Mother

Mother, in complete humility and gratitude I bow,
However far you may go,
The rays of your love will light
even the darkest of my night!

O Mother,
My first footstep lies in thy womb,
From such a begining,
how can I reach a destination wrong?!

Darkness

Too far and deep, I have gone into the pit of gloom,
And lost in the cavernous folds of the impending doom,
Even the brightest big suns now appear too far,
Faint stars these now and just flash their inspiring rays,
Feeble raylets reaching me cannot take out the ship caught in treacherous bays,
I know the futility of the beckoning light,
Even in its brightest folds outside, hope was always out of sight,
Now i go deep into my night,
With nobody as a witness to my plight,
All cherished dreams out of sight,
A wingless bird that tried to fly but then crashed from its struggled height,
Now I just silently walk into the dark hold of my night,
Alone
and forlorn,
 Musicity of my soft moan,
Carrying me into hitherto unreachable zone!

Crime and Punishment

There is crime and there is punishment. The crime, full stop. It's a criminal act. It cannot be reversed. Punishment cannot right the wrong. There is hardly any redemption. Punishment is a poor instrument of deterrence, and most often it fails even in that. Going above the man-made instruments of punishments, we have the divine system of justice, For crimes, where man-made system of justice fails to deliver redemption, we expect the divinity to set it right. But what of mass crimes? What of Nazi Holocausts, communist purgings, religious ans racial genocides? The equation of right and wrong loses its meaning. It's just crimes, A massive wrong. Forget about mankind's justice, even wildest stretch of faith in divine redemption fails to get even an iota of justice.Does it  mean that the mass crime stands unredeemed? Forever. Does it just keep casting its shadows over the present, creeping into the future, almost forever. Just waiting to be redeemed. And forgotten finally. Or forgiven more suitably.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. A song of humanity amidst mass crime. A depiction of human hate and lust for power in Nazi occupied France in second world war. France is virtually menless. Men are in prison. Women hold the baton of life. It's a dark cloud over, taking their smiles away. They are wives, mothers, daughters, sisters and lovers. But only in memory. The males who identify them as such are missing. They have to survive. When they can no longer fight to save their body, they fight to save their soul. For future. For the victory of humanity over monstrosity. For their men. To give them fresh lease of life, if at all they return after war. Forget about redemption. The survival of love in a woman's heart for her man, despite all the wrongs to her body in his absence, is still a better right then millions of wrongs by criminal souls. It is here that the question of redemption becomes irrelevant. Like a small lamp drives away millions of particles of darkness with its tiny flicker, The women of France keep the torch alive. Beacon of hope, of love, of a possibility in times to come, an urge to relive the moments that sound farther than wildest dreams, In the backdrop of Nazi holocausts, they move silently, unheroically, carrying love in their eyes, hopes in their laps and seeds of humanity in their womb. Read it. It might help you in being a still better human being.    .

A Sunny Day at Last!

A perfectly sunny day after what it seems like ages. Many a fate seemed to have frozen. Life almost suspended, barely pulsating in hibernation. Sun appeared to have gone on a sabbatical, making us realise how important He is. Imagine, what would happen if sun goes off duty for some time!? Coldness creeped in from all corners, stalking all and sundry almost everywhere. Icy winds, frosty nights, grey overcast skies giving their best to realise how important warmth is to life and living on earth. What chance poor earth stands without the glowing father? And does human soul stand a better chance without the warmth of love and compassion? And dispelling all the doomsday talk lisped through the elders' shivering bones, He peeps over a perfectly clean eastern horizon one fine day and gives an assuring smile like a seafaring father returning to bring protectiveness and peace with him after months. Lo, all the grey ghosts of cold vanish. The cold wind still tries a frigid mischief, but its swirly taunts get absorbed in His fatherly smile. All they appear is just innocuous lukewarm airy swirls. Frost beaten leaves tumble down with gently pining musical notes. The birds raise their chorus again, after staying uncharacteristically subdued for weeks. The sky blue and fresh like freshly washed. Icing on the cake for me also. I spot a rufous Indian treepie. The beautiful long-tailed bird, so conspicuously proud of its long tail, appears to lord over a drove of insecure, noisy mynas. And lo, a bigger icing on the previous icing! A pair of Indian Grey Hornbills! Dear o dear! Is it a dream!? First time I have seen them here in this part! Almost exotic! The grey, long-tailed birds carry their long, curving, scimitar type beaks with an aloof majesty. They grace the weather beaten branches of the gulmohar and flow away like the VVIPs of the birdie world. The treepie and and Hornbills appear to give a smiling assurance that not all is lost. Among the boring monotony of the ubiquitous house sparrows, crows, mynas, pied sterlings and pigeons, these two appear like foreigner birds. Well, a great day indeed. Possibly, propelled by the heartwarming enthusiasm of a sunny day, they took a larger foraging circle!

The Ultimate Doom

There are costs to be paid as an omnivorous carnivore society like the Chinese. Not judgmental about them. They have every right to eat anything, including themselves. But then one can't rule out scenarios like Coronavirus. There are a huge number of human-hazardous viruses hosted by animal and bird species. In this case, bats are the hosts for this virus. The poor bat was gobbled by the snake who in turn found himself on the enthusiastic dining table of a human and lo, the world gets an epidemic. At Wuhan market, you have truckloads of dogs, live foxes, crocodiles, wolf puppies, giant salamanders, snakes, rats, peacocks, porcupines, camel meat and you name anything possible under the sun to douse human gluttony. Eat man eat, i know you love boiling live being and take burps of world supermacy! But why spread the evil effects of your gluttony world over! As an epidemic-scared globalist, I am as scared of the hunger rumblings in a Chinese stomach as as dog is while being ferried to the dog market. Because God, or maybe even dog, knows, what new species may end up on the table of culinary experiment, unleashing some new virus in the food chain. Given their overblown aspirations to rule the world by cramming Chinese nationals all over the globe, the strain travels faster than their supernukes. As a poor vegetarian Indian I am more scared of the viral-nukes launched from their dinner tables than the globe-destroying weaponry. God, errr dogs, save us! I am getting more and more scared. I think, the human race will be destroyed, not by nukes and supernukes as u may suppose, by some hitherto unheard of culinary experiment in some Chinese kitchen where some animal, reptile or bird might be boiled and cooked for the first time in their entire millions of years of history, introducing a viral strain that willl eat the entire glibe-load of Homo-sapiens...oh God, errr, o dogs rather!!! To make it still worse, if i fall in Chinese hands, the kindest of them would still be happy to roast me alive and bring about another culinary experiment!!