history – Mad Decadence

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?

Immortality

There are ways to live forever

Through your sheer talent

There are ways to be

Remembered fondly

By gently nudging the broken souls

Be it Van Gogh or Sylvia Plath

Or countless many more

Who struggled for existence

Struggled to pursue their passion

They died as mere beings

Unrecognised mortals

But lived forever

As Immortals…

Time truly

Is a game changer

The more you

Try to hold on to it

The more quickly it slips away

And then without

Your knowledge or approval

It makes you live forever

As immortals…

Condemned to be

As per everyone’s

Imagination and perception!!

Ceasefire

As the whole world holds its breath

As the threat of annihilation looms large

As brave people brace themselves

For the final showdown with death itself

Bunch of men proclaim

“Ceasefire!!!”

Such an easy convenient word

Why did it take so long?

One just has to cease

And step back

No one needs to call off the war

This game is paused for the next level

After all it increases views, stocks and profits

And weapons industry sells quite well

The biggest reality show of current times

Boom!! Just after ceasefire

There was much fire elsewhere

While the negotiations were still being read

There has to be a twist in the war drama

Well, the whole bloody drama is twisted!!

No one knows who is winning or losing

I guess it doesn’t matter anymore

Let the game go on…

While the desolate moon, sun

And a bunch of astronauts

Behold the beautiful Earth

Blue and white…pristine marble

Moving in the dark empty space

Silently miles miles away

Human life does seem a miracle

Till it turns itself into a curse!!

Stranger

A stranger stares at me

Whenever I look at the mirror

A school girl with two pigtails

A college goer

A trekker

A writer

Stranger takes many forms

All forms seem

Like a figment of imagination

The mirror itself has gone missing

The images are stuck in my head

My self tries to time travel

I climb the hills

But I go out of breath

The pigtails are gone too

A writer perhaps still thrives

Who will keep record

Of all these strangers?

They grew up with me

And then abandoned me

Or maybe I abandoned them

It’s not just them or me

The world has become a stranger too

Victims have turned perpetrators

Little children no longer grow old

To stare at the mirror

To remember their many strange selves

As we go further to discover

Ever expanding edges of the Universe

We seem to be collapsing

Just like those stars running out of hydrogen

We are made of star dust after all

Stars taught us to go nuclear perhaps

Just like a habitat with prey and predators

We continue to live in a concrete jungle

Though roles get reversed in every epoch

Predators become prey

Hunted turn into hunters

How long will it take for us

To be humans?

Mirror has no answers

My many selves and versions

Collapse into one too

The one that is trapped

Behind the mirror or screen perhaps

A virtual self…a stranger

Stares back at me!!

Ownership

We don’t own anything

Not even these words

Which are borrowed

From a language

Thoughts may be ours

But not entirely

They are formed by

All that we read and experience

In a dynamic shape shifting world

How can we own anything?

Our body cells start to shed

The moment we are born

Our ions and electrolytes

Are forever incomplete

Seeking bonds

Nothing is ever static and whole

Blood flow forms rivulets

All through the body

Do I own these cells, ions and atoms?

All formed from the star dust

Including the sun, our planet

How can we own anything at all?

We are just a blip, a heartbeat

In the grandeur of cosmos and

Timeline of universe

Yet in vain we try to possess and own

That piece of land, this piece of resource

People in our lives and their free minds

What for?

For that momentary

Lust for power and glory?

We play with lives

Lives of others

While squandering our own

Nothing ever dies

It changes forms

We just own our made up

Truths and lies

Our actions too are borrowed

From the history playbooks

We lack courage to love

So we choose deceit

Ilusion and grandeur

Happy in our bubbles

We float in an embryonic state

Feeding off the lives

Which we think we own

While we own nothing

Earth belongs to itself

It doesn’t give a damn

About our petty lives

Our politics and lies

The more we plunder

More it will make us pay

Just like any other landlord

Photo courtesy: Anuran – Researcher and photographer based in Paris

Being a Woman

There is a lump
Stuck in my throat
It can’t be removed
Surgically
It just stays there
Just like the abyss
In my heart or perhaps brain
I keep sinking into
A free fall
With no rock bottom
With no voice
To scream for rescue
Not sure whether
There is a rescue team
As neither my internal abyss
Nor lump in my throat
Is visible or audible
That’s what it is
For most women
I am told
You learn to stay afloat
Put a brave front
And you scream internally
Without letting out a whimper
You accept praises and criticisms
Whatever comes your way
You assume you have a purpose
Or a role
Until you decide to step away
From the roleplays
To realise
You are invisible too
The world never sees you as a person
But rather as a wife or mother or sister
You step away
And you are reduced to a nobody
How liberating is that!!
They care only till you care
You like a fool kept caring
Letting them humiliate
The Law of reciprocity
Is always learnt a hard way
But apply it
Just like everyone does
In every other sphere
You will see
What you hold together
Collapses as a pack of cards
And then you realise
The cards were rigged
With misogyny
To remain as an object or
As a person with lump
In the throat
And Abyss in the heart
To sink without a sound

Step and snap out now
Out of the roleplay
To find your own voice
And your sense of balance
You will be visible
To those who want to see you
Rest do not matter
At least you will be visible
To your damned self

In that damn mirror!

