Homeland

Seated by the window of a plane… waiting to take off. 

Ground reality is my homeland. My house I can’t see, but I know it’s there somewhere.  Everything I can see is so real. Looking up. Clouds are adding on to the weight of the sky. The plane is preparing to take us there. It takes off. In some moments, through our stone deaf ears, my eyes realise we are up in the sky. Looking down. Can’t make out which is a hut and which a sky rise. All are dots now. The clouds are real. They have started melting onto the earth now. It has become lighter, clearer, cleaner, brighter. It is space. Is there conflict here? Well, earth is also space, and so is the space between the earth and the sky. We have one sky, one earth. The plane is moving I know, but I can’t feel it. Not at all. Just as I don’t realise when the earth moves. It appears as not real. That which is flat is round, and that which is still is moving, and space which is thick with things is also space. So what is real? Is the conflict I see real? Is the killing I see real? The sky which was not real from the ground, and the ground which does not seem real from the sky! Both are real or nothing is? So is it the distance that’s causing the shift from the real into something it is not? So will the conflict seem unreal with distance I wonder. It’s worth making the effort then.

The plane landed. People speak, eat, dress, and even think differently. The language I use in my land is not real here. Nothing is real and constant. I see conflict here too. What causes this conflict in a place where nothing is real. I am away from my home, away from my food, away from my familiar smell. But I see conflict here too just as I see in the land where my home is. I feel at peace here. Nobody understands what I speak, so I am in conflict with none. I find this strange when people here want to know about my land and go there. They say they are tired of conflicts, and that people are bad there. Strange, because I have seen people saying the same thing in my land too!

Like this I move from land to land. And everywhere I find that people are tired of conflicts, of their own people, and they want to travel to be at peace with themselves. So it is the distance may be! Not sure, there is a may be. Or is it the way of looking at your people as if they are not yours, to be able to imagine that you don’t belong to the land where your home is makes all the difference.

I am on the plane again. I am in the sky. I am seated in an aisle now. This is my home… this space is my home. I have imagined similar roads, tea shops where I drink tea with friends in the sky. I can’t see it, but I know it’s there somewhere.

My plane has arrived in my homeland now… can’t wait to reach home. I see me telling myself that this is not my home...it is elsewhere, in a space where there is infinite peace. With this I reach my homeland and I see my people running into me to say hello.

O Kalidasa

O Kalidasa, the king of metaphor!

We are still doing what you did years before

How could you finally transform

If you share with us, so we can also reform.

The transformed ‘you’ is respected by us, though

The fool ‘you’ is followed through and through

And it is not confined to our land alone

All over the world it is on the throne.

People are fighting everywhere in the world,

Mountains and rivers are not saying a word.

Issue is our cause, and cause is our issue

All are right, correct, even the wrong seems true.

The branch you sat on is the one whole tree

We live in one space we so disagree.

Nothing seems good enough to have any effect,

Tell us how like you, we could resurrect.

You fell off just once and to you came the sense!

We’re failing all the time yet no intelligence?

Tell us how this cutting will be away from the whole,

Peace to be the password, the only clever parole.


Note:
The poem stands on the story of Kalidasa. The legend says that Kalidasa, one of the greatest poets that ever lived in Indian soil, was a fool cutting the branch of a tree he was sitting on with an ax. When he fell on the ground, Saraswati, the Goddess of learning, came to his rescue and gave him a boon,, which eventually resurrected him into a poet with an outstanding talent. However, there are many versions of this story. Later, he came to be known as the master of roopak (metaphor) and had authored brilliant novels including Meghadootam, Shakuntalam.

yeux anciens

Je suis libre.

Je n‘attends rien du tout.

L’approbation c’est un déséquilibre,

Un atout qui dévorait de partout.

Je suis disponsable,

Mais disponible dans les situations qui m’entourent,

Entre le mal et le bien ma sébile

Est présente dans son alentour.

Je ne cherche point des amis, ni ennemis,

Ni des retrouvailles, ni bonheurs,

Ni un mot juste qui fait chanter mon corps,

Ni des chaleurs, ni mesquineries.

Plus le monde se divise,

Plus que j’unirai;

Plus le monde s’étend dans sa valise,

Je prétends le tout admirer.

Je suis ici dans la balle

Je m’amuse dans ma petite île

Avec des gens, suis-je noyé dans le bien et mal

Sais pas si c’est agité ou tranquille.

Liberté, c’est la liberté de tout pouvoir,

Trop leger pour censer la misère ou la gloire,

La guerre, guerre, guerre dans ce monde civilisé,

La seule réalisation, c’est quand elle sera du passé.

Des personnes dans ce monde 

Sont tous des êtres humains,

La terre n'est qu'une petite ronde,

Le regard neuf dans les yeux anciens.

Prisoners

For ages they are in prisons,

Chained with flowers, candle sticks,

We worship them inside lifeless bricks,

For days and nights, months and seasons.

