A Song 160

Bread, butter, jam of
a priest,
pouting a roll of tambakoo,
jostles turtles in the temple
pond;
spends hours with them
as they string their way from
rain jacketed hills
across the mangroves.
Some crawl their way to seas,
some in creeks,
some in the temple pond
safe in company
of the priest. 

Keki is hurting

Something is amiss in the nation when its poet is in pain. Our poet and essayist Keki Daruwalla. Of a Heart of Darkness he writes today in The Indian Express (July 20, 2017). Perhaps, poet Jawaharlal Nehru, if he was around would have read the essay; perhaps, called Keki Daruwalla and talked to him. Said a Sorry. These times have no graces. Absent decencies. Daruwalla writes: 'We have been having a mournful feast of words recently. ...But all this is so broad brush......Junaid Khan, a handsome fifteen-year-old boy going for his Eid shopping was killed because he wore a skull cap, looked like a Muslim and horrors, was a Muslim.... Nothing subverts like lynch law.' Me bet is none will bother. Me may come across a bhelpuri wala packing bhel in a newspaper cone bearing Keki essay; after bhel munching, will crush the paper cone, litter the road. Since Babri Masjid, India is a kabaristan for Muslims; since 2014, Dalits and poor share the underground. Economic growth statistics will not reflect the mishaps; nor me bother. Bharat Mata ki Jai is a must, a Bharat Mata disowning Muslims, Dalits and poor. In her collection of poems, Learn from the Almond Leaf, Eunice de Souza says: '..Mrs.V beats her husband. The churchman says: Into every life, a little rain must fall.' Rain drops are not descending, poetess. A Hindu woman falls in love with a Muslim man; marries him; becomes a Muslim; has a child; her relatives slaughter her husband; a news item, a lead item for the night sub in The Indian Express. Over. She will cry; her tears will dry; life will be a fry. Are we being fair to ourselves? We check our Aadhaar cards before starting a friendship. For business papers and business channels and business journalists (me was one for 37 years), news is a drop or a rise in GDP; Chinese investments with Chinese keen on dollars to make and nothing else; RBI governors and Finance Ministers make sense. Long time ago anchors on a business channel raised a toast to the Sensex crossing some important number. It was a public show. Eunice is a poet not a journalist, not surely a business journalist. Business journalists may like her line: ' A compound full of silver cars. The sky with not a single silver star.' Dislike her lines: Finally, the Lord said: Move that damned highrise. Let there be light. 

A Song 159

At the Press Club,
journalists asked
Tuka and Kabira
smelling of Vicks
toning July rains:
Are
the kick of Ram
and kick of Rum,
same?
'Ho! Of course,' said
Tuka and Kabira.
  

A Song 158

A spectacled drumstick,
the Virar Lady,
a regular at Vazira Ganesh.
Virar to Borivili is 43 km by rail,
making it every day plus Sunday.
She prays more at the temple tank
and turtles;
sometimes, turtles pray back
to chuckles of Ganesh.
Some nights nods on the temple bench.
She wants to stay old;
pleasure is in aging
beside her stick;  
old is best of times,
she murmurs to nobody.
in locals
running over creeks of rains,
older than she,
Lady sits and smiles,
looking out of the window.  
Plus 60, a retired nurse,
is a caretaker of a couple plus 80
in Borivili.

Liu Xiaobo Bye. Liu Xia Love.

