Tag: poem

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!!!

Time Stood Still


Time stood still
We giggled and giggled
Like a pair of good old kids
But in their fifties

Time Stood still
As we stared at those benches
In the front of the canteen
Where we often sat and sang

Time has stood still
In that college campus
When pleaded the guard
To let us in

We went back in Time
Through those gates
Perhaps to seek our younger
Gullible, ugly and clueless selves

We patted on their backs
For making it through 
For finding each other
To make up lost time

But who knew
All sand was about to slip
In that damn hourglass
For one of us

What a chance it was
That we took
Instead of standing each other up
We finally showed up

And we made the Time
Re-wind and replay it all
We relived our nostalgia
And made fresh memories

Re-unions are the sweetest
They take us back in Time
To meet ourselves and find love
Even if it is for one last time!

Pick Yourself Up

Life teaches

How to pick

Yourself up

Along with all

The broken pieces

Of your heart

And your being

One just needs

To be patient

Those life lessons

Are like strewn clues

Hidden in a flower

Or a bleak star

In the night sky perhaps

Or on the dark side

Of the moon

When pushed

To a corner

Or into an abyss

Don’t quit

But rebel

Your life puzzle

Maybe undone

With pieces missing

But new pieces

Are strewn around you

Pick those up

Try to find

A grander puzzle

Or a greater purpose

Or just be

An unseen gardener

Toiling away

For the new seeds

To germinate

Pick yourself up

Don’t give up

Yet.

20/1/2025

Shame

Shame

Perhaps it is easy
To violate
A woman’s body
And soul
And then walk with
Head held high
It is all done
To teach a lesson
To create fear

Perhaps it is easy
To plunder the earth
To dig out all
That is worth
And then walk with
Head held high
It is all done
For a profit
To create wealth

Will Earth save itself?
What about women?
Bilkis Bano is silent
Our silence is more deafening

We will rage
For Earth, for Bilkis
Yet they will
Walk free
Reign free

That is how it is
Dont ask why?
It’s reign of the
Shameless and inhuman
Emperor after all parades
In full nakedness and glory

How does one teach shame
To shameless tyrants?

#BilkisBano

Best not Taken

Thud – will that how it will sound?
Breaking lazy monotony
Of a rainy evening
Ensuing a chaos

Miraculously
Things will be taken care of
Strangers will curse,
blame and pity
And so will
family, friends and colleagues

People who never paused
To listen or understand
Will dissect your being
For hours

Gaslighting the departed
Absolving themselves of guilt
Everyone will move on

Within a day or two or years
Presence of a life will be erased
Unloved life would be lost in vain

Is that all there is?

Pause and look up
Behold the bird
Soaring in the sky
Flying into the setting sun

Birth is never a choice
But when death seems at times
The trick definitely is to
Keep breathing

Wait for the moment to pass
Look beyond
Outside your window
There is a life that awaits
That wants you to live

Take the pain in stride
And marinate your life with it
The last desperate step
Will definitely be
The best not taken!!

Dreams

I take long walks
In Latin quarters in Paris

I enter a random church
Someone is playing Ave Maria

I climb Sahyadri hills
Feeling free and fatigued

I walk along Marine drive
Watching rains approach

I am stranded in deluge
Waiting for a transport home

At times I am sailing
Along Tungabhadra in Hampi

Or I am listening to a stream
On some river bank in Bhutan

Or I walk and sob on a beach
Unsure of taste of salt

It could be sea
Or my tears 

At times I am trapped
In Escherisque space

Or walking on a 
Mobius strip 

I am lost and then
I am found

I reach yet
I don't reach

While Uncertainty is
The only certainty 

Waking hours 
A prolonged nightmare

My escape and freedom
Is in my dream 

Selfish it may seem
I don't want to be awake 

I don't want to talk
Of nightmares today

#covidtimes

Just Like a Driftwood

Don't behold me 
With contempt
Because I floated in
Just like a driftwood

I had a name
Born to someone
Isn't it enough
To qualify as a human?

Do not fear me
Do not hate my folks
Simply they couldn't afford
 - love, pyre or a grave 

They probably thought
Water should be my grave
Instead of fire or earth

River being the river
Did what it does best
Buoyed me back
Just like a driftwood  

I had love to give 
But there were no takers
In the land of hate 

River could have set me free
But it returned me to you
As a nameless corpse
To be counted among
The countless 

River will remember me
Even if you don't
This beloved river is
Our memorial!

#CovidDeaths

Waiting in the Dark

When will it be dawn?
I ask in desperation
Peering at the night sky
Stars too seem grim tonight

After the endless wait
There is a dim light
But, someone whispers
Hey, you missed the day!

What arrives is another dusk
Followed by the dark
Moonless night
Stars without their shine

Another endless wait
For the dawn
That never arrives
A dawn
That never arrives

Spin

What kind of a spin is it?
What goes around, does come around
Yet, its never the same!

Laws teach nothing is lost
Yet, much cannot be retrieved
The top is also below
A walk on the mobius strip

In a world so self-similar
Nothing is familiar
For – What is, is never,
What really it is!

What we know, is actually,
Only the depth of the unknown
And that bond also decides the drift

Stuck on a blue planet in a vast abyss
Where war literally is sold as peace
I wonder,
What kind of a spin is it?