Image courtesy: Anuran Kar Gupta, Physics researcher based in Paris

Future?

Future?

They ask me if I think of my future
– have you ever thought of…?
I tell them – I take a day a time
And future as unknown with numerous unknowns and possibilities

I have stopped dreading the future
Out of sheer shame
It is a sheer privilege and luxury
To be alive while many are dying or
Being killed mercilessly

It is not just humans I am talking about
Those are always the collateral
Quid pro pro you see?
No, no – not just life for life
But life for land, minerals, rivers, seas and power

I also mean the other species, climate, air
Trees, rivers, mountains, glaciers,
Ponds, lakes, forests,.estuaries and wetlands
The planet under the great threat
The land sharks are on the loose
They are worse than the sea ones

And they point out to their political masters
Who they say have a cut
They serve the greed, lust and perversity
They point to you and me too
Our flawed dreams and aspirations

We all want an immortal home
In our mortal lives
We pretend to do it
For our future generations
By killing theirs and rest others

We don’t know where the Owlets went
Or the fledglings
Or the big cats, elephants or the tiny ones
When that wild fire raged
Or the bombs dropped

Future? You ask…
I don’t think it’s gonna be any different
We would be perhaps hanging on the walls
In lovely framed photos taken by best cameras
Which would be vintage ones tomorrow

Those who will survive, will ask
Like we often ask –
Why no one acted to end the war?
Or save the planet?
And life on it?
They would perhaps
Live the tragic consequences
Of our inactions

Being gone, is being free too
Eventual absolute freedom
From the degenerating bodies, ailments
From the cells which start dying
From the day we are born

Being free of the conscience
Free of thoughts and guilt
Not having to bear witness
To ghastly progress
Where we prefer algorithmic voice
And intellect too

I want my plants and trees and rivers
and nature to outlive me
I want to dream of a future that will
Breathe in gratitude
And not curse their past where
Everything was normalised and livestreamed

I just want the future to breathe
I want possibilities of the future to exist
While the present is hell bent on harming it
Just for its own imagined ‘collective good’
For the collectives which are exclusive clubs
Of the powerful, greedy and merciless

I know I don’t have a future
One day dying cells will win over
I know I will wrinkle and wither
Just like my flowers and leaves
There cannot be any other way

Perhaps I am already dead, so are you
We watch it all live streamed
Wildfires, melting glaciers, dead rivers,
Erased forests and the lakes
Bombs and deaths of the little ones

We still go out and buy those ACs
Cars, new flats and their abundant lies
We think we are part of the exclusive ‘collectives’, the chosen fittest species
With exclusive passes
To the grand party on the plundered land!!!

War – A Grim Reality Show

It almost unfolds live

On Social Media

On Television

Whipping emotions

As short lived

Till the next reel or news

There is a race

Turn it into an epic

Before the elections

Even before it ends

Scriptwriters have no clue

How will it end?

Or will it end at all?

Who has the controls?

Nations who are sparring?

Or nations who sell

Arms and weapons

To both sides fairly?

Is this an long over due upgrade?

Of war technology?

Old stocks need to be used or sold

For the new ones replace them

Weapons lead to wars

Or wars lead to weapons?

Damn the vicious cycle!

Everyone wants to stay in power

Even when they don’t have any

Wars and revolutions rarely go by the script

They often go rogue, off the script

Resilience and resolute is never factored in

Soldiers become immune to killing

And civilians learn to mourn the loss

They understand they are

Important but

Unacknowledged collaterals

Unbelievable!

What a techno-feat!

We witnessed and debated genocide

Inbetween binge watching shows

Even if war comes home

We will watch it on screen

Not realising the proximity

In denial glued to the screens

Life must go on after all

Everything is for greater good

Even the greater evils!!

A Place Called Home

For some it’s a place to return to

For some it is a place to escape from

For some it is a place they cannot return

And for some it is a place they cannot escape

A Place Called Home

That illusive space in time

Where we think we belong

The place to fight for

Or die for

A Place where we wake up

And go to sleep

A space where we thrive

It becomes an identity

Pride and asset

A place called Home

Yet it doesn’t take much

To tear it down

The home of your childhood

Or to lose it to the occupiers

Who too think it is theirs

A Place Called Home

Wars are fought and lost

A lifetime is spent as refugee

What remains is in our memories

And in imagination that illusive space

A Place called Home

Where I am me

Unapologetic me

A place where we can be

Let alone in peace

To go on with our daily drudgery

Watch our flowers bloom

While I looked for it

A place called Home

I didn’t realise

I was home within me

On this planet

Which is our home

We often fail to protect

While fighting to save our idea

Of a place called Home

My Dear City…

What do I say to you

My dear city?

Should I regret the joys

I was robbed of ?

Or should I thank you for

Gifting me a new me?

I have smiled and cried too

On these shores of the sea

The sea that you seem to hide

I came around a full circle

What I thought was a closure

Became a spiral

Yet I am back here

Asking no questions

Nor seeking any answers

Your hidden vast shores

Are welcoming as always

As though waiting to hear

My song again!!