Mortgaged

When the indefensible is defended,
Truth becomes the victim;
For our self interests,
We swallow our independence, and
Clock our intelligence
In language of the learned;
Ah, for the gullible,
And of minds simple,
The believers,
Honesty and integrity
Uncompromised,
Happy to rest their guilt,
On shoulders of the learned,
They march with their
Heads held high;
After all, everything that’s
Greek and Latin,
Must be the words of God,
Mere mortals they,
Who are they to question;
For the roof over their heads,
Life is mortgaged to
The banks,
And their heads?
Charlatans have a
Lien on that.

Divergent Thoughts: Set of Haikus

In the name of God
Millions tortured, maimed and killed
Still preach the gospel

The prophet of peace
Followers kill in his name
Mute spectators all

Tower of Babel
Merciful God’s punishment
Cursed diversity

Children of the book
Monotheistic all but
Which one is greatest

We want lasting peace
But peace on our own terms though
While the world suffers

Lie, cheat, commit sin
As long you serve our purpose
Get a mulligan

We worship same god
Speak different languages
Different, we fight

We speak same language
But worship different god
Different, we fight

Worship same, speak same
Different color of skin
Different, we fight

What is different
Language, color, religion
Same blood flows in vein

 

I Search in Vain

My friend Jane (Jane Dougherty) had introduced me to writing Ghazals in English some time back.  Growing up in India, I was quite familiar to listening to ghazals but never knew that ghazals were also written in English.  During last few months, I tried my hand writing a few pieces. I either write in my mother tongue, Assamese ( Axomiya), and then translate to English or vice versa.  Last week, like a fool, I prompted Jane to write a ghazal as she had not posted a ghazal for quite some time.  She turned the table on me as she promptly wrote one and posted (Rain) and challenged me to write one. I find it very hard to follow rules while writing poetry and ghazals do have some strict rules.  I am not professing that I have followed all the rules but here is my try.  My apologies to all the purist who follow strict rules. I plead guilty to breaking the rules.

I wrote the following piece in English first and then translated to Assamese. Posting it in the same sequence.

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I Search in Vain

Just wanted to be human but society pigeonholes

Hyphenated identity breaks my heart as society pigeonholes

Will:Week Thirty Five of My Fifty Two Weeks Journey with the Letter ” W”

English is somewhat funny and ambiguous language.  Same word can be noun, pronoun or verb on its different avatar. I do not even go into the way it is spoken or spelled by people in either side of the pond.  The slap that I got from my elder brother for misspelling “centre” as “center” still resonates loudly in my ears after all these years.  I had the temerity to show him that I was correct by showing the title of the illustrated comics I was reading at that time, ” Journey To The Center Of The Earth” by Jules Verne. That was the end of my tryst with illustrated comics till my high school examinations were over.  Little did he know then that I would have to spell it as center for the major part of my life, otherwise spell check would always underline it with a red curly line.  I had no idea that one of the former colonies of the empire had decided not only to rebel and gain independence from the empire but also had decided  to distort the royal language. I think those early pilgrims, like many others of the modern world, had difficulties following the rules of English spelling and decided to make the spellings simpler.

I am digressing. It is a bad habit of mine. I will try to keep this short. Yes I will.  I  am talking about the word “will”.  Will can be a verb, it can be a noun or it can be a pronoun depending on how it is used.  No wonder it is difficult for non-native speakers to master English quickly.  There are definitely different versions of English being spoken in different parts of the world and people speaking Hinglish may be more in numbers than speakers of native English.

I digress again.  Before the clock strikes twelve, I must post for Write Anything Wednesday.  I must will myself to ensure that I will post this piece and my poem starting with the letter “W” for week thirty five of my fifty two weeks journey with the letter “W”.  I will have to run to finish it before the hour is up. Oh! I forgot to mention the word. It is “WILL”.

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This post is in response to Write Anything Wednesday-Sept-28-2016 sponsored by Writerish Ramblings

Wrong

WRONG!
What’s wrong is wrong
Whitewashing the wrong
Will not make it right
Why do we
Who seek the good of
World’s civil society
When in minority

“WRONG”! Week Twenty Eight of My Fifty Two Weeks Journey with the Letter ” W”

We come to this world pure and innocent.  Slowly as we start growing up, we start to learn what is right and what is wrong.  It is out of love and concern about our safety that our elders, knowingly or unknowingly, start teaching us what is good for us and what is bad. We do not have much choice. Left to ourselves we would have learnt everything by trial and error as we grew older, if we would have been lucky enough to survive our curiosity.  So early on in our life, we learn to be subservient to our elders in believing what is right and what is wrong.

Many of us during our adulthood relearn to judge for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. Sadly, many of us never grow up.  We abdicate our responsibilities to judge for ourselves and become blind followers.  We rent out our brains to others to play with it as they like and become puppets, to dance at the will of our puppet masters as they pull our strings.  Simply put, we just become unable to decipher right from wrong.  We let ourselves be manipulated and start believing whatever our puppet masters put into our brains.  Otherwise how can one justify killing for any cause. We have sanctified killings and tortures by awarding Nobel Peace Prize to people whose hands were sullied by the blood of  their fellow human beings, we have declared people as saints who had tortured their fellow human beings in the name of their faith and God.  We always find a reason to justify those actions of ours.  If those killings and tortures can be right, then why other killings and tortures are wrong.

For me, personally, what is wrong is wrong.  We may try to wash that wrong in milk to make it look like pure lily white, but that does not make it right. Concoction of politics and religion, the venomous brew of race, ethnicity, language and nationality has poisoned our minds to such an extent that a day may soon come when the human race, whatever left of it,  may be dancing the dance of ultimate destruction on the cemetery of it’s own creation.

Before I start sounding like one of those sermonizing pundits who invade our houses day and night through the wonders of modern technology at light speed, let me share with you the starting word of the poem for week twenty eight of my fifty two weeks journey with the letter “W”.  You, my dear readers, must have guessed it by now and you are not “WRONG”.

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This post is in response to Write Anything Wednesday-Aug-010-2016 sponsored by Writerish Ramblings