What begins, always ends
And all ends have a beginning
Just like in Life
And in everything else
Life too begins
And Life ends
The journey lies in between
Suspended in memories
And disbelief!!
Category: war
Prison
Democracy is imprisoned
In the name of justice
Justice is imprisoned
In the name of freedom
Freedom is imprisoned
In the name of Peace
Peace is imprisoned
In the name of War
War is shackled too
In the name of economy
Economy is prisoned too
In the name of capitalism
Capitalism is boxed too
By the markets and profits
One person’s loss is
Another one’s gain
The media is imprisoned too
In the name of propaganda
Propaganda itself is made of lies
Lies aren’t free too
They have to hide the truth
Truth is in gallows too
On non-bailable terms
Don’t ask who benefits
Everyone has lost the plot
Old money gets older
New money becomes old
Those who are poor
Remain poorer
How else will we define
The real rich?
Marginalized communities
Define the majoritarian
Who turn authoritarian
Till…till everyone loses the plot
And the script flips
Nature loves entropy
But it likes balance too…
Not everyone gets away
With it all…
Where do you stand?
Waiting Time
We will certainly wait
But for how long?
Can you hear the collective gasp?
Can you see the crimson pyres?
Sorry, there is no waiting time
In this game of death!!
How long do we wait?
For better sense to prevail
For wars to end
For children to get a chance
To live their life
How long do we wait?
For the Time that never arrives
Time of peace
Time of love
Time of kinship
How long do we wait?
For the rains
For the barren land
To become green again
For the earth to heal
How long do we need to wait?
For the stars to be visible again
To be able to breathe again
Perhaps sing again
How long do we wait?
For a day without news of abuse
A day with no school shootings
No war or no killings
No rapes or acid attacks
Just how long?
Just how long before we value
Humanity and living
How long before we value
Equality and love
We have been waiting
Far too long
Too too long
To find ourselves
To love ourselves
Possibilities
It is difficult to be optimistic
Some always see
half glass empty
Because it is empty
Emptiness is overwhelming
And it consists of suffering
And all kinds of lacks
A cruel void
But it also presents
Immense possibilities
There is a space to fill
There is a space that can change
However grim realities are
Change is always a possibility
It just happened in Hungary
Before it came to Nepal, Bangladesh
Common young people turned up
In streets and in polling booths
They did not stare at the void
And the status quo
They decided to upturn the glass
That’s the tipping point
One country at a time is reaching
Rekindling hope against all hope
For possibilities against
What seems impossible
History shows tyrants were defeated
There is an overwhelming evidence
We know the half empty glass
Can be filled with hope
And unknown possibilities
We need courage to
Keep trudging
To live with and without
To believe
And to simply show up
When possibilities emerge!!
Courage
Tonight I want to talk
About the courage
Courage of those who are
Facing imminent fatal threats
As fear looms large
No one is talking about leaving
Or fleeing the war
It has been a pattern
Among all the nations under attack
No one is leaving to make conquest easy
Tonight we need to talk about this courage
Courage of common people
Who take the batterings
Who are easy civilian targets
Yet they refuse to leave or flee
They bury their children and kin
They live in refugee camps
They return back to the rubbles
To rebuild again and again
As long as the ceasefire lasts
They stand up to
The truth and power
While every powerful nation chooses silence
They don’t leave or flee
Their ancestral land and home
Despite all indignity and threats
They keep showing up as human chains
They keep recording
And collecting evidence
In the hope that civility and peace
Will return again
And one day wars
Will become redundant
Tonight let’s talk about the courage
The courage of four astronauts
Who flew furthest from the earth
To the dark side of the moon
To watch unseen craters and an eclipse
Perhaps knowing well
Their mission will be eclipsed
By the war and fear mongering
They saw our beautiful blue planet
Knowing very well how bad the things are
Yet they speak of One Earth
Tonight let’s talk about the courage
Courage in the face of the fear and death
Tonight I don’t want to
Write the saddest or angry lines
I want to stand in solidarity with those
Who are being relentlessly attacked
If they have the courage to hope
To bear it all and fight back
And have guts to die
What we think or do is inconsequential
Their land, river and mountains
Will remember them
As a resilient civilization
I will just hope
Hoping against hope
This exemplary courage will win
It has to win against the evil
Fear is not even a choice
Fear was never a choice!!
