Why Me?

Red and deep wound
On the raw psyche

Each scrape of spirit
A body blow to soul

I can withstand pain enormous
I can survive belied expectations
I can live through broken promises
I can live out dispirited times

But these are the worst of times
And I seek comfort in empathy

I want to understand
Why me?

I do not seek to supplant
I do not seek to unruffle
I do not seek to replace
I do not seek to impose
I do not seek to thwart
I do not seek to inflict
I do not seek ignorance
I do not seek to destroy

I want to prosper
I want to learn
I want to work
I want to create
I want to plant
I want to offer jobs
I want equal rights
I want freedom for my people
I want to move fearlessly

I want understanding
I do not seek to belittle you
I only seek to enlighten myself

Then why me?

I harbour all
I may not secure all
But I do my best

I do not mind your colour
Or the length of your hair
Or the growth of your beard

I care for the smile
At the end of a hard day

I care for the contented look
At the end of reflection

I care for the proud look
You bestow upon your child

I seek to care for your heart
I seek to care for your future

For they make me
For they define me
For they will be my legacy
For you will be my history

This land, this people -
The aspirations and dreams
A land of thousand mutinies
A land of hundred living dreams

Flu of Indifference

A crispy morning
The air is stale
A rejuvenating bath
Water's stagnant taste
A delicious breakfast
Tasteless texture of food

Unstoppable thoughts
Expressionless freedom

Exciting times all-around
No sight of freedom
Of rights and expression
Of thoughts and reforms

No world for sane men to inhabit
None at all for women and babies
No space for thinkers of change

Time for no sane Gods
And insane religiosity
With just Mammon
And the dogs of war
At the altar of worship

We live; we pass the days
We inhabit this time
- Our only inheritance

What will be our legacy?
…Chaos and jellyspine?

We dread the futures
But too timid to step
Forward in time, in thoughts

Such spit and wildfires
Rattling deep-rooted foundations
And hard-built civilisations

The seeker wallows in cold depths
Craving for clarity of thought & action
Seminally afraid of uncomfortable truths

Where's the Third Eye?

Folly

Layers of ignorance
Building glaciers of hate
Loathing of the unfamiliar
Dangers for the ‘other’

Hostility and revulsion
Recipes of civil disaster
A withering society
Breeding self-destruction

Blood always the answer
To any and every stray word

Defenders become attackers
No lions among lambs anymore

Faithless protectors of faith

Lucid minds driven to ghettos
Hyenas hunt the dead cities
Where logic lies in ruins

Where are the poets?
The writers? The painters?
Defenders of rights and voices?

All forgotten ideals

I stand mute and voiceless
Watching my kinsmen
Harvest a world of hate

The rainbow is red now
Fires bloom everywhere
In my selfish world of I's
With the world shrivelled up
And thrown into the corner bin

Woes, Unhinged

The recent bomb blasts in various Indian cities have me worried.

I worry for the future of my extremely flawed, yet still, much beloved nation. I love my country, even though increasingly, there are fewer and fewer credits against its name.

But more than the ravings of these twisted minds, what worries me is the increasing religious intolerance amongst my countrymen.

Today, when I say “ravings of these twisted minds” it can mean any one of these:
a. so-called vengeful extremist Islamic elements
b. so-called ‘righteously outraged over conversions’ violent Hindu mobs
c. so-called ‘violently seeking our share of the national pie’ naxalites
d. so-called ‘protecting the honour of mother languages’ extortionist elements
e. so-called ‘protecting age-old culture by curbing creative instincts’ extremist Hindus
f. so-called ‘offering a plank to the powerless’ power-leeching politicians

And let us not even venture into the realm of gender bias and anti-women tendencies.

Everyone is an enforcer in today’s India. Enforcers with limited mandates and individual agendas, who toy with sensibilities and sensitivities.

And we, the spineless, stand and watch it all.

I can close my eyes and pretend that I did not hear and see anything.
I can crawl inward into that warm and fuzzy place in my mind and pretend to be indifferent.
I can trawl through the internet and seriously think of migrating to a different land with at least different problems.
I can hear and watch everything and say, “as long as that is not me”, I am fine.
I can bemoan my country’s spiritual and philosophical decline for an hour and then trumpet my country’s raised economical profile for days to blind myself to such decline.
I can ignore all these and console myself with cricket.
And when that fails, I have dreamy Bollywood.

But once the lights go up on scrunched popcorn holders and empty cola bottles, naked reality is all that remains under the heating sun.

Bottomline: Will more of us give in to the reality of oppressive and seemingly powerful zealots or will more of us dig in our heels in favour of the much short-changed liberal way of life.

The answers to this will make or break India, my much maligned, yet much beloved country.