The Night in Labour Pain

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.

My Sleepy Village on the Millennium Eve

 

The new millennium will

take birth in a couple of hours

in the foggy dark with the stars blown out.

 

What kind of handover is this?

When we see no light,

Either in the houses or starry twinklings above.

 

The dusk today was prematurely lost in fog,

Not a single star smiled,

Starless, light-less we go into the changeover.

 

Same in the houses, blackouted,

We here in this sleepy village

lie abed in the archaic dark.

 

Surely the fog will last

for another half of the day to come,

Sunless, we will welcome the newborn triplets.

 

Millennium, century, day;

The momentous birth-time in the dark,

Electric bulbs in houses also follow nature in gloom.

 

Of course, luminosity is there somewhere,

At places some; houses privileged,

Bulbs glow, create as they stars new.

 

Lucky they are,

Take part in the natal activities,

And the partisan, crony-crazed new one arrives.

 

And we the irritating ones,

Shunned for not taking part in the celebrations

at the long anticipated moment of break in history.

 

Uncertain we are thus,

What change has for us?

The stale old dry dust or some fresh dew?

 

The night is thus cold and dark,

Great events will occur,

Our fate but hardly provides any succour.

The Millennium takes a Big Toll

The millennium is to end,

So will be the case with the century,

Approaches as this day the zero hour;

Aah, this narrowing down,

Too eager to embrace the next,

The altar of nationalism too

looks for some selfless sacrifice,

The stale flowers of its glorious past,

Now need some offerings fresh.

 

On this 31^st of December,

alarmed is this mortal

for the countdown quickened,

The relatives few weep hoarsely,

For their loved ones,

Hijacked at a land distant;

Nationalism is thirsty,

It demands sacrifice,

A billion souls expecting a few hundred people

to assuage their boiling sense of nationhood,

But the pain of one’s own blood

is felt only by the closest kin.

Their pointing fingers,

And slogans for the release

of someone who challenged

our integrity, our pride,

They have to put self above the nation,

Jingoism is on a hypothetical plane,

The realty cuts us to our real size.

 

Wails, cries and noises,

Chorused a pleading, ‘Release’,

For a week whole,

Nationalism squirmed meanwhile,

Dreams of national glory postponed

to save the blood in real life,

Struck was a bargain

to save those who constitute the nation.

 

Three militants go free,

Hundreds died to capture whom,

Our soldiers look mute,

Bullets in their chests

though pain not much,

But then there are tears of joy

as the captives walk free,

Nationalism may feel the pinch,

But is it above the life of its ordinary citizens?

 

This millennium can seek comfort,

As another will follow figuratively,

Nationalism but must be feeling

a fishy death out of the pond,

Suffocated to death;

Vanish as the oxygen from the lungs,

The hawks may condemn them as selfish,

But is it a sin to cry to save one’s kin?

 

Earlier, some soldiers kidnapped for

the cause same were slaughtered,

Nobody then barked ‘Release’,

O my God,

A soldier taken guaranteed to die.

 

The hostages will return tonight,

Under pressure by the citizens,

The painful wails shut out

all nationalistic doors in the state,

And they will celebrate,

Some 160 families will rejoice extra,

But they should light candles also

for those who died in Kargil,

Everybody jingled when

with pride and love for the nation,

Certain as they were of safety,

Died meanwhile our soldiers icy deaths.

 

Yes, we will celebrate today

the approach of the millennium new;

And the great guffaws will echo around,

Hysterically rising towards

the zero hour approaching,

But at what cost?

A question difficult to answer.

There is Always Light Somehow

 

There is light beyond

the deepest dark depth,

There is a bright day after

the ghostly haunts of a nightmarish night,

After a barren famished fight

there is a full blossomed spring’s delight,

After pining pangs of separation

there is a worthy end to the desperation,

After crashing in the gutters

there is a surge and rise to bathe in holy waters,

After crying convulsions on the lips,

a smile takes honeyed sips,

After the last defeat,

still there is an undying urge to accomplish the feat,

Even when blind with despair,

there is hope hiding and cajoling somewhere,

Even in hate love still lurks somewhere!

Some Celebrating Lamps

 

Celebrations will occur today,

With firecrackers and partying

on happy islands on the west coast,

Noise huge, colours bright

will try to subdue something.

 

Something which plagues the east,

The hush and fury in the dark,

Arrowed upon poorly quantified humanity,

Died where even the little traces of quality and dignity,

And celebrations will take place in the west.

 

Those drunken dances and rockets flying,

The rich garbage of celebration scattered around,

Myriads swaying upon the boozed beaches,

With joy, sensuousness and laughter,

While deadly claws put a print on the sand in the east.

 

The east spread out like an orphan,

The forlorn beaches, where swept out

were the labouring footprints of masses,

The night where howls around

the decaying uncremated remains.

 

And unmindful and uncaring

they will celebrate the night whole,

For new dawn, millennium new,

Hope has died meanwhile

somewhere with the millennium gone.

 

Such is the case with humans,

Segmented society for roles,

The lucky ones with a lamp

to welcome the change great,

Others carried on bier in the dark.

The Millennium Bath

 

A bath I am to have today,

The ‘after death’ ritual

for the mortals left behind;

The old millennium will die today.

 

The certainty of its death,

And the certainty of timing as well!

I want to be certain myself;

Wash I will, the mortal remains.

 

The remains of the millennium last,

Quantified efforts to measure eternity,

A part of me will also die today,

Fragmented death to live fully another day.

 

Die with the millennium,

A thousand years old man,

Wash I will myself,

Midnight is the hour to depart.

 

We will go hand in hand,

The remains will be left behind—

All washed out and infants;

Millennium new, and the new man.

 

That is why I will bathe

for the new man, millennium new,

We know, the new may loath the old;

Two thousand-year-olds.

 

Try I will to oblate the sins,

And all the sewage and garbage,

Layered which over both of us,

I will bathe for both today.

Let the Change Prevail Inside

 

This chilly gentle breeze of a defined era

blankets us for the last,

This sun struggling in the fog,

Tries to see us for the last.

 

From a long slumber we arise,

On this millennium’s last dawn,

The moon in its last phase

still gracing the western sky,

And through its bloated,

Obscured shape in the west,

Stubbornly watches the hoopla,

The millennium eve’s noise.

God! Amidst such fire-cracking ‘lasts’,

About the matter and externalities,

Will the ‘lasts’ extend

to the dark corners in us?

The patches where

greed, selfishness, war

and all man-made disasters

vying with the nature’s,

Will they also pack off

to follow the trend around.

 

O night, when you arrive today,

Please chuck away all the dirt

in thy nocturnal folds:

O sun, cast your ochre rays

oblique upon the wrong facets,

Make them glow like jewels;

O breeze, enter the souls,

Soothe the passion inside,

Blow up which like volcano;

O man, let the series culminating around,

enter your deeper self and make you realise,

the futility of sticking to old follies

even in the new era.