borderless

Take me back to a time
Before borders separated men.
Before flags proclaiming nationhood
Fluttered against a borderless sky.

Take me back to those moments
When love was free to exchange
And humans held on to the ability to wonder
And smile at differences between them.

Take me back to the world
That once was one.
Where it didn’t matter how rice was cooked
Or meat was had
Or jewels worn
When all that mattered
Was the gratitude of being alive.

Take me back to the terrain
Where the earth still smelled like herself
When the sky and seas were still azure
And didn’t need the illusion of perfection,
For they were already so.

Take me back in time
Where women knew their might
Without having to proclaim so
Where children grew alongside the wild
Without knowing fear or despair.

Turn back time
Will you please,
For I do not understand
Why we must draw lines between us
When all we have is just one earth
For all of us to share.

pledge

he feels the earth beneath his feet,
picks up the broken lumps
and sieves it through his hands,
she smells of freshly turned soil
vestiges of fallen leaves.
she brings alive the stories
of countless miniature beings
that have made their homes in her.

He holds her close to his face,
And she talks to him,
Like a long-lost friend.

She tells him of the days
when he played on her as a small child,
Helping his mother pull out weeds,
With his clumsy, little hands.
She shows him the new pair of shorts
that her rich crop bought his father,
She weeps as she reminds him of
a large corner of her being sacrificed,
To the pawn broker,
who later became the keeper
Of his mother’s gold, and their home.
She shows him her barren womb
year after year
And how more of her disappeared.

And then, she is silent.
For the time has come
When he must leave her.
Forever.
There is no reproach in her.
Just sadness. And silence.
For despite all that she gave him,
he has pledged her all,
for a computer education
For his son.

He holds her once more,
Close to his heart.
And breaks down,
weeping like a child.
She smells of him,
his father and his grandfather,
And yet, he has no choice,
But to surrender an unforgettable past
To an unknown future.

there's fame. and there's fulfillment.

The giant waves leave nothing
Nothing to chance.
Lives, boats, even memories are gone.
And as the people gather around
The many graves of loss,
They just stare. For even their tears
Lie lost, buried amongst remnants in the sand.

The rescuers arrive,
Their earnest pride, masked under thin gauze strips
To prevent the stench of death
From entering their memories.
At first, they are shocked,
Looking at the half naked limbs, severed
By the might of the waves,
Orphaned like garbage heaps.
By the end of the day,
Tragedies turn to statistics
In the notebooks of the rescuers.

And then they come, men in suits,
In luxury cars and lapel pins that announce
The might of their being.
They sanction lakhs, draw blueprints,
Smile in benevolent grace,
At photographers flashing the headlines
Of the morrow.
They disappear, as quickly as they arrive,
Just like those giant waves.

The donations will now be watched over
By self appointed altruists
Whose altruism is directed at few
But themselves.

The real ones who stay to help
Will have to fight hurdles every where,
For trust in the times of strife
Is as abandoned as hope.

But these martyrs will stay,
Rebuild lives until one day,
They become nameless graves
Themselves.

But what will stand is the generous gifts
Of those men in cars and badges on their lapels.
Articles in papers, interviews on TV.
Always preserved in files and families.

The real martyrs and the rescuers
Will become mere memory,
Lost in the sweat and toil
Of the rebuilt land.

Midas Touch

Does humanity hear the Gods cry?
Listen then,
For They shed tears

Each time we dam those rivers
Fell a tree, slay an animal,
Plunder the soil

They weep
Each time we send up clouds of grey
In the name of civilisation

And yet
We move on,
Pretending the Gods are happy
Watching us play Their role
Ignoring Their plea to be heard
Just once

We wage war
Because we need to fuel material dreams
We kill with passion
So we may brew more heady concoctions of power

And in time, how rich we shall grow!

With each tamed river, we'll find more gold
With more species gone, we'll expand our empire

Until one day, we'll wake to find
We have been blessed with the Midas Touch
Gold will fill our coffers, our hearths and our beds
It will turn our fields to money and rivers to jewels

We will never stop
Until one day
Our children cry for food and water

But no God will listen
For we would have killed Them all


written sometime in 2009