Tag: poetry

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

What Ifs…


If there were life elsewhere
With a different Time flow
A day lived in a second perhaps
A year going by in 365 seconds

Shortlived precious life
Much to be done in milliseconds
Much to behold in minutes
Years going by sooner, wilting us

But what if instead
A day was stretched to a month
A year going on and on 
Long lived, Turtle life

Maybe wars would have
Ended sooner
If time went by faster than
The weapons could be made

But if the Time slowed down
We would be lingering away
Too tired of long drawn wars
Exhausting all natural resources

Maybe everyone dead
And civilization was born again
And again, either way
Messing it up in newer ways 

That’s the trick with time
It keeps us wondering
What if…what if
Unhappy, seeking, lost

We avoid What is…
The finiteness of our being
In the infiniteness of time
We delude ourselves
With immortality of soul

We choose What Ifs
Over What Is
Ignoring the beauty and love
The momentary transience

We trade it all 
With Dante’s inferno
Imagination, intellect, beauty and love
Reduced to insatiable lust
For hate, anger, desire and power

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!!

The Bell


For Whom will the bell toll?
In fond remembrance
Of ones we lost?
Or for us who lived?

The bells can no longer
Keep the count perhaps
The bell no longer tolls

Where are the Hemingways and Orwells?
The ones who toiled
In armies and in kitchen
To write about how it felt
To hear those bells

For whom will the bell toll now?
And how long?
Wars are unending
Ceasefires rarely cease fire

The bells can no longer
Keep the count
Of who is on which side
Who is the winner or loser?

And whom should it toll for?
The ones who lost yet won
Or ones who won yet lost
The bell no longer tolls

There are mourners
But no graves
There are lovers
But no love

For whom will the bell toll?
For you and me
Or for the one who went away
And who can no longer hear

Time has set itself free
It doesn’t count anymore
How can it possibly measure?
What we no longer value

6/3/25
Bangalore

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!!

Destiny and Luck

In the name of the
Sun and sky
Let me lament
For the lives
That derailed
One late evening
Just as their lives
Were chugging along

As ever, they were
Destiny’s offspring
Unware that
That the game
Of destiny is
Forever fixed
Death is destiny
Life is luck

Suddenly many
Many lives
Ran out of luck
On that late
Summer evening
Destiny it is
To be born
In a land where
Apathy is normal
Kindness an anomaly

While their lives derailed
And were mutilated
Beyond recognition
In another far away land
Operation Hope
Was combing forests
To look for
Four lost kids
Their destiny
Lost game to Luck

Storm

There bellows a strong wind
A storm arrives from strange lands
Just to irrevocably change
Everything that is and will be

Overnight it sweeps away
The cobwebs of Time
Changes the entire
Landscape of survival

There is no way to stop
The raging winds, tides
Lightning or the rains
No way to lock it all away

Change becomes eternal
Certainties uncertain
Life transforms
For better or worse

What remains same
Are dawns and the dusks
Motion of the planet
And yearnings of a heart

There is no going back
To recreate what it was
One that did not withstand
The winds and the storm

Yet condemned to hope
And dream
We sail our ships
Trusting oceans of Time

Life and Death

Stink of death
Hits the nostril
Some poor creature
Took the plunge
Not realising perhaps
Its certain death

We can’t see it
But stink is unbearable
More than the
Death itself perhaps
Of that pitiful creature
That was living

Life and living
Death and dying
Polar opposites
Starting and ending
Out of nowhere

An unbearable stink
An indelible mark
Life slips away
Just like that
Into the cloak of death

Our Story

It is rather strange
How we get planted
In our own stories
Unintentionally

All characters
However likeable
Or unlikeable
Play their part

A hero
Could be an
An anti-hero
Or vice versa

Characters often
Become variable
Refusing to be
a constant

However chaotic
This drama of our life
We script it
Or it scripts us?

We get planted
Uprooted
Worshipped
And Cursed

For some we
Become breath
Toxic air
For others

Remembering
Forgetting
Othering
Dying

Ironically
We measure
Our lifetime
As Time and not Life