Skip to main content

We are the beggars


We are the beggars begging for our own money
Standing in serpentine queues before
Automated bureaucratically heartless machines.
The boss will charge a cess
For giving us our own money
and peddle us promises in return.

There is food in the market.
Vegetables rot on the stands
For want of money to be bought.
Fruits rot.
Fish and meat rot.
Money rots in our accounts.
We live in a rotten country.
Having everything, we have nothing.

Not even voices to speak out.
We mistrust the very air we breathe.
The person standing behind or in front in the queue
Is my enemy in all probability.
There are only patriots with burning hearts
And traitors to feed the passion’s blazes.

My government is the wizard of words.
Words conjure up a utopia, paradise, in people’s fancy,
Swachh Bharat where wealth and all else is white,
Whose godman sells miraculous fairness creams
For whitening all that is black.
Whiteness is Prakriti ka ashirwad.

The white man’s burden is back
Whitening the nation
Whitening the nation
Whitening the nation

Automated bureaucrats laugh
Like the wind passing through dried up brambles.



Indian Bloggers

Labels:

Comments

  1. जितेन्द्र माथुरJanuary 5, 2017 at 11:24 AM

    You said it Sir. The present situation is exactly the same in our country. Helplessness has become the order of the day for a commoner.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 5, 2017 at 1:41 PM

      How much patience do the people possess is the next question, Jitender ji. While imposing remedial measures (some of which may be needed), can people be ignored? For whom is the remedy? For the sake of remedy or for the people?

      I hope the government will become more sensitive to the ordinary people's needs and necessities.

      Delete
  2. Amit AgarwalJanuary 5, 2017 at 12:56 PM

    Ha ha..the impact of demonetization has made you write a poem..and an even more impactful than that I must say! I loved every single word of it, Tom sir:):)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 5, 2017 at 1:43 PM

      Thanks for the appreciation, Amit ji. I was reminded to Vikram Seth's poem 'The Tale of the Melon City' in which the King says, "The nation needs a hanging and someone must be hanged'. We now have almost the whole nation being hanged for the sake of the King!

      Delete
  3. sunaina sharmaJanuary 5, 2017 at 5:00 PM

    Reminded me of Eliot's poetry - the rotten city of hollow mindsets

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 5, 2017 at 7:16 PM

      Eliot is a regular source of inspiration whenever I turn a poet.

      Delete
  4. Purba chakrabortyJanuary 6, 2017 at 12:03 AM

    A wonderful poem on the current scenario.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 6, 2017 at 6:24 AM

      The current scenario is a fertile ground for poets.

      Delete
  5. Rajeev MoothedathJanuary 7, 2017 at 5:48 AM

    You should the weapon of poetry more often since you do have a natural knack for it!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
8 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Kailasnath the Paradox

AI-generated illustration It wasn’t easy to discern whether he was a friend or merely an amused onlooker. He was my colleague at the college, though from another department. When my life had entered a slippery slope because of certain unresolved psychological problems, he didn’t choose to shun me as most others did. However, when he did condescend to join me in the college canteen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette, I wasn’t ever sure whether he was befriending me or mocking me. Kailasnath was a bundle of paradoxes. He appeared to be an alpha male, so self-assured and lord of all that he surveyed. Yet if you cared to observe deeply, you would find too many chinks in his armour. Beneath all those domineering words and gestures lay ample signs of frailty. The tall, elegantly slim and precisely erect stature would draw anyone’s attention quickly. Kailasnath was always attractively dressed though never unduly stylish. Everything about him exuded an air of chic confidence. But the wa
9 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
16 comments
Read more