Hycean
Hycean was a hypothetical
A theoretical exoplanet
Made of Hydrogen and Ocean
The exoplanets which
We now know exist
Thanks to the presence
Of essential bio markers
Evidence of life elsewhere
Far far away
Whose signature spectra
Can only be seen
By powerful telescopes
It is exciting to know
We are not alone
Life can be elsewhere
Ah! Life is elsewhere
Maybe not be the kind we know
It may not be earth-like
It may be completely different
But here we are
Living evidence of
Existence of complex lifeforms
In the entire universe
Also having intelligence to
Decipher it all
From smallest to largest scale
A sea of evolved beings
Refusing to look inwards
Very reluctant to look at
Darker side of humanity
While we send missions
To the dark side of the moon
Absurd humanity
Which wages wars
With itself
We have pushed
Our pale blue dot
(Also made of 70 percent water, hydrogen and oceans)
To the brink
Maybe it will survive
Once we eliminate ourselves
Future will perhaps remember us
As dichotomous beings
Glorious ambitious ones
Who turned into blood thirsty beasts
And as beautiful intelligent ones
Who saw signatures of
Far far away exoplanets
Who were delighted
To figure it all out
To create knowledge
Ask and experiment relentlessly
We did live, they will know
We had our own sun
Our year was made of 365 days
They will find it all –
Evidence of our existence
And extinction!!
Image courtesy: Artemis II mission, Nasa
Travels
Intriguing migratory birds
With tiny magnetic compasses
In their tiny little being
Navigating with perfection
They travel miles and miles
Across from Siberia and elsewhere
To find their little green oasis
Their islets, wetlands
To stay and nest
Till the fledglings are strong enough
They are so faithful to
Their geography and biology
Tuned perfectly
To the Nature of their very being
I wonder how they perceive
The climate change
And the erratic weather
Also the flying drones
And fighter planes
All set forth by humans
To take over land and resources
That doesn’t even belong to them
Migratory birds
Are quite enviable
They don’t need papers
To prove they nationalites
They fly high above
Man made borders
Who knows maybe
They will be
Saviours of life on earth
When humans go extinct
Unkept Promises
Every Peace treaty
Every marriage
Every relationship
Every dysfunctional family
That fails
Has a history
Of Unkept promises
Promises which did not
Pass the test of time
There should be
A proper closure
For unkept promises
Or else they turn into deep wounds
They grow like cancer
Occupying spaces
Leaving no breathing room
They are like unseen
Elephants in the room
Which are never addressed
The room where
Where adults play
The game of pretend
Lies and amnesia
While teaching their youngs
Lessons of morals, values
And promises…
That promises are meant to be kept!!
Unpredictable Life
Nothing succeeds like success
And nothing fails like a failure
Life remains a gamble
Whose cards we neither own
And not do we hold
It’s a probability game they say
Chances of one being born
Chances of one dying
Who decides the starting lineup?
Who makes it
To the finishing line?
Your guess is as good as mine
It’s a bad script
A very sad one too
Life – remains a long sigh
We will never know
If the cries of those children
Will become our worse nightmare
How does one settle upon a grave?
Or build mansions
On trampled dreams
Merchants will sell you anything
Ketto diet, protein diet, botox
A whole new you
Like a Ship of Theseus
Nothing authentic or original
But yet we ace at being an odd
Superposition of the both
Forgetting lines
Of an erasing script
We keep babbling
Nothing makes sense
None of the pieces
Of this puzzle fit
If only we could feel
The emptiness of space
Earth’s solo cosmic dance
Rarest of rare life on it
Sustained by the sun
Maybe we would learn
To value this one chance
The one shot
We actually have
To live a life
To love a life
Killings
Senseless violent killings
Never make sense
More so
Killing of young children
They don’t deserve
To be targets
In a failed world
With failed morals
They don’t
Need to die
During morning prayers
For our failings
To build a safe world
Senseless violent killings
Of young children anywhere
Doesn’t make sense
Far too many children
In far too many countries
Are laying their lives
For humanity’s moral decadence
Be it in Gaza, Ukraine or US itself
The more weapons you build
The more innocents will die
Why do you wish to rule
Over corpses and graves?
What will grow there?
Your riches are scarred
And tainted with bloodbaths
We have scarred children
Who grow up as adults
To kill more children
Vicious cycles of deaths
They are on you
Though you have
Traded your conscience
To guns and drones lobby
And your religion too
How many more small graves
Need to be dug?
Don’t you realise
You are ending your line
The line of inheritance
Riches and homes
Build over little graves
Will never last
Should not last
Mad Decadence 