The Indian Express, Monday, July 17, 2017 on Page 11 has a box item on Liu Xiaobo, 1955-2017, with pix of him with wife Liu Xia and the empty chair at the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 2010. 'I have no enemies, no hatred,' says Liu and the sentence has been buzzing me since his death. To me he is alive; alive from an obscurity of not being familiar with him. Me did not pray but Liu is in me. He insisted on the birth-right of a butterfly. Chinese Communists denied it and will always be in denial as Communism is dictatorship. Nowhere (me has read a bit of Marx) has Karl Marx argued in favour of unfreedoms clamped on Russia by Lenin and Stalin and by Mao in China. Great Leap Forward killed over 10 millions; Cultural Revolution was a massacre; Tibet continues to be a holocaust; they want to wipe away Tibetans and Tibetan Buddhism; yet, every corporate of every nation, including India, wants to do business with China as it has the biggest market in the world. Cash shuts protests. China is most feared and Liu stood up against China not with a prayer or a god but with a conviction that freedoms are a given. In India we discuss the date when we will be more economically powerful than China. None questions Chinese data. And none talks of Chinese having no freedoms even as we in India are living in 2017 with edited freedoms or freedoms with hair cuts or freedoms of the zoos. (Me lives in fear of Modi regime and am not Liu). Till date no corporate chieftain in India has protested Modi. China had a Liu and has many others stacked in torture. Long ago Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi woke us to battle the British. But British as rulers were soft despite Jallianwala. British gentlemen and gentlewomen were in awe of Gandhi and his wife Ba. Gandhi could pray to Rama and protest the British. These concessions were denied Liu. Liu was treated cruelly. He lived in no hope. He stuck on, yet. Tsering Wangmo Dhompa in A Home in Tibet writes of the Chinese trying hard to diminish Tibet, Tibetans and Tibet Buddhism. A hurting tale. Tsering writes: 'At seventy-six, Ashang is my oldest relative in Tibet. .....Prison was a good teacher, he says. Can the world accomodate a wise and foolish monk who has lived half of his life in prayers? .... He has no time for hope.....In my solitary existence in San Francisco I think of his question and ask myself if I am free.....Ashang understands impermanence as a key to freedom and to a life light of fear and want. I have yet to learn to be free in a free country.' Prayers are easy. Not Freedoms. Fact is dictatorship, Chinese or North Korean version, can be made, done. Freedoms are born into. Fragile. Can prayers and gods help? Gandhi thought so. He was allowed to think so. Act so. Chinese government denied Lu friends and loves. At least English allowed Gandhi to satyagraha for freedoms. Liu tried a Gandhi in China, failed. Will Liu one day stir up a Gorbachev in China? When will this misery called Chinese Communism end? Yes, Liu, freedom to Love alone is. Bye Liu. And Lady Liu Xia, hope you are alive. Love Liu Xia.

Of wars

How long will India and Pakistan play this hate match. Since 1947, we have been at each other, sometimes as India and Pakistan, sometimes as Hindu and Muslim. In me school times, ACC (Auxiliary Cadet Corps) was a must. In college times, NCC (National Cadet Corps) was a must. In ACC, we lefted-righted the kerchief of a school ground. Sardar Sarwan Singh, who had a special dislike for me, bellowed: Bharat Mata ki Jai. We bellowed, swinging arms, righting and lefting shoed legs with chests out (me earned hard raps as the chest never could breathe out). At NCC in college, an army man made life hard; mornings marched the Maidan; the lone command me liked was 'Vishram'; one could rest a second. Came the standing before a field gun; diving on to it full tilt; firing; always missing the target; me was good at the target of  the friend beside me; changing bullets from a hot container. And the lecture bajee on killing. You kill before you are killed. Me never understood any of it. Waited for the damn show to end, for a quiet Charminar and tea in earth cups from a Bihari who was always there under the banyan. He lived with the cheap demeaning hatred of Bengalis for Biharis. Calcutta has more Biharis; Mumbai more from UP; both are termed bhaiyas like all from the south are madrasis. And in October 1962, me became a patriot as China roamped into India. Me wanted to go to to war. Left-right at a furious pace in the Maidan. At the Madian stood in a line for army recruitment; more for the job than for love of the country. Was rejected for poor eyesight. An army man took away my specs and me could see nothing. 'Kuch kaam ka nahin hai, Sir' he said and that was it. As a journalist, read of Indo-Pak wars at the business desk of Times of India and other papers. Patriotism steamed away. And today at 71, me think of the futility of the hates and guns. Does it make any sense? Have the wars any winners? There were no winners in Mahabharata. Ended miserably for Krishna and Pandavas, the victors. Rama won the Lanka war and despatched Sita to the forest. Perhaps, the bhakti poets of the 6 th century in the south, Tuka, Kabira make more sense. Me reads Kabira and Tuka again and again. But they are not icons like Rama and Krishna. Today, it is fashionable for India to abuse Pakistan and vice versa. Ye, a must for living in both nations. Soldiers are brave, all soldiers. Do they not blink and titter at the first gun shot? Are they not nervous ahead of a battle? And should they not, being humans? Which soldier in India and Pakistan wants to die? Of course, they are patriots. Patriots are first civilians, unwilling to die, like me. Armed forces is a job, a very high risk job for all Indians and Pakistanis. Emotions come second. Me would not like me son to join the forces. Never. Will 21st century go hating each other? Will there not be a India-Pakistan cricket match at Eden? And if they can play in England why not in India and Pakistan. Pakistani hockey players dribble on Indian grounds; but Pakistani cricketers cannot in IPL. Queer indeed. Perhaps, the lone beneficiary is the corporate making arms. And they will decide. Today, Tatas, Ambanis, Mahindras are into weapons business. US weaponers are liberal with Pakistan. Trump dislikes Muslims yet supplies arms to Pakistan. For them hatred and wars bulge balance sheets. Governments on both sides may often be reluctant but not corporates. Hatred pays. An old habit, a stylish, loud way of living, since gods were imagined or born. Sir, Sir, Sir. Till date has not heard Madam, Madam, Madam. It wont go, will never go. There will be exceptions: Gandhi or Liu Xiaobo.    

