Light breeze kissing the leaves
Dancing waves touching the shore
Whisper to me
A storm is on the way…
I want to be silent
I do not want to burden the wind
For my words might trigger a storm
I wait silently for the storm to pass
Once again I shall be ready
To throw my words to the winds
1999
I seek the moon tonight
With thousands of others
From my window
Caged momentarily tonight
In my cell window
Moon too looks desolate
And Persecuted
Was I persecuted for
Beholding the Moon?
My parents at my faraway home
Me, at my detention centre
Along thousands of refugees,
Illegal immigrants
And activists around the world
All are looking at the Moon
Moon smiles as ever grimly
Bonded forever to the Earth
Spinning with twined destiny
It tells me
We all need to wait
There is no easy way
To Salvation
And Freedom
Peasants will rise
They will sing
They will protest
They will take bullet
They will save democracy
While we will fret
And intellectualize!
Educated middle classes
Don’t you worry
These whom you ‘other’
Will save your jobs too
They don’t need you
But you do
To reap crops,
Cook your food
Cobble your shoes
Tailor your clothes,
Build your homes
Clean your homes
Toilets and cars too!!
After the revolution
They will still come
And assume their lowly jobs
While you will rot in your guilt
Or die with a foolish smug!
History textbooks will talk of them
But you will be mentioned
As the ‘other’ who let the system down!!
#saynotohate
Time is wrapped
We move forward
But yet in circles
A new beginning
Another New Year
All dots
On the circles
Time is a trap
An endless wrap
Moving forward
Yet in circles
Histories repeat
Dictators return
But tyrant
Time
Beats them all
Let us not despair
No one colour or
One faith can
Rule Forever
Light refracts
Even through
The Prism of Religion
Into a Rainbow
All mighty forever
Will bite the dust
As children of soil
Will rise yet again
Time goes in circles
Some look ahead
Forgetting the wrap
Others who look behind
Fall in the trap
There is no way
Back into the womb
Only death awaits
Ahead
Time moves forward
While moving in circles
Maybe Sisyphus is happy
For he knows
The clock ticks…
We are still under the hangover of Macbeth – the play by Rajat Kapoor which was staged yesterday at Kalamandir, Kolkata. It really give hope that there are people who are voicing their dissent loud and clear!
The satire was not lost…starting with three witches being compared to Kardashians, fascism being called Karaoke Fascism, how it needs one small ‘push’ to make any person violent, how violence is the potent force that binds the society and ending with the satirical disclaimer by two jokers played brilliant by Jim Sarabh and Vinay Pathak.
Ranvir Shorey portrayed the dilemma of modern day Macbeth (who kills to become a CEO)
with troubled conscience superbly. Each dialogue was important but unfortunately much was difficult to decipher due to poor sound and our back alley seats. They made it very clear that given current state of affairs, the joke was entirely on the elitist audience!
Bravo is all I can say!!
I hope it will make people introspect what they are endorsing so easily is dangerous and the blood stain on our conscience will only grow bigger and bigger even if we try to wipe or justify it!
#macbeth #shakeaspeare #rajatkapoor #jimsarabh #vinaypathak #ranvirshorey
As the night falls
I wonder what
Set the pace
Of Time
It moves
Freezes
Goes back
And forth
Yet always
Arrow of Time
Points always
Ahead
It circles
Around the
Life and Death
Beginning
And the End
I look at the stars
I look back
Millions of years
Wonder how do they
See our history
Unfolding
On a tiny
Blue Dot
Strange is the
Arrow of Time
Pointing into
Nowhere
Ticking away
Turning
Itself into ashes
Rising like a phoenix
Yet it always
Moves ahead
Stubbornly ahead
Leaving behind
Strange mute imprints
A sand dune there
Or a mountain here…
Staying relevant
In irrelevant times
Is the challenge
Engage
Or disengage?
Stay attached?
Or be detached?
When Time sweeps
You away from the frame
Should one linger
On the fringes?
Where does one go?
Is there a Rumi’s field?
The even playing field?
Where they play it fair
No time to call a foul
A foul
No ground rules
It’s a game
Where no one wins
But all try to
Reinvent
Shifting positions
Moving goal-posts
To stay relevant
In these irrelevant times…
With her chin-up
And chips down
With spring in her feet
She trots on the globe
Our blue dot
But she is not alone
There are billions of us
Totally lost
In the humongous mess
Of hundreds of imagined worlds
And faiths
And the great sense of propriety
All trying to be right
By proving others wrong
Kudos to us for
Throwing out the baby
– our sustenance
Along with the bath water
All self similar beings
Trying so hard
To advance their race
By killing each other
The sheer madness
We still love to imagine
And believe
It’s the sun that sets
Or rises for us
Instead of –
– that’s it’s we go
Around an axis
Downside up
And upside down
Along the elliptical
Planet doesn’t care
Whether it’s dinosaurs
Or only us
Neither does the Universe
Feeling all self-important
With bloated
or deflated egos
With the chin up
Or chips down
We continue to seek
our significance
In the grand cosmic
Insignificance
But does it have all to be
So dangerously silly?
by pitting imagined worlds
Imagined selves
And imagined gods
Against each other
And against Nature!
Under the Canopy
Here She lies
In Paris
In exile
At Pere Lachaise
A mother, a queen
With a vanquished dream
She crossed seven seas
A sin in the 1850s
In the hope of justice and freedom
From the Queen of England
Mocked, ignored and bribed
She told them
They could not own
The kingdom of her son
And her pride
Here she lies
Our own Queen of Oudh
Next to a bush of roses
Growing in the wild
In exile
at Pere Lachaise
Resting quietly among the greats
She sought nothing
But Peace and Freedom
Among all the shiny graves
If you see an earthly grave
Fractured by Time
Under a green canopy
Know that it’s her
India’s brave Queen Mother –
Janab-e-Aliah Mallika Kishwar
Who crossed seven seas
A sin in the 1850s
To seek Peace and Freedom
And fair political justice
From the Imperial queen
And did no compromise
Do pause
And pray
If you may
But do tell her tale
Here She lies…
I exist therefore I am
I am therefore I exist
I am the means
and the end
I think
so I do
I do
so I think
I stand
so I believe
I believe
so I stand
I reason
to be
not to be
I protest
for Justice
That is blind
I am free
but chained
by law
But the law exists
to free the chains
what is Right
is also Left of Right
But Right is not wrong
so Left is definitely wrong
Mad Decadence 