Category: refugee

Silence and the Darkness

When silence becomes deafening

And the words hide in the dark

Slowing erasing history

I try to figure out their forms

Or meaning or language

Nothing emerges

It’s a dark dense space

Nothing is visible

Nor is audible

I wait

Maybe words are being born

Maybe a new reality is taking a form

What if it’s a monster that’s in the making?

What if the silence is made of inaudible screams?

As the world looks away in faith

Blinded by the festive lights

I will hang on to my doubts

I shall still try to listen to sounds of silence

And try to peer into dark abyss

With or without hope

Jump

Unable to find answers

Unable to bear the questions

Acutely aware

Of all closed doors

And humiliations

And all silences

She decided to jump

As she walked along the edge

Too many thoughts

Crowded her mind

She wanted to cut loose

From the past

From the present

The questions

The helplessness

The despair

Her luckless and

Loveless life

When no one pays heed

When life is cruel

What’s the point?

What’s the point?

On and on

The thoughts fogged her mind

Tears blinded her vision

Suddenly a stranger stopped her

“Please take one bunch please.

I haven’t eaten whole day”

A blur of bunch of yellow roses

Were staring at her face

Prodding her was

Another voice of despair

Carrying a bunch of bloom

What an irony!!

She paid the boy

And watched the train go by

She brought home

The yellow flowers.

She wondered…

There is a point maybe…

There are people maybe…

There are doors maybe…

There are paths maybe…

There is a future maybe…

That day she didn’t jump

But took a leap of faith instead!

Bare Foot Joy

Making, flying and chasing paper kites

Bare foot

Running across the crowded streets

They seem to soar just like the kites

Kite runners look happy

Across continents their joy is same

For the moment

They are free just like their kites

Riding on the lightness of the moment

They behold pure joy

The joy that eludes

The boy across the street

Sitting in the car

Staring through the glass window

He is a prisoner of luxuries

While poverty has set others free

They run like wind

Through narrow lanes

They hop across building roof tops

While the other stays glued

To the smart phone screen

Sun kissed

Blessed by the evening breeze

Our kite runners seize the moment!

Ah! the bare foot joy

That eludes the little boy!

Strange

Strange is the light that blinds

Strange is the light behind dark shadows

Strange is the joy that inflicts pain

Strange is the love that teaches to hate

Strange is the life that must end in death

Strange is the meaning that is absurd

Strange are the dreams that cannot be real

Strange is the reality that is a dream

Strange are the clouds that don’t bring rain

Strange is the regret that hides the pride

Strange are the journeys that never end

Strange are the words that defy the form

Strange are the doors that never open

Strange is the religion that robs the faith

Strange are the bridges that separate

Strange is the war that is fought for peace

Strange are the journeys that never end!

Seeking the Moon

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

Other

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

Staying Relevant

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…

Silly Significance

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!

Strangeness

In a strange city

Trees grow

In abandoned homes

And uprooted people

Dwell beside the roads

There is no place

To plant trees

There is no home

For migrants

Trees grow

Inside old homes

And people grow old

Without homes

Both trees and people

Have become refugees

And homes are empty

Devoid of love

And compassion

Trees and people

Search for roots

In a strange city

On a strange planet

Kafkaesque

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