love concedes

love concedes … … …

love concedes, through bitter travails,

love recedes, into closeted wardrobes,

love exhausts, lover and loved alike,

but,

love endures, through the years,

traversing valleys of tears,

dispelling untruths,

exiling paralysing fears.

A Poem for Jawaharlal Nehru

A Poem for Jawaharlal Nehru

Pandit-Ji*

1.

The moon cast an enveloping shadow over the teeming multitudes,

as they made their tryst with destiny**,

with you as the bearer of the light,

and at the stroke of the midnight hour,

you emerged an icon, from the long and desolate night.

Long years had passed,
since those humid evenings spent,
languishing in jail,

yet your mind remained unshackled,
putting words on paper in the dim candlelight,

as the gaudy glare of empire began to pale.

2.

Today,
you live,

within us,
though not amongst us,

and,

your discovery,
your glimpses,

smoulder within me,

your immortal words,
my compass.

I am now,
the soul of nations,
once suppressed,

that have,
found utterance.

I am now,
me.

I am now,
finally,

free.

       _________________

* – ‘Pandit-Ji’ was the name that Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, was respectfully called.

** – excerpts from Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech on 15th August 1947

history shall judge us

history shall judge us …

history shall look back upon us, and a light shall be shed, upon this time when the few were fattened and sumptuously fed, while the many were wrung till the last drop they bled, to the hypocritical wars that for resources were fought, and the complicit silence of the power-brokers was bought, where children went hungry and were pummelled by shrapnelled lead, when obscene chariots roamed the streets and not a word was said, about the inhumanity of this technologically advanced human race, propped up and gaudy as it showed its skewered face, allowing the few to pillage and plunder, as the hopes and dreams of the many were torn asunder.

yes, for these are the days when noxious ostentation does rule, caring little that its modus operandi is so patently cruel, as long as the diamonds are adorned and the gold is worn, it matters not the billions of families’ that are torn, torn apart so the machinery of greed flourished, while the child remained forgotten, mattering not that billions of souls were left malnourished.

yes, history shall look back and judge us with withering hindsight, when we perfected avarice, fine tuning it as best as we could, while ignoring our fellow beings as though they were hewn from wood, and history shall not be wrong to judge us in a horrified light, for even as we read these words, the many lie huddled under bridges, on yet another bitterly cold night …

.