A Noun?
A Verb?
An Adjective?
Human value?
Emotion?
Attachment?
Attraction?
Respect ?
Friendship?
Kinship?
Dopamine?
Oxytocin?
Validation?
Affection?
Admiration?
Desire?
Conditional?
Unconditional?
Affection?
Romance?
Platonic?
Narcissism ?
Passion?
Adoration?
Devotion?
Compassion?
Sympathy?
Obsession?
Lust?
Greed?
Love encompasses all, takes various forms… yet no one understands it…
PS: Have I missed something? Do add..
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!!
Though there is ample evidence
That we were the harvesters, gatherers
While men went hunting and gaming
Maybe we were cave artists too
Though there is an ample evidence
That we did the ground calculations
For ambitious space missions
Carried out fatal experiments
To figure out x rays, radioactivity and
Even the DNA structure
Though there is evidence
That most anonymous writers
Too were women
They were also those wives, sisters, sister in laws and whores
Which gave the world stupendous art
Yet women have been historically ignored
Cast aside, taken for granted
Treated as a doormat
While men ran their victory laps
As they stood on the podium
The tray bearers were the women too
There is ample overpowering evidence
That we birthed the entire humanity
Every evil soul who masquerades as saviour
Started life in a mother’s womb
The very female sex whom he ended up
Exploiting, killing and silencing
How did we end up here?
Are we truly the weaker kind?
Or just too kind? Or too conditioned?
Passing on the intergenerational trauma
And patriarchy in equal measures
No wonder we end up being hated a lot
For trading freedom for freedom
That’s the only real deal for us
Be unfree, free, unfree, free
To be or not to be
We truly can’t distinguish between choices
There isn’t any escape route
From this foul role-play
We regale it in and we ace it too!!
After all we just have to call it day
And decide not to give birth
And watch homes and government scramble
With incentives and perks
We can pull off a demographic shift
Yet these imbecile fools
Disrespect and disrobe us
Rape and kill as per their will
There seems to be no end in sight
We are still in the recognition stage
Recognising the inequality
Still debating that patriarchy
Is the ultimate design
No wonder Joan of Arc
Was called a witch and burnt at stake
Only to be venerated later
As a patron saint and saviour
This game is too old
Can we move to the next level?
We refuse to be recognised in retrospect
We dare you to practice equality
Take those baby steps
Remember we women are good at it
To teach those baby steps
Watch you falter
Give us a chance to make you
A better human or maybe at least a human!!
Photo courtesy: My son, Anuran. This was clicked at Orleans where Joan of Arc led the war to save France.
Mad Decadence 