Category: future

The ASK

You ask

How could you do this

To your own

Partner/Home/Country?

Without answering the

Same question

How could you do this

To your own

Partner/Home/Country?

After pushing to the brink

You ask why the center doesn’t hold?

The center ought to collapse

Without the dialectical force

But you desired one-sided

Undisputed brute force

Every stable star is in equilibrium

Because of the perfect balance of forces

You desired to be the single force

How idiotic was your plan?

Leading to the implosion/explosion

You wanted to be the center

There you are collapsing

Under your own self claimed glory

Responsible for it all

Yet you turn around and ask

How could you do this?

Without answering

How could you?

You plunder the very planet

Then you blame the god

Your war games never end

And then you ask

Why does peace never get a chance?

You never play fair

Then you ask

You fixed the game?

The ask is a big ask

With no easy answers

Let’s enjoy the spectacle

Of this collapse

While blaming each other

You will win this blame game too

Then you will ask

Why didn’t you win?

The very game rigged by you

GenZ Rebellion

My handheld device

Shows me a glimpse

Glimpse of a rebellion

By GenZ and Gen Alphas

Our youngsters are on edge

They are tired of hope

Hope for a better tomorrow

Of which there are no signs

They know

Action speaks louder than

All the words and rhetoric

To ensure a better future

The best way is to show up!!

With climate dystopia

Temperatures rising

And Wars raging

There is indeed no hope in sight!!

Youths are doing

What youths do the best

They are rebelling

Asking for a systemic change

They are dreamers

Left with only nightmares

They are out on streets

To reclaim their dreams

Dreams of a better future

A better safe tomorrow

Afterall it is their future

Being gambled away

By senile politicians and greedy oligarchs

Young protestors are seeking

Accountability –

Who is responsible?

Who plundered it all?

Why isn’t education a priority ?

While defense budget is?

What are you defending?

If not the lives of youngsters?

Sending them to war fronts

For wars of not their making

Leaving them stranded in life

With AI enabled devices

(Which too predict only dystopia)

The pretense is over

They know no one cares

No one thinks of them

Their safety, their education

And their future

With a miniscule education budget

And crumbling infrastructures

And no teachers

They are learning faster on streets

The lessons of life and history

They need no textbooks or classrooms

To understand misplaced priorities

Are we at the tipping point?

That rare historic epoch?

Revolution isn’t being televised 

It is being livestreamed

Every regressive action

Is on record and on camera

Heartless political machinery

Turning cities into militarised zones

Waging war against its own youth

Such a deplorable shame!!

While the rebellion is spreading

Like a wildfire

All world leaders have turned

Blind, deaf and mute

Hoping perhaps for the rebellion

To lose its momentum

Such a lapse of judgement

No one learns from history

(Hence the history repeats)

Time and again

Our children teach us

Courage and empathy

While we build a pretty facade of a home

And a farce of a life for them!

Photo courtesy: creative commons wikipedia

Love in the Era of Dating Apps

I wonder how does love fare

In the era of dating apps

Earlier love came gate crashing into our lives

Annoyingly when we least expected it

It sat as an unwanted guest

Messing up all the time lines

It waited patiently for its turn

To unleash it’s charm

And make its way into our lives

I wonder how love copes now

In the era of dating and speed dating

Has it become impatient?

Does it move along with our swipes

Swipe right you may find it

Swipe left you may lose it or vice versa

With Apps and profiles

As the ultimate gate keepers

How will it ever get to gate-crash?

Is love at first sight even a possibility?

There are always damn screen and filters

And best edited profile pictures

And then when you personally meet

With ample room for expectations

And disdain

Does love leave the table politely?

Earlier love would linger on

And maybe even stalk

And now it ghosts

Earlier there were no promises or forever

But yet love would haunt for life

I no longer know how it works

When we lay all our cards on the table

Hoping for a fair game

But then it turns out

There are no rules of the game

Love remains a situationship

Waiting for an upgrade

It is always a clean slate

No misgivings, no messiness

Light as a butterfly

Love flutters in and out of life

No surprises anymore

No confessions either

Love in the age of AI and Apps

Has turned out to be a smart love

With racing heartbeats in rings and watches

No broken hearts, no unrequited love

Nor platonic or overtly lustful

Love itself has become a need

A box to be ticked

The more you chase it, the more it eludes

That hope – the next swipe might

Bring it to your table right?

Keep at it!!!

Knowing love, it will still turn up

To upset all your plans

Staring right at you

Sweeping you in a twister storm

And then dumping you

Totally broken but warm

It will teach you to smile and sob

Only love can teach love

It is a shape shifting algorithm

Making an absolute fool of

Even the wisest one!!

A Closure

I am not sure

What is A Closure?

Which everyone looks for?

Is it a signalling to end a phase of life?

Does life have such demarcations?

Before and after phases

Before school, after school,

Before marriage, after divorce?

After birth and before death

That’s the lifetime we get

We keep dividing into moments

Phases of growing up, coming of age

Falling in and out of love

Getting married, becoming a parent

Then the lonesome empty-nester

We keep drawing lines

Or adding chapters to our lives

While erasing the past which keeps

Receding faster, Doppler shifting away

Memories fade but hurt remains

We can’t get over traumas

Yet we call it PTSD

From the moment of birth to death

It’s just a few odd years

When we scale it

To the age of the Earth or the universe

We can’t even predict 

Where the grim reaper awaits us

When we will close our eyes

The curtains will fall

And the drama will end

The drama of our life

That will be the true closure

Two dates in the bracket

Will define our lifetime

And of course

The perspectives of people

Who loved to love us

And who loved to hate us

While we were caught up

In their ideas of love and hate

The drama was never ours

We were mere characters in

Lives and dramas of others

Time does strange funny things

Somewhere in the future

One might get resurrected

In some random conversations

In another drama of not our making

A dead bright leaf also gets

A chance at immortality

When someone clicks a photo

Or paints it or turns it ornamental

In the Camus Universe

Existence has no purpose or meaning

And here we are purposefully

Decimenting and reducing each other

To almost nothing

Or whatever suits us

Then we seek a closure

Closure from hurt

Only to begin again

Another drama

Hoping for forevers

Which doesn’t exist

Soon I will be gone

And so will you be

We will be either villains or heroes

In shape, perspectives and

Narrative shifting world

How about seeking a fresh start

Maybe begin again

So where were we?