A day in our life

What do you do at home, a neighbour asked. Rama and me celebrate failure. Enjoying failure is a satisfying art, a FB post said. Me liked it; am not sure about Rama. But failure is interesting as we slip from one day to another. We get up in the morning, brush our teeth, light the diya to the many, many god and goddesses littering Rama's kitchen plus agarbattis; Rama makes filter coffee with the fragrance descending from the seventh floor to the ground floor inviting sparrows, crows and myenas; sitting in our sofas we sip coffee, watching sparrows breaking their fast over Marie biscuits; today morning it is sheets of rain drops with the sky cleaning up its stock of soiled bedsheets. Rama has her sofa, me mine; never exchange. Warm and smelling of coffee, we walk up to Vazira Ganesh temple with our many desires; a week ago, we prayed for a mobile lost, previous evening, after a chat under the peepal tree; we found the mobile at the foot of the peepal. Comes the breakfast chat. Dosa, idlis or dry, overnight chappatis? Rama mood is the critical input. In the money, it is plates of vegetable upma plus chutney (as today) or chappatis rejected by stray dogs. But me takes it chewing in me sofa. Having retired, no fresh, Churchgate vada pavs. At long last, mobiles are pulled out, newspapers set aside. On her new mobile, Rama is into Malayalam songs, Pulimurugans of Mohanlal and of late...actor Dileep derobing, a 2017 take on Draupadi in Mahabharata; and Vinoo on Asianet News. By about 11, the lunch menu is scheduled for a discussion; or as is popular, a meeting; Rama scraps chappatis; me opt for avial and pappadams; Rama screams: no pappadams with triglycerides high; me into Zen silence; before she decides, she goes over the years, her mother (me mother-in-law) prepared sambhar, avial and pappadams for lunch at the college; the housemaid delivered it hot and Rama licked it all up. Tongues fall out. Many Sreevatsam stories get unreeled and today is the latest instalment. Rama was a tiny tot when her father, Hari Gopalakrishnan, thought of owning a cow; fresh milk in the morning for his kids; wife agreed. Gentleman Gopalakrishnan stepped out a Sunday morning and was back at noon with a brown-white cow. The cow mooed, the family responded. It was tied to a pole in the garden; free to chew up the entire garden. In the night, it rained being July. Hari Gopalakrishnan worried over the cow catching fever; he got up from his cot, took the cow to the kitchen and shut the door. Entire night cow mooed and mother-in-law could not sleep. In the morning, she pleaded for relief. Hari Gopalakrishnan escorted the cow from the kitchen to the market. None appreciated his love for a cow. Dont know about the cow. Our first Cow Bhakt, non violent, quiet and humourous. Sold it. It was a happening told to Rama by her mother, me mother-in-law. We laughed, had not laughed over a failure for long. Trapped in a good mood, Rama make avial, sambhar, rice and pappadoms. After lunch, snooze. Evenings for TV sport channels as Rama goes for her adda. Day is over. Failures are worth it. Laughing failures.