-defined world
in a corner tiny,
The luscious wild flower
still stands brave and shiny.
The great call at midnight:
‘Will the throaty pitch and guffaw
be the same for the thousand years coming?’
If it’s to be such,
Please, then let us all
turn to nothingness at this moment.
Nothing new does it seem:
The chorus behind the throaty
noise seems to be the same foolish dream.
Such a huge and godly definition
given to the change,
Most forgettable is which,
but parroted now with childish rage.
Godliness has been contrived out of it,
I’m afraid it will bear the end same;
Revered now most formally,
Misunderstood and negated afterwards,
In all practices which
the sun will uncover at the dawn.
The days are in fact trotting,
A new dawn, new year, of course
new century and millennium,
The snaily destiny but pulls back.
Time may fly past,
Making us grow manifold,
We but remain stony,
rigid and preyed upon by chance.
Moves it too slowly,
Whom spirit never catches,
Its rock-like firmness,
makes us stick mossily around.
I do not know
what the new rays have in store?
Better or worse?
Rays to see or to blind?
Today I start my new day;
A new start and initiative,
Let me see if the occasion special
lends its hues to me also.
My palette has just two colours,
Just black and white,
Let me see if it gets multi-coloured,
Giving me a new rainbow.
I do not know whether the new dawn
is a different one, after the night long,
When darkness grappled with me and I failed,
Or is it the same as the old?
Let me see the occasion
too special and celebrity,
Prismatic and multicoloured,
Too long was the one-coloured night.
O new rays,
Please turn the occasion special,
God please, leave I myself
at thy complete mercy.
The new sun, millennium new,
Rays new at Dong, Katchel,
Pray I, crown my India anew!
New with a newly hewed crown
with hopes of more survival,
Not so with basics, rather
new roles, responsibilities new.
That India which saw
so much of flux and turbulence
over thy last empire—
History of religions,
Of races, ideas and many more,
Pray I, the newly diademed
remain such in the millennium next.
O new sun, shine too bright,
To light the patches dark,
Haunt which the geography ours,
And shadows whose reach hearts,
Sun, please warm up our hearts
with new warm ideas,
Glow with such spiritual aura
that the highest peaks in the Himalayas
shine like a jewel on the head,
O light, traverse through body
‘Hindustan’ to most distant parts;
Each hut, each palace, each home,
Light them, do away with the dark.
God, we committed wrongs,
Blood spilled over,
Minds became rigid; misunderstood,
Pray I, o new rays,
Warm up them again,
Blanket up the wrong,
O new sun,
Shine with vibrancy such.
At this zero hour I stand in the dark,
trying to see the newcomer,
Nobody is there, alas!
Not even the refracted skylight.
Bundled out round in a circle,
I thus fumble around words,
Meaning whose has fatality—
Of circling around; ending nowhere.
Three big zeroes of the new,
which hover over, gobble up
the sleepy environment
around me,
Wonder while I about the ‘zeroness’.
Three zeroes take me round—
The zero for myself,
A bigger one for the country,
Still larger one for the world whole.
Will I break this vicious circle
of rounding on the path same;
Burning out too much energy,
Arriving then at nothing?
Will this country having
so many self-centred circles,
Arrive at something new,
rather than the same big zero?
And what about this world?
Will it unmatch its physical shape?
The great big circle,
Binds which our orbiting passions.
Now that clock has struck twelve,
We have entered the millennium new;
The grand ceremonial crowning,
Celebrations for which were going on
among hopes, fears, opportunities new.
The court members are jubilant,
Exult at this moment,
The rest, meanwhile, remain unconscious,
Even about the newly crowned!
What type of coronation is this?
That people nearest to the ground understand it not,
Just a time-pass game perhaps,
Still, on this foggy cold night,
When voices are heard high and near,
Thanks to the dense foggy medium,
The noise made here or there
travels disproportionate to the source’s distance,
And the majority just takes a turn,
Lying while in their beds.
Isn’t it an unsuitable time?
For they must sleep now,
While the crowning ceremony
being held at this freezing zero hour,
When few must be awake
and left with celebrity nocturnal spirit,
Sleep they will like bats and owls
when the day will break,
And the rest will start toiling,
Unmindful of the nocturnalities.
Of course, new sun, new day
will be there for them,
Its meaning but will be unnoticeable;
Hungry, deprived bellies never
sense theoretical change in the cosmos as such.
The night is in labour pain today,
I can feel its sweat, suffering and plight.
Triplets are to be born today—
The millennium, the century, the day.
Labour pain is too much—
Wars, epidemics, killings kicked her belly.
For years one thousand she bore
the pregnancy period all turbulent and disturbed.
The pain is thus too much,
Yet birth she has to give for new life.
A new child among the maternal pains,
The elder one meanwhile writhing to die.
And look at the urgency,
Sky has touched the ground almost.
A smoky fog circles around
to work as a midwife.
Too many kicks have been hurled at the belly,
Pain hence cannot be avoided.
Painful writhing more so,
For the birth time’s certainty is there.
Also scared is the mother
of those rioters awaiting the birth.
God forbid, if they go crazy,
and kick at the moment last.
Anxious for the infant,
She fears pangs more.
Small hope is there in a lamp
glowing dimply by death bed.
But a furious whiff by anyone
can blow it out too.