Yes…A closure…

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

The Night Sky

Once upon a time

I would lie under the starry night

In utter darkness

To do a Messier marathon

I knew those magnificent

Beauties of the night sky

By their first name

Out of nowhere

They would appear

Once sun disappeared

We would behold them

In the field of view

Of our small and big

Telescopes facing the night sky

Just like the sun

Constellations would dip too

Below the horizon

While new ones appeared

Nothing compares to the

Silence and darkness

Of the dark night sky

Which has inspired

Countless artists and poets

I trust the night

It removes the blinding lights

Both sun and moon are absent

We can peer much deeper

And beyond

Going back in time

14 billion years is the age of the Universe

Along the way multitude of stars

In the billions of galaxies

Are burning away

Fusing atoms together

Forming newer elements

Elements that make you and me

And every being on this planet

We are after all atoms

Trying to figure out atoms

A scientist famously said

Annihilation preludes creation

And vice versa

Creation of new particles

And elements go on

Till the stable ones are born

Nature loves stability

But then entropy is a reality too

In the great cosmic churning

Life indeed is a miracle

But then…

One day after millions of years

The sun will die…

It will engulf the earth

Growing into a red giant

Till then we will play perhaps

This game of war and fear

While sending missions into the space 

Such contradicting realities of our existence

We needn’t end it all here and now

We are self similar beings

Made of same cosmic dust

It would be such a pity

To cut this fabulous story short!!  

PS: Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s book – Poems to Night

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!!

A Fall

All it takes is a fall

To rise again

We haven’t reached

The tipping point yet

Where words

Will eventually give up

Their meanings

All languages will fail

To express the pain and gratitude

All the love will be a foregone conclusion

And death?

It is now a  kids play

Their playmate doll dies

Just like their friends did

They know the rituals

They know the burials

Death seems so routine

Mourning has turned

Into a celebration

What else can we do?

Except for changing

Our perspectives

We are running out of

Perspectives and paradigms too

There are no masks

Emperors take pride

In their nakedness

That brave little boy

Has been buried

They don’t care even if

They are called out

It will take big fall

For the humanity

To rise again

We haven’t fallen

Enough yet!!

Irony

I became you

And you became them

All boundaries blurred

Between predators and preys

Every role flipped

In a role reversal

Victims turned into proud bullies

Preying upon helpless victims

Me, you, us and them

We keep changing our roles

Going in circles

Irony itself has become ironical

Like never before

I has been replaced by AI

Human by machines

Humans have turned into

Well dressed mannequins

Frozen like zombies

Doom scrolling away

Devouring themselves

Life has turned into monstrous death

In the finest of all role reversal

They feel most alive

When they kill

A movie showing severed flying head

Gets all the screens

While life affirming Space film

Finds hardly a space

Addiction to violence!

Ironically life always wins

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Didn’t change anything

Cherry blossoms do bloom

And paper cranes are still a craze

Ironically the victim nation

Never built the bomb

It ended the cycles 

Of trauma and violence

But the bully nation

That built and used it

Is back with the same flex

Ironically bullies often

Call themselves victims

What scares them?

Addicted to violence and power

They refuse to give up

Their carnal desires

While Artemis II is on its way

To the darker side of the moon

Humanity has plunged

The planet Earth

Into one of its darkest phase

How diabolical

And Ironical!

Unheard Screams

She was out on the streets

Screaming about horrors

That went on inside a mansion

No one believed her

Women are always

Hysteric they thought

Before her there was another

A super model

Who tried to tell the truth

She was packed off

To the psychiatric ward

A filmmaker tried too

He died before

The world saw his edited film

Which felt like his perverse imagination

All this while

For decades men and women

Of power and influence

Kept mum even when they knew

They all partied, built a horrific reality

That the world thought was

Just a perverse imagination

They maimed, harmed and killed

In the name of fun and longevity

It took a whole generation

Of abused and trafficked kids to grow up

To call it all out, fight endless legal battles

Die mysteriously in the process

To bring it all to the light

With all evidence for everyone to see

Yet the world is numb

The perverse spy network

That controlled the world

Still thrives in money and power

Telling people to move on

Screaming only stocks and race

Money and influence matters

A handful few perverts

Reminding us that torture chambers

Continue to exist, cruelty never dies

In war between good and evil

Evil always has the ugliest loud laugh

While goodness stands shackled

Maimed, trafficked and brutally abused

No one believes the goodness anymore

What good does it serve to be good?

What kind of a rot is this? 

Where screams of vulnerable

Women and children

Often go unheard

While men continue to flaunt

Their naked positions and power

Through utter cruel perversity

Shame on this selective

Deaf, dumb and blind world

Was it all like this forever?

Was free world, an illusion

That was sold to us?

Just like puppets we dance

While the screams go unheard

We scroll past all the horrors

To pause at delicate flowers

Or wellness reels

How many steps did you walk today?