Skip to main content

Waste Land


1.  The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, stirring
The winter-frozen blood in the veins, rousing
Mosquitoes and dust storms, dousing
The light in the souls with the fire of the sun.

You came riding waves of promises,
Development topped the list,
Quality was sought in and through workshops,
Sweatshops are what we are left with.

Unreal City,
Under the glare of the blaring sun,
A crowd flowed over bulldozed debris,
Performing the rituals chanted by the Guru.

“You! hypocrite lecteur! – mon semblable, - mon frère!”

2.  A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in itched her bum with allergens,
Her dress, words and smile sanitised by detergents,
“Your move, your move,” cried she ready to pounce
On the King on every board, every board she played against
Keeping multiple gadgets alive on her capacious crowded table.

“Bulldozer,” people called her.
Queen, she considered herself.
Heads rolled when she smiled.
Tails wagged when she screamed.
The Guru chanted mantras of success
For her the chessmen transmuted into pawns.
Before her the world prostrated
And the Guru laughed his way to the bank.

3.  The Fire Sermon

The chelas lit the fires
On pyres of protests
Ghar Vapsi, ghar vapsi,
Chanted the fires
That danced in the darkness
Of development built on infinite debris.

4.  Death by Sun

The bulldozer took on feminine agility
And achieved multiple orgasms beneath variegated costumes
When the April sun scorched the souls
That longed for spring rains and resurrection.

5.  What the Thunder Said

Datta
Dayadhvam
Damyata

But there was no thunder
There is no promise in the Waste Land
Except farts from bums
Rested on chairs that cause allergy.


Note: The poem is a silly parody of T S Eliot's famous poem of the same title and same parts. I admire Eliot. I claim nothing. Not even understanding Eliot.  I'm not worthy to lick his boots. But I love his imageries.  I love the way he can tease us out of our complacencies.  Out of our hypocrisy, perhaps.  Not out of our greed, I'm sure. Greed for power and wealth and land and...    

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 20, 2015 at 9:42 AM

    awesome :-) thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownApril 20, 2015 at 3:58 PM

    Oh, the comparisons! I hope I understood most of it right...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Utpal KhotApril 20, 2015 at 7:08 PM

    Good one Tom.. :) Thanks..

    ReplyDelete
  4. Roohi BhatnagarApril 21, 2015 at 1:07 AM

    I understood as I read your posts about the school. It was sad. But the poem has a sharp humor :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 21, 2015 at 6:21 AM

      Land is being taken away from farmers, people are ejected from their homes, students and teachers are thrown out of School... Development comes at some price! Or have we converted everything into a commercial enterprise?

      Delete
  5. AmitAagApril 21, 2015 at 12:23 PM

    It's only you who could appropriately match Eliot's genius in words and in spirit!
    Amazingly done!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Saru SinghalApril 21, 2015 at 8:14 PM

    Same plight, different eras; I would say. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 21, 2015 at 9:04 PM

      Yes, Saru, only the time changes, people don't- unfortunately.

      Delete
  7. sunaina sharmaApril 23, 2015 at 1:06 AM

    I adore Eliot, so I was a little taken aback when I read the beginning....but you did so much justice not just to the great poet but to your words as well.....I don't have words enough to praise you Sir.....just a salute....

    ReplyDelete
  8. UnknownApril 27, 2015 at 2:14 PM

    Sattire and it shows pain too....kudos truly!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more