Making a move

When all the scientists
Engage their ignited minds
To develop a technology
That channels to feed
The thin mouths
With excess food,
Then the expeditions to
The outer worlds
Will make sense.

Map the distance between
The food and the hungry heart,
Measure with flawless perfection
Than making a mark
On the colorful planets;
Calculate the shelf life of the
Not-yet waste grub,
Let it travel to its starving hub
Sparking priceless smiles.
This trajectory is worth
Thousand times more
Than those
Lightyears of
Meaningless,
Meandering miles.

Dry food, wet food
Oh! The huge Stomach
Is waiting to eat them all.
Before it reaches the garbage
For heaven's sake
Let them reach their desired place.

If you could construct towers
In every nook and corner
For the sake of communication,
You could definitely streamline
The excess to the needy
With your effort and gumption.

Every eatery, hotel
Every restaurant, motel
Every house, home,
Every city, from Haiti, Beijing
To New Jersey, Rome
Needs your help dear
Scientists and engineers
of the world to ensure
That not a morsel of food,
Not a drop of water
Be drained,
We don't have the means
You see
To let them rot and squander
Without care and empathy.

When you solve this challenge
Of this blue terrain
With your gifted Brain,
When all its famished residents
Are replete, thanks to your brilliance
Can you rest to wander
In outer space.

Else it's rather
Superfluous
To make a move
In Moon or Mars.

In words

I speak with words
Yet the sense
Precipitates in a land
Beyond their world.

I've never chosen
Green for grief,
Gray for gaiety
I have never said,
'I'm tired'
With an expression
Of exhilaration.

Words
Murderers,
Saviours
Of the soil.

It is the non-words
That make words, words.

Still
All of this
Had to be unearthed
In words.

Humble wish

The tongue is in between
The heart and the brain
Let my speech draw
The strength and balance
from both,
Not from one alone,
For then it could be either
Too dry, too wet, too in vain.

Let it be colorful, soft, sure
Warm and humble, yet very high
Let the lightness of the tongue
Touch the sky,
its sharpness so sound
Peacefully poised on the ground
Like the rainbow that's seen
As an effort of delight
By the sun and the rain.

France factor

France factor

France is fuelling!
No to football?
Is France failing?
Frustrated with
The rising fuel price
They're fiercely paying
A heavy price.
Damaging their own
Priceless possessions
In Paris which, even
Hitler hesitated to hurt?
All this just to
Get a message across?
France has lost its gumption.
To protest against Macron
Parisians, or 'Pharisiens'*
Are behaving like Morons.
O Saraswati! Goddess of learning! Save this mess!
Bless this modern Kalidasa**
So he resurrects into consciousness!

Pharisiens* - Pharisees or hypocrites
Kalidasa** - One of the greatest Sanskrit writers of India, author of  'Meghadootam'. The legend goes that he was considered naïve and ignorant, known to have been cutting the branch of a tree where he was sitting. He fell off the tree and was weeping helplessly when Goddess Saraswati came to his succour, blessed him and thus hehwent on to become the wisest man history has ever known.

Being in touch

Being in touch

Speak less, speak slow

Speak sweet,

Even when you're

Feeling low.

Let vibrations of

Happiness be sent

To all the priceless

Five elements.

From dawn to dusk

Let all the organs

Sing of love

Not of judgement.

Being light, being sound

Beneath the sky,

On the ground

In every moment.

The unpaintable

Heaps of livid leaves
Lying loose on the ground.
A deaf and blind artist
Visibly challenged,
With the tired brush,
Frozen paints,
Frenzied fist,
Was trying hard
To draw people,
Who, in their mind
Are deaf and blind.

Br-aching news

When the moribund world
Is wailing of walls
Of false, deadly habits
Beyond its wits,
We are in the lounge talking,
Breaking our heads
Over Brenrty or Brexit.

The guest

At times I realize
That the country
Where I work, doesn't
Belong to me.

Here the rains appear strange
Petrichor smells foreign
They fail to make me happy
I wonder why!

I do love to see those huge
Red autumn-leaves,
They look beautiful;
But I've grown up seeing
Catkin flowers talking
To the feathery clouds,
Priests are hired for the
Durga puja* which is celebrated
With enthusiasm and grandeur,
And I've also made friends here
Still in me a sense
of emptiness prevails.

Then where do I belong!
Cannot ignore money, good life?
That's why I'm floating here
Singing the immigrant's song!

Despite the number of shops,
Neighborhood,
No matter how flawlessly
I sing 'On the country roads'
Or a Jim Reeves number
I'm always out of tune
A signed off intruding prune.
If they don't find anything
They'd look at me, in a metro
They'd stand for miles
Yet not sit beside me
Or they'd simply say,
'O I love this accent'
Until I realize I'm a guest.

But when I go to my
own country, there too
I'm made to feel like a guest.
Relatives, friends
Carry for-how-long-you're-here
On their curious faces
I'm pound and dollar for them
Passers-by look at me strangely,
Roadside teashop owners
Call me sir, but hesitate
Calling me by my name
No matter how flawlessly
I recite in my mother tongue
Lines of Tagore so dear
'Where the mind is without fear
And the head is held high'
Looking up in the azure sky.

In this world I guess
The only consolation
That perhaps eases
Is that we all are guests.

I also have this voice
In me which says,
'O boy, chin up, head high
You've made a choice
Make it right without guilt or shame
Both the beautiful countries
Are gaining as much as you are
No worries, you've come this far.
Don't cloud your head with insipid stories
Accept the game
Do not sulk, do not blame
Anyone, neither the petrichor, nor the graceful rains
You've come here for your growth
Your places of work and birth belong to you
You also belong to both.
Red leaves and catkin flowers
Too fall and bloom as guests
We're all visitors here
Love it all just as they are
And keep on doing your best.

Durga puja* - A Bengali festival that takes place in every autumn.

The deadliest terror

Thousands of books
Written on
Growth and development,
Despite Nobel Laureates
Renowned economists
Scratching dead, re-read heads,
Notwithstanding
Millions of seminars
Conferences arranged
Good and kind words exchanged
Year after year
Rich are becoming rich
Poor poorer.

The deadliest terror
The world has ever known
Is disparity amongst
The rich and the poor.

The rich cannot survive
Without the poor
By design poverty is alive
So rich can gain more and more.

It's a global shame it's a pity
Since time the endemic terror
So openly dirty and vulgar
Is spread as a red carpet so dear
So characteristically pithy.

Standing up

Standing up

My parent, an activist who founded a hospital
In a remote village of Bengal,
Stopped having milk
And dairy products
To stand for the
Mal-nutritioned children.

A worthy child,
I actively
And furiously refuse
To indulge
In any competition,
I believe in playing my part,
Not in being apart
For the sake of perfection.

Trying to be better than others
Phew it's such a vice
Trying to improve self
And fellow brothers and sisters
It's out-of-the-box thinking,
It's pricelessly nice.