The Day of Freedom

 

It is not a mere ritual 

To rise and dive into the spirit of freedom

 To recall the bravehearts

 who spent days and nights

in the dungeons of prisons, 

forests and hideouts, 

whose tears and blood made the new soil.

It is prayer to bow down 

and reminisce the courage 

we would never have to court pain

 for a motherland. 

A heart truthful, 

A mind for self- assessment, 

Eyes that do not close on the wrongs, 

A conscience clear as a forest fountain, 

Action; pure, uncontaminated

Let these be the best tribute to a Mother 

and her freedom bearers 

who brought light and a new dawn 

for a nation that saw its flag 

fluttering in the zenith high,

 beyond the reach of perpetrators of sin. 

Freedom was not free, 

Freedom is not free, 

In the path of redemption and love 

that will unbind our wings 

at the dusk of departure at last, 

One salute in the name of motherland, 

One humble murmuring into the air; 

We are, because you were.

15/8/2021

Mother:An Elegy

 

Mother: An Elegy

Who could have fathomed

How deep the roots will have to

dive, wrestling against

the earth's crust

to wring out water 

and food.

What we saw was the canopy

of green foliage 

offering free shelter

from sun and rain.

When mother lay 

on the pyre

her lips were locked tight

in a smile,

for she was free now

from the everyday death 

she died

trying to wring out

food and water for others

from her marrow.

Nobody saw or heard

the thousand words

her lips held from escaping

lest the walls should crumble

around her.

Now she is at peace.

May be the world is

a better place today

for some  mothers,

A place

they won't want to leave.

NOMAD

 

Nomad

That you wear this nomadic life 

on your sleeve and move 

from house to house

scene to scene, drawing lines 

on water and then 

shuttling to another horizon altogether

in burserk, 

It only speaks of your rootlessness.

You have forgotten even to be sad,

Your eyes are dry like a perennial desert

The rain comes, but in such odd 

and strange hours that you 

do not recognise the clouds

once in a while.

A flood rises in you purposelessly

not seeking any shore to drown

but as a random thirst,

There is no hunger but of the stomach;

That also you do not feed with zest,

 You spend the empty hours in langour, without chasing a Buddha 

or a denouncement, 

Stray flashes of thoughts 

hiting the walls of your non-being,

when you are not struggling

to meet the necessity of the necessities.

Purposefully someone something wrote

in the slate of time,

And you lost a home,

So that you will be making homes here and there, until the times comes,

to fly back home,

Past the etching of a half hazard tale

of half inclination

and half comatose existence.

Till then it is frenzied songs

sung quietly in the long summer hours 

of the day or the wintry nights,

Or the afternoons when the 

sky casts the gloom and suddenly 

changes into the storm's costume 

forcing everything into chaotic madness.

Then you dance, then you come alive.

You breath the ordinary charm

of the extraordinary days 

like the fragrance of mellowed afternoons.

The overwhelming moments

keep whispering,

that you are here

for a few seasons,

So are the happy yellow flowers 

falling outside the window-

Arriving, blooming and disappearing.