They are so high above the ground,

We can’t reach them when the world makes a sound,

It’s time to do things anew,

We just need to free ourselves, walk a step or two.

They’d now like to be free,

Be with us, think and play,

Work in us in every minute of the day,

We need to let them do this you see.

How strange is the mind,

Those who empower us to be wealthy and kind,

To keep them so far from the land,

Not to bring them down;
and let them be with the earth and the sand?

Let us now keep the destroyers and killers there,

It's hard on the mind;
But let's worship them with love, respect and care,

We’d never apply them in our lives again,

Like we never did those prisoners’ prayer.

I am responsible

I am responsible for the wars around me

For inside there’s horror that I get to see

With all my love I will kill those wars

Until the time I clear my scars

I have wars battling inside me

Will heal them all let the world to be

I am responsible for Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Afghanisthan

I am responsible for Kashmir and Pakistan

I am responsible for the world in this state

I love to fight and I love to hate

I have wars battling inside me

Will heal them all let the world to be

I am responsible for Uttarakhand

Responsible for the exploitation that’s running there

Will not blame those who are doing this mess

For I also do the same to people in stress

I have wars battling inside me

Will heal them all let the world to be

I look at the world lying inside

It’s full with pain, anger, jealousy, hatred and greed

I promise I’ll clean without fear and pride

Wars will be gone with all its need



Inspired by many spiritual leaders

scarcity

Two-third is water.

It is full of vibration.

Everywhere flows light, air is free,

Endless lands to plough.

True is false and false is true
Facts attack with figures not so new

Water is scarce,

Light is still not for all,

The earth we say is incapable

Of producing good enough food without fertilizers!

True is false and false is true
Facts attack with figures not so new

There are no lines, no range,

What differs is the weather so strange,

In the foolproof whole where we stay

Is unsafe still without borders, like yesterday.

True is false and false is true
Facts attack with figures not so new

How prosaic is the Intelligent mind?

That mistrusts all, so not to find

In the round, a ground for us to rock and roll?

Has flattened with the hammer for a hole!

Scarce we’d like to show and see

Has become our lone destiny!

True is false and false is true
Facts attack with figures not so new

We want us all in the game.

Be a bit of a fool to see.

Scarcity is nowhere in the frame.
The mind clicks and we set it free.

All or none

For as long as we have lived so far,

There has been no dearth of anger and war.

Strategies chalked out has the intelligent mind,

To outwit the enemies of any kind.

Now for the years we are here to live,

Come up with a strategy for peace for a change;

War has been so clever and alive,

Peace would seem a little strange.

We spent gallons of oil and kilos of gold,

We let it win and become so bold;

Let’s spend some time to think of peace,

Let’s see how clever we can be on this.

Let’s not blame the days now gone,

Of sadness and hatred that were reborn,

Boring it was, now play a different game,

To see that war is but a little name.

In the borders where people fear

Standing with arms aiming at the sky

Doves be there from close and near

We’d hear them clap see them fly

We have a say

Dum, dum.

beats the drum.

There plays the flute

On the rainbow route.

We have passed through many ages,

The old, the new and other grinding stages;

Now has the time for peace,

Come unto us with lives that went amiss.

Dum, dum.

beats the drum.

There plays the flute

On the rainbow route.

Arms, arms, arms, and more of arms,

They are all lying still in silent museums;

People come and look at them in wonder,

There was a time these were used from the back, above and under.

Dum, dum.

beats the drum.

There plays the flute

On the rainbow route.

Now we have arms only to stretch,

Profit and wealth, growth and freedom,

Are reaping here to fetch

Health, peace, friendship and wisdom.

Dum, dum.

beats the drum.

There plays the flute

On the rainbow route.

The pied Piper has come back,

To give back the children to their root;

There plays the drum with the flute in the track

Of the rainbow route.

Peace? How did it come!

Everyone knows, and all have a say;

The drums are beating dum, dum,

The flute playing away.

good

I am a good parent, not the best,

Am happy being good when I am with the rest.

Not the best, am a good spouse and a child,

I am not alone, to leave others in the wild.

The language I speak, the food I eat,

Are just as good, worthy for a treat.

My country's not the best, but good enough for me,

I love it all the more, let others live and be.

Good is good enough, a friend is any me,

It's okay to be good, the magic’s here to see.

Good is the World a bit ahead of none,
Endless is the fun for us to win as one.

Borderless day

We want an interdependence day

When borders melt and differences cease,

We live without fear, with ease

We meet, smile, laugh and play.

Days that talk of the past

In the flags that flutter in the sky,

Are gone, not to overcast

Us anymore with anger and wry.

We belong to the world

Patriots of countries we’re out

Of the orders so bold

Cross limits strong and stout

With a simple flag that dances to say,

We want a borderless day.

Wars have gone into the past

Now it’s peace that’s to stay,

We want interdependence to last

With a single flag on the borderless day!