Inspiration

I fumble, I pause, I halt
I get blamed for it being my fault
Couldn't it be a temporarily lapse
Or just a bad day, perhaps
But, such a day comes in our life
When for each action one needs to strive
The failure should inspire in you the will
'Cause of the confidence you should have in you still
That for this day you were given a call
That no matter what, the world can be yours.

Death

No appetite for the sea, an empty pale
The boat stops rocking, no wind in the sail
 Ravaged by the high seas, the captain wants to rest
 Like a brown leaf drop into the ground, it knows best
 So is the wish, the I want to be
 Forgotten from memory be the end I see

Pandal Hopping

The festivity was at its prime
With joy and pleasure in the clime
Swift business happened in all the shops
The idols, the lights and all the props

Sweetmeats and drinks and meats all galore
For all child's wants she got a little more
New saris and dhotis were fashioned around
The carnival full of din and palpable sound

I was in awe of the happiness in the air
A welcome change from my desk and chair
A loin clothed man then disturbed my scene
Of the jubilance that my eyes had seen

The ragpicker creeped to the nearest dump
His head deep down, searched for the occasional bump
Like a shaggy dog to get a morsel to eat
Ignorant to his surround which were so neat

I sit now at my chair and he is in my thought
Why he was at the fiesta, I wish it was not
To eat from garbage, did You write his destiny so?
Why then my brother had to fall so low?

The last two months

The following is not in chronological order. Some points that I would like to always remember.

1) Going inside a house, only to come out after 20 minutes to see a suicide due to poverty and alcohol a few houses away.

2) Dancing to drums for Didi's phenomenal win and welcoming an era of change by rubbing each other with green 'gulaal'.

3) Visiting 6*10 sq. ft. homes of daily wage earners with four family members.

4) The status of God being endowed to the children of the family.

5) How geography and history play a vital role in decisions of people.

6) Meeting a rickshaw-puller cum pimp in a hill station saying of only one thing when asked of places worth 'seeing'.

7) Finding the BOP being more hospitable even when constrained with extreme poverty compared to 'the people living in flats and kothis.'

8) Travelling in all modes of transport except for a bullock-cart or a horse back.

9) Speaking Bengali.

10) Working in the summer sun at 48*C, and still surviving it successfully.

To kill a mocking bird

"It is a sin to kill a mocking bird" said Atticus, in the novel 'To Kill a mocking bird'. The novel revolves around the trial of a negro, who is not guilty of the charges of having raped a white girl, but the jury unanimously believes otherwise. The negro finally is battered with 11 bullet holes while he tries to run from the jail.

The preface and the description on the cover tell you the same story, only in some different words. Yet, it looses to give due attention to another killing. There is the murder of innocence and purity of Scout, the protagonist, who has been characterized as being in the 2nd grade. The child in her is murdered as she becomes a lady at ten. She observes her aunt and her neighbors as 'behaving' that way when they get to know about the Negro's death and slowly she too starts 'carrying' herself around. I wish to express my views on such transformation, but there is another killing of the mocking birds, which is currently taking place in most of the households that I see around that I want to discuss. The figurative 'killing' of the child.

India has 1.2 billion people living in it, with 30% of the people below 14 years. If you ask mothers about the routine of their kids, they would tell that their child goes to school at 6 in the morning, comes back at 1 pm, takes his/her lunch, studies till 4 pm, goes for tuition at 5pm, returns home at 9 pm, has dinner and goes to sleep. This grind happens 5 days a week. Non-stop.

Don't the mothers see the mocking birds in their children? Where is the time for the birds to sing? What a shame that the children have been gifted with wings to fly, but have had them clipped by the social pressure of studies. Why are the children forced to conform to the rat race before they even know the pros and cons of being rats?

I wish rather than running and making haste to their schools at 6, they would have been suggested to pause and look at the red of the sun. Just to get the warmth and the freshness to fly in this world rather than race like